I agree very much with all of it, great analysis :D I disagree about Gravity though. It's Zero-G, not Zero-Gravity. Gravity keeps them in orbit, so it's a very fitting name.
He is not a movie buff. Its a blessing when we get neil to comment on a sci fi movie in general. His top movies is based on what he seen. Not the entire world. And I can respect that. I dont hold Neil to a movie critic standard. We hold him to a science standard. So lets respect his movies even though they might not be the best . A lot of people down played gravity cause of neil but Gravity was a good movie. He was just focused on the scrience,
The original Matrix script had the humans being used for cloud computing; it got changed to batteries because the executives thought audiences wouldn’t understand the concept. The directors even explained exactly Neil’s point, but the execs got it their way
I found this out years ago and it still makes me angry, effing studio exec d-bags ruined the lore of an otherwise excellent sci-fi setting because of their arrogance.
My Father's hobby is the study of the universe. He was an accountant and auditor before retirement which may explain his capacity to understand and appreciate large numbers that I never can. We lived in a small town in Alabama when "2001-A Space Odyssey" opened in theaters. He drove the family to Birmingham just for this movie. I was 8 years old. I remember goosebumps from the music and choking up when HAL was singing "Daisy". My Father obtained one of the theatrical posters and it still hangs in a room called, "The Classics" with other posters and memorabilia. We fondly talk about that trip and the movie. He's now 92. I'm 65. That's the measuring stick of when Hollywood gets something right.
@danielphillips6195 danielphillips, "study of the universe" sounds very vague. Reminds me of comedian Severn Darden, who famously gave a faux "Metaphysics Lecture" in the guise of Professor Walther von Der Vogelweide, titled, "A Short Talk on the Universe". The German accented professor opens with, "Now, why - you will ask me - have I chosen to speak on the Universe, rather than some other topic. Well, it's very simple: there isn't anything else!"
Arrival comment: They had hundreds or thousands of people involved with alien communication at dozens of sites around the world. We only follow the linguist and physicist. They also had mathematicians and biologists consulting. In the short story, there were hundreds of sites and it implied there were thousands of people involved.
Yeah putting arrival at the c-tier was a bad look. It was almost like he didn't pay that much of attention to the movie to see just how detailed and specific they were with their science
Also... as a security specialist with an affinity for cryptography. I'd prefer to use a linguist over a cryptanalyst. Most cryptanalysis deals with uncovering hidden human writing of the major, current, human, written languages. A linguist looks at a multitude of forms of communication. I think they would first have some grasp on how the language works. Afterwards, maybe a cryptanalist could figure the rest out fast, but they'd have no place to start.
I skipped to the end of this video because I'm not a huge NGT fan - when I saw Arrival was C-tier I was glad I didn't watch the whole thing. Arrival is a masterpiece. Full stop
As a former cryptographer and current linguist, I disagree with Arrival needing a cryptographer. A cryptographer deciphers code, but there's much more fine nuance to a language than there is to a code. There are a lot of linguistical concepts conveyed in that film that go beyond the science of cryptography.
Yeah, it seems Neil really didn't get Arrival. The film (and the short story it's based on) explains very clearly why they need a linguist. And I'm pretty sure Jeremy Renner's character was supposed to be an astrophysicist, not a generic physicist, but he was there just as scientific support for the linguist. They were trying to communicate, not dissect and analyze their bodies, which is where they would have called a biologist. On top of that, there were more than two people, they were constantly web conferencing with other scientists from around the world, but those scenes were downplayed because it would just be scientist exchanging and comparing data. Also, the hypothesis that the aliens would be dumb enough not to realize they had to write their symbols from the perspective of the humans on the other side of the glass is too silly to even entertain.
Exactly my thoughts (as neither a linguist, nor cryptograhper)! Linguists are not just polyglots and translators. They study communication systems. They are the ones actually thinking about alien languages and constructing them. It would have been cool to see the background of the main character in Arrival include her constructing an alien language. Presumably some of the aliens' communication is private and they might be using some form of encryption to protect it, and a cryptographer would be useful in that case. But I imagine their effors wouldn't be vey fruitful without some knowledge about the underlying language.
Would a cryptographer or linguist be better suited to cracking a rosetta stone & why. It seems to me you have it backwards. Cryptographers are better trained and equipped to decipher patterns in communications. While linguists have no such formal training or experience.
Neo: "Doesn't harvesting human body heat for energy, violate the laws of thermodynamics?" Morpheus: "Where'd you learn about thermodynamics, Neo?" Neo: "In school." Morpheus: "Where'd you go to school, Neo?" Neo: "Oh." Morpheus: "The machines tell elegant lies."
As a computer engineer, the biggest criticism I have against Independence Day is the assumption that an interstellar alien race's computer systems can be infected by a malware coded on Mac OS by a TV satellite technician.
@Mariamus But it is also stated that the alien vessel was unpowered until the arrival of the alien fleet. Which means that they had mere days to study, analyze, understand and reverse engineer a system that is unlike anything they have seen before, and on a much more advanced technical level. And then Jeff Goldblum's character was able to learn it in a matter of hours and devise a program that perfectly penetrated the entire alien fleet systems. That's like giving an ENIAC's technician the onboard computer from an F-35, and saying "Study this, we're hacking the USAF secure comms lines tomorrow". Only orders of magnitude harder, since we're dealing with an alien specie, whose thought and logic patterns might be completely different from human ones.
The movie also stated that the aliens used humanity's satellites to coordinate their attack, Golblum's character discovered this and tapped into their communications to see the countdown. So, an interface between alien tech and human tech already exists. But yeah, developing a virus that works at the mothership level on a few hours is kind of crazy.
John Carpenter's The Thing should get an honorable mention for it's alien depiction and the tension between a small group of scientists when it gets loose.
Your comments about the comet fragment hitting the Chrysler Building reminded me a realization I made recently while watching the trailer for "A Quiet Place - Day One." Whenever movie aliens land in New York, they land in Manhattan. They never land in Brooklyn or the Bronx.
They were both good movies. Also, I disagree about how accurate Interstellar is, mainly the Black Hole part of the movie. It also really bothered me that they thought going through a Wormhole is easier than fixing the food situation on Earth. It was also a stupid idea to go to the planet with extreme gravity. I thought a lot of the movie didn't make common sense.
Also the time it took for Matthew to enter the black hole the earth would have ended before he could play ghost in the 4 dimension due to time dilation
this is the only movie neil missunderstand, well most people do... Everything in that movie in space never really happened. it was all in her head. the movie was really about the diferent stages of grieving. first hint, she is a doctor..
For me Arrival was one of the best movies due to the strong sense of wonder it generates. You can feel that this is "real" the danger, the unknown. The Seriousness. I love that.
Arrival, to me, is great not because of the sci-fi aspect of it. It's great because of the idea that learning a different language is like learning a different way of thinking and changing the way you think can greatly change your perception of the world.
Annihilation is even better imho and "the Shimmer" from that movie is the most terrifying alien thing ever. The Shimmer from "Annihilation", the living Ocean from "Solaris" and the Orb from "Sphere".
That movie overturns our concept of time and language. I've heard anthropologists talk about tribes that lack words for concepts that we take for granted and so those concepts don't exist in their "world."
In The Terminator, it's explained that the machines only had fragmentary records about Sarah Connor. They just knew that she would be living in L.A. in 1984, but not what she looked like or an address. Going after her parents presumably was never an option, they wouldn't know where to look.
Apparently in the latest version they just kept sending terminators back after them every year. I used to imagine that after they break the time loop, in the far future some time cop finds out about this anomaly and investigates, starting it again and giving the machines time travel.
Even so. Then it would have just been Sara Conner's mom instead of Sarah Conner. Same movie different time period. The machine kills because that's all it was programmed to do. I liked later lore about why the T1k in T2 made mistakes and why Skynet stopped making them.
You know if the Terminator was never sent back in time to kill Sarah Connor then Kyle Reece would’ve never been sent back to protect her, and they never would have conceived John Connor, and skynet would have won, but then if the Terminator was never sent back then cyberdyne systems wouldn’t find the destroyed Terminator in the factory, and would never develop the inhibitor chip that births skynet so it’s a never ending paradox of itself.
Damn good point sir. Fits well and works within the Terminator universe. Neil is a very intelligent and knowledgeable man, but nobody's perfect, and he definitely missed the ball a bit with his quibble about this movie.
In the first script it said that the Terminator was ripping away the flesh on the leg of the first killed Sarah Connor, because it knew she had a metal piece in her leg due to the injuries from the explosion at the end.
I thought Arrival was a masterpiece because the main plot of the story really isn’t about the aliens, it’s more about life and how time is perceived as being non linear. It got a ton of things right especially on how humanity would react to aliens visiting earth. Just for them to ask humans for help in 3000 years in return knowing they will help because they can see into the future and giving humanity the gift of also seeing into the future by learning their language. No typical Hollywood aliens either, these had no mouth, no ears, no eyes, I feel like that is the best way that extremely advanced aliens from a far away galaxy would really accurately look like. As well as the main character’s story Dr.banks aka Amy Adams acting skills were incredible. Probably my favorite sc-fi movie of all time.
@ginog93 I completely agree with you. ARRIVAL was a sci-fi masterpiece! Hands down. It was absolutely brilliant in so many, many ways. Story, cinematography, music, acting, sound design, EVERYTHING. I can't believe he gave it a "C". Wow.
@@aka_15 Agreed, not terrible but just mediocre, but you know what are awesome science fiction movies by Denis Villeneuve who directed Arrival are Dune and Dune Part II! Dune has really interesting well thought out science fiction that is hard to cover in the movies, but in terms of sci-fi as well as spectacle it's brilliant!
That is why I didn't like it. Just took South African struggles and replaced it as aliens. No imagination just copy. The same with Avatar, just another white man conquering land for greed. So what is knew.
@@jimstewart3283 I love District 9, but yeah this always annoys me about it. Making a metaphor for apartheid is fine, but to have the setting actually BE IN .za is like when the characters go to the zoo... in a cartoon where all the characters are animals, or the Sun being "pulled down" (by 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵?) in the "gravity is the curvative in this rubber sheet" analogy.
The film "Moon" from 2009 starring Sam Rockwell is an amazing film that most people don't know about. I won't say any more, because I don't want to ruin it for you. Another solid independent film is "Primer" from 2004. It's a low budget film that was extremely well written, with a plot that's surprisingly complex, and extremely well executed. Shane Carruth was the writer/director/actor/composer for the film. (Did I mention it was extremely low budget?) Before making the film, he earned a degree in Mathematics and worked as a software engineer/developer of flight-simulation software. Once you see the film, it's pretty obvious that he put a lot of that knowledge to good use when making the film. No joke, after I watched it the first time, I had to immediately re-watched the entire film a second time. There's a bunch of subtle things that you will only notice on subsequent viewings, because you need the full context of the film to understand their relevance. For an Indie film made by a first time director, it's far better than it has any business being, and it has a surprisingly small number of goofs listed on the IMDB page, given the fact that they shot 80 minutes of film, which was edited down to 78 minutes. Only an engineer would have put that meticulous amount of effort into making a film. I didn't watch it right after it was released, but it's definitely been more than ten years since I watched it--and now that I'm on the subject I think I'll probably give both of these another viewing.
Another vote for Moon. I had never heard of it, and saw it, of all places.. on a Long haul flight! Captivating movie that deserves to be much better known.
I, too, would have liked to see where you rank GATTACA. The missions to explore Titan, all of the vehicles being electric, and the social ramifications of an entire class of genetically engineered humanity all combined for a very thoughtful movie.
Oh, yeah. That's one I've been looking to see if Neil had seen and commented on! The premise is that the main character can't pursue his dream to go to space (Saturn) because he's had a heart condition that was inherited (also people discriminate against his kind "in-valids"). I suppose it would be like how some teenagers playing sports find out they have an unusual heart condition when something happens. I guess they can't fix that or give him a transplant? The guy who sells him his identity (and genetic material) is confined to a wheelchair from an injury. So the former's strength of will, ability and duplicity gets him a position on the mission, if he's not found out. It doesn't say whether he's capable of surviving the launch and the trip to Saturn, but that's what people debate. I imagine in space his heart problem wouldn't be that deleterious, if he can make it.
