It's a strength.

I first became interested in SciFi movies (and books). The laser swords and rocket ships pulled me in, but the ideas that took root in my mind were what have kept me a SciFi geek for most of my life.

But please don't cut out the laser swords. I still love them.

Grr. That should say: "As a child, I first became interested..."

John, one of the things you didn't mention was that often times, truly bad classic SF films become cult films because of their badness.

I think this is due to the fact that those of us who are into SF are so often disappointed with film that we've gotten to the point where all we can do is laugh.

I do think that the value of the idea can get us past badness of all kinds. SF is supposed to be all about imagination and fans of the genre (all media types) are well versed in using their imaginations. I think most of them are used to ignoring what doesn'f fit with their visions and/or substituting their own.

"John, one of the things you didn't mention was that often times, truly bad classic SF films become cult films because of their badness."

Indeed, that's another dynamic entirely (and another column, no doubt).

I believe it is a weakness. I personally can not watch any Godzilla movie except the 1998 Roland Emmerich version(I'm always disappointed by the end). If a movie is so poorly acted the idea behind the movie ends up completly ignored by me. The exception is a film like Star Wars where only a few of the characters are poorly acted.

If I just want an Idea I'll read the book. In a movie I really expect the combination of all the arts that make a good film to be there.

Why have a strong Idea then weaken it inside a poorly made movie?

All right, I'm going to mention it because if there ever was a place it should be mentioned, it would be a blog about "classic" scifi movies that aren't actually good. Battle Beyond the Stars. I absolutely loved it as a kid and find myself weirdly compelled to watch it now whenever I find it on at 2 in the morning. I know it's a scifi rip on Seven Samurai but any movie that has a ray gun wielding John Boy Walton in it is a special kind of awesome.

I'd say it's rooted in the history of making up the details ourselves from being science fiction readers. Or, for those of the SF film watching variety that aren't/weren't SF readers, the same impulse.

The same part of my brain which turns Leonard Cohen's "Famous Blue Raincoat" into a really marvelous sprawling love-story, turns Gojira into a really fantastic beast, even if he looked like crap on-screen.

Right on, Mr. Scalzi. I've been saying this for years -- there are so few really good SF movies that we've had to take our victories small and where we can find them. As often as not it's because of a beautiful visual as much as a beautiful concept. Sometimes the concepts we like are just a small slice of a movie.

Example: last year's movie Sunshine. Visually stunning. Really bad physics. Final verdict? Worth seeing.

Or Pitch Black. Which really tried to deal with the rough physics of a bad re-entry. (grin)

Dr. Phil

Admittedly I am not a film critic, but I think there are some “good” classic sci-fi movies. The one that comes to mind first is The Day the Earth Stood Still. Sure it has a cheesy 1950’s feel, but I still think it manages to be a serious film.

I'm still a newbie to science fiction, so I guess that's why I don't know what the picture at the top of this column is. Why are all the red white-haired people jumping into a gigantic ruby like thing in a colosseum-like structure?

I can't really comment on either of those examples as, even though I have seen both, they were not "of my era" so to speak - I wasn't even born when Gojira came out and I was only 8 when Logan's Run was released. With LR, given my age, I was not aware of the "swinging 70s" culture at the time, so the context of the period in which the film was made was lost on me. And I think in large part a movie like LR is as much a condition of when it was made as the idea contained therein, and I'm not sure the two (idea/culture of the time) can be de-interlaced easily. Now that we are several decades removed from that era, it does look silly. But when I speak to people who saw the film when it was first release, they admit to it's sillines, but almost all tell me that at the time it really seemed like a really good film. (as a completely unrelated aside I got a kick out of this quote from Roger Ebert's review: "The movie was made on a very large budget - the figure $9 million has been whispered about Hollywood")

