Top 25 Science Fiction/ Dystopian Movies of All Time

Top 25 Science Fiction Movies of All Time

 1.    Matrix (1999)

A computer hacker learns from mysterious rebels about the true nature of his reality and his role in the war against its controllers.

Directed: The Watchowsky Brothers

Stars: Keanu Reeves, Hugo Weaving

 2.  Inception (2010)

 

Dom Cobb is a skilled thief, stealing valuable secrets from deep within the subconscious during the dream state, when the mind is at its most vulnerable. One last job is offered for him,a chance to regain his old life as payment for a task considered to be impossible.

        Directed: Christopher Nolan

        Stars: Leonardo Dicaprio, Josph Gordon Levitt

3.  Avatar (2009)

 

A paraplegic Marine dispatched to the moon Pandora on a unique mission becomes torn between following his orders and protecting the world he feels is his home.

             Directed: James Cameron

             Stars: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana 

  

4.   V for Vendetta (2005)

 

A shadowy freedom fighter known only as "V" uses guerrilla tactics to fight against his terrorist, totalitarian society.

           Director:  James McTeigue

           Stars: Hugo Weaving, Natalie Portman 

 

5.  Terminator 2 (1991)

 

A Cyborg, T-101 comes from future to protect Sarah Connor ‘s teenage son, John Connor, from an even more powerful and advanced Terminator, the T-1000.

         Directed : James Cameron

         Stars : Arnold Schwarzenegger

6.   Equilibrium(2002)

 

In a Fascist future where all forms of feeling are illegal, a man in charge of enforcing the law rises to overthrow the system

        Director: Kurt Wimmer

        Stars: Christian Bale, Sean Bean

 

7.   Blade Runner (1982)

 

A blade runner has to track down and terminate for replicants who hijacked a ship in space and have returned to Earth seeking their maker. 

              Director: Ridley Scott

              Stars: Harrison Ford, Sean Young

8.  Children of Men (2006)

 

In 2027, in a chaotic world in which women have become somehow infertile, a former activist agrees to help transport a miraculously pregnant woman to a sanctuary at sea.

           Director: Alfonso Cuaron

           Stars: Julianne Moore

9.   A Clockwork Orange  (1971)

 

In future Britain, charismatic delinquent Alex DeLarge is jailed and volunteers for an experimental aversion therapy developed by the government in an effort to solve society's crime problem... but not all goes to plan.

              Director: Stanley Kubrick

              Stars: Malcom McDowell

10. Wall-E  (2008)

In the distant future, a small waste collecting robot inadvertently embarks on a space journey that will ultimately decide the fate of mankind.

Directed : Andrew Stanton.

Stars : Ben Burtt, Elissa Knight

11. District 9 (2009)

 

 An extraterrestrial race forced to live in slum-like conditions on Earth suddenly finds a kindred spirit in a government agent who is exposed to their biotechnology.

             Director: Neil Blomkamp

             Stars: Sharlto Copley

12. Star Trek (2009)

 

The hero,James T. Kirk tries to live up to his father's legacy with Mr. Spock keeping him in check as a vengeful, time-traveling Romulan creates black holes to destroy the Federation one planet at a time.

Director: J.J Abrams

Stars: Chris Pine

13. 1984 (1984)

 

George Orwell's novel of a totalitarian future society in which a man whose daily work is rewriting history tries to rebel by falling in love.

Director: Michael Radford

Stars: John Hurt, Richard Burton

14. Fahrenheit 451 (1966)

 

In an oppressive future, a fireman whose duty is to destroy all books begins to question his task.

Director: Francois Truffaut

Stars: Oskar Werner, Julie Christie

15. I Robot (2004)

 

In the year 2035 a techno-phobic cop investigates a crime that may have been perpetrated by a robot, which leads to a larger threat to humanity. 

            Director: Alex Proyas

            Stars: Will Smith

  

16. Total Recall (1990)

 

When a man goes for virtual vacation memories of the planet Mars, an unexpected and harrowing series of events forces him to go to the planet for real, or does he?

Director: Paul Verhoeven

Stars: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sharon Stone

17. 12 Monkeys (1995)

 

In a future world devastated by disease, a convict is sent back in time to gather information about the man-made virus that wiped out most of the human population on the planet.

Director: Terry Gilliam

Stars: Bruce Willis, Brad Pitt

18. Gattaca (1997)

 

A genetically inferior man assumes the identity of a superior one in order to pursue his lifelong dream of space travel.

Director: Andrew Niccol

Stars: Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman

19. Minority Report (2002)

 

In a future where a special police unit is able to arrest murderers before they commit their crimes, an officer from that unit is himself accused of a future murder.