Combining a space mission with the dystopia of ranking everyone by genetics and constantly testing them is what seemed off about that movie. I can't imagine any society like that being curious enough to explore other planets and moons, because what would they do if they found life on Titan - judge it by their own standards and "in-valid" it if it's deemed inferior?
Interstellar deserves way higher. It’s a movie with working science. The problem wasn’t with food. It’s literally said in the movie that the food was infected with a virus that consumed oxygen and released nitrogen. At the beginning of the film it said that the atmosphere was 80% nitrogen already. The problem wasn’t food starvation but suffocation.
You're not really addressing the point raised. Is finding a usable interstellar wormhole to send a million people through really easier than fixing the atmosphere?
@@MindForgedManacle They weren't going to send everyone from Earth though. The "plan B" to use the embryo's was "plan A" all along to continue the survival of the human race. Everyone on Earth was doomed.
@@MindForgedManacle There's no "wormhole to send a million people through". Just a wormhole to send a few astronauts creating a new world far from earth. People on earth are doomed. That's a main story twist in the middle of the movie.
Yeah, 100%, especially when one of them is Bill Paxton (whom he he did mention too)! And the other guy, right hand side on the screen, is Brian Thompson - the "famous" alien bounty hunter from X-Files series (or the "bad" guy from the "Cobra" movie with Stallone).
Funny thing about the weakness in the matrx is they originally wanted to make it so the machines use us for the computing power of the brain but the studio thought most people wouldn't understand so they had them change the script.
Wouldn't really make it better, right? The movie had a ton of plotholes. For example: Apparently the inner core of the Earth was still warm (Dozer says son in the first movie when he talks about why Zion is located there) and the machines have the ability to drill. It would be way (WAY!) easier to just drill a tunnel to the core and use geothermal energy to power all the stuff and shut down the Matrix.
@@Llyd_ApDictanah, geothermal energy would still need a lot of work to carry that energy from deep in the earth, many km to the surface. Nuclear energy would still be readily available
@@Llyd_ApDicta Remember, "There is no spoon". The machine world with Zion is still a layer of The Matrix. The Architect's reset it several times. It's why Neo can 'see' despite being blinded. The scenario is all part of the plan to root out Smith, which is the real threat to the system.
They should’ve just enslaved bunch of bovines that would provide greater energy, yet wouldn’t have the same mental capacity to escape the matrix. Would’ve made more sense. But they probably didn’t want to create a barnyard-based sci-fi caper 😂
@@DonLee1980 What are you talking about? "geothermal energy would still need a lot of work to carry that energy from deep in the earth" - No. Some piping and a medium that can transport heat. Water for example. And you can even use the drill hole for the piping. "Nuclear energy would still be readily available" - First of all, geothermal energy technically is a form of nuclear energy and secondly if you are under the impression, that the enrichment of fissile materials to a purity level that let them be used as fuel in a controlled nuclear reaction is somehow easier to achieve than some pipes and, say, a Sterling engine you really need to read a book or two.
"Arrival" - Neil, did you get a description from TV Guide or something? They had enormous teams in a dozen countries. The tagline is "Why are they here?" My friend, you need to listen to the good folks here.
Worth mentioning: Kip Thorne published a peer-reviewed research paper based on the visualisation of the black holes in Interstellar (only major film that can claim such a feat) and several years later got the Nobel Prize for his work on black hole physics.
Dear Dr. Tyson, Kip Thorne did have a role in the movie but it wasn't as C.A.S.E. His representation was as the "deliberately disassembled" robot, K.I.P.P., that was booby-trapped by Dr. Mann to keep the 2nd expedition from discovering his deception.
Yep. I very much respect Neil deGrasse Tyson but he absolutely missed the whole meaning and message, the whole point, of the movie. Wild to me, given he appears to be someone who pays attention to the tiniest of details (very much like me). For me Arrival is one of the best movies of the decade, not just sci-fi movies.
@@flaggerify My favorite part is when Aerosmith made that song and in the MV, Steven Tyler's daughter was the pin-up girl. Because that's definitely not up any ass. (This is supposed to be as ironic as your post)
I must say, I'd put "Arrival" at the top of the list. The film explores one of the greatest mysteries of physics and consciousness: how we experience time, and in the process, raises the question of our choices if we experienced time in a way that isn't strictly linear. It is beautiful and poetic in showing us that even if we escape time, we cannot escape the nature of our human condition.
Absolutely at least among dramatic serious alien movies it's the best ever. Like almost no violence is necessary, an entire language is conceived of... And I think it's probably the best score in a movie in a long time.
Sorry I am going to disregard the hoverboard comment. Wheels of a skateboard get caught on rocks and cracks in the ground; a hoverboard will glide right over. This invention would make for a smoother ride.
I just commented on that point and just noticed yours :). Imagine the possibilities with wheelchairs, moving heavy stuff. Wheels are useless on stairs.
Right, the one thing a hoverboard would have. Small irregularities on the surface you glide over won't rattle your board. I could see that incredibly useful for patient transports. Or for trains. Anywhere where you want an extremely smooth ride.
And what might have caused the oxygen to rapidly be supplanted? Maybe it's caused because of pollution and blight together. Blight kills plants which takes in some pollution and releases oxygen.
In my headcanon (and after watching The Second Renaissance many, many times), the machines did it as a courtesy to their makers. They couldn't keep fighting, but also didn't want to commit genocide.
What I don't understand about what Niel is saying about thermodynamics is; then why are there Carnivores? Like isn't it because it's easier to let the herbivore do the work of digesting the food and then u just eat the herbivore? So they doing similar to us?
@@Voldemorts_Mom Except the machines were designed and don't have to run with whatever random system evolution came up with. Photovoltaic cells and batteries are much more efficient and vastly simpler to design and maintain than the matrix and it's human bio batteries. 😁
So glad you pointed out the tether problem in “Gravity.” I remember seeing that scene for the first time and thinking, “Uhhh…Neil’s not gonna be cool with this.”
Are they not in lower orbit, hence them being around satellites, and Neil once explained what it means to be in lower orbit. They are moving at a very high speed or aka free falling. That can then explain why you can't tug on the tether
THANK YOU! Deep Impact and Armageddon came out at the same time and I said right from the get go that Deep Impact was a better movie for being more realistic. I'm curious where you'd put some fun movies like Batteries Not Included or ET or Last Star Fighter.
In terminator the machines couldn't send Arnold earlier in time since all they had was the name. That is why the terminator looks for every Sara Connor in the phone book. Just saying.
Was now saying this, there were no records on the Connors since everything was destroyed in the war. So the machines couldn't do what Degrass is saying would have been easier
This. Plus I'm pretty sure that the meta reason they had the "go back naked" rule has less to do with them wanting to show off Arnold and more to do with them wanting no high-tech weapons ruining the plot. Although I'm sure showing off Arnold was a bonus for them.
I came looking for this comment because it's exactly what I was gonna' say. They had this point covered. NDG's point about the hair and nails is a good one, though - if hair and nails are exempt, then you could pretty much wrap anything you want to bring back in time in leather and it would go through just fine.
Must disagree on the linguist / cryptographer issue. A cryptographer's (crypto analyst actually in this case) job is to reveal the message that was sent in a coded or encrypted form. But that relies heavily of our understanding of the language properties and structure of the expected real message (plain text) - that we are trying to reveal. For example - when trying to decipher an encrypted English text you rely on the fact that statistically 13% of the letters of a text in this language are 'e'. Since it's an alien language - we have no idea what would the real message will look like and if it is coded at all. A linguist on the other hand will have a better chance of understanding key words, verbs and nouns, references and gestures, and eventually build a dictionary.
No need for cryptographer at all. Their language isn't encrypted, it's just a foreign language. Also Neil must have missed they had a team of people working in their tent, and other teams were working on this around the world.
Fun bit of trivia - the first ever song sung with a computer generated voice was "Daisy Bell," done with an IBM computer in the early 60's, and that is the song HAL ends up singing at the very end as he is shut down.
The song is subtitled "Bicycle Built for Two" which is pretty funny in the situation (at least I think it is). Whether the ship is a bicycle built for the two astronauts, or that HAL and Dave are the "two" it's an ironic representation of our relationship to technology. Maybe not but I still enjoy it. Plus now I'm terrified fo tandem bikes.
Skynet didn't know anything about Sarah Connor, other than her name and her location in 1984. They wouldn't be able to find her parents before she was born.
Honestly District 9 deserves an honorable mention. Such an interesting take on aliens that got stranded on earth and want to leave, but are forced by humans to stay in alien slums so we can learn from their technology.
The concept is quite fresh, I agree, but the movie bored me so much that I can't even remember half of it, and I watched it twice (second time precisely because I couldn't remember anything about it)...
That's not the reason they were forced to stay on Earth. They were forced to stay on Earth because humans didn't understand their technology enough to help them repair their ship to enable them to leave (to be fair, neither did most of the ones who survived whatever disease it was that wiped out most of their scientist and engineer class fellow aliens. It was mostly the blue collar class aliens who survived it.) The fact of humans trying to learn their technology after the fact was a by-product of this forced situation and not the primary reason they were trapped here. The humans were not trapping them here. They didn't know how to get them or help them to leave and short of killing them all, there was nothing else to do with them.
Good addition! Using the scientific method to figure out what made the old man and the infant the same and the testing of a number of hypotheses created the suspense.
@@cwbybear4665It was said elsewhere, Neil only picked the movies he's seen and he's not a film buff! I agree: Andromeda Strain was a fine and subtle film!
another sci-fi i loved was one called "phase IV" where ants became sentient the scene where the ants picked up their dead to honour the fallen i found chilling and moving
although...what would you expect to roll out of a flying saucer? A ramp is easier to lower from a moving vehicle than a staircase (as staircases are usually stationary) 😅 speaking as someone temporarily in a wheelchair myself.
Wow. Arrival has been top of S Tier for me since I saw it the first time and keeps creating distance every time I see it. Any movie that attempts to solve the issues we have in our world, I’m a sucker for. Then I had kids and now it’s even more relevant. Incredible.
Agreed. Best modern sci-fi in the last two decades maybe. Didn’t bother me that a linguist was also an expert in cryptography. The gift of non linear time perception is amazing.
I ranked it about 3/5 when I first watched it. Started off strong but at some point they threw all the delicacies of the script into the trash to move the film along. Then it lost me.
1. T2 2. The Matrix 3. Aliens 4. Contact 5. 12 Monkeys 6. Primer 7. Blade Runner 8. Dune (all versions) 9. Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back 10. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Neil, maybe this will affect your opinion of Arrival. The movie was an extreme version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, the idea that learning another language affects, or in this case, completely changes how you perceive the world. That’s why the protagonist is seemingly able to truly see time as circular once she figured out their language.
As a fan of both linguistics and astro-science I love Arrival, but strong linguistic relativity - where a language can expand or limit a speaker's ability to understand the world - is generally not widely accepted as a real phenomenon, especially in such a strong expression as portrayed in the movie. I think in the context of Arrival this can be kinda hand-waved with the "alien science" justification, but it was a bit of a suspension of disbelief sticking point for me.
but that hypothesis is nonsense. i get the stretch of the concept, but when the whole movie is about that, that is like interstellar except instead of cooper going through a wormhole, he imagined it in his basement meditating the whole thing (along with saying that love was the reason he could meditate that hard). it is not even remotely realistic someone can time travel with language alone with no physical intervention needed. if the language included a new dimension that the aliens were able to teach her to see, it would have been better. but as the movie stands, it does not show this at all. maybe you can say it's implied, but at some level is it just an idea without execution. a movie close in terms of being more of an idea and not much meat is annihilation. there is a huge leap from the concept of mutation to a godlike or ideal form of being. but at least it showed something more of a transition into the idea. the coolest part of arrival was the creation of the language, which seemed like it took a lot of computer expertise to create. but in the end it still wasnt interesting enough to support a leap into circular time. i think technically even the language failed, as it ended up only being a couple of words. I don't know if they were able to make a language that fit the idea. the whole movie is about this linguistic concept but they also barely analyze the language, as neil mentions. as interstellar reaches the dead end of scientific explanation, he can say it's because of love, the movie is still mostly about the science. arrival seems to rely heavily on the imaginary fruits of understanding the alien language, but we get neither... it's just, adams having an implied deeper conversation with the aliens, end of movie. for example, it could have been cooler if they required some multidimensional analysis so that they can at least map what they think the aliens are saying. as it stands, they took the 2d watercolor ring language completely at face value, but somehow adams got superpowers from it with her mind.
