Sci-Fi Archives - Page 4 of 9 - Movie SmackdownÂ®

Battle: Los Angeles (2011) -vs- Transformers (2007) -vs- War of the Worlds (2005) -vs- Independence Day (1996)

June 1, 2011 Bryce Zabel 12

There are alien invasions and then there are alien invasions.

This Smack is about the ones where the aliens swoop in, lasers blazing, hell-bent on some balls-to-the-wall human ass-kicking. No demands, no negotiations, just straight-ahead mayhem where the Earth is torn up with no regard whatsoever. It’s as if they’re treating our planet like a condemned building that just needs to knocked down as fast as possible so the new construction can get started. I know some folks think we’re already doing that ourselves but let’s skip the politics and just define this as apocalyptical visitation.
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Alien Contact @ Movie Smackdown

May 29, 2011 Movie Smackdown 5

In the billions of stars, solar systems, and galaxies out there, our little planet is but a single speck of dust in the whirlwind of the universe. Probably, we are all starting to realize, we are not alone.

Hollywood got there earlier than the rest of us, and the film industry has told us stories of alien contact — what might happen if intelligent beings out there were to make contact with our suposedly primitive culture here on Earth — since the 1950s.

This week, Movie Smackdown! examines how alien contact is portrayed in cinema. Each day, we’ll pick another Smackdown from our Classix vault. From the brutal attack force of Independence Day to the benevolent space brothers of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, let your imagination soar as the extraterrestrial life of a crowded Hollywood universe comes calling here on Earth. […]

Source Code (2011) -vs- Deja Vu (2006)

April 10, 2011 The FilmGuru 3

They say love overcomes all obstacles, but time seems to be one of the most difficult. Time and time travel seem made for romance. Maybe that’s because there is a more of a fantasy quality to it than strict science fiction. Finding two lovers who meet across time has been done before, but Hollywood loves to revisit this idea again and again.

This week, our challenger, Source Code, and our champion, Deja Vu, tackle the problem of finding love in the time continuum. In both cases, what starts out as a case of time-travel observation becomes something more of an obsession for the observer. […]

Inception (2010) -vs- The Dark Knight (2008)

July 16, 2010 Beau DeMayo 14

Christopher Nolan. The Dark Knight. That’s all about you need to know when it comes to how Inception has been marketed, a film whose title could easily be mistaken as “From The Director of The Dark Knight” as its actual title.

Inception and The Dark Knight are two movies that are so radically different, yet so fundamentally the same. Both films strive to do something radically different with their genres, turning the typical tropes on their heads and challenging audiences to keep up.

Now we put what many consider to already be Nolan’s masterpiece up against his newest film. Another masterpiece or just another movie? […]

Can Inception Save The Movie Industry?

July 14, 2010 Beau DeMayo 6

Friday at 12:01 a.m., the first batch of non-critic moviegoers will see “Inception”, Christopher Nolan’s new sci-fi existential heist flick. Â This week, critics spiralled into an ego war, some lauding the film as a cinematic […]

Surrogates (2009) -vs- Gamer (2009)

June 28, 2010 Rodney Twelftree 0

Would humanity be better off if we all plugged into an artificial reality where our dreams, nightmares and fantasies can come true? In a strange way, both “Surrogates” and “Gamer” attempt to explore that question. With vague flashes of “Minority Report,” “The Matrix” and “I, Robot,” “Surrogates” plugs us into a bizarre world lived through robotic versions of ourselves, while “Gamer” answers the new-age-old question of what life would be like if we could live inside a video game vicariously, through actual people. Both films question our belief that fantasy would be better than reality, but which one does it more successfully?
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Lost (2010) -vs- Lost (2004-2010)

May 24, 2010 Beau DeMayo 1

So, “Lost” has ended. Â It’s over. After six years, viewers got their closure with “Lost”, a television series that became a pop culture phenomenon like no other and shook the foundations of how TV is […]

Independence Day (1996) -vs- The War Of The Worlds (1953)

March 28, 2010 Rodney Twelftree 4

Last year here at Movie Smackdown we got the idea to see what readers thought was the Best Alien Invasion Film of All Time. We thought that the genre really broke down into two sections — “Classic” and “Modern.” And so we did what we always do in these cases, we put it to our readers and let them weigh in.

We have two winners now, and we’re about to put them to the test against each other. For our purposes, we defined “Classic” as all the films that existed in the early 1950-1970 period (although all our candidates came from the 1950s), and “Modern” as everything that followed. Interestingly, fully half of our “modern” films were re-makes from the “classic” era. The “Classic” race was a close as hell, the “Modern” race yielded a clear winner. Here are our results: […]

What the Academy thought of Avatarâ€¦

March 8, 2010 Bryce Zabel 2

Basically, it looks like they pretty much thought "Avatar" was a gimmick. The best-performing gimmick of all time but not a "real film." Whether that judgment will stand the test of time or we'll […]

The Results of Our 2009 Sci-Fi Poll

March 7, 2010 Bryce Zabel 4

With the Oscars done, we close down our Movie Smackdown poll about what was the Best Sci-Fi Film of 2009. It was a good year for sci-fi respect in that two of the ten Academy-nominated […]