I think a better example for those of us that grew up in the transition from Saturday Night Fever to Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo is Tron. Even though computers had been around for several decades by that point, ours is the first generation where many of us spent the majority of our developmental years with one in the home. Tron speaks directly to our generation - the coding, video-game playing geek who totally embraces the emerging computer culture - via the Flynn and Tron characters and pitting them against the previous generation with the Dillinger/Sark/MCP characters to whom computers are something to be suspect of and even feared. While this idea (computers taking over/controlling our destiny) was, IMHO better executed the following year with Wargames (admit it, using tic-tac-toe to teach Game Theory to a computer is pretty slick), Tron did it with Style (yes, with a capital 'S') almost to the sublimation of the story. While it does impart the idea - "Be careful, computers can be bad!" - and it is visually stunning even to this day (since the backlight projection methods used to film the CPU sequences have never been attempted again), it really is not a good movie. I watched it a few weeks ago and found myself not even paying attention to the story and just looking at the visuals. When the focus was on the live-action portions of the film the story was a lot more compelling. As soon as Flynn is de-rezzed, the story stops mattering until the MCP is destroyed and Flynn goes back to the real world. Think about it - do you really remember the plot or just the Light Cyles, Solar Sailers and the bugs. While it is a landmark production because of the CGI it really wasn't as great as it seemed at the time - again we're faced with the "culture" of when the film was made being as much an influence on how we perceive the quality of a film as the idea or story.

"Admittedly I am not a film critic, but I think there are some 'good' classic sci-fi movies."

There certainly are (and yes, "The Day The Earth Stood Still" is one of them). I'm not saying there aren't excellent SF films, just that some of the classics of the genre are not, in themselves, particularly good movies.

My sons have been raised on Doctor Who, so we are all skilled in seeing monsters made out of bubble wrap and green spray paint as frightening predators. I think that effects have trailed what we could all imagine by so much that everyone who hit puberty before 1977 is used to doing that. Then we remember the processed version that we saw instead of what was actually projected.

This also has me thinking about submarine movies like "The Hunt For Red October" or "The Enemy Below". Either of those could have been set in spaceships about as well as in submarines, and I think the result would have been an excellent film. It would have been science and fiction, but would it be considered an SFF classic without cool ideas? Whare are the markers of the genre? I don't recall anyone discussing "Groundhog Day" as an SFF film, for example.

John, if the "good" science fiction movie classics (from 1927 to 1968) can be counted on one's fingers, then what are they?

What? Tell you now and waste a whole potential column? Madness!

I look forward to it!

Gojira/Godzilla has an f-ing great soundtrack, which still works in its favor. And the appeal of Godzilla comes not from it tapping into mid-20th c. fears about nukes; its appeal is the pure anarchic destruction of it. Godzilla was a fanatically relentless depiction of raining anger and frustration onto everything within reach (the city, the military especially). Nobody watched that one for plot.

But, yeah, Logan's Run and Star Wars were not great movies.

Possible hypothesis. In film, most (but not all) science fiction includes a large action component. Prior to the mid-seventies, the action films that did get made were largely westerns and detective flicks, because those sold tickets and were cheap to make (Production design: Drive to Utah. Find ghost town. Rent horse.). This is was especially true for quality directors. Howard Hawks and John Ford weren't exactly spending their time doing "Bride of the Slime Monster". When big budgets were available for action movies, they tended to be either war films or biblical epics, which filled theatres in their day but have not aged well.

Star Wars went over my head the first three or four times I watched it. I think I was six or seven.
But now I can appreciate it a lot more... granted, it has its wince-worthy moments, but overall, I don't think it falls into the "bad SciFi classics" category. At least, the original three don't!

As a Sci-Fi fan, I don't expect Hollywood to ever get it right. I cannot think of a single Sci-Fi movie that was better than the book, hell even the comic book it came from. So "classics" are what we settle for.

Most Sci-Fi movies aren't made by fans, and when they are, they focus on what made them, personaly, a fan. Example Alien vs. Predator, they wanted to see the epic battle, and didn't care about anything else, like plot, location (the artic?) or the source material (comic book) it came from.

As for Roland Emmerich's Godzilla there probably was a good movie in there somewhere, but the casting was horrid, and the ending was pretty poor as well. I fondly remember the Raymond Burr version, (of course I was 6 or 7 when I saw it.)

John, I basically agree with you about SF films, but I don't think you've sufficiently supported your hypothesis that other genres' classics are all good.

Random example: I recently happened to see a Marx Brothers movie, Animal Crackers. I'd seen it as a kid but I didn't remember much of it, only a few funny bits... and it turns out the few funny bits were the only part worth remembering; the rest of the movie is awful. But: Widely regarded as a classic. Because the funny bits really were funny.

Another one: Ever seen Easy Rider? The movie that spoke to a generation, kick-started the American new wave of cinema, and just generally defined its era? It's crap. Nearly unwatchable. (The fact that it inspired such passions in people despite being so terrible is itself a fascinating historical statement about the time... people must have been really desperately hungry for something. But I digress.)