@@quazillionaireDoes this mean theory or reality, Chinese perceive the world differently than Americans or anyone else who doesn’t speak Chinese (and everyone else perception of the world is different to Chinese perception)? If this is the case, why? Refer me to reading material ps, a link or something - I find this quite interesting.
@@paulnolan4971 yep. Gets killed by a T-800 in Terminator (1984) in the clip NDT showed. Then he gets killed by a Xenomorph in Aliens (1986) and finally he is killed by a Yautja on the train in Predator 2 (1990). Respect!
The problem you talked about Sarah Connor is actually answered in the movie.Kyle Resse said that most of the information lost after the nuclear war.Skynet only knew the mother name and the city nothing else was there in their closet.So they don't possess the previous ancestor's name or anything.That's why they target Sarah Connor for termination.
I really love how Neil is this brilliant person that we sometimes forget he is just as human as we are and I really loved how he went and analyzed every single movie and gave so many reasons as to why he put them in each tier.Like when he went to the back to the future movies and was like "They are NOT all going to the same slot".My man gets it.
Forbidden Planet was for me a great Science Fiction story, but also a very scary invisible monster movie. Love the concept of the Krell. Using their minds to create matter but like human beings, they are genetically predisposed to violence and base emotions. Everything is a double edged sword. AI might be our Krell moment. Also love Fifth Element.
I noticed something curious about my LSD experience... a blank wall became a fascinating canvas for the imagination whereas a 'psychedelic' poster was practically inert.
The bigger pronlem is "20 minutes" - my gripe with 2001 is its run time ... way too long. Not just this scene but most of the movie is too stretched out. Instead of 2h20m it could've been 1h20m. I far prefer "2010", its sequel.
@@BryTee When the film was being made space travel was still science fiction, televisions and telephones were entirely separate devices, people still read 500 page books for entertainment and most minds were able to focus on one topic for many hours at a stretch. I saw the movie in 1968 on a rainy weekday afternoon sitting in the sweet spot in a near deserted theater on a rare, curved, ultra wide screen with six channel surround sound. If you watched it on a cell phone then I understand your complaint about its length.
Interstellar is definitely an A. It was a beautiful movie. One of the first science fiction movie that had you feel different emotions than the normal.
i had the odd privilege of watching Interstellar just a few rows behind Professor Stephen Hawkins at the VUE Cinemas in Cambridge! Suck on that, Neil!!
Oh man, we have the exact same ranking/taste. There are some of the older ones I haven't actually seen but I've already found them online (legally of course). Thanks for this.
As a 'professor' of IT I find it hard to believe that in Independence Day, Jeff Goldblum just whipped out a cable to interface with the alien ship along with a laptop that apparently speaks their computer language to just inject a virus. Especially when in the movie they say the ship they had captured had only recently come to life....
Their ship obviously runs on Linux. They got it from us, from one of those capsules that humans send to space with Elvis music and mathematics and other stuff. They should have put that in the movie 🤣
I've always thought they should make Interstellar 2, where the reality is that plan B worked, and the plan B humans are the ones that solved the problem of gravity. Everyone on Earth from the first movie dies, but once the humans that survived via plan B find out that their ancestors died to save them, they want to use their time knowledge to save them. They then create the tesseract in the black hole in the past, resulting in the first movie. Not only would it be a great movie, it would explain the plot hole from the first.
@@ImagineBaggins simple answer is there is no "us" from the future that create the worm hole or tesseract. We heard Cooper say it but there no evident, he could just "wrong". more accept answer is another advance spicies that save us. And thus no paradox
@@ImagineBaggins It would lose some of the essence of the first. Which for most of the time followed known physics. A sequel would be 100% speculative.
Some of my favourite Sci-Fi that were left out of this list: The Thing, Alien, District 9, Ex Machina, Ghost in the Shell, The Man From Earth, Dune, Inception, Mad Max, Stalker, Children of Men, Blade Runner!
July 1968. I was 13. Hot, humid Summer Saturday Eve. After a dinner out with my parents, we saw "2001: A Space Odyssey", which had been featured in a recent issue of "LIFE" magazine. Settled into our seats in a very full and very packed 70MM theater, which was the "IMAX" of the day, I spent the next 2-plus hours stone-cold mesmerized, if not entirely stupefied, by the visual and aural spectacle which exploded on the immense screen! Words simply could not define or describe what had unfolded, as if I had both seen and experienced Nirvana! That night, and that journey, irrevocably changed me, questioning forever not only the nature of The Universe but of the fabric of Reality itself. To this day, my very fave film of all time. Namaste and Cheers!
Amen brother. I never understood the last minutes until I read the books... but I always knew it was something extra special...definitely my fave Sci fi movie....it's literally amazing....
The interstellar take is hilarious, because the movie made a point to say that most of, if not all education was directed towards agriculture. So no one could figure out the blight.
@@Venerablenesses the agriculture focus was because of the blight though. If it was that big a problem, every nation on Earth would have programs going trying to solve. Whatever fungus or bacteria the blight is, it can't be invincible.
2001 A Space Odyssey isn't just one of the best sci fi films of all time, it's one of the greatest cinematic achievements to date regardless of genre. Coming up on 60 years old and the film holds up just as well today - I make sure to watch it every few years and it's always a mind-blowing experience.
2001 Spoiler alert 🚨 The ending when I saw it, I couldn’t understand until someone a decade ago, explained that the rooms were designed by something that had never been on earth. Knew nothing about earths history and left the character in these rooms as we on earth. When we will generate a plausible living quarters for animals, like in our zoos that is nowhere close to their actual habitat. So we can observe them. THAT WAS GENIUS!!
Hands down the most overrated movie of all time. Visually, it is a masterpiece; the special effects were amazing at that time. But I'm sorry, Arthur C. Clarke was a terrible writer. He had no idea how to craft a plot and his characters and dialogue were flat. Every book/story he wrote started off with a good idea but ultimately ended in ridiculous nonsense. This movie is the most perfect representation of pretentious nonsense and the fact that there are so many fans that, to the end of the world say, "you just don't understand it," only serves to prove the point even more.
@@Cromulant so your whole thing sums up to you laying this blanket of your opinion with “you’re pretentious if you disagree with me”. That’s the definable epitome of pretentiousness. Thanks for the laugh.
ARRIVAL as a film... is a pure S-tier. I understand the scientist having issues... but the thoughts behind this film... and the main points... are staggering. Just a brilliant piece of drama that will leave you thinking about a host of things. Back to the Future by comparison is a kiddie picture. I'd also rank GRAVITY higher. But overall: FASCINATING discussion. THE QUIET EARTH is excellent! I'd also have added "DARK CITY," "GATTICA," and John Carpenter's "THE THING"... Also "LAST NIGHT" (The Canadian film starring Sandra Oh) is awesome!
@@ARandomInternetUser08 I loved Back To The Future... but the franchise is, as whole, below par. It certainly is not better than Arrival, Gravity, or Dark City, imo.
@@ARandomInternetUser08 Then you're not logical. One can agree with one thing but still think the other opinion is wrong. One does not negate the other.
Andromeda Strain is almost hard sci-fi, and *exceptionally* well thought out (by Michael Crichton) and executed. Like the _Mass Effect_ game series, Andromeda Strain contains only *one* plot element that is not current reality. While in Mass Effect that is the titular physical _Mass Effect_ of one chemical element, in Andromeda Strain it is extraterrestrial life. I prefer such kind of sci-fi because it allows for very strong audience immersion. the more a story revolves around the concept "this could maybe in the future happen", the better I can immerse myself.
7:40 That funky robot in _Interstellar_ was named TARS. The robot that Matt Damon had that performed no actions at all and that exploded was named KIPP.
There were two of those robots with McC and the crew; KIPP and TARS. Matt Damon's robot was unnamed (or at least we never got to hear of it, as it had such a minimal appearance in the story).
@@noneofyourbeeswax01 no, those were TARS and CASE. KIPP was indeed dismantled and then exploded in the face of Romilly. You can read it's called KIPP, it's written on it.
28:05 I guess everyone in the universe uses windows. would be funny if it showed the aliens screen saying "this file cannot be opened as we do not recognize the operating system for which it was made""
Thank you, thank you, thank you so much for including The Quiet Earth. A wholly underrated film that shares a somewhat similar vibe or two with movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey or The Andromeda Strain. The fact that the movie never really tried to scientifically explain what "the event" was didn't bog the movie down with unnecessary fictional scientific exposition. This allowed the rest of the movie to excel in what it was attempting to showcase. Good choice.
@@michael-1680 True. The other question is if Gravity counts as science fiction as even though it's a fictional story the science in it is based on today's technology?
Last night I dreamt that Neil was just a friend of my dad, and now thinking about it, he perfectly fits the character of just one of my dads friends that comes over every once in a while.
@29:50 In the movie it was stated that "most the records were lost in the war. Skynet knew almost nothing about Connor's mother... her full name, where she lived. They just knew the city."
Also he mentioned the sequels to The Matrix, and Back To The Future, but Terminator 2 didn't get a mention!? Arguably one of the best sci-fi films ever made
I hate how it means the aliens knew the china crisis was coming before they even landed and just decided to let it happen anyway. Those Aliens are dicks...
Some languages, like Mandarin Chinese, use other methods to convey the timing of actions instead of verb tenses. They often rely on context and specific words to indicate when something happened or will/might happen. Was the character of General Shang coincidental for the movie?
I Was 9 Years Old When The Andromeda Strain Came Out, And Both My Father, And I Were Glued To The Movie Screen, All The Way Through That Amazingly Scary, And Scientific Thrilling Movie . . .
Stayed up reading the whole book in just one sitting. Couldn’t put it down. Talk about a story that has real science behind it, Michael Crichton graduated from Harvard Medical School as an MD. He researched the living daylights out of his topic. Look at the bibliography of ‘State of Fear’. Page after page of tiny print denoting all the published research papers he read before writing the book. Oh, then there’s this other book ‘Jurassic Park’…
When Dr Tyson talked about how “the Blob” had an alien so different from the typical depiction of life, my mind immediately went to the Andromeda Strain. A glaring omission, IMHO.
Sorry, Neil, but you are just wrong about Arrival. Denis Villeneuve lulls us into thinking that we’re watching another Hollywood first contact movie, and it gradually morphs into a deeply philosophical film about parental love, time and communication.
Totally agree. Also the point about writing being flipped is very weird. Obviously the alien was writing is for someone to read, not for themselves to read. If that's something the aliens use to communicate between each other (and we're led to believe that they do), then surely they are able to take that into account.
Absolutely - hear, Hear! Unfortunately, I found Neil's entire presentation to be surprisingly coarse... Quite disappointing - I expected a far more thoughtful effort.
2001 is also my favorite because my 6th grade teacher back in Marin County, read the book to our class, over the school year. To our class's surprise, at the end of the book, she took us to the premere viewing of the movie, as a class field event that same year in 1968. Having her read the book to us first, we understood the movie. Thank you Mrs. Mann wherever you are, we will never forget this.
Impossible for you to have read the book and then watched the "premiere". Clark wrote 2001 with heavy feedback/editing from Kubrick and with the agreement that the movie would premiere prior to the novel's release.
I'm so glad to have come across this. Thanks for making it. One of the assignments I give my students during our space unit is to review a movie from a list of 5 films I've compiled, so I was watching for anything I needed to add or throw out. Contact, The Martian, and Interstellar are all on that list so I was glad to see the Neil DeGrasse Tyson seal of approval. The other two are Hidden Figures and Appolo 13. Less sci-fi, more history, but still, I'd be interested to hear some thoughts on it.
