Best Sci-Fi Tournament - Round 2, Group C

[Heather19]

Note: Please choose up to 4 films

Blade Runner
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/53/Blade_Runner_poster.jpg

Chronicle
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f9/Chronicle_Film_Poster.jpg

Frankenstein
http://images.moviepostershop.com/frankenstein-movie-poster-1931-1010141499.jpg

Ghostbusters
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c7/Ghostbusters_cover.png

Pi
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/5a/Piposter.jpg

The Thing
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c1/ThingPoster.jpg

War of the Worlds {1953}
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/31/Film_poster_The_War_of_the_Worlds_1953.jpg

X-Men : Days of Future Past
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/0c/X-Men_Days_of_Future_Past_poster.jpg

[mae]

Blade Runner
Frankenstein
War of the Worlds
X-Men

[DoctorDodge]

Blade Runner (still in my top 5 favourite films ever)
Chronicle (dark and one of the better takes on the 'superpower in the real world' films)
The Thing (claustrophobic and dealing with a very scary apocalyptic threat in a small setting, plus amazing effects make me love this as a scifi film as well as a horror)
X-Men: Days of Future Past (I just fucking love the use of time travel in this movie, particularly for exploring characters like Charles Xavier both at their wisest and at their most fucked up points in their lives, and how past and future can clash)

Really tempted to vote for Ghostbusters in this round, but decided not to only because I don't tend to think of it as 'scifi'. 'Supernatural' would be a better label, I think.

[divemaster]

Voted

Blade Runner
The Thing
War of the Worlds

[frik]

*Blade Runner
*Frankenstein
*The Thing

sk

[Mattrick]

Chronicle
Pi
War of the Worlds

[DoctorZaius]

Tough grouping. I wish there were a way the groups could be more well-rounded. Either the A or B round two groups really sucked.

[pathoftheturtle]

I just voted for the valid nominations; that makes it easy. I mean, yes, Chronicle is science fiction technically, but technically so is Superman. (Which was, I think, shot down in our pre-nominating phase.) I think it would be interesting if movies of similar type were grouped head-to-head with the winner from e.g. a larger set of superhero films going on to face top choice of post-apocalypse, top alien invasion, and etc. What usually happens instead is that a weaker example of one can't make it far enough to meet other examples of the same archetype. Unless it's just a popular archetype in its own right. Or unless one of countless other random factors disrupt the theory. Evenly distributing some high quality and some low in each group is definitely not possible to orchestrate in any fair way, though, since determining general quality is supposed to be the whole goal of the tournament itself. The theory there is that low quality films should all have been voted out already. Until someone has a better idea, let's just pretend that's true. I might not agree with the group all the time, but I find the experience educational anyway.

[Mattrick]

Well Chronicle is sci-fi just for the 'alien' object that gives them the powers but how technology affects minds, in this case a commentary of egregious self-documentation.

[Ben Staad]

I truly hope Frankenstein receives more votes and moves on. The plot is sci-fi based and it is a beautifully tragic story.

[DoctorZaius]

I just voted for the valid nominations; that makes it easy. I mean, yes, Chronicle is science fiction technically, but technically so is Superman. (Which was, I think, shot down in our pre-nominating phase.) I think it would be interesting if movies of similar type were grouped head-to-head with the winner from e.g. a larger set of superhero films going on to face top choice of post-apocalypse, top alien invasion, and etc. What usually happens instead is that a weaker example of one can't make it far enough to meet other examples of the same archetype. Unless it's just a popular archetype in its own right. Or unless one of countless other random factors disrupt the theory. Evenly distributing some high quality and some low in each group is definitely not possible to orchestrate in any fair way, though, since determining general quality is supposed to be the whole goal of the tournament itself. The theory there is that low quality films should all have been voted out already. Until someone has a better idea, let's just pretend that's true. I might not agree with the group all the time, but I find the experience educational anyway.

I agree that lower quality may have been voted out, but sometimes groups get loaded, with good and bad, which hurts the whole.

[fernandito]

I agree that lower quality may have been voted out, but sometimes groups get loaded, with good and bad, which hurts the whole.
Films were sorted based on how they ranked in the previous phase. I grouped them into 'tiers' with movies scoring (for example) 30-25 in one tier, 25-20 in another and so on and so forth. There is one film from each tier in every single group and I labored over them to make sure they were as even as possible.

Any notion of groups being loaded is probably down to bias/personal preference.

[Mattrick]

So what you're saying Fernie is that you rigged it :P

[fernandito]

fuck off :P

[pathoftheturtle]

You could rearrange them to be more balanced for one person and I guarantee that THAT would look less balanced to someone somewhere. But it shouldn't really hurt anything, anyway. You ought to expect to be choosing the worst from a list that are not so good at some point in a game like this, and choosing between a solid list of favorites is also something you'd have to do eventually. If a better one is eliminated a bit earlier than it would have been if placed against weaker choices, they still don't have any better chance to beat the film that beat the one you think they would have lost to, do they?