          Director: Steven Spielberg

          Stars: Tom Cruise

20. I am Legend (2007)

 

Years after a plague kills most of humanity and transforms the rest into monsters, the sole survivor in New York City struggles valiantly to find a cure. 

Director: Francis Lawrence

Stars: Will Smith

21. Demolition Man (1993)

 

A cop is brought out of suspended animation in prison to pursue an old ultra-violent enemy who is loose in a nonviolent future society.

Director: Marco Brambilla

Stars:Sylvester Stallone, Weseley Snipes,Sandra   Bullock

22. Hunger Games (2012)

The Hunger Games is a 2012 American science fiction adventure film directed by Gary Ross, based on the novel of the same name by Suzanne Collins.

Director: Gary Ross

Stars: Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson

23. Donnie Darko (2001)

A troubled teenager is plagued by visions of a large bunny rabbit that manipulates him to commit a series of crimes, after narrowly escaping a bizarre accident.

Director: Richard Kelley

Stars: Jake Gyllenhaal, Jena Malone

24. Aliens (1986)

The planet from alien has been colonized, but contact is lost. A Company enlists  Ellen Ripley to aid a team of tough, rugged space marines on a rescue mission to the now partially terraformed planet to find out if there are aliens or survivors.

Directed : James Cameron

Stars : Sigourney Weaver

25. A.I (2001) 

A highly advanced robotic boy longs to become "real" so that he can regain the love of his human mother. 

Director: Steven Spielberg

Stars: Haley Joel Osment

Contemporary Russian Science Fiction

Contemporary Russian Science Fiction

Though Russian Science fiction again faced stagnation in the 70s and 80s it blossomed again in the late decades of 20^th century. Fantasy and Science fiction are still among the best selling literature in Russia. Late 2000s and early 2010s saw a rise of Russian steam punk, with such books as Alexy pekhov’s Mockingbird (2009), Gray Green’s  Cetopolis (2012) etc. Contemporary Russian literary field is dominated by science fiction authors.

         

Contemporary Russian Writer Vladimir Sorokin is famous for his Science fiction works. His The Ice Trilogy: Bro(2004), Ice (2002)and 23,000 (2005) are science fictions. The plot is set in a brutal Russia of the near future, where a meteor has provided a mysterious cult with a material which can make people’s heart speak. Sorokin’s Day of the Oprichnik (2006) describes dystopian Russia in 2028. His Blue Lard (1999) combines Science fiction fantasy and some distorted realistic detail. The narrative is set in two distinct time frames, the last years of Stalin’s rule and distant future, in the 2^nd half of the 21th century.

Dmitry Glukhovsky is specially known for his Science fiction works. His first novel Metro 2033 (2005) was a trendsetter. It is post- apocalyptic Science fiction set in the Moscow metro where the last survivors hide after a global nuclear holocaust. Metro 2034 (2009), an indirect sequel to the novel Metro 2033, has sold some 300,000 copies in just six months.

         

Another living Russian writer of Science fiction is Victor Palevin. In his Helmet of Horror (2006), the action takes place in cyberspace. The book’s eight characters each find themselves mysteriously locked in a room with only a screen and a keypad for company. His recent novel is  S.N.U.F.F (2011). Its setting is a post- apocalyptic world where the majority of people live either in a poor technologically backward Ukraine with about 300 million Slavic speaking inhabitants or in  a technologically advanced English Speaking artificial flying city “Big Byz”, which is locked in the sky above Ukraine and has population of about 30 million.

         

The great period of Soviet Science fiction, from 1956 to1972, produced the finest literature of the thaw and worthy continuation of Russian social and philosophical thinking as represented by Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Fyodorov etc. Among recent literature published in Russia, only Science fiction has been able to raise fundamental questions and construct philosophical systems counter to obsolete Marxist dogma and Science fiction still remains the most favorite area of Russian literature.

Dystopia / Dystopian Novel

Dystopia

         

        The word derives from Ancient Greek for "bad place". It can alternatively be called cacotopia or anti-utopia. A dystopia is a community or society, usually fictional that is in some important way undesirable or frightening. It is the opposite of a utopia. Such societies appear in many works of fiction, particularly in stories set in a speculative future. Dystopias are often characterized by dehumanization, totalitarian governments, environmental disaster, or other characteristics associated with a cataclysmic decline in society. Dystopian novels usually include elements of contemporary society and are seen as a warning against some modern trends.