I got the impression hoverboards worked similar to maglev (even though there's no magnets in the pavement) - so yeah there was still proximity to the ground, like a mag-lev train, and with the same advantages
Yeah the bit about a hoverboard being pointless is a big WTF. Also, I got the impression too when I saw BTTF2 as a kid that hoverboards didn't work over water, but I think the flaw was that you can't thrust with your foot over water. The hovering clearly worked. It was just a little confusingly filmed.
When someone says "[Blank] is the greatest Sci-Fi movie of all time," I think _2001_ because it was new and just before the moon landing. Of course a monolith would be considered "Intelligent Design" and is not how evolution works. Unfortunately, it's kind of boring on repeat viewings, or even your first time. Also, the Space Baby, "Star Child" that David Bowman becomes decides not to convert the human race to his transformation. Thanks, Dave. (sarcasm). I think _Star Trek the Motion Picture_ took it's cues from that rather than _Star Wars_ as most of the film is looking at the models in space, while converting an hour episode into a two-hour movie, with nothing for the characters to do!
2001's visual special effects are much more beautiful and *believable* than most of today's Hollyweird garbage. Plus it has no "sound in space" unlike 99.9% of sci-fi movies.
@@Scott-i2b Nah, _2010 The Year We Make Contact_ was just OK, but _2001 A Space Odyssey_ was a breakthrough from what came before. _Close Encounters_ was very good. It had the subtext of people having trouble communicating with their family, others in the human race, as well as (presumably) friendly aliens.
The Blackhole has so much nostalgia for me. I can completely understand why Neil wouldn't like it, but for little kid me it was exciting and emotionally impactful.
I saw Black Hole in theater as a kid and remember liking it quite a bit. I rewatched it last year and was highly disappointed by it. As a 10 year old, it was suspenseful but on rewatch, I have no idea what I saw in it. There are other movies I watched in a movie theater as a kid and still love. For example Sound of Music, Bad News Bears, Star Trek II: Wrath of Kahn, Rocky 3 and Poltergeist.
I liked this, but The Martian also had one other flaw: the martian surface is so loaded with clay and metals that while Damon/Watney could indeed grow potatoes, they would've been heavily poisonous.
He said it was definitely worth watching. But the movie was stupid though. An alien ship drops into the middle of a field and they only think to send 2 people? GTFO.
@@zyrux_Arrival is a overrated shitty pseudoscientific garbage, learning some alien language will not rewire your brain and give you the ability to see the future 😂. Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is considered a joke by linguists
Fun Fact: The only reason the machines use Humans as batteries in the Matrix is because the directors changed things after filming had started. Originally the machines were gonna be using Humans for extra computing power but they didnt think people in 2000 would understand that, so they changed it to something simpler.
Exactly; it's a shame audiences aren't actually smarter, and I know the producers are pretty much solely bent on making as much money as possible, but also maybe just assume that audiences are ACTUALLY smarter than they surmise.
In 1978, when I bought my first computer, it was rare to meet a computer owner. Not so in 1999. Computing capacity would have made a brilliant justification for the Matrix coming into being (but perhaps carry considerably less potential for dramatic impact (since thinking and computing are invisible abstract processes and what boring images might arrays of linked brains floating in dark vats have made)). (I thought it pretty clever to use the old fashioned wired telephone as indicator of transition between the 'real' world and the matrix, effective both in the minds of the characters and in the minds of the audience (especially for those of us who used those phones in our youts).
THAT makes more sense (CPU power vs BATT power). Humans DO have more internal processing power than most computers, it's just that our IO interface is so damned slow.
Which ranking do you disagree with? 🤔
Interstellar
I agree very much with all of it, great analysis :D
I disagree about Gravity though. It's Zero-G, not Zero-Gravity. Gravity keeps them in orbit, so it's a very fitting name.
I'd have swapped your ranking of Back to the Future 2 and 3.
The only difference I have is the "blob" . I'd put it a grade higher. I'd prefer a grade+ but you didn't offer that option lol😊
Mars Attacks! Ack Ack! Ack Ack Ack!
The Thing, Alien, Aliens, Event Horizon, Predator, Sunshine, Abyss, Blade Runner…? Cmon Neil, lots of gold left in those hills.
Hope he'll do another one.
yup, he should make part 2 video
He is not a movie buff. Its a blessing when we get neil to comment on a sci fi movie in general. His top movies is based on what he seen. Not the entire world. And I can respect that. I dont hold Neil to a movie critic standard. We hold him to a science standard. So lets respect his movies even though they might not be the best . A lot of people down played gravity cause of neil but Gravity was a good movie. He was just focused on the scrience,
He can’t review all movies. You missed a lot of good ones too
He probably hasn't seen all of them lol
Context: Neil’s wife asked him what movie they should watch that evening
ROFLMAO!!!!!! most accurate statement here.
reality: he knows how to spell his own first name...
@@joejoe2658 Did he correct his post, or are you thinking of Niels Bohr? 😉
😂😂😂😂😂
makes sense
The original Matrix script had the humans being used for cloud computing; it got changed to batteries because the executives thought audiences wouldn’t understand the concept. The directors even explained exactly Neil’s point, but the execs got it their way
It’s a shame because people use cloud computing all the time now.
@@samanthac.349 Exactly. Ahead of their time, those two
Yup! This is another example of studio executives underestimating the intelligence of their audience.
Didn't know about that. But yeah makes more sense and would be even more mind-blowing back in 1999
I found this out years ago and it still makes me angry, effing studio exec d-bags ruined the lore of an otherwise excellent sci-fi setting because of their arrogance.
My Father's hobby is the study of the universe. He was an accountant and auditor before retirement which may explain his capacity to understand and appreciate large numbers that I never can. We lived in a small town in Alabama when "2001-A Space Odyssey" opened in theaters. He drove the family to Birmingham just for this movie. I was 8 years old. I remember goosebumps from the music and choking up when HAL was singing "Daisy". My Father obtained one of the theatrical posters and it still hangs in a room called, "The Classics" with other posters and memorabilia. We fondly talk about that trip and the movie. He's now 92. I'm 65. That's the measuring stick of when Hollywood gets something right.
@danielphillips6195 danielphillips, "study of the universe" sounds very vague.
Reminds me of comedian Severn Darden, who famously gave a faux "Metaphysics Lecture" in the guise of Professor Walther von Der Vogelweide, titled, "A Short Talk on the Universe". The German accented professor opens with, "Now, why - you will ask me - have I chosen to speak on the Universe, rather than some other topic. Well, it's very simple: there isn't anything else!"
Putting Armageddon and Arrival in the same tier sounds criminal to me!
Armageddon and independence day can't be more than F
@@praticastransculturais You can't be more than F
Armageddon above Close Encounters?!!!
I don't think he's interested in linguistics!
completely agree Armageddon is a F-
Arrival comment: They had hundreds or thousands of people involved with alien communication at dozens of sites around the world. We only follow the linguist and physicist. They also had mathematicians and biologists consulting. In the short story, there were hundreds of sites and it implied there were thousands of people involved.
Yeah putting arrival at the c-tier was a bad look. It was almost like he didn't pay that much of attention to the movie to see just how detailed and specific they were with their science
Also... as a security specialist with an affinity for cryptography. I'd prefer to use a linguist over a cryptanalyst. Most cryptanalysis deals with uncovering hidden human writing of the major, current, human, written languages. A linguist looks at a multitude of forms of communication. I think they would first have some grasp on how the language works. Afterwards, maybe a cryptanalist could figure the rest out fast, but they'd have no place to start.
I skipped to the end of this video because I'm not a huge NGT fan - when I saw Arrival was C-tier I was glad I didn't watch the whole thing. Arrival is a masterpiece. Full stop
Placing Arrival in the C-tier is a crime.
Arrival is an A all day every day!!!
As a former cryptographer and current linguist, I disagree with Arrival needing a cryptographer. A cryptographer deciphers code, but there's much more fine nuance to a language than there is to a code. There are a lot of linguistical concepts conveyed in that film that go beyond the science of cryptography.
Thank you! Exactly what I was thinking.
Yeah, it seems Neil really didn't get Arrival. The film (and the short story it's based on) explains very clearly why they need a linguist. And I'm pretty sure Jeremy Renner's character was supposed to be an astrophysicist, not a generic physicist, but he was there just as scientific support for the linguist. They were trying to communicate, not dissect and analyze their bodies, which is where they would have called a biologist. On top of that, there were more than two people, they were constantly web conferencing with other scientists from around the world, but those scenes were downplayed because it would just be scientist exchanging and comparing data.
Also, the hypothesis that the aliens would be dumb enough not to realize they had to write their symbols from the perspective of the humans on the other side of the glass is too silly to even entertain.
It would not matter one iota if the alien language were written mirrored, flipped, or upside down.
Exactly my thoughts (as neither a linguist, nor cryptograhper)! Linguists are not just polyglots and translators. They study communication systems. They are the ones actually thinking about alien languages and constructing them. It would have been cool to see the background of the main character in Arrival include her constructing an alien language.
Presumably some of the aliens' communication is private and they might be using some form of encryption to protect it, and a cryptographer would be useful in that case. But I imagine their effors wouldn't be vey fruitful without some knowledge about the underlying language.
Would a cryptographer or linguist be better suited to cracking a rosetta stone & why. It seems to me you have it backwards. Cryptographers are better trained and equipped to decipher patterns in communications. While linguists have no such formal training or experience.
As a fan of Sci-Fi and space movies, Where is War of the worlds and Sunshine Neil?? Awesome scientific evaluation, love from Pakistan.
Neo: "Doesn't harvesting human body heat for energy, violate the laws of thermodynamics?"
Morpheus: "Where'd you learn about thermodynamics, Neo?"
Neo: "In school."
Morpheus: "Where'd you go to school, Neo?"
Neo: "Oh."
Morpheus: "The machines tell elegant lies."
This comment is so underrated!
trigger the Sentinels boys, we found them
Thats another reason why it is so genius.. this loophole for everything logical right here 😂
I think this is hilarious
How many read this in the voices?
As a computer engineer, the biggest criticism I have against Independence Day is the assumption that an interstellar alien race's computer systems can be infected by a malware coded on Mac OS by a TV satellite technician.
It's explained in the movie why it worked. Computer tech was reverse engineered from the downed spacecraft.
@Mariamus But it is also stated that the alien vessel was unpowered until the arrival of the alien fleet. Which means that they had mere days to study, analyze, understand and reverse engineer a system that is unlike anything they have seen before, and on a much more advanced technical level. And then Jeff Goldblum's character was able to learn it in a matter of hours and devise a program that perfectly penetrated the entire alien fleet systems.
That's like giving an ENIAC's technician the onboard computer from an F-35, and saying "Study this, we're hacking the USAF secure comms lines tomorrow". Only orders of magnitude harder, since we're dealing with an alien specie, whose thought and logic patterns might be completely different from human ones.
The movie also stated that the aliens used humanity's satellites to coordinate their attack, Golblum's character discovered this and tapped into their communications to see the countdown. So, an interface between alien tech and human tech already exists. But yeah, developing a virus that works at the mothership level on a few hours is kind of crazy.
Invader Zim lampooned this. I don't know which episode but Dib has the line.
Mustve been using windows defender
John Carpenter's The Thing should get an honorable mention for it's alien depiction and the tension between a small group of scientists when it gets loose.
Exactly that first one was wew scary until this day lol
Honorable mention?? F*** that!
That should have gotten A+
The thing is not about science and space aliens but PARANOIA!!!
@@reyrayo2502 The Blob got top billing in Neil's list, not a whole lot different.
the thing is more horror then sci fi. The Thins is on every horror list but on 90% sci fi list not. why? Because 90% is horror, only 10% sci fi
Your comments about the comet fragment hitting the Chrysler Building reminded me a realization I made recently while watching the trailer for "A Quiet Place - Day One." Whenever movie aliens land in New York, they land in Manhattan. They never land in Brooklyn or the Bronx.
Because they would get their asses handed to them in either one.
Interstellar and Gravity being ranked the equally is unsettling
Impossible!!
EXACTLY! 😡 Neil!
They were both good movies. Also, I disagree about how accurate Interstellar is, mainly the Black Hole part of the movie. It also really bothered me that they thought going through a Wormhole is easier than fixing the food situation on Earth. It was also a stupid idea to go to the planet with extreme gravity. I thought a lot of the movie didn't make common sense.