My point is, not many movies succeed on every single level. SF movies, perhaps, fail a little more often than other genres because there are more levels for them to succeed and fail on (nobody cares whether the science is plausible in When Harry Met Sally). But a movie has a chance of being regarded as a classic if it succeeds brilliantly at something. Even if it's just "capturing the zeitgeist really well" or "containing ten minutes out of ninety that are incredibly funny". That's not just an SF thing.

(Come to think of it, though, it would be funny to write a review of When Harry Met Sally that focused entirely on its scientific plausibility.)

>>Is this willingness to value the idea at the expense of
>> almost everything else a strength or a weakness of the
>> science fiction film genre?
I think it's a weakness that has been exploited too many times, so a good idea gets buried in special effects that are supposed to make up for bad writing. Sometimes the effects drives out the idea, so something really cheesy gets thrown in at the end. Case in point: The Fifth Element, Visually stunning, good writing for an action flick, nice characters, but the big secret weapon? Love? Total let down.
The idea is central. The idea is the movie. Too bad we don't get more films like Gattaca, which I think holds up as the best idea-driven sf film I've seen.
Unfortunately, too much effort is invested in making roller coaster movies.

Evan:

"John, I basically agree with you about SF films, but I don't think you've sufficiently supported your hypothesis that other genres' classics are all good."

Well, you know. I'm supposed to keep these columns to around 800 words. Something's got to give.

That said, you have a good point that not every classic film is classic all the way through, and that context matters. Your Marx Bros example is particularly on point because structurally they've got a lot of noise -- there's often a romance subplot between what used be known as "juvenile leads" which is something that was sort of expected at the time but which now just seems really kind of pointless.

However, even factoring in context and practical issues like production values, etc, I would suggest to you that the pantheon of acknowledged "classic" films in science fiction has more "less than good" films in it than most other major film genres. The only genre I think the thesis might be on shaky ground with is horror, which has many of the same problems as science fiction.

But I agree it's something that could be debated, and I'm happy to debate it. Debating's fun, and I don't mind being wrong if I end up learning from it.

Could it be that good SF films aren't remembered as being SF?

It might tend a bit towards horror, but isn't The Sixth Sense a briliant "twist in the tail" SF story built around an idea?

Can't say that I agree with you here...

The examples are weak---Godzilla certainly isn't considered a classic other than as a piece of kitsch. Logan's Run...yeah...not so great. But also not really considered "classic"--not at the level of "Some Like it Hot" or "Psycho".

More comparable "classic" entries would have been... 2001, Bladerunner, the Thing, Alien, the Matrix, Close Encounters, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Terminator 1 & 2, Brazil, Clockwork Orange...

And of course Star Wars, dammit.

-Daniel B.

The photo is from Logan's Run: The people who are floating upward (not falling) are new 30-year-olds who are participating in "Carousel," allegedly a method of selective rebirth for the lucky few, but actually (we learn later) simple death by individual midair explosion.

I had read the novel Logan's Run (1967) before seeing this in the theater. Man, did they trash it. First, the age in the book is 21, not 30; second, the society affected isn't limited to an enclosed city; most important, there is no damn Carousel - and the movie really cheats by having an opening title card specifying that all must die at 30 unless reborn through the ritual of Carousel (stating it as a fact).

The whole opening Carousel scene (it also appears later) was just galling for me in 1976 and remains so. It's exactly as if the effect was concocted and the story molded to accommodate it; same for the DC-in-ruins effects later on.

Nice gratuitous nudity for Jenny Agutter, though. Why on earth would she disrobe before putting on the furs?

Then there's "Zardoz", which is worth renting because it's hysterically funny, not that that was the intention...but it's certainly a classic of its kind.

danielb:

"Godzilla certainly isn't considered a classic other than as a piece of kitsch."

Yes, and this is why, among other things, on the 50th anniversary of the 1954 release, Godzilla was the subject of his own academic conference at the University of Kansas:

"This Godzilla Conference drew a field of participants including historians and anthropologists from Harvard and Duke universities, who discussed such topics as postwar Japan-US relations and how special-effects films like the Godzilla series, animated films, and other elements of Japanese pop culture have influenced the world."

Certainly Godzilla is kitsch, but it's not just kitsch, and one cannot seriously discuss the science fiction genre without acknowledging its influence. As noted in the actual column, it's a direct line from Godzilla to Cloverfield (JJ Abrams got the idea for Cloverfield specifically because he wanted to make a Gozilla for the US) and given that by some relevant criteria Cloverfield is the most successful science fiction film of 2008 to date, it's hard to argue Godzilla's only value is as kitsch.

