Conor's Top 12 Scifi Movies of all time

Conor’s Top 12:

12. Wall-E

The funny little robot called Wall-E definitely has a place on my list. I was captivated by his adventures on the spaceship colony with Eva, and was very amused to see how several hundred years of having robots do everything for us turned humanity into a race of fat blobs attached to floating chairs. It is also a classic underdog story, for Wall-E, a simple trash compacting robot, singlehandedly changes the earth from being a trash heap by reminding a lazy bunch of humans that they can make a difference by cleaning up and taking care of the planet.

11. District 9

In my opinion the coolest thing about this movie is how it puts aliens and humans together in a believable manner. The aliens, or “Prawns” as they are called in the film are segregated from humans because of their hideousness and gangster reputation. The film follows a reporter, who is transformed by accidental influence from powerful alien technology. After escaping military testing with the help of an alien comrade, he gives the alien a chance to return to his home world with the promise that the alien will return and relieve the reporter from his mutated state.

10. Hancock

In this spin on a superhero movie, our hero is far from beloved. His manner of saving people is extremely costly, lazy, and sometimes plain stupid. Hancock is at times an alcoholic, and the general public despises his arrogant and selfish attitude. To regain his honor and hero status, he must take the advice of a lowly businessman. The thing that draws me to this movie was that Hancock is not a flashy caped crusader; he’s just a regular guy. This version of a superhero is much more believable to me, which is something you can’t say about most other superheroes.

9. Ironman

I loved this movie because it is such a classic. Ironman is a rich guy who had it all, and then nearly loses it in a near death experience, which reignites his passion. My favorite part is how he creates his own suit and flies it himself, free of military intervention to do what is morally right, not what is legal.

8. X-men

X-men is definitely one of my top 12. The concept of mutated humans with superpowers has captured my mind ever since I read one of my dad’s old comic books, and the movies provided great special effects and characters that were instant classics for me. In particular I liked Wolverine (when have retractable adamantium blades and instant regeneration ever been a bad thing?).

7. Avatar

The thing that attracted me to this film was that it was set on a different planet, with eight-foot tall blue aliens. I think it would be awesome to be able to get into a machine that would transfer my mind into an alien body that could fly on strange beasts and fall from treetops etc. Another aspect about this film that set it apart from the others was the fact that the bad guys were human beings. In most stories, it is the aliens who want to scour Earth for all of her natural resources, but in this case it is us Earthlings who want to strip mine Pandora.

6. Star Trek

This movie came out recently, and proved to be extremely entertaining. I used to watch some of the old Star Trek episodes, and I was very interested by the effect of the time paradox created when the Romulans killed Captain James T. Kirk’s father, and changed his life, making him a little more reckless as a child, and giving him and Spock an opposite relationship for the better part of the movie.

5. The Book of Eli

This post-apocalyptic film depicts earth about 40 years in the future after a nuclear war that destroys the world as we know it today. Eli is a man who is one of the few people old enough to remember the world as it was, and is guided by the last bible in existence. God blesses him, and the book seemingly gives him protection from his enemies, leading him to a refuge on Alcatraz Island. I have always like post-apocalyptic movies, and this provided a new twist I had never hear of before.

4. Terminator

The concept of a cyborg going back in time to murder a person who wasn’t even born yet seemed cool to me, and became even cooler with Arnold Schwarzenegger and his cheesy punch lines and use of guns and cars to hunt down Sarah Connor. I really liked how Arnold ends up protecting the Connors in the second and third movies against enemy cyborgs and other threats. I thought the newest installment that came out in 2009 was a great addition to the series and can’t wait for a conclusion.

3. Star Wars

Although this series was created some years before I was boring, I went through a time in my life when everything I did could be related back to Luke and Vader battling it out on the death star. For me it was definitely the exotic aliens and light sabers that provided the initial interest, and about 20 minutes into my first Star Wars movie, I realized that my life would not be the same had I not seen the series.

 2. The Matrix

The Matrix is an incredible movie because it suggests the theory that all life as we know it is simply an illusion created for us by machines. In the movie the only way to escape the matrix is to be freed by the people who have escaped the machines by living underground in a city called Zion. The coolest thing of all about the movie was by far the bullet dodging hero, Neo, who masters the matrix, and my brothers and I spent days trying to imitate him after we watched the movie for the first time.

1. The Lord Of The Rings

The Lord of The Rings is by far number one on my list. Any fantasy movie or novel that takes place in another realm where Orcs, Elves, Hobbits and many more fantastic creatures are constantly at war against a seemingly invincible enemy pretty much encompasses all things that a guy of any age loves. What makes this movie particularly good is the fact that it has great special effects, superb acting, and most importantly sticks almost completely to the novels it is based on.