Also the time it took for Matthew to enter the black hole the earth would have ended before he could play ghost in the 4 dimension due to time dilation
I thought the same
The force that pulled George Clooney into deep space in Gravity was the script.
As Tina Fey pointed out at an award show, George Clooney would rather drift away to his death in space than to date a woman his own age.
The Force is strong with this so-called silver fox, lol.
this is the only movie neil missunderstand, well most people do... Everything in that movie in space never really happened. it was all in her head. the movie was really about the diferent stages of grieving. first hint, she is a doctor..
CHA-CHING! all about the benjamins
@@pse2020 So that's where Returnal got the plot from?
For me Arrival was one of the best movies due to the strong sense of wonder it generates. You can feel that this is "real" the danger, the unknown. The Seriousness. I love that.
Agreed. Such a poor take by Neil.
Arrival, to me, is great not because of the sci-fi aspect of it. It's great because of the idea that learning a different language is like learning a different way of thinking and changing the way you think can greatly change your perception of the world.
Arrival is S tier, not as good as 2001 certainly, but better than the rest
Annihilation is even better imho and "the Shimmer" from that movie is the most terrifying alien thing ever. The Shimmer from "Annihilation", the living Ocean from "Solaris" and the Orb from "Sphere".
That movie overturns our concept of time and language. I've heard anthropologists talk about tribes that lack words for concepts that we take for granted and so those concepts don't exist in their "world."
I love how Neil pays attention to minute details
In The Terminator, it's explained that the machines only had fragmentary records about Sarah Connor. They just knew that she would be living in L.A. in 1984, but not what she looked like or an address. Going after her parents presumably was never an option, they wouldn't know where to look.
Apparently in the latest version they just kept sending terminators back after them every year. I used to imagine that after they break the time loop, in the far future some time cop finds out about this anomaly and investigates, starting it again and giving the machines time travel.
Even so. Then it would have just been Sara Conner's mom instead of Sarah Conner. Same movie different time period.
The machine kills because that's all it was programmed to do. I liked later lore about why the T1k in T2 made mistakes and why Skynet stopped making them.
Yea. Writers and studios were grasping for content.
Also to argue against Neil if you go too far back to kill Sarah’s parents you also risk significantly changing the timeline (butterfly effect)
You know if the Terminator was never sent back in time to kill Sarah Connor then Kyle Reece would’ve never been sent back to protect her, and they never would have conceived John Connor, and skynet would have won, but then if the Terminator was never sent back then cyberdyne systems wouldn’t find the destroyed Terminator in the factory, and would never develop the inhibitor chip that births skynet so it’s a never ending paradox of itself.
About the Terminator. Skynet didn't know which Sarah Connor to target because records of pre war times were mostly destroyed, hence this method
Damn good point sir. Fits well and works within the Terminator universe. Neil is a very intelligent and knowledgeable man, but nobody's perfect, and he definitely missed the ball a bit with his quibble about this movie.
Was looking for this comment. It didn't even know which Sarah Connor it was after which is why it went after all of them.
In the first script it said that the Terminator was ripping away the flesh on the leg of the first killed Sarah Connor, because it knew she had a metal piece in her leg due to the injuries from the explosion at the end.
@@w359borg Exactly, and if it had gone after the "parents of Sarah Connor," it would have had to kill twice as many people!
@@duncankennedy4080 Missed that and also a bit of engineering about skateboard wheels or even wheels 🤣
I thought Arrival was a masterpiece because the main plot of the story really isn’t about the aliens, it’s more about life and how time is perceived as being non linear. It got a ton of things right especially on how humanity would react to aliens visiting earth. Just for them to ask humans for help in 3000 years in return knowing they will help because they can see into the future and giving humanity the gift of also seeing into the future by learning their language. No typical Hollywood aliens either, these had no mouth, no ears, no eyes, I feel like that is the best way that extremely advanced aliens from a far away galaxy would really accurately look like. As well as the main character’s story Dr.banks aka Amy Adams acting skills were incredible. Probably my favorite sc-fi movie of all time.
@ginog93 I completely agree with you. ARRIVAL was a sci-fi masterpiece! Hands down. It was absolutely brilliant in so many, many ways. Story, cinematography, music, acting, sound design, EVERYTHING. I can't believe he gave it a "C". Wow.
Pretty average and forgettable, I love Dune though which is the same director!
nahh arrival is mediocre. it also has a lot of bad linguistics. its a bad movie
@@aka_15in your opinion
@@aka_15 Agreed, not terrible but just mediocre, but you know what are awesome science fiction movies by Denis Villeneuve who directed Arrival are Dune and Dune Part II! Dune has really interesting well thought out science fiction that is hard to cover in the movies, but in terms of sci-fi as well as spectacle it's brilliant!
Do more of these please, Star Wars, The Thing, Alien, Star Trek, Guardians of The Galaxy, so many more Neil can do
One of my favorites of the 21st Century is DISTRICT 9 - brilliant first contact tale with enough difference to keep it interesting.
Yeah, forgot about that little gem. I recommend the man who fell to Earth starfing Bowie. Makex md doubt Elon is from Sarth Effrikka😂😅😂
District 9 was about South African society.
District 9 was about xenophobia in South Africa.
That is why I didn't like it. Just took South African struggles and replaced it as aliens. No imagination just copy. The same with Avatar, just another white man conquering land for greed. So what is knew.
@@jimstewart3283 I love District 9, but yeah this always annoys me about it. Making a metaphor for apartheid is fine, but to have the setting actually BE IN .za is like when the characters go to the zoo... in a cartoon where all the characters are animals, or the Sun being "pulled down" (by 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵?) in the "gravity is the curvative in this rubber sheet" analogy.
The film "Moon" from 2009 starring Sam Rockwell is an amazing film that most people don't know about. I won't say any more, because I don't want to ruin it for you.
Another solid independent film is "Primer" from 2004. It's a low budget film that was extremely well written, with a plot that's surprisingly complex, and extremely well executed. Shane Carruth was the writer/director/actor/composer for the film. (Did I mention it was extremely low budget?) Before making the film, he earned a degree in Mathematics and worked as a software engineer/developer of flight-simulation software. Once you see the film, it's pretty obvious that he put a lot of that knowledge to good use when making the film. No joke, after I watched it the first time, I had to immediately re-watched the entire film a second time. There's a bunch of subtle things that you will only notice on subsequent viewings, because you need the full context of the film to understand their relevance. For an Indie film made by a first time director, it's far better than it has any business being, and it has a surprisingly small number of goofs listed on the IMDB page, given the fact that they shot 80 minutes of film, which was edited down to 78 minutes. Only an engineer would have put that meticulous amount of effort into making a film. I didn't watch it right after it was released, but it's definitely been more than ten years since I watched it--and now that I'm on the subject I think I'll probably give both of these another viewing.
Another vote for Moon. I had never heard of it, and saw it, of all places.. on a Long haul flight! Captivating movie that deserves to be much better known.
MOON is fantastic!!!
sry my bad english, the director say a quote about this film " if u understand the film first time you r genius or a liar" something like that
Primer yes yes yes yes, oh and the Spanish film TimeCrimes.
Moon is great. It was on Netflix in 2015
I, too, would have liked to see where you rank GATTACA. The missions to explore Titan, all of the vehicles being electric, and the social ramifications of an entire class of genetically engineered humanity all combined for a very thoughtful movie.
Gattaca…another crazy boring movie like 2001. Not a bad movie but I like my sci-fi to have space stuff and not just talk about space stuff. IMO
@@robertfalcon60832001 is widely regarded as one of the greatest pieces of filmmaking ever. you just have a short attention span
Just the idea of having even the remotest of chances to smash Uma Thurman makes me like gattaga.
Oh, yeah. That's one I've been looking to see if Neil had seen and commented on!
The premise is that the main character can't pursue his dream to go to space (Saturn) because he's had a heart condition that was inherited (also people discriminate against his kind "in-valids"). I suppose it would be like how some teenagers playing sports find out they have an unusual heart condition when something happens. I guess they can't fix that or give him a transplant? The guy who sells him his identity (and genetic material) is confined to a wheelchair from an injury. So the former's strength of will, ability and duplicity gets him a position on the mission, if he's not found out. It doesn't say whether he's capable of surviving the launch and the trip to Saturn, but that's what people debate. I imagine in space his heart problem wouldn't be that deleterious, if he can make it.
Combining a space mission with the dystopia of ranking everyone by genetics and constantly testing them is what seemed off about that movie. I can't imagine any society like that being curious enough to explore other planets and moons, because what would they do if they found life on Titan - judge it by their own standards and "in-valid" it if it's deemed inferior?
One of my favorites is Cosmos. Did you ever see this Neal? So inspiring.
Interstellar deserves way higher. It’s a movie with working science. The problem wasn’t with food. It’s literally said in the movie that the food was infected with a virus that consumed oxygen and released nitrogen. At the beginning of the film it said that the atmosphere was 80% nitrogen already. The problem wasn’t food starvation but suffocation.
You're not really addressing the point raised. Is finding a usable interstellar wormhole to send a million people through really easier than fixing the atmosphere?
@@MindForgedManacle They weren't going to send everyone from Earth though. The "plan B" to use the embryo's was "plan A" all along to continue the survival of the human race. Everyone on Earth was doomed.
@@MindForgedManacle There's no "wormhole to send a million people through". Just a wormhole to send a few astronauts creating a new world far from earth. People on earth are doomed. That's a main story twist in the middle of the movie.
I hate the stupid movie with a passion, Interstellar is a movie that thinks it's better than what it actually is.
@@jbryant5253And it is actually better than you think it is! Goated movie
“Anytime people are fighting each other to look through a telescope, that’s a good day for me”😂 Love it!
At 30:34
@Mauro Biglino & The 5Th Kind & Adam 1414 channels
Yeah, 100%, especially when one of them is Bill Paxton (whom he he did mention too)!
And the other guy, right hand side on the screen, is Brian Thompson - the "famous" alien bounty hunter from X-Files series (or the "bad" guy from the "Cobra" movie with Stallone).
Funny thing about the weakness in the matrx is they originally wanted to make it so the machines use us for the computing power of the brain but the studio thought most people wouldn't understand so they had them change the script.
Wouldn't really make it better, right? The movie had a ton of plotholes. For example: Apparently the inner core of the Earth was still warm (Dozer says son in the first movie when he talks about why Zion is located there) and the machines have the ability to drill. It would be way (WAY!) easier to just drill a tunnel to the core and use geothermal energy to power all the stuff and shut down the Matrix.
@@Llyd_ApDictanah, geothermal energy would still need a lot of work to carry that energy from deep in the earth, many km to the surface. Nuclear energy would still be readily available
@@Llyd_ApDicta Remember, "There is no spoon". The machine world with Zion is still a layer of The Matrix. The Architect's reset it several times. It's why Neo can 'see' despite being blinded. The scenario is all part of the plan to root out Smith, which is the real threat to the system.
They should’ve just enslaved bunch of bovines that would provide greater energy, yet wouldn’t have the same mental capacity to escape the matrix. Would’ve made more sense.
But they probably didn’t want to create a barnyard-based sci-fi caper 😂
@@DonLee1980 What are you talking about?
"geothermal energy would still need a lot of work to carry that energy from deep in the earth" - No. Some piping and a medium that can transport heat. Water for example. And you can even use the drill hole for the piping.
"Nuclear energy would still be readily available" - First of all, geothermal energy technically is a form of nuclear energy and secondly if you are under the impression, that the enrichment of fissile materials to a purity level that let them be used as fuel in a controlled nuclear reaction is somehow easier to achieve than some pipes and, say, a Sterling engine you really need to read a book or two.
I'd love to hear your take on the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy
"Arrival" - Neil, did you get a description from TV Guide or something? They had enormous teams in a dozen countries. The tagline is "Why are they here?" My friend, you need to listen to the good folks here.
Worth mentioning: Kip Thorne published a peer-reviewed research paper based on the visualisation of the black holes in Interstellar (only major film that can claim such a feat) and several years later got the Nobel Prize for his work on black hole physics.
oh wow I hadn’t heard that! I love that movie and Kip is a legend, very cool! I’ll have to read his paper!