Logan's Run I'm personally less inclined to go to the barricades for, but I know enough serious critics and SF fans who demand "classic" status for it that it's worth tossing out there.

As for the rest of your suggestions, I agree they are by and large good films, but that's not my argument. The argument is that there are a number of SF films acknowledged as classics of the genre which are not, in themselves, good films. Pointing out that there are classics in the genre which are also good films is neither here nor there to that point.

At least bad sci-fi plants the seeds of parody, which in a way, can redeem it. Witness the glory of Laser Cats 2:

http://www.jibjab.com/view/103956

And speaking of non sequiturs, you mentioned _The Day the Earth Stood Still_ as a good classic. Nothing being sacred in Hollywood, this movie is being remade by Fox into a blockbuster action piece of shit starring Keanu Reeves and Jennifer Connelly. You'll really probably want to stay away from this movie.

But, that brings up a long-standing discussion I've had with my friends: the only movies that seem to get remade are the good ones, to their inevitable detriment. What BAD movies contained good ideas that could be remade into GOOD movies? The BSG reboot is an example of that in the television arena; I consider Christopher Nolan's Batman movies to be a decent example of that (sorry, I hated Burton's Batman movies almost as much as the even shittier ones that followed them; that's what I get for having _The Dark Knight Returns_ as my formative Batman exposure). Someone suggested _Spawn_ as a bad-into-good remake candidate, but perhaps the comic-book movies are too easily singled out. Since sci-fi has such a surplus of sub-par cinematic offerings, it would seem that the genre would be rich for positive-karma remakes.

But damn if I can imagine a way to make _Logan's Run_ into something worth watching.

I never was a big fan of either of your examples. Godzilla was a so-so movie that descended, with each succeeding entry, further and further into piles of crap. Emmerich's version, however well made(I'm speaking here of special effects and not the acting), just wasn't any fun.
Logan's Run changed the age from 21 to 30 out of some misbegotten attempt to emulate that "trust no one older than thirty" credo from the sixties(and yes, I lived through that era). It fell flat on it's face.
A lot of people in this thread have discussed other classics in the SF genre, so I have nothing to add. Except, the only good Star Wars movie was The Empire Strikes Back. One out of six is not a good average. Star Wars(I refuse to call it A New Hope) had it's moments, but not nearly enough to place it in the same pantheon as a true classic.

MGM was responsible for turning Logan's Run into what it became. Nolan and Johnson actually wrote a screenplay for it, sticking close to the book, and sold the rights to MGM, which didn't know what to make of it until Saul David decided to take the project as producer. David Zelag Goodman, the screenwriter, elected to "compress" the action into a single domed city incorporating aspects of many of the environments described in the book, and watered down many of the concepts in the original novel and screenplay. Despite this, they got good performances out of the lead actors, Michael York (Logan) and Jenny Agutter (Jessica), which saved the movie from turning into a total crapfest. But don't even get started on what happened with Logan's Run when CBS came up with the idea for the TV series...

(A lot of the detail of this can be found in William F. Nolan's preface to the omnibus volume, Logan: A Trilogy.)

According to IMDB, director Joseph Kosinski is working on a remake of Logan's Run, slated for a 2010 release. One hopes he'll be shooting, if not the Nolan/Johnson script, at least something reasonably close to it.

Thanks, gottacook.

I think that a lot of science fiction movies almost have to sacrifice good plot because the spectaculars that the stories almost always involve eat up time and budget, especially at the big studios. And time is something you have the least to spend on when movies and big productions are concerned.

Movies rely so heavily on visuals that SF seems almost certainly doomed unless you have directors who seem to be highly sensitive to the balance of large-scale effects, idea, and story. Or a story where large-scale effects can be scaled back. Cloverfield was nice that way; you still had the big monster and those little horrible things that killed people done well, and that was enough to communicate visually the otherworldliness invading reality...

But then you have aliens plus world-building in space, and that tends to just shoot everything to heck. And then you are at the mercy of people who may not understand the concept of something that is speculative in nature rather than horses, sunsets, and dragons. Although I think that enough of science fiction has bled into normal culture that this kind of barrier is disappearing (or maybe is completely gone by now).

Of course, that is all apparently no real explanation for Logan's Run.

