Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Sci-Fi Movie Tier List
1,558,110
Published 2024-04-10
Neil deGrasse Tyson takes us through a catalog of some of the most important sci-fi films of the last century, ranks them against each other. Who will end up on the top of the pile? There's only one way to find out...
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0:00 - Introduction
0:09 - The Black Hole
0:58 - The Matrix
2:27 - The Martian
4:09 - The Blob
5:55 - Contact
6:48 - Interstellar
9:19 - Gravity
12:54 - Back to the Future
14:39 - A Quiet Earth
16:48 - Arrival
19:44 - The Europa Report
21:10 - Armageddon
22:20 - Close Encounters of The Third Kind
24:54 - Deep Impact
26:02 - The Day the Earth Stood Still
26:55 - Independence Day
28:58 - The Terminator
32:03 - 2001: A Space Odyssey
33:25 - Closing Notes
All Comments (21)
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Which ranking do you disagree with? 🤔
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The Thing, Alien, Aliens, Event Horizon, Predator, Sunshine, Abyss, Blade Runner…? Cmon Neil, lots of gold left in those hills.
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Putting Armageddon and Arrival in the same tier sounds criminal to me!
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I am VERY surprised that the 1971 "Andromeda Strain" isn't on the list. Hard science fiction doesn't get harder than that.
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Wasn’t the interstellar robot named TARS?
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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
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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.
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let's see part two! {suggestions: Total Recall. Robocop, Forbidden Planet, They Live, Planet of the Apes, Sunshine, Moon,?}
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I thought it was weird when in Interstellar they need a Saturn-like rocket to escape Earth but later on when they go down to that planet with the extremely high gravity, they have a typical science fiction vehicle that easily escapes the planet's gravity.
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“Anytime people are fighting each other to look through a telescope, that’s a good day for me”😂 Love it!
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Putting Arrival on the same tier as Armageddon is WILD.
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"Klaatu barada nikto." In my opinion, the greatest line in any scifi movie.
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2001... the cut from the bone thrown in the air to a satellite is one of the best in history.
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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.
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The force that pulled George Clooney into deep space in Gravity was the script.
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Back to the Future, one of my favorite movies of all time - BUT, you didn't mention the problem that bothered me since I saw it as a kid in the 80s. If the Delorean was to disappear and reappear from the same point on the earth, the rotation of the earth is going to have Marty reappear anywhere on earth relative to its rotation possibly inside of the ground. Then I got even older and realize the expansion of the universe is going to poof them in the middle of space. Great Scott!
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One other problem with the Martian (though I can figure out excuses to get around it) is that the poop potatoes would have been toxic due to high levels of perchlorates in the Martian soil. Plants tend to absorb them easily without harm to the plant, but they are deadly to humans.
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Interstellar and Gravity being ranked the equally is unsettling
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Matrix originally had the human brains act as processors, not batteries. Executives didn't understand it, so it was changed.
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"Primer" needs to be on a list that includes what you're calling the definitive time travel movie.