          A dystopia is usually set at some point in the author’s future and describes a society in which we would not want to live. Writers, presenting dystopias, generally want to alert readers to the potential pitfalls and dangers of society’s present course or of a course society must conceivably take one day. In the Russian novel We by Yevgeny Zamyatin people are permitted to live out of public view twice a week for one hour. They are only referred to by numbers instead of names, but are "ciphers" which are neither. Unlike utopian fiction, which often features an outsider to have the world shown to him/her, dystopias seldom feature an outsider as the protagonist. The story usually centers on a protagonist who questions the society, often feeling intuitively that something is terribly wrong. The hero comes to believe that escape or even overturning the social order is possible and decides to act at the risk of their own life; this may appear as irrational even to him/her, but they still act. Another popular archetype of hero in the more modern dystopian literature is the Vonnegut hero, a hero who is in high-standing within the social system, but sees how wrong everything is, and attempts to either change the system or bring it down

         

There is usually a group of people somewhere in the society who are not under the complete control of the state, and in whom the hero of the novel usually puts their hope, although often he or she still fails to change anything. In Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four they are the "proles”, in Huxley's Brave New World they are the people on the reservation, and in We by Zamyatin they are the people outside the walls of the One State. In Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, they are the "book people" past the river and outside the city.

         

Examples of Dystopian Novels

Famous depiction of dystopian societies includes,

·       We (1920) Yevgeny Zamyatin

·       Nineteen Eighty Four (1948) George Orwell

·       Brave New World (1932) Aldous Huxley

·       The Hunger Games (2008) Suzanne Collins

·       The Time Machine (1895) H.G Wells

·       A Clockwork Orange (1962) Anthony Burgess

·       Fahrenheit 451(1953) Ray Bradbury

The film such as Demolition Man and Equilibrium etc. portrays dystopian societies.

Defenitions of Science Fiction

                

                       Definitions of Science Fiction

Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (Don D’Ammassa)

Science fiction is one of the three subdivisions of fantastic literature, the other two being fantasy fiction and supernatural horror. Science fiction is the youngest of the three, but since the late 1940s it has been by far the most popular, and the total number of science fiction titles published in book form presently exceeds that of fantasy and supernatural fiction combined.                                                                  

Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms 

Science fiction is a type of narrative fiction that is grounded in scientific or pseudo scientific concepts and that, whether set on Earth or in an alternate or parallel world, employs both realistic and fantastic elements in exploring the question “What if?”

Isaac Asimov

Science fiction can be defined as that branch of literature which deals with the reaction of human beings to changes in science and technology.

Christopher Evans

Perhaps the crispest definition is that science fiction is a literature of 'what if?' What if we could travel in time? What if we were living on other planets? What if we made contact with alien races? And so on. The starting point is that the writer supposes things are different from how we know them to be.

Arthur C. Clarke

Science fiction is something that  could  happen - but you usually wouldn't want it to. Fantasy is something that  couldn't  happen - though you often only wish that it could.

Jeff Prucher

Science fiction is "a genre (of literature, film, etc.) in which the setting differs from our own world (e.g. by the invention of new technology, through contact with aliens, by having a different history, etc.), and in which the difference is based on extrapolations made from one or more changes or suppositions; hence, such a genre in which the difference is explained (explicitly or implicitly) in scientific or rational, as opposed to supernatural, terms."

Merriam Webster Dictionary

Science Fiction is a fiction dealing principally with the impact of actual or imagined science on society or individuals or having a scientific factor as an essential orienting component

Brian W. Aldiss

Science fiction is the search for definition of man and his status in the universe which will stand in our advanced but confused state of knowledge (science), and is characteristically cast in the Gothic or post-Gothic mould.

Dick Allen

Is it any wonder that a new generation has rediscovered science fiction, rediscovered a form of literature that argues through its intuitive force that the individual can shape and change and influence and triumph; that man can eliminate both war and poverty; that miracles are possible; that love, if given a chance, can become the main driving force of human relationships?

Kingsley Amis

Science Fiction is that class of prose narrative treating of a situation that could not arise in the world we know, but which is hypothesized on the basis of some innovation in science or technology, or pseudo-technology, whether human or extra-terrestrial in origin.

John Boyd

Science fiction is story-telling, usually imaginative as distinct from realistic fiction, which poses the effects of current or extrapolated scientific discoveries, or a single discovery, on the behavior of individuals of society.

J. O. Bailey

A piece of scientific fiction is a narrative of an imaginary invention or discovery in the natural sciences and consequent adventures and experiences ... It must be a scientific discovery -- something that the author at least rationalizes as possible to science.

Theodore Sturgeon

A science fiction story is a story built around human beings, with a human problem, and a human solution, which would not have happened at all without its scientific content.