There is another level to Sci-Fi movies (along with Fantasy, Action, Adventure, Westerns, Martial Arts...) that simply doesn't appear in a movie like Tootsie, When Harry Met Sally, Casablanca, or Animal Crackers. I'm going to call that level the Spark.

The Spark is what makes children want to play Star Wars, or Cowboys and Indians. It's what makes gamers want to run a Logan's Run inspired Game. It's what makes fanfic writers want to expand the universe of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. (ok, ok, maybe the spark is actually a conglomerate of other things, but stay with me)

For me, while I can appreciate the beauty of a movie like Schindlers List, It doesn't inspire me the same way Raiders of the Lost Ark or Empire Strikes Back does. Planet of the Apes or Godzilla may have bad acting, plots, effects, and cinematography, But they charge up my imagination.

So some movies are classic because of their quality (2001, Blade Runner, Metropolis), and others are classic because of the Spark (Raiders of the Lost Ark, Star Wars, Planet of the Apes).

>> "Nice gratuitous nudity for Jenny Agutter, though. Why on earth would she disrobe before putting on the furs?"

To make all of us 11 year old boys in the audience very, very happy, of course...

>>> "This Godzilla Conference drew a field of participants including historians and anthropologists from Harvard and Duke universities, who discussed such topics as postwar Japan-US relations and how special-effects films like the Godzilla series, animated films, and other elements of Japanese pop culture have influenced the world."

I don't see how a conference like that makes a movie a classic, but I guess it depends on the meaning of the word. To me, a film can generate interest, be influential, be worthy of study, yet still not fall any where near Classic Film territory.

Off the top of my head, I'd say a Classic needs to have stood the test ot time (20 years or so minimum) and enjoyed a not unsubstantial amount of positive critical and/or positive popular reaction.

Being innovative and influential are also big plusses, though you can have classics that don't break any new ground and achieve that status just for the sheer quality of the acting/directing/story as examples of the art. (Just like you can have innovative/influential movies that fail so badly in being movies that they can't be considered Classics).

Anyway, that's generally what I think of when I think "Classic Film", and while Godzilla may be interesting sociologically it doesn't fit the bill, at least not for me...(though if they would just splice in a scene of Jenny Agutter putting on furs I might reconsider)

Daniel b:

"I don't see how a conference like that makes a movie a classic"

It doesn't; however, it is indicative of its status as a film, since it seems unlikely you're get a viable and serious academic conference out of a film that is not regarded as influential and foundational, i.e., a classic. And by your own definition, Godzilla fits the "classic" mold: it's 54 years old, massively popular (evidenced by two dozen plus sequels, plus other media spinoffs) and is also regarded by critics as massively influential (if not, in itself, a great film). It's earned its classic status.

I would agree you might not find it a classic personally; it's clearly not one of my favorites, either.

I think the 'Classics' that used tech as a key part of the plot or event as 'The Plot' don't age well.

But there are Sci-Fi movies that are classics, but don't put the tech as the focus, such as Alien(s) (which I would put forward as among the greatest of all Sci-Fi movies that have also aged well).

Or perhaps the tech in 'Alien' and 'Aliens' is just better realized than most sci-fi worlds. But in any case, The first 2 Alien movies seem more 'true' than many movies set in a contemporary setting. The grittiness of work in space, the risk / reward behavior of explorer / exploiters / corps / governments doesn't seem as, for lack of a better word, alien as most Sci Fi post humanism like Star Trek / Blade Runner.

Randy Johnson: the only good Star Wars movie was The Empire Strikes Back

I can't agree. It's certainly the only well-made Star Wars movie; the acting and pacing are head and shoulders above Star Wars (I, too, refuse to call it "A New Hope"). But Star Wars has a much better, more satisfying story, and more "sensawunda", as a friend of mine puts it. Empire is depressing and incomplete, and actually attacks some of the strengths of its predecessor (going from "trust your feelings, Luke" to "jesus christ, Luke, don't trust your feelings, they'll only lead you into evil").

The first movie is the only one of the lot I regard as a classic; the second one only stands out for being more competently directed. (And the last four are just a complete crapfest, of course.)

anithri: So some movies are classic because of their quality (2001, Blade Runner, Metropolis), and others are classic because of the Spark (Raiders of the Lost Ark, Star Wars, Planet of the Apes).

Beautifully put; I hadn't thought of that before, and I agree. (Though... Blade Runner? Well, maybe--I haven't seen any of the various director's cuts...)