Not for his work on black hole physics. For his work on gravitational wave detection (LIGO).
@@fd7231 Yes, you're right, it was for LIGO. Black hole physics was central to it though as noted on the 2017 Nobel Physics press release.
Dear Dr. Tyson, Kip Thorne did have a role in the movie but it wasn't as C.A.S.E. His representation was as the "deliberately disassembled" robot, K.I.P.P., that was booby-trapped by Dr. Mann to keep the 2nd expedition from discovering his deception.
Putting Arrival on the same tier as Armageddon is WILD.
Yep. I very much respect Neil deGrasse Tyson but he absolutely missed the whole meaning and message, the whole point, of the movie. Wild to me, given he appears to be someone who pays attention to the tiniest of details (very much like me). For me Arrival is one of the best movies of the decade, not just sci-fi movies.
Armageddon was less up its own ass.
@@flaggerify God forbid a movie having depth and something to say
Agreed. Armageddon should have been S tier.
@@flaggerify My favorite part is when Aerosmith made that song and in the MV, Steven Tyler's daughter was the pin-up girl. Because that's definitely not up any ass. (This is supposed to be as ironic as your post)
That outro was fire, "As always, keep looking up"💯🌌
I must say, I'd put "Arrival" at the top of the list. The film explores one of the greatest mysteries of physics and consciousness: how we experience time, and in the process, raises the question of our choices if we experienced time in a way that isn't strictly linear. It is beautiful and poetic in showing us that even if we escape time, we cannot escape the nature of our human condition.
Absolutely at least among dramatic serious alien movies it's the best ever. Like almost no violence is necessary, an entire language is conceived of... And I think it's probably the best score in a movie in a long time.
Beautifully put.
Arrival is a 💎.
Annihilation is one of my favorite sci-fi films. The scene towards the very end with that faceless creature gives me goosebumps every time.
It didn't even occur to me that Annihilation is a sci-fi. It's quite ambiguous in that regard. It could easily fall into the horror genre instead.
A really good alien invasion trilogy.
Sorry I am going to disregard the hoverboard comment. Wheels of a skateboard get caught on rocks and cracks in the ground; a hoverboard will glide right over. This invention would make for a smoother ride.
Reading your name made me dizzy
I just commented on that point and just noticed yours :). Imagine the possibilities with wheelchairs, moving heavy stuff. Wheels are useless on stairs.
I believe u might go faster since there wouldn't be no friction.
Right, the one thing a hoverboard would have. Small irregularities on the surface you glide over won't rattle your board.
I could see that incredibly useful for patient transports. Or for trains. Anywhere where you want an extremely smooth ride.
This. The hoverboard would also allow travel over rougher terrain that is unpassable for a wheeled-device.
8:47 I don’t think bro realizes that the crops weren’t just dying it’s because in the movie the earths oxygen was supplanting rapidly
Still synthesizing more oxygen is more plausable than sending 1 billion people through a wormhole
@@mderveni9144agree
Synthethizing oxygen. How.@@mderveni9144
And what might have caused the oxygen to rapidly be supplanted? Maybe it's caused because of pollution and blight together. Blight kills plants which takes in some pollution and releases oxygen.
I agree with Neil on this one. Finding out what's causing that supplanting of oxygen & fixing that would be 1 million times cheaper
Matrix originally had the human brains act as processors, not batteries. Executives didn't understand it, so it was changed.
In my headcanon (and after watching The Second Renaissance many, many times), the machines did it as a courtesy to their makers. They couldn't keep fighting, but also didn't want to commit genocide.
What I don't understand about what Niel is saying about thermodynamics is; then why are there Carnivores? Like isn't it because it's easier to let the herbivore do the work of digesting the food and then u just eat the herbivore? So they doing similar to us?
@@Voldemorts_Mom Except the machines were designed and don't have to run with whatever random system evolution came up with.
Photovoltaic cells and batteries are much more efficient and vastly simpler to design and maintain than the matrix and it's human bio batteries. 😁
@@Voldemorts_Mom Carnivores exist because there's an ecological niche for them to exist in.
'only 12 Watts per hour per brain' would've sufficed, but sunlight being blocked is nice tho.
So glad you pointed out the tether problem in “Gravity.” I remember seeing that scene for the first time and thinking, “Uhhh…Neil’s not gonna be cool with this.”
Are they not in lower orbit, hence them being around satellites, and Neil once explained what it means to be in lower orbit. They are moving at a very high speed or aka free falling. That can then explain why you can't tug on the tether
This needs a part two. So many more movies to go through.
Agreed! What about Spaceballs? 😂
For sure. Love his takes and would love his take on Moon (2009).
With such simplistic approaches? Nah, im fine with only part one!
Part 1 would need serious revising before I would care.
Agree
THANK YOU! Deep Impact and Armageddon came out at the same time and I said right from the get go that Deep Impact was a better movie for being more realistic. I'm curious where you'd put some fun movies like Batteries Not Included or ET or Last Star Fighter.
In terminator the machines couldn't send Arnold earlier in time since all they had was the name. That is why the terminator looks for every Sara Connor in the phone book. Just saying.
Oh yeah...forgot about that part.
Was now saying this, there were no records on the Connors since everything was destroyed in the war. So the machines couldn't do what Degrass is saying would have been easier
This. Plus I'm pretty sure that the meta reason they had the "go back naked" rule has less to do with them wanting to show off Arnold and more to do with them wanting no high-tech weapons ruining the plot. Although I'm sure showing off Arnold was a bonus for them.
I came looking for this comment because it's exactly what I was gonna' say. They had this point covered. NDG's point about the hair and nails is a good one, though - if hair and nails are exempt, then you could pretty much wrap anything you want to bring back in time in leather and it would go through just fine.
@@colinhiggs70though that raises thr question of "Couldn't they have smuggled a small plasma gun or a bomb you-know-where?"
Must disagree on the linguist / cryptographer issue. A cryptographer's (crypto analyst actually in this case) job is to reveal the message that was sent in a coded or encrypted form.
But that relies heavily of our understanding of the language properties and structure of the expected real message (plain text) - that we are trying to reveal.
For example - when trying to decipher an encrypted English text you rely on the fact that statistically 13% of the letters of a text in this language are 'e'.
Since it's an alien language - we have no idea what would the real message will look like and if it is coded at all.
A linguist on the other hand will have a better chance of understanding key words, verbs and nouns, references and gestures, and eventually build a dictionary.
19:08 Yes, Neil needs to rewatch... A
True..
Except he was suggesting the cryptographer would replace the physicist, not the linguist.
No need for cryptographer at all. Their language isn't encrypted, it's just a foreign language.
Also Neil must have missed they had a team of people working in their tent, and other teams were working on this around the world.
Cryptographers are used to decoding messages of unknown origin tho, I think his point stands
Fun bit of trivia - the first ever song sung with a computer generated voice was "Daisy Bell," done with an IBM computer in the early 60's, and that is the song HAL ends up singing at the very end as he is shut down.
And H A L are the three letters preceding I B M
@@xneapolisx that just blowed my mind haha
The song is subtitled "Bicycle Built for Two" which is pretty funny in the situation (at least I think it is). Whether the ship is a bicycle built for the two astronauts, or that HAL and Dave are the "two" it's an ironic representation of our relationship to technology. Maybe not but I still enjoy it. Plus now I'm terrified fo tandem bikes.
A book by Clarke said that IBM vs HAL was coincidence and he would of changed it if he knew of the furry it would cause.
@@xneapolisx Wow. Any more easter eggs from 2001??
lol my man Neil bashing the Disney Black hole movie 😂. I saw it and walked out in anger for the reasons you cited.
Skynet didn't know anything about Sarah Connor, other than her name and her location in 1984. They wouldn't be able to find her parents before she was born.
They could go back to 1984, and infiltrate the IRS to find out the not only the personal data on sara Conor but the entire resistance.
Yep, the reason why the Terminator went after 3 different Sarah Connor's. Neil's argument doesn't hold up if you know the movie.
exactly. and Genysis breaks this rule with its alternate timeline.
Maybe he didn't watch it 🤔
@@Punisher6791 No one cares about Genesys.
Honestly District 9 deserves an honorable mention. Such an interesting take on aliens that got stranded on earth and want to leave, but are forced by humans to stay in alien slums so we can learn from their technology.
Dude that movie is sooo good. I also love Chappie
The concept is quite fresh, I agree, but the movie bored me so much that I can't even remember half of it, and I watched it twice (second time precisely because I couldn't remember anything about it)...
District 9 is one of my favorite modern movies. I thought it was so good.
That's not the reason they were forced to stay on Earth.
They were forced to stay on Earth because humans didn't understand their technology enough to help them repair their ship to enable them to leave (to be fair, neither did most of the ones who survived whatever disease it was that wiped out most of their scientist and engineer class fellow aliens. It was mostly the blue collar class aliens who survived it.)
The fact of humans trying to learn their technology after the fact was a by-product of this forced situation and not the primary reason they were trapped here.
The humans were not trapping them here.
They didn't know how to get them or help them to leave and short of killing them all, there was nothing else to do with them.
Was originally a halo movie..
I would have like to have seen "The Andromeda Strain" (1971) on this list.
Good addition! Using the scientific method to figure out what made the old man and the infant the same and the testing of a number of hypotheses created the suspense.
totally agree...Neil,why wasn't it in your list?
@@cwbybear4665It was said elsewhere, Neil only picked the movies he's seen and he's not a film buff!
I agree: Andromeda Strain was a fine and subtle film!
another sci-fi i loved was one called "phase IV" where ants became sentient the scene where the ants picked up their dead to honour the fallen i found chilling and moving
Or Capricorn One. What a movie.
Viruses aren’t Alive. I just corrected Neil Degrass Tyson lol
Arrival and Armageddon on the same tier is absolutely criminal 😩
Totally agree Armageddon was a cartoon next to documentary, which would have been Arrival
As a disabled engineer, I thoroughly appreciated the disabled accessibility of the alien flying saucers comment! Kudos!
although...what would you expect to roll out of a flying saucer? A ramp is easier to lower from a moving vehicle than a staircase (as staircases are usually stationary) 😅 speaking as someone temporarily in a wheelchair myself.
Wow. Arrival has been top of S Tier for me since I saw it the first time and keeps creating distance every time I see it. Any movie that attempts to solve the issues we have in our world, I’m a sucker for. Then I had kids and now it’s even more relevant. Incredible.
Agreed. Best modern sci-fi in the last two decades maybe. Didn’t bother me that a linguist was also an expert in cryptography. The gift of non linear time perception is amazing.
I was thinking the same thing. He was too harsh with Arrival.
Agreed!!! Arrival should have been higher on the list!
I ranked it about 3/5 when I first watched it. Started off strong but at some point they threw all the delicacies of the script into the trash to move the film along. Then it lost me.
His rankings are way off lol
1. T2
2. The Matrix
3. Aliens
4. Contact
5. 12 Monkeys
6. Primer
7. Blade Runner
8. Dune (all versions)
9. Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back
10. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Neil, maybe this will affect your opinion of Arrival. The movie was an extreme version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, the idea that learning another language affects, or in this case, completely changes how you perceive the world. That’s why the protagonist is seemingly able to truly see time as circular once she figured out their language.
And secondly, it’s a movie!
It ripped off Slaughterhouse 5.
