Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Sci-Fi Movie Tier List

it's my turn to rank the movies that matter to me let's start at the bottom how about Disney's the black hole one of the 10 worst movies ever made when this movie came out I was just in college I think it was and I'd known all about black holes and the physics of black holes and it was clear that when they made this movie they didn't know any physics at all they I I don't think they had a physicist in sight of any scene that was scripted U prepared and filmed for this for this movie a journey that begins where everything ends so that goes in the F category there we go right there I heard they're going to be remaking the black hole and they better have a science adviser otherwise go home my single favorite movie of all time the Matrix you got to love the Matrix and How Deeply thought through those plot lines are the the one flaw in the reasoning is that they're growing humans embryos and the machines are pulling energy from the humans because they knew that we generate 100 watts of energy so between 80 and 100 Watts so that's a power source for the machine okay well then where do the people in the embryos get their power from well they're fed energy from the outside thermodynamically that doesn't work if you're going to put energy into another thing before you take out the energy you're getting less energy than what first went into the system so apparently machines didn't know this they didn't have a class in thermodynamics bypass the middleman draw the energy directly you don't need the humans at all but without that little fact there is no movie so give him a hall pass on that all the rest of the film was so brilliantly conceived and especially executed that is an s on my list and for each subsequent Matrix movie they got worse and worse so next was Matrix Reloaded let me put that down to a c and you know where Matrix Revolutions is going that maybe not an F it's not as bad as as as the black hole let's give that an e the Martian love me some Martian you got to love any movie that turns a noun into a verb as Mark Watney the lead character says I'm gonna have to science the out of this plus it got so much science correct oh my gosh and one of the highest compliments I ever received was from the writer of that original story Andy Weir he said Neil when I was writing out the science on this I imagine you were looking over my shoulder and that put him on notice because if he messed anything up he was worried I'd be tweeting about it after or Xing about it so uh Martian is the Martian is the most scientifically accurate film I have ever witnessed so that gets very high marks I I would have to give that an a a very high marks by the way it had a minor sort of plot flaw as well in the middle why did they give up Mark Watney for dead on the Martian surface because because a dust storm was kicking up and they had their spaceship and they had to take off and the dust storm was rocking the spaceship and it rocked it too much they wouldn't be able to take off and they'd all die and they assume Mar Ro Mark Watney was dead on the Martian surface the problem is the air density on Mars is 1% that of Earth so high winds on Mars are just a gentle breeze that's how you would feel it it would barely be rocking the ship so I told this to Andy we he said yeah I know you got to give me one so I'll give him a hall pass two it's because there is no movie without that premise and he got everything right he gets an a The Blob let's go back 1958 Steve McQueen this is an alien that landed from space and the best portrayal of an alien ever because it was a blob and it was alive you know when it first first landed on Earth it was a transparent Blobby thing then after it consumed its first victim it was red for the entire rest of the film that was cool that was not cool that was badass so the blob just because of how different they imagined that alien to be it was not a Hollywood actor in a costume it was something completely different every other alien we see it's got a head nose eyes mouth two ears a neck shoulders elbows fingers they look practically exactly like humans if you were an oak tree you would say all the Hollywood aliens look exactly look just like humans just like we say all trees are alike the oak tree would think that ET and all the aliens even alien in the aliens that had a mouth eyes Okay looked a little reptilian a little seahorse like but so what it still had a mouth do trees have mouths do do do do viruses have mouths dud so many life forms in the world don't have mouths anyhow blob gets very high scores for how creative it's alien was it Still Remains the most creative alien ever portrayed uh i' give him give him a B on that contact based on the novel by Carl San the search for extraterrestrial Ral intelligence they knew that we can't imagine what aliens look like so they don't portray them and what spooked me about contact is the notion that you discover alien intelligence what effect would that have on our culture and this explored the Cults that would rise up the people that would act weird and crazy I thought there was a very aware and sensitive attempt to capture human civilization in the face of the knowledge that we've made contact with extraterrestrial intelligence I'm GNA have that join Mark Watney up there in a right there with the Martian what's next oh Interstellar Interstellar lot of good physics in interstellar no doubt about it and in fact for our star talk we we interviewed Christopher Nolan about his whole portfolio of films so you got to love Christopher Nolan's take on storytelling right on up through Oppenheimer so this one probably had more authentic physics going on than any other movie made why a co-executive producer was a colleague of mine Kip Thorne a world-renowned cosmologist relative I found