Both movies are about heroic actions taken, no matter how pointless or misplaced. Something in me responds to that element in human beings that just won’t quit, won’t give up no matter what the odds. Sundance is the better movie because it shows what usually happens to us poor heroic-striving humans. But Armageddon deserves kudos as well. It holds out the carrot of cock-eyed-optimist-lucky-American/earthman success while killing off the guy who insists on obtaining success. His death is fulfilling to the audience because with it he is paying off all the bad calls he made during his pre-astreoid life, not because it adds any believable penalty to the pricetag of success.

Is science fiction involved at all in these stories? IMO, not at all. They are just movies about people trying to do things–to survive in a time that has moved past them, or to intervene in earth’s behalf and give it more time. Also IMO, if the human drive to keep trying is ever bred out of us, we’ve had it. The best science fiction concurs, no matter what species the “us” might be.

But then you’ve got to wonder: how can one possibly define what science fiction is if someone else defines it differently? For if there is no universally accepted definition or criteria of the genre, then the argument to single out the specific elements woudn’t be very meaningful. It’s a human-made concept, one with no-higher power backing for it’s meaning. For what it is of telling other worlds or realms of existance through stories that are told with different settings, sci-fi could be no different than fantasy for most people.

When it comes to films, ‘sci-fi’ movies are just movies themselves, cinematic creations meant to entertain and stimulate the human mind in what most of their writters try to do: tell a story, no matter how good/poorly it ws executed.

For me, one definition of sci-fi i like to stick to is one that Arthur Clarke saw it as: sci-fi is something that could possibly happen but you wouldn’t want to happen, and fantasy is something that couldn’t possibly happen but you would want it to happen.

Having read both novels, I was horrified at what Hollywood can do to a great book. Starship Troopers was Robert A. Heinlein’s essay on politics and the responsibility of free men for their freedom. The movie was a special effects film that contained the same names of the characters, but turned them into cartoons.

Battlefield Earth, which when it was first published was the single longest Science fiction novel ever written, is a marvel of storytelling. And not once did I ever picture John Travolta as a Psychlo. And the movie covered about a third of the scope of the novel. Poorly. Even the actor who portrayed Johnny Goodboy Tyler was pathetic.

And this just covers “recent” disasters. Dune (the theatrical version) was a slaughtering of Frank Herbert’s epic (does anyone who read the book still cringe when they remember the “weirding modules?”).

The list is endless. But there are some gems in the mix. Just have to watch a lot of crap to find ‘em.

Fifth Element is just action movie, interesting and futuristic, but out of ranking.

Star Wars isn’t a science fiction. So yes it out of ranking.

The worst: “Alien 4″, “Plan9 from Outer Space”, “Alien vs Predator”, “Ultraviolet”, “Armagedon”, “The Core”, “2012″, “First Spaceship on Venus”. This are very bad. “Deep Impact” is also bad as a movie.

If you want good sci-fi, look at “Comet Impact” – low budget, but nicly done.

Ask any mechanical engineer, nuclear scientist, geologist, material scientist, chemist, biologist, aerospace engineer, construction worker, opthamologist, weapons expert, programmer, factory worker, garbage collector, or English major about the moment when they said “Now I know I can prove that’s just not possible…” and each of them would average about ten or so responses from MEMORY. It claims to be Science Fiction but it’s further removed from Fantasy than even most fantasy movies…

Ooh…. *ARGH!* I’d love to teach a college course for freshmen where you sit in a theater and rip that movie to shreds for COLLEGE CREDIT…

If Waterworld had been made as badly as Armegeddon was then the oceans wouldn’t have been wet.

The WORST sci-fi movie EVER was the horrid “Starship: Adventure of a Million Lifetimes”, which aired in 1984. My girlfriend and I had to suffer through that endlessly dark, weak and confusing dirge for almost 2 hours at a drive-in theatre. We would have left the drive-in halfway through the movie if it weren’t for the second feature, David Lynch’s “DUNE” (I thought it was actually pretty good, all things considered), which is why we went there in the first place.

The ONLY good thing to come out of this stinker film at the drive-in was the quality time I got to spend with my girlfriend that DIDN’T involve watching the movie.

I’m telling you, “Starship: Adventure of a Million Lifetimes” is SOOOO bad, you can’t even FIND it mentioned anywhere on the web. Not in IMDB. Not in any reviews. Not in the B- or C- films databases. Not in the MST3K movies list. Not in yard sales. Not in the libraries. Nowhere. I once found it on a foreign ebay site for sale as a VHS tape but the guy wanted $12 plus shipping for the stinker. I offered $4 including shipping because even THAT’S more than what it’s worth. I just wanted to see it again so I could have a moment of nostalgia, laugh at it, then upchuck and lose some weight.