I am an unapologetic fan of the original Star Wars trilogy, which occasionally leads me to leap to their defense (does that make me an unapologetic Star Wars apologist?). Let me just say that Luke is no more whiny in A New Hope than most teenagers I've known (and one I've been) in my thirty-five years on your...the planet.

I'm also one of the rare folks who will (like you, John) admit that the Emmerich version of Godzilla is hands-down superior in every way (except perhaps kitsch-factor) to the 1954 original and its many, many sequels. The Emmerich version, however, is not now and never will be a classic; the 1954 version most definitely is, for reasons you've already listed. A quick search on IMDb.com reveals more than 40 sequels and spinoffs, the most recent (known as Godzilla: Final Wars in the U.S.) released only four years ago. Oh, and there's Godzilla 3-D on deck for 2009.

As an aside, if I'd paid money to see Cloverfield in the theater rather than renting it from the local video place, I'd have demanded that either someone show me the other half of the blasted movie or give me half of my money back. A hundred and thirteen minutes does not a feature film make, no matter how hotly anticipated it may have been.

Is Cloverfield destined to be a classic? Somehow I doubt it. I understand what the filmmakers wanted to do and I appreciated the effort, but it fell far short of my expectations and wound up feeling like a student film with a studio budget.

Personally, I've always thought that it was the idea that made the film sci-fi. And it's always been the distinguishing feature of sci-fi over the years, especially considering the grey area between sci-fi and horror. For instance, I would really consider the Alien series as a horror movie set in space, but not necessarily a sci-fi movie. Star Wars--is a fairy tail with spaceships, but not sci-fi.

Unfortunately, with the mainstreaming of science fiction it seems that the "idea" is going out of sci-fi at the expense of more explosions and CGI.

I love the SF movies that suck primarily because they suck. Laserblat, Planet of The Vampires, The Lost Continent, The Monitors are all amazing because of their badness.

And Logan's Run? Hell, I wanted to live there!!!

Science fiction has always been hard to define. I can't remember what author, maybe Damon Knight said "I can't define it, but I know it when I see it."
But in my opinion you can come close. As others have pointed out, Star Wars is space fantasy. Being set in space, or having aliens in it does not necessarily mean it is science fiction. C'mon, was ALF science fiction? In my opinion, science fiction is about taking a scientific principle and mucking about with it in a logical way, or extrapolating the effects of a new gadget on contemporary man.. While not very good, Michael Crichton has written science fiction by that definition. Jurassic Park and Timelines are two movies that can be called science fiction by my definition.
My choice for a classic science fiction movie is...Brainstorm. A new technology (recording memory and thoughts and being able to play them back) and the effects that this has. I loved that they spent some time exploring the possibilities of this technology. Yes it did get action-y and there was that tie-in with the military-industrial complex meme that was kind of new then and very cliche now, but Brainstorm is my submission as an example of a science fiction movie.

If you want to talk about bad SF movies, my favorite is the famously bad Plan Nine From Outer Space. I love the Ed Woods masterpiece(I use the term extremely loosely) and one might put it in that sub-genre of humorous SF, though that wasn't the intent while being made.
A lot of people consider it the WORST film ever made, never mind the category.
That's why I like it so much. It's perfectly made for sarcastic comments while viewing. I don't know whether or not it was ever an episode of Mystery Science Theater. It was probably to easy, like shooting fish in a barrel(to drag out that hoary old cliche).

You're right that Classic does not equal Good.

Good is something that can change over time, while classic is something that is conferred as the result of time passing.

Look at classic cars: the Edsel was Ford's biggest disaster when it was in production. Today its a classic and avidly collected.

Same kind of thing goes for old men of the tribe. They may have been bad hunters, or just plain outright idiots, but there's a special place reserved for them around the camp fire, if only for lasting as long as they have.

On the other hand, if you want to talk classics that are better that their descendants, I'd challenge you to read Matheson's 'I Am Legend' and then watch The Last Man On Earth, The Omega Man and I Am Legend (in that order) and not come to the conclusion that the first film isn't the truest (to the novel) and the best film overall.

A few thoughts. First off, I think there's a difference between being 'good' and 'classic'. In some cases, being first warrants being a classic, even if the execution is weak. Gojira is a classic not because of it's execution, but it's central idea, it's sub-text and it's invention of a genre. Pointing at the many sequels, which were made for a different audience and often as a cash-in, seems somewhat unfair to the original movie. One doesn't look at 'Destroy All Monsters' and view it with the same lens as the original...they're completely different types of movies.

