Image Credit: Rodolfo Clix

This is the seventh article in our examination of the AFI’s Ten Top Tens. You can read the introduction here, the first article in the series on animation here, the second article in the series on romantic comedies here, the third article on sports movies here, the fourth article on mysteries here, and the fifth article on westerns here, the sixth article, on fantasy films, here.

Good science fiction that is true to the genre is very, very rare.  Part of this is due to a usual lack of understanding of the genre by professionals or an unreasonable definition by enthusiasts.

Rank	Film	Year
1	2001: A Space Odyssey	1968
2	Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope	1977
3	E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial	1982
4	A Clockwork Orange	1971
5	The Day the Earth Stood Still	1951
6	Blade Runner	1982
7	Alien	1979
8	Terminator 2: Judgment Day	1991
9	Invasion of the Body Snatchers	1956
10	Back to the Future	1985

The AFI defines science fiction as a genre that “marries a scientific or technological premise with imaginative speculation.”  Fine.  I like this definition, but right off the bat, I see some trouble with the list.

First, I’d like to say for the record, that as great as Star Wars is, I think it belongs more in the Fantasy genre than it does in science fiction.  Sure, there’s space travel and alien species, but that’s mostly incidental.  The premise that really encapsulates Star Wars is that of “the force”.

“The Force” is better understood in mystical terms or spiritual, Taoist, terms than any scientific understanding.  One of the things that I believe must be required of science fiction is an explanantion, somewhere, somehow, in the work of the main scientific premise, or how it applies scientifically.  Star Wars really doesn’t do this.

If a medieval story uses fire, it is not necessarily science fiction.  Especially if it applies a mystical or alchemical understanding of fire.  If, however, that medieval story uses fire as a major plot point and explains, scientifically, what fire is and how it is wielded, then I would say that this is, by all accounts, science fiction.  Just because it’s in the past makes no difference, and the AFI definition supports me here.

By contrast, Star Wars, which presumably takes place in the future (even though it takes place “A long time ago…”) uses a natural phenomenom but can’t or doesn’t even attempt to explain that hugely significant phenomenon in scientific terms.  What’s worse is that it is explained in metaphorical terms.  It is well known that metaphoric language is long relegated to the use of explanation of supernatural and religious phenomenon.  Since Star Wars uses this metaphoric language in lieu of explicit observation, than it isn’t science fiction.  How can it be?

And don’t give me that crap about the midichlorians, the idea was introduced well after Star Wars.  It doesn’t apply here.  Prequel induced knowledge works for literature, maybe, but if it doesn’t exist and there is no hint of it existing in the first film, chronologically, than it doesn’t exist for film.  The scientific explanation of “The Force” in the fourth installment of the series does nothing to change its absence in the first.

Now that most of you are beside yourselves in anger, let’s move on.  The second glaring mistake in this list is A Clockwork Orange.  Sure, it takes place in the future, but that doesn’t guarantee it’s science fiction, as we’ve already discussed.  I suppose the stretch here is that since it uses “advanced” pyschological behavioral modification techniques that it is somehow science fiction.  That’s quite a stretch it seems.

I’m no psychologist, but its likely that even in the distant 1970s, most psychologists understood the “techniques” used in Orange were along the same lines as torture rather than treatment and probably not really effective.  The groundwork for Behavioral Psychology was well laid by this point in time and Cognitive Psychology was well underway.  Put this together and the basic understandings of modern pychology were already present.  This renders the “science fiction” portion of the movie null and void.  Not because the movie doesn’t explain the science (well, it doesn’t) but rather the science in the movie is demonstratively wrong.

Not pissed off anymore?  Let me see if I can change that.  Terminator 2: Judgement Day.  Take it off the list.  Why?  Not because I don’t like it; I do.  Just like I rather enjoy Star Wars.  But T2 must be taken off because The Terminator is a better movie.  In every respect except production quality.  The part of the first one is the basic concept of the movie makes much more sense than the second and is much more poetic.

In the first movie, the intelligent machines battling the humans send back the Terminator to the past in order to stop John Connor from being born.  As you know, John Connor is instrumental in the successful uprising, and eventual war, with the machines.  The machines send the Terminator back in time as a last ditch effort to win the war.  It was a desperation move.  Humans soon raided the warehouse where the device was stored, realized what was going on, sent a human back to protect John’s mother, then destroyed the facility.

In this scenario, the humans had absolutely no understanding of time travel, they merely pulled the right levers.  Then, since they defeated the robot overlords, they rendered future time travel impossible by destroying the facility.  Very cleanly done by James Cameron.

So the question is, how did the robots ever send the second Terminator?  Sure, they said that the research continued because of the remnants of the original, but that doesn’t explain how the second Terminator was ever sent.  Only one was ever sent.  And it was sent back to 1984 (great Orwellian nod).  Furthermore, how were the humans able to send their Terminator back to protect from the impossibly sent second robot Terminator?  They don’t have any understanding of time travel.  There is no explanation for this.  It doesn’t make sense.  So, T2 doesn’t belong on the list.  The first one, however, does.

The one movie that suprised me most for not being on the list is Jurassic Park.  Movies really don’t get much more culturally or filmically significant than this one.  Nor are they bigger commercially.  Jurassic Park has a pretty solid scientific base and explains it well.  The idea for the technology was not new at the time, but its implementation was still years away.  Much of the advance in genetic techniques since doesn’t make Jurassic Park out-of-date either.  So, given all of this, why isn’t this slam-dunk on the list?  But A Clockwork Orange is?  Riddle me that Batman.

The other really surprising one that didn’t make the cut is The Matrix.  The Matrix is really good at setting the rules for a movie and sticking with them the whole time.  This can’t be said for the second in the series, and especially not the third (Uh, weren’t they supposed to save the enslaved people?), but we’ll ignore those.  My only major problem with this film is the lack of explanation on how the energy from humans is harvested.  I certainly don’t understand that.  I doubt AFI gave it this much scrutiny though.

I was also suprised to see the I, Robot is not on the list.  I suppose that since it’s so new it is tough to decide how it fits in filmic history.  But that hasn’t stopped AFI from making other such controversial selections.  The explanation on Asimov’s positronic brain is pretty thin, but I don’t think that’s what stopped them from placing it on the list.

The last of my wonderment in absentia is Total Recall.  But I don’t know.  I give up.  Overall, I’m rather disappointed with this list.  I guess I sort of expected it though as no one seems to understand how to actually marry science with film with only a few exceptions.  It’s a tough genre.  Maybe it’s due to the scrutiny that science-minded folk give it.  Or maybe it’s because not many give a damn whether something is plausible so long as it’s entertaining.  Oh well, who knows?  I’m sure some will come along to restore my faith in Hollywood when it comes to science fiction.