As a fan of both linguistics and astro-science I love Arrival, but strong linguistic relativity - where a language can expand or limit a speaker's ability to understand the world - is generally not widely accepted as a real phenomenon, especially in such a strong expression as portrayed in the movie. I think in the context of Arrival this can be kinda hand-waved with the "alien science" justification, but it was a bit of a suspension of disbelief sticking point for me.
but that hypothesis is nonsense. i get the stretch of the concept, but when the whole movie is about that, that is like interstellar except instead of cooper going through a wormhole, he imagined it in his basement meditating the whole thing (along with saying that love was the reason he could meditate that hard). it is not even remotely realistic someone can time travel with language alone with no physical intervention needed. if the language included a new dimension that the aliens were able to teach her to see, it would have been better. but as the movie stands, it does not show this at all. maybe you can say it's implied, but at some level is it just an idea without execution.
a movie close in terms of being more of an idea and not much meat is annihilation. there is a huge leap from the concept of mutation to a godlike or ideal form of being. but at least it showed something more of a transition into the idea. the coolest part of arrival was the creation of the language, which seemed like it took a lot of computer expertise to create. but in the end it still wasnt interesting enough to support a leap into circular time. i think technically even the language failed, as it ended up only being a couple of words. I don't know if they were able to make a language that fit the idea. the whole movie is about this linguistic concept but they also barely analyze the language, as neil mentions. as interstellar reaches the dead end of scientific explanation, he can say it's because of love, the movie is still mostly about the science. arrival seems to rely heavily on the imaginary fruits of understanding the alien language, but we get neither... it's just, adams having an implied deeper conversation with the aliens, end of movie.
for example, it could have been cooler if they required some multidimensional analysis so that they can at least map what they think the aliens are saying. as it stands, they took the 2d watercolor ring language completely at face value, but somehow adams got superpowers from it with her mind.
@@quazillionaireDoes this mean theory or reality, Chinese perceive the world differently than Americans or anyone else who doesn’t speak Chinese (and everyone else perception of the world is different to Chinese perception)? If this is the case, why? Refer me to reading material ps, a link or something - I find this quite interesting.
Can we give a shout out to Bill Paxton? The only man who has been killed by a terminator, a predator, and an alien.
Is that true , shit man wow
@@paulnolan4971 yep. Gets killed by a T-800 in Terminator (1984) in the clip NDT showed. Then he gets killed by a Xenomorph in Aliens (1986) and finally he is killed by a Yautja on the train in Predator 2 (1990).
Respect!
Not to mention been turned into a toad.
Not true. Lance Henricksen was also killed by a terminator, a predator and an alien.
@@les4767 but was he killed by an Avenger too? Bill Paxton was.
The problem you talked about Sarah Connor is actually answered in the movie.Kyle Resse said that most of the information lost after the nuclear war.Skynet only knew the mother name and the city nothing else was there in their closet.So they don't possess the previous ancestor's name or anything.That's why they target Sarah Connor for termination.
All of them in the phonebook, 3 or 4 if I remember right.
I really love how Neil is this brilliant person that we sometimes forget he is just as human as we are and I really loved how he went and analyzed every single movie and gave so many reasons as to why he put them in each tier.Like when he went to the back to the future movies and was like "They are NOT all going to the same slot".My man gets it.
Honourable mentions:
The Abyss, Moon, Cocoon, Blade Runner, Dune
5 times no.
@@nedludd7622 dune is goated
Dune sucks tho
Blade Runner gets my #1.
H. G. Wells The time machine and Forbidden Planet. Two of the best ever.
Yeah!
agree....
Forbidden Plant has a lot of old fashioned attitudes, but it had pretty freaky special effects and an original monster
Forbidden Planet was for me a great Science Fiction story, but also a very scary invisible monster movie. Love the concept of the Krell. Using their minds to create matter but like human beings, they are genetically predisposed to violence and base emotions. Everything is a double edged sword. AI might be our Krell moment.
Also love Fifth Element.
Forbiden Planet was essentially the prototype for Star Trek.
Those lists needs to be 2d graphs. One axis for physical accuracy one for entertaining value.
That would have been so much better. Great idea. Some of the most entertaining movies have the worst physics accuracy.
Fantastic idea!!!
Oooooo!
Good thinking! I also realized Neil has nostalgia as a driving force on some
It was called Zero Gravity here in Japan. One of the rare instances that the love of longer titles helped it make more sense.
I was sad to see that the original 'The Andromeda Strain' from 1971 was not here. A truly great sci-fi movie that takes it slow.
Good point.
One of my favorite movies. Although the look of the film is a bit dated today (especially the computer graphics) but the story/conspiracy is A+.
I think it hold up well despite the technology of the era. Remember the scientists in Fantastic Voyage used slide rules.
As a teen that movie blew my mind LOL excellent
Yes, for science sake I'd give it a "B".
“Am I on LSD? Or is the movie on LSD? One of us is on LSD for the last 20 mins of the film.” 😂😂😂
both if you do it right
It made me feel like I was on LSD before I knew what LSD was!
I noticed something curious about my LSD experience...
a blank wall became a fascinating canvas for the imagination whereas
a 'psychedelic' poster was practically inert.
The bigger pronlem is "20 minutes" - my gripe with 2001 is its run time ... way too long. Not just this scene but most of the movie is too stretched out. Instead of 2h20m it could've been 1h20m.
I far prefer "2010", its sequel.
@@BryTee When the film was being made space travel was still science fiction, televisions and telephones were entirely separate devices, people still read 500 page books for entertainment and most minds were able to focus on one topic for many hours at a stretch.
I saw the movie in 1968 on a rainy weekday afternoon sitting in the sweet spot in a near deserted theater on a rare, curved, ultra wide screen with six channel surround sound.
If you watched it on a cell phone then I understand your complaint about its length.
Interstellar is definitely an A. It was a beautiful movie. One of the first science fiction movie that had you feel different emotions than the normal.
i had the odd privilege of watching Interstellar just a few rows behind Professor Stephen Hawkins at the VUE Cinemas in Cambridge! Suck on that, Neil!!
Oh man, we have the exact same ranking/taste. There are some of the older ones I haven't actually seen but I've already found them online (legally of course). Thanks for this.
As a 'professor' of IT I find it hard to believe that in Independence Day, Jeff Goldblum just whipped out a cable to interface with the alien ship along with a laptop that apparently speaks their computer language to just inject a virus. Especially when in the movie they say the ship they had captured had only recently come to life....
No waycould that ever happen. Physics fail!
Where do you thing we got the technology from?! The space ship!
I am sure Apple would have an adapter for that.
Their ship obviously runs on Linux. They got it from us, from one of those capsules that humans send to space with Elvis music and mathematics and other stuff. They should have put that in the movie 🤣
@@tomusiAnd overpriced!
The twist in Interstellar is that it was NEVER possible for them to move all inhabitants of earth… that’s the TWIST lol
Right. They all died horribly. That’s the other other movie.
I've always thought they should make Interstellar 2, where the reality is that plan B worked, and the plan B humans are the ones that solved the problem of gravity. Everyone on Earth from the first movie dies, but once the humans that survived via plan B find out that their ancestors died to save them, they want to use their time knowledge to save them. They then create the tesseract in the black hole in the past, resulting in the first movie.
Not only would it be a great movie, it would explain the plot hole from the first.
@@ImagineBaggins simple answer is there is no "us" from the future that create the worm hole or tesseract. We heard Cooper say it but there no evident, he could just "wrong". more accept answer is another advance spicies that save us. And thus no paradox
@@ImagineBaggins It would lose some of the essence of the first. Which for most of the time followed known physics. A sequel would be 100% speculative.
The other problem with biologists is that the school system stopped promoting science and instead focused on the labor side of farming.
Some of my favourite Sci-Fi that were left out of this list:
The Thing, Alien, District 9, Ex Machina, Ghost in the Shell, The Man From Earth, Dune, Inception, Mad Max, Stalker, Children of Men, Blade Runner!
Its your problem
One of my favourite sci-fi _movies_ is one that kind of requires knowing the series as well - Babylon 5's "In the Beginning" 🥰
wow "the man from earth" is top !
@@enfrike1850 so underrated!
I would LOVE a second episode covering other scifi movies, it's always just super entertaining to hear him comment on this stuff :)
July 1968. I was 13. Hot, humid Summer Saturday Eve. After a dinner out with my parents, we saw "2001: A Space Odyssey", which had been featured in a recent issue of "LIFE" magazine. Settled into our seats in a very full and very packed 70MM theater, which was the "IMAX" of the day, I spent the next 2-plus hours stone-cold mesmerized, if not entirely stupefied, by the visual and aural spectacle which exploded on the immense screen! Words simply could not define or describe what had unfolded, as if I had both seen and experienced Nirvana! That night, and that journey, irrevocably changed me, questioning forever not only the nature of The Universe but of the fabric of Reality itself. To this day, my very fave film of all time. Namaste and Cheers!
Amen brother.
I never understood the last minutes until I read the books... but I always knew it was something extra special...definitely my fave Sci fi movie....it's literally amazing....
About linguists, Stargate SG-1 had a linguist as a main character for most of its 10 yr run.
Worth noting: He had a flagship named after him by the Asgard.
Worth noting: you don't know what a vagina tastes like@@paulmichaelfreedman8334
Also thinking of Hoshi Sato from Enterprise.
Blade Runner's Tears in rain is a quote Neil likes to roll once in a while
Unfortunatly the tier list ended at S only
I read some where that was an ad lib by Rutger Hauer
In my post, I mentioned BLADE RUNNER as my favorite sci-fi movie, ....and I write sci-fi books.
The interstellar take is hilarious, because the movie made a point to say that most of, if not all education was directed towards agriculture. So no one could figure out the blight.
@@Venerablenesses the agriculture focus was because of the blight though. If it was that big a problem, every nation on Earth would have programs going trying to solve. Whatever fungus or bacteria the blight is, it can't be invincible.
2001 A Space Odyssey isn't just one of the best sci fi films of all time, it's one of the greatest cinematic achievements to date regardless of genre. Coming up on 60 years old and the film holds up just as well today - I make sure to watch it every few years and it's always a mind-blowing experience.
2001 Spoiler alert 🚨 The ending when I saw it, I couldn’t understand until someone a decade ago, explained that the rooms were designed by something that had never been on earth. Knew nothing about earths history and left the character in these rooms as we on earth. When we will generate a plausible living quarters for animals, like in our zoos that is nowhere close to their actual habitat. So we can observe them. THAT WAS GENIUS!!
@@bertdashurt5202 Your ending is more confusing than the film's
@@supertouring22 this is the ending of the film though. That's what it's intended to be.
Hands down the most overrated movie of all time. Visually, it is a masterpiece; the special effects were amazing at that time. But I'm sorry, Arthur C. Clarke was a terrible writer. He had no idea how to craft a plot and his characters and dialogue were flat. Every book/story he wrote started off with a good idea but ultimately ended in ridiculous nonsense. This movie is the most perfect representation of pretentious nonsense and the fact that there are so many fans that, to the end of the world say, "you just don't understand it," only serves to prove the point even more.
@@Cromulant so your whole thing sums up to you laying this blanket of your opinion with “you’re pretentious if you disagree with me”. That’s the definable epitome of pretentiousness. Thanks for the laugh.
ARRIVAL as a film... is a pure S-tier. I understand the scientist having issues... but the thoughts behind this film... and the main points... are staggering. Just a brilliant piece of drama that will leave you thinking about a host of things. Back to the Future by comparison is a kiddie picture. I'd also rank GRAVITY higher. But overall: FASCINATING discussion. THE QUIET EARTH is excellent! I'd also have added "DARK CITY," "GATTICA," and John Carpenter's "THE THING"... Also "LAST NIGHT" (The Canadian film starring Sandra Oh) is awesome!
Looking that one up, thanks!
You completely lost all legitimacy with me saying that about BTTF.
@@ARandomInternetUser08 I loved Back To The Future... but the franchise is, as whole, below par. It certainly is not better than Arrival, Gravity, or Dark City, imo.
@@ARandomInternetUser08 Then you're not logical. One can agree with one thing but still think the other opinion is wrong. One does not negate the other.
@@doublestrokeroll whatever makes you feel better, buddy.
Armageddon: well now let’s be fair - the Fast and the Furious movies violate the MOST laws of physics per minute.
Family defies physics
@@drfeelgordo Defiles?
you have not seen "starflight one" then? makes armageddon look like a documentary
Still more entertaining than Arrival or Interstellar.
probably, but not Sci Fi for Niel's rankings.
Wouldn't it be easier to train Astronauts to drill rather than training drillers to be astronauts?
"Shut the fuck up" was Michael Bay's response to that
Dune, The Wast of Night, Solaris, Passengers, The Andromeda Strain, Ex Machina, Moon - would love to see Neil's take on these
2012
Dune isnt really sci-fi. Its geopolitics in space.