[pathoftheturtle]

Well Chronicle is sci-fi just for the 'alien' object that gives them the powers but how technology affects minds, in this case a commentary of egregious self-documentation.
Does that mean that ALL of the "found footage" style movies should be defined as science fiction?

[Mattrick]

Well Chronicle is sci-fi just for the 'alien' object that gives them the powers but how technology affects minds, in this case a commentary of egregious self-documentation.
Does that mean that ALL of the "found footage" style movies should be defined as science fiction?

Chronicle isn't technically a found footage movie. What we see is a combination of police cameras, security cameras, various handheld cameras, news cameras. If it was found footage that meant someone would have had to have found it, compiled and edited it all, not to mention the camera was left on top of a mountain, doubt it was found and the original camera from the first parts of the movie was trapped underground (which is the most interesting question of all...who edited and compiled what we're watching?). Blair Witch - Making a documentary. REC - News crew/swat cameras/handheld, Last Exorcism - making a documentary, The Fourth Kind - making a documentary, Cloverfield - was documenting a farewell party and then recording what happened after: these have nothing to do with with self-documentation at all. Chronicle is about a kid who buys a camera to film his own miserable life that he feels no one else can see and he intends on filming everything no matter how strange it makes him seem to everyone else; using his powers he films himself lying in bed, not even doing anything, yet he still films himself and he becomes so obsessed with filming himself when he goes beserk he pulls cameras and cell phones out of peoples hands and surrounds himself with cameras filming him A lot of the movie is commentary on self-documenting and self importance and that if something is being documented it becomes important (he feels he isn't important at all) until he gets powerful enough he documents himself, and monologues to the camera, about himself being an Apex Predator.

[pathoftheturtle]

It 's an interesting style. I still don't think of it as a great sci-fi movie.

Just another way of presenting a very old plot.

[Mattrick]

It is more a combination of various genres (Which sci-fi is known for a lot anyways, often with horror/action/adventure) I agree. I'd consider it a superhero film if it was based off any previous superhero material. It's kind of like 28 Days Later...some people don't consider it a zombie movie because they aren't actually zombies even though the film follows the tropes of zombie horror. What I admire about Chronicle (besides being a launching pad for some good young actors) is it's fresh take on tropes as old as storytelling itself like man being corrupted by power and every time I watch it I discover a new layer to it. I still think it's a better superhero movie than most superhero films lol

[pathoftheturtle]

As I said, tho, I think half the nominees on this thread are out of place. I don't mean to pick on Chronicle that much. It is an okay movie. Another example is Pi. It's basically about effects doing science can have. Whether that's actually sci-fi I can't quite decide.

[Mattrick]

I think Pi is as realistic as sci-fi can get. I only saw it the one time two years ago so I can't comment too much on it. I think the least sci-fi thing on here is The Thing. It's a horror movie that happens to have an alien life form. The most scientific they get in the film pretty much is using petrie dishes to put blood in lol.

Days of Future Past has time travel but it's still just a mutant power...there is no science in the movie at all aside from the sentinels and even they only received perfunctory explanations. Out of all the X-Men the original is the most sci-fi imo.

[pathoftheturtle]

…It's a horror movie that happens to have an alien life form. A fair argument, except that the first rule we agreed on was that Horror Sci-Fi is allowed. I'm not opposed on general principle to superhero movies: it just doesn't seem right to vote for one or two when so many others were given no chance. Furthermore, just for the sake of argument, I think that a genetic time travel mechanism as hypothesized by "Days of Future Past" (the "X-Men" comic, originally) and The Butterfly Effect is more plausible scientifically than the fantastic implication of Somewhere In Time that anybody can travel through time if hypnotized.

[pathoftheturtle]

Oh yeah, and regarding the absurdities of incidental science in The Thing, it is fairly common for B-movie computers to provide incredibly specific information for the plot that would, when you think about it, require tremendously sophisticated programming. That is especially funny if you rewatch an old movie nowadays and get a fresh look at the graphics that those machines were actually capable of. :lol:

[Ben Staad]

Frankenstein needs more love! If you vote for him he will be happy to come over and pick some flowers and teach you to swim.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MA9opHsLACk

[mae]

When embedding YouTube videos, remove the s in https.

[Ben Staad]

Fixed and thanks!


When embedding YouTube videos, remove the s in https.

[pathoftheturtle]

I truly hope Frankenstein receives more votes and moves on. The plot is sci-fi based and it is a beautifully tragic story.
The novel was among the first of science fiction. They took some liberties in the original movie, but I still hate to see it lose to Ghostbusters. C'mon, people: this is not a comedy contest!

[needfulthings]

http://imageshack.com/a/img633/3434/b1T4ed.jpg http://imageshack.com/a/img673/8297/hCXOY3.jpg

[pathoftheturtle]

P.S. Dr. Z: I hope I didn't come across the wrong way. I once had the same feeling about "unfair" grouping, and I believe I even made similar comments myself on the first polls here that I participated in. I was only saying what currently seems to make sense. Nothing personal.

[mae]

I'm pretty surprised the '53 War of the Worlds is doing so well so far.

[Heather19]

The Thing
Frankenstein
Chronicle
Pi