Second, don't underestimate the 'grading on a curve' function. There haven't just been fewer good Science Fiction movies...there have been fewer Science Fiction movies in general. The popular notion that SF required often expensive special effects meant that such movies would be created by people who assumed the effects themselves were what made a movie SF, not the plot or the ideas...and thereby they would often get made less often or with terrible effects. Television often put the lie to this idea: The Twilight Zone and the Outer Limits managed to routinely produce some very compelling SF without a large budget. But in Hollywood, SF was (and to a degree still is) perceived as a juvenile genre, not a serious one.

Third, the classification of 'SF' is often tricky to apply. Is King's 'Firestarter' horror or SF? Is 'The Hidden' a cop movie or SF? Is 'Somewhere in Time' a romance or SF? Many SF films sit astride a divide between different genres and it's hard to pin them down. How do you classify 'Superman'? It's chock-a-block full of SF elements, but it's also full of straight-on scientifically-incorrect four-color fantasy. Is 'Children of Men' an SF film or a thriller? If you delete a few lines of dialogue from the film, it becomes very mundane. For that matter, the entire 'Bourne' trilogy could be considered SF instead of a series of spy movies...and several James Bond files, too. And so on.

Finally, the big idea is important to genre films in a way they aren't to, for example, comedy films. You don't want to be the 40 year-old virgin or hang around with the characters in Blazing Saddles...but you might love to pretend you were Indiana Jones or Luke Skywalker. That aspect of shared fantasy...of the transportive quality of those ideas, are powerful myths. Every kid I knew growing up wanted to be a Jedi...they sure didn't want to be the kid from Kramer vs. Kramer. That's why, IMHO, a film like "Silent Running" isn't fondly remembered, but a film like "Mad Max" is. Despite the horror of Max's world (his wife and child murdered, friends killed, infrastructure collapsing), he is transformed into a powerful vigilante. Bruce Dern's character, by contrast, is a dick.

So while Star Wars may be a terrible film from a execution standpoint, it grabs me every time I see it, even 30 years later. It's ideas, it's romance and it's visual power still captivate and transport me in a way a film like 'Sunshine' simply never will. It's myth is strong.

The secret is: Opera.

Much of the movie sci-fi aesthetic is taken from opera, a 400-year-old genre in which an unrealistic cast (doesn't the 14-year-old ingenue look suspiciously like a 35-year-old soprano?) uses oddly stylized techniques (why do they always seem to be singing, even when they're talking?) to act out preposterous, absurd, overwrought, or downright silly plots.

None of which matters because opera aims to work at an emotional level. The music and the pacing (driven by the beat and the choreography -- and, in film, by the editing) elevates the libretto by adding a huge range of emotional shading. The lyrics of Carmen's entrance aria, or even Carmen's looks, are immaterial once you hear the music: You know immediately that she's a femme fatale, and you can feel what her character feels, and what the other characters feel.

Most sci-fi films work like that. Think about the early classics that defined the genre -- Metropolis, say, or Frankenstein. Metropolis didn't succeed because of its plot, which is kind of hokey and makes little sense, but because of its mood: the expressionist set design and choreography evoke the feeling of living in a mechanized, routinized dystopia. Frankenstein is a character study of a mad scientist and his creation. What Frankenstein and his monster do is immaterial; the movie aims to show you what they feel, and it succeeds. Godzilla is a success because, despite the plastic costumes and the plastic dialogue, it succeeds in its expressionist goals: It's meant to make you feel the dread of powers we don't understand; the fear of the panicked populace; the bravado of the soldiers, and the disappointment when their weapons prove useless; the rage of the angry beast; the awesome power of nature in relation to man.

Sci-fi movies aren't shy about their operatic roots. The most obvious example is, indeed, "Star Wars": John Williams borrowed every move he could from Wagner and Stravinsky without even bothering to file off the serial numbers. Operas used to incorporate ballet, and all sorts of movie scenes make more sense when you think "dance" -- Logan's Run has Carousel, which is literally a ballet; Star Wars tends to use spaceships and swordfights for its dance moves.

Of course, sci-fi movies are a large genre, and there are exceptions that disprove the rule. A big source of confusion is the existence of literary SF, which -- despite a lot of crossover of fans, plots, character names, and titles -- is really a very, very different genre. When people say "in SF, ideas are more important than the effects or the music", they're speaking primarily about novels and short stories -- in SF movies ideas are often of no consequence, because it's the feelings and the mood that are most important. But, nevertheless, some movies are based more strongly on SF literature, and they tend to be a bit more about logic and a bit less about atmosphere.

Also, it's often entertaining to play against type. If the typical sci-fi movie is an opera, a dash of cold realism can be a nice change of pace. That's what makes, e.g., Alien work so well: it bears the same relationship to the typical 1950s-era monster movie that Saving Private Ryan does to the typical 1950s-era WWII movie.

Somebody was bound to step up and say this, so I guess it might as well be me: John, I love ya, but you couldn't be more wrong about Godzilla. Now, I agree that it's probably more important for the genre it launched than for its inherent qualities. But the original has a powerful tension and menacing atmosphere that's still powerful today. John Fulton mentioned its amazing music. The effects are ingenious and downright gorgeous-- those aren't "cardboard sets," but an intricate and elaborate model that took hundreds of man-hours to build. (Miniatures were still in regular use in special effects through the mid-'90s-- and I would rather watch a good model, or even a *mediocre* model, than bad CGI any day of the week.) Compare the effects to other SF movies from the early '50s and you'll see how good they really are. It's tough to judge the performances unless you speak Japanese, but they're pretty darned good too-- one of the actors, Takeshi Shimura, was a Kurosawa regular who appeared in _The Seven Samurai_ and _Ikiru_. There are fair criticisms to level against Godzilla, but they're not on display here. Please don't call this movie awful-- it's just not true.

As for its sequels and the Emmerich movie-- have you *seen* all of the sequels? (For that matter, have you seen Emmerich's tripe lately?) There are some really good, really fun movies in there-- and not just for camp or kitsch value, either. (Any doubters should check out the 2001 entry "Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack".) But pretty much the only good thing you can say about Emmerich's film is that it wasn't dubbed into another language prior to its release.

Obviously I'm speaking as a Godzilla fan, but your post trots out the same stereotyped arguments we fans have been arguing against for decades.

That said, I completely agree about Logan's Run. But I think the real issue here is that SF films often don't age well.

The essence of true sci fi is the idea. Like you go to opera for the music (and get a lot of other nonsense in the bargain), you watch sci fi for the idea. The other day 12 Monkeys came on and I couldn't not watch it again. The idea of witnessing your own death... I generally dislike the crap that comes out of Hollywood, and I put costume sci fi like Star Wars in that category. But I'll watch 12 Monkeys or Planet of the Apes and find something satisfying and (I know it sounds odd) intellectually pleasurable about them, whereas Star Wars, for me anyway, is just a waste of time. If I want to understand the human condition, I'll read Shakespeare, or Tolstoy (thank you very much Mr. Lucas for playing).

"Is this willingness to value the idea at the expense of almost everything else a strength or a weakness of the science fiction film genre?"

I'd have to say it's a strength, inasmuch as the genre actually HAS ideas in the first place, to a greater extent than other genres.

Some other comments:

1. The word "classic" is so subjective as to be almost entirely meaningless. Everyone has their own ideas on what the classics are, and one person's classic may be another person's garbage.

2. I agree with the commenter above who questioned the assumption that other genres' classics are better than SF's classics. I doubt that. I'm a big believer in Sturgeon's Law: 90% of EVERYTHING is crap!

3. I don't give a damn for either Godzilla or Cloverfield. I consider giant monster movies to be more closely related to horror than to science fiction, so they're largely irrelevant to me. And I don't think it's a good idea to use the popularity of such movies to make any arguments about the quality of sci-fi. Most of the people who went to see Cloverfield are probably not people with any serious interest in SF; they just went to see a cool monster and/or action movie.

Plan Nine From Outer Space was a good bad movie. I bought the Ed Wood box set and was not disappointed. Viewing these types of Z-grade movies is different from viewing top-flight movies like TDTESS. Here you just relax and prepare for (un-)intentional humor. And this PNFOS was saluted in the Burton film Ed Wood. Another good one.

Let me make this simple movies don't be come classics for being bad movies. And yes Godzilla is a CLASSIC MOVIE! Godzilla is a Sci-fi /Horror movie! The start of the great Sci-fi started in the 50's try watching some of them old 1 dollar DVD they sell and the dollars stores. I seen better acting in them then modern films that suppose to be great with computer special effects. Some of the best monster/sci-fi "classics" were made by Ray Harryhausen check them out for your self. Re-watch so of them "classics".