@@johnfbm :D good one
The what of Night?
@@jcjcviews The Vast of Night (slight typo)
Love it but you didn't even look at my number one, The Andromeda strain. Having lived thro contagion with COVID just made it better for me.
Agree, great book & movie. One of my favorites.
@@chrishebert5672 I just hope people read the book or watch the film!
thank god for covid huh
Andromeda Strain is almost hard sci-fi, and *exceptionally* well thought out (by Michael Crichton) and executed. Like the _Mass Effect_ game series, Andromeda Strain contains only *one* plot element that is not current reality. While in Mass Effect that is the titular physical _Mass Effect_ of one chemical element, in Andromeda Strain it is extraterrestrial life. I prefer such kind of sci-fi because it allows for very strong audience immersion. the more a story revolves around the concept "this could maybe in the future happen", the better I can immerse myself.
7:40 That funky robot in _Interstellar_ was named TARS.
The robot that Matt Damon had that performed no actions at all and that exploded was named KIPP.
There were two of those robots with McC and the crew; KIPP and TARS. Matt Damon's robot was unnamed (or at least we never got to hear of it, as it had such a minimal appearance in the story).
@@noneofyourbeeswax01 no, those were TARS and CASE. KIPP was indeed dismantled and then exploded in the face of Romilly. You can read it's called KIPP, it's written on it.
@@noneofyourbeeswax01 Its name is on the front of it, "KIPP", in the same location TARS's name appears on it.
@@ZeroOskul There's never in the movie a robot refererd to as KIPP, it's always either TARS or CASE.
@@flybeep1661 see: *Interstellar - Kipp*
Listen to what TARS says at 58 seconds.
28:05 I guess everyone in the universe uses windows.
would be funny if it showed the aliens screen saying "this file cannot be opened as we do not recognize the operating system for which it was made""
Proof of how dumb we are…of course, an advanced intelligence would use a Mac! Sheesh!!
'Her bangs always know which way down was' - nearly spat out my coffee laughing!
Thank you, thank you, thank you so much for including The Quiet Earth. A wholly underrated film that shares a somewhat similar vibe or two with movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey or The Andromeda Strain. The fact that the movie never really tried to scientifically explain what "the event" was didn't bog the movie down with unnecessary fictional scientific exposition. This allowed the rest of the movie to excel in what it was attempting to showcase. Good choice.
I think Apollo 13 was worth mentioning. It is pretty accurate with physics and space travelling in my humble opinion.
FICTION, BOZO😅😂😅
But it wasn't science fiction, it was dramatized history. Same as Schindler's List.
@@michael-1680 True. The other question is if Gravity counts as science fiction as even though it's a fictional story the science in it is based on today's technology?
Yes, it was a great movie. But not Science Fiction.
Lol yeah that was science fact not science fiction
Last night I dreamt that Neil was just a friend of my dad, and now thinking about it, he perfectly fits the character of just one of my dads friends that comes over every once in a while.
@29:50
In the movie it was stated that "most the records were lost in the war. Skynet knew almost nothing about Connor's mother... her full name, where she lived. They just knew the city."
thats why t1 looked it up in phone book
Also he mentioned the sequels to The Matrix, and Back To The Future, but Terminator 2 didn't get a mention!? Arguably one of the best sci-fi films ever made
I love how Arrival is about the effect of language in the way we think / perceive the world (including time)
I hate how it means the aliens knew the china crisis was coming before they even landed and just decided to let it happen anyway.
Those Aliens are dicks...
Which is why we'd need a linguist, not a cryptologist.
Some languages, like Mandarin Chinese, use other methods to convey the timing of actions instead of verb tenses. They often rely on context and specific words to indicate when something happened or will/might happen. Was the character of General Shang coincidental for the movie?
I am VERY surprised that the 1971 "Andromeda Strain" isn't on the list. Hard science fiction doesn't get harder than that.
Rock-hard Science Fiction from a brilliant mind.
Agreed. Brilliant movie.
btw - check out the other credits of director Robert Wise, it will blow your mind.
I Was 9 Years Old When The Andromeda Strain Came Out, And Both My Father, And I Were Glued To The Movie Screen, All The Way Through That Amazingly Scary, And Scientific Thrilling Movie . . .
Stayed up reading the whole book in just one sitting. Couldn’t put it down. Talk about a story that has real science behind it, Michael Crichton graduated from Harvard Medical School as an MD. He researched the living daylights out of his topic. Look at the bibliography of ‘State of Fear’. Page after page of tiny print denoting all the published research papers he read before writing the book. Oh, then there’s this other book ‘Jurassic Park’…
When Dr Tyson talked about how “the Blob” had an alien so different from the typical depiction of life, my mind immediately went to the Andromeda Strain. A glaring omission, IMHO.
1. Interstellar 2. 2001: Space Odyssey 3. Blade Runner (1982) 4. Alien 5. Star Wars: Return of the Jedi Honorable mention: ET
The Martian is one of the scariest movies I have ever seen, the very thought of running out of ketchup terrifies me….
But u have vicadin!!!!
Patrick Mahomes, is that you?
Sorry, Neil, but you are just wrong about Arrival.
Denis Villeneuve lulls us into thinking that we’re watching another Hollywood first contact movie, and it gradually morphs into a deeply philosophical film about parental love, time and communication.
Couldn't agree more
Totally agree. Also the point about writing being flipped is very weird. Obviously the alien was writing is for someone to read, not for themselves to read. If that's something the aliens use to communicate between each other (and we're led to believe that they do), then surely they are able to take that into account.
Yeah he lost me when he ranked this masterpiece at C.
Absolutely - hear, Hear! Unfortunately, I found Neil's entire presentation to be surprisingly coarse... Quite disappointing - I expected a far more thoughtful effort.
It sucked. I fell asleep halfway through and after I looked up the meaning it was even worse than I expected. 👎🏼
2001 is also my favorite because my 6th grade teacher back in Marin County, read the book to our class, over the school year. To our class's surprise, at the end of the book, she took us to the premere viewing of the movie, as a class field event that same year in 1968. Having her read the book to us first, we understood the movie. Thank you Mrs. Mann wherever you are, we will never forget this.
Impossible for you to have read the book and then watched the "premiere". Clark wrote 2001 with heavy feedback/editing from Kubrick and with the agreement that the movie would premiere prior to the novel's release.
WOW I wish I had this experience from school ..... I just want to demolish it.
I'm so glad to have come across this. Thanks for making it. One of the assignments I give my students during our space unit is to review a movie from a list of 5 films I've compiled, so I was watching for anything I needed to add or throw out. Contact, The Martian, and Interstellar are all on that list so I was glad to see the Neil DeGrasse Tyson seal of approval. The other two are Hidden Figures and Appolo 13. Less sci-fi, more history, but still, I'd be interested to hear some thoughts on it.
A hoverboard won't trip on a crack in the sidewalk causing you to tumble over into concussion land.
Yeah, I don't think Neil has ever ridden a skateboard on uneven ground!
I got the impression hoverboards worked similar to maglev (even though there's no magnets in the pavement) - so yeah there was still proximity to the ground, like a mag-lev train, and with the same advantages
Yeah the bit about a hoverboard being pointless is a big WTF.
Also, I got the impression too when I saw BTTF2 as a kid that hoverboards didn't work over water, but I think the flaw was that you can't thrust with your foot over water. The hovering clearly worked. It was just a little confusingly filmed.
But what if something came between the board and the ground, interfering with the hovering and causing you to fall over and eat shit regardless?
Exactly this. Give us hoverboards that you may ride on the ground, grass and rough surfaces where regular skates are a bumpy nightmare
2001 holds up remarkably well for a Sci-Fi effects movie filmed in 1968. It still looks great.
When someone says "[Blank] is the greatest Sci-Fi movie of all time," I think _2001_ because it was new and just before the moon landing. Of course a monolith would be considered "Intelligent Design" and is not how evolution works.
Unfortunately, it's kind of boring on repeat viewings, or even your first time. Also, the Space Baby, "Star Child" that David Bowman becomes decides not to convert the human race to his transformation. Thanks, Dave. (sarcasm).
I think _Star Trek the Motion Picture_ took it's cues from that rather than _Star Wars_ as most of the film is looking at the models in space, while converting an hour episode into a two-hour movie, with nothing for the characters to do!
2001's visual special effects are much more beautiful and *believable* than most of today's Hollyweird garbage. Plus it has no "sound in space" unlike 99.9% of sci-fi movies.
On another level. I'd say 2010 were way above any other. Close encounters was pretty darn good as well
@@Scott-i2b Nah, _2010 The Year We Make Contact_ was just OK, but _2001 A Space Odyssey_ was a breakthrough from what came before.
_Close Encounters_ was very good. It had the subtext of people having trouble communicating with their family, others in the human race, as well as (presumably) friendly aliens.
for 1968 it is MIND-BOGGLING .. almost a decade before Star Wars. Flat panel displays, AI, it was way before its time.
The Blackhole has so much nostalgia for me. I can completely understand why Neil wouldn't like it, but for little kid me it was exciting and emotionally impactful.
Yeah that film was a wall breaker.
Maximilian haunted my dreams for a good awhile.
Neil’s ranking was on scientific accuracy more than storytelling. And the story is just a retelling of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
I saw Black Hole in theater as a kid and remember liking it quite a bit.
I rewatched it last year and was highly disappointed by it. As a 10 year old, it was suspenseful but on rewatch, I have no idea what I saw in it.
There are other movies I watched in a movie theater as a kid and still love. For example Sound of Music, Bad News Bears, Star Trek II: Wrath of Kahn, Rocky 3 and Poltergeist.
@@frommatorav1 Yeah I have not rewatched it since my childhood viewing.
this is so cool, hoping for a part 2
and if it's possible other media too, novels, comics etc. !!
I liked this, but The Martian also had one other flaw: the martian surface is so loaded with clay and metals that while Damon/Watney could indeed grow potatoes, they would've been heavily poisonous.
It's the perchlorates that are especially hostile to growing potatoes :p
@@logansmall5148perchlorates are water soluble and can be rinsed out the regolith, wouldn't make for snappy drama though.
it was contained in a dome with the appropriate ingredients of elements
.... just another Saving Matt Damon movie IMO.... I'd love to save MD..from uglifying my tv monitor.
Arrival as C tier is nuts
He said it was definitely worth watching. But the movie was stupid though. An alien ship drops into the middle of a field and they only think to send 2 people? GTFO.
@@Lionheartx675 have some of ur own thoughts u just repeated the exact same thing. Now tell me another criticism which is from ur own
@@zyrux_ i reiterated his thoughts because you (clearly) lack the critical thinking to understand the point he was getting across
@@Lionheartx675 tell me ur criticism. If u are so intelligent thn tell me an issue u actually have with the film and not the celebrity physicist
@@zyrux_Arrival is a overrated shitty pseudoscientific garbage, learning some alien language will not rewire your brain and give you the ability to see the future 😂. Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is considered a joke by linguists
Fun Fact: The only reason the machines use Humans as batteries in the Matrix is because the directors changed things after filming had started. Originally the machines were gonna be using Humans for extra computing power but they didnt think people in 2000 would understand that, so they changed it to something simpler.
It was the producers who thought we wouldn't understand.
Exactly; it's a shame audiences aren't actually smarter, and I know the producers are pretty much solely bent on making as much money as possible, but also maybe just assume that audiences are ACTUALLY smarter than they surmise.
In 1978,
when I bought my first computer,
it was rare to meet a computer owner.
Not so in 1999.
Computing capacity would have made a brilliant justification
for the Matrix coming into being
(but perhaps carry considerably less potential for dramatic impact
(since thinking and computing are invisible abstract processes and
what boring images might arrays of linked brains floating in dark vats have made)).
(I thought it pretty clever to use the old fashioned wired telephone
as indicator of transition between the 'real' world and the matrix,
effective both in the minds of the characters and in the minds of the audience
(especially for those of us who used those phones in our youts).
You explained it in half a sentence. What did they think we wouldn't get?
THAT makes more sense (CPU power vs BATT power). Humans DO have more internal processing power than most computers, it's just that our IO interface is so damned slow.