I play books by the guy okay on my physics shelf Kip Thorne was active in the story lines of what was told and if you remember that film the robot that funky robot with the with the legs that would sort of spin that you remember the name of that robot it was named Kip so maybe it had two P's in it but it was Kip Kip Thorne was is an authentic by the way Kip thorn wrote The Companion book to the movie called the science of interstellar and so you you read through there okay here's my issue with interst I have an issue issue there's a blight on the crops they can't figure out how to prevent the crops from dying really really okay so we can't figure out the no biologist in the world can figure out how to stop the disease on the crops yet we're going to somehow find a wormhole through the universe and ship a billion people to an exoplanet somehow that's easier what the hell's wrong with the biologist in that future get back to work the biologist and botanist and Farmers go work on it dudes okay please that whatever you do however much money it takes I promise you it'll be easier and cheaper than building spaceships finding a wormhole traveling Through the Wormhole terraforming a planet an exoplanet that we have to then discover and ship a billion people there so I love me some Interstellar but I had that was a big issue for me I'm going to put that down at a B let's make that a b right there okay what else do I have going here Gravity Sandra bulock and Mr handsome man what's his name um George Clooney okay the only two actors in the whole movie and it all takes place in space they really should have renamed the movie Zero Gravity cuz 99.9% of the movie takes place in orbit where there is zero g okay all right so that's fine fine uh I it's brilliantly done I first saw it in IMAX oh it's terrifying they show a very real scenario where if you destroy a satellite and it makes a lot of bits and pieces each of those pieces becomes a projectile that can destroy 10 other satellites the the 10 pieces can destroy 10 other satellites each of those make by the way they make thousands of pieces but let's just make the math easy for a moment they make 10 pieces each of those destroys 10 other satellites making 10 other pieces each you lose your first satellite then 10 then 100 then a thousand within several orbits 100% of all satellites can be destroyed look it up it's called the Kesler effect it's a calculation that was done several decades ago and it has to do with how how many satellites are in orbit and how much debris is there with it and many of us worry that we're approaching that limit to create the scenario that we saw in gravity so there's some Physics they got wrong but they got way more physics right and so I give him a shout out for even going there totally one of the things I got wrong you know there's Sandra bulock and everything's floating around the capsule but her bangs always seem to know which way down was you know maybe she used heavy moose on it before she went into space I don't know but the bang should have been done a little bit of that and there's more I could as here's something they did right you realize when you burn a candle why does it keep burning oh because it heats the air around it the air rises and brings in fresh oxygen there's a convection of air in the vicinity of a candle in Zer G if you burn any flame and it's absorbing the oxygen the hot doesn't know where to go it stays there snuffing out the flame that started it they showed that they they I saw that in in gravity that was good oh yeah that was good but her bangs always told me which way down was okay so I it was incomplete in their effort one other scene where George Clooney is at the end of a tether and she's trying to save him and cuz all the as you might remember their spaceship was completely destroyed by this Kessler phenomenon all right he's at the end of a tether and she wants to go save him she might use up her oxygen then they both die and he does the manly Brave thing and let's go and he flies off excuse me have we thought about the physics of this we're in space she's not swinging the tether they're they're they're in space connected on the other side of the if she just tugged it then he would drift towards and be saved but this didn't occur to anybody certainly not to George Clooney his character anyhow uh gravity is a spectacle it's a spectacle I think it's brilliantly executed um Let me give that a b also right there next to Interstellar there you go back to the future best time travel movie ever filmed hands down hands down but there was one two and three they're not going in the same slot okay let's take back to the future one and slide that right on up to S it is best of genre 1980s Cannon Back to the Future then they made a two and a three by the way right now we are nine years past the future portrayed and Back to the Future to just FYI everybody wanted like the hover boards no the reason why a hoverboard is not interesting did did it occur to you to think this the hoverboard only works within a few inches of the ground the way Wheels work okay so so so if a hoverboard only does what a board with wheels can do what do you need the hoverboard for plus we learned the hoverboard does not work over water and you can't fly in the air okay it still has to be appr proximal distance above the ground just the way the wheels of your skateboard work so that's not a new interesting invention it's just not all right so I'm going to take two and I'm going to put that down at a c and Back To The Future Three really really they go back to the wild west really I'm putting that down to an E right next to the Matrix three right that's it that's when it's time for the franchise to just say move on to other things all right what else do I have oh I've got quiet Earth this hardly anyone saw that film lower budget