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What sci-fi movie should I watch next?

Which sci-fi movie should I watch first?


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samsmart

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I've got a DVD that has "2001: A Space Odyssey," "Forbidden Planet," "Soylent Green," and "The Time Machine." I haven't played it yet because I don't know which one to watch first. So I'm asking the forum what their collective will thinks, and I'll watch the movies in order of the highest votes.

P.S. - "The Time Machine" is the one from 1960 featuring Rod Taylor, not the latest POS to bear the name.
 
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2001, one of the greatest movies ever.
 
I've got a DVD that has "2001: A Space Odyssey," "Forbidden Planet," "Soylent Green," and "The Time Machine." I haven't played it yet because I don't know which one to watch first. So I'm asking the forum what their collective will thinks, and I'll watch the movies in order of the highest votes.

P.S. - "The Time Machine" is the one from 1960 featuring Rod Taylor, not the latest POS to bear the name.


2001 is arguably the best of the four.

Forbidden Planet is also intresting, and possibly more entertaining as it is less "artsy" and moves faster.
 
How about A Boy and His Dog?
Or Clockwork Orange?
 
Out of your list, 2001 is probably the best one, but is much better if you've read the book prior to watching it. It was a little on the goofy side imo, and is much more symbolic than serious. The Time Machine was pretty bad, but it was the first movie I ever saw in a walk-in theatre when I was a kid, so I thought it was pretty cool back then.:mrgreen:.
 
Maybe it's because it's not my generation, but I find 2001 incredibly boring.
 
Maybe it's because it's not my generation, but I find 2001 incredibly boring.

It was boring to many in my generation too.:) If you don't know the storyline (via the book), you'll miss anything significant in the movie. It was an interesting story, but is not conveyed in the movie at all.
 
2001 is a good movie but really slow. I mean REALLLLLY slow. If you're into that I'd go for it first. But beyond that I'd go for Soylent Green. I don't know much about Forbidden Planet and the Time Machine (especially if its the new version) never impressed me much.
 
I've got a DVD that has "2001: A Space Odyssey," "Forbidden Planet," "Soylent Green," and "The Time Machine." I haven't played it yet because I don't know which one to watch first. So I'm asking the forum what their collective will thinks, and I'll watch the movies in order of the highest votes.

P.S. - "The Time Machine" is the one from 1960 featuring Rod Taylor, not the latest POS to bear the name.

2001 is good, but its better if you read the books first.
I haven't seen forbidden planet
Soylent Green is excellent
The time machine is OK, but not great.

In order I would:
1. Read 2001
2. Watch 2001
3. Watch Soylent Green
4. Watch WestWorld
5. Watch Logan's Run
6. Watch The Time Machine
7. Read The Time Machine
8. Watch Forbidden Planet.
 
2001 is a good movie but really slow. I mean REALLLLLY slow. If you're into that I'd go for it first. But beyond that I'd go for Soylent Green. I don't know much about Forbidden Planet and the Time Machine (especially if its the new version) never impressed me much.

2001 is entirely about presentation. Yes, it has a story, but it's not really about that. It's presenting the wonders of the imagined future. It moves slow since instead of pressing the story, it presses the shots. So we get a long scene inside the space shuttle that does not move the plot at all, but shows zero-G and how it is handled. The story does not really get moving until well over an hour in, when Hal loses it.
 
2001 is entirely about presentation. Yes, it has a story, but it's not really about that. It's presenting the wonders of the imagined future. It moves slow since instead of pressing the story, it presses the shots. So we get a long scene inside the space shuttle that does not move the plot at all, but shows zero-G and how it is handled. The story does not really get moving until well over an hour in, when Hal loses it.

I have to agree. If the movie focused more on the story, it would have made more sense without having to read the book to pick up the bits that were not in the movie. Such as the point of the monolith, why HAL loses it (its different in the book), the whole shot at the end with the old man and the baby. (I badly want to state why, but I should not give out spoilers)

I truly recommend reading the book, its awesome, even if it made some assumptions that are laughable today (like everything he writes about how a computer works, but you can't blame the guy he was quite innovative), its a great story and makes some interesting statements about human nature and humanity itself.
 
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I have to agree. If the movie focused more on the story, it would have made more sense without having to read the book to pick up the bits that were not in the movie. Such as the point of the monolith, why HAL loses it, the whole shot at the end with the old man and the baby. (I badly want to state why, but I should not give out spoilers)

I do think that if the movie had focused more on the story however, it would not have been as great a movie. This is especially true considering the context of when it was made. In 1968, space and space travel where all new, and pretty unknown. People thought of space travel in terms of Star Trek.
 
I do think that if the movie had focused more on the story however, it would not have been as great a movie. This is especially true considering the context of when it was made. In 1968, space and space travel where all new, and pretty unknown. People thought of space travel in terms of Star Trek.

I very much agree that it was a legitimate focus in itself. It was sort of a "world's fair, this is the future" thing, which was popular back than. However, if you look at something like moonraker, it had a lot of similar space themes and it still had a coherent story too. I think it would have been possible to do both. However, the themes in 2001 space odyssey would have been hard to understand if you were not a computer scientist at the time. Ultimately you had three movies in one

1. Whats going on with HAL9000
2. Monoliths and their whole story
3. Cool special effects and space stuff

I think if the movie focused on 2 and 3 or 1 and 3, they would have made a great movie. I think telling a 1968 audience what 1 and 2 had to do with each other in the time allotted would not have been possible.

Really, I think the movie had too broad of a focus. If you look at it, the first scene with the monolith and the pre-humans could have been cut out since showing what the monolith was actually doing would have probably been a movie in itself.
 
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I have to agree. If the movie focused more on the story, it would have made more sense without having to read the book to pick up the bits that were not in the movie. Such as the point of the monolith, why HAL loses it (its different in the book), the whole shot at the end with the old man and the baby. (I badly want to state why, but I should not give out spoilers)

I truly recommend reading the book, its awesome, even if it made some assumptions that are laughable today (like everything he writes about how a computer works, but you can't blame the guy he was quite innovative), its a great story and makes some interesting statements about human nature and humanity itself.


A friend of mine, who was a film-producer-wannabe, actually did an "edited" version of 2001, cutting about 25 minutes of the long, slow shots out to make it more watchable for the standard filmgoer. Frankly I thought it was pretty good and didn't really take much away from the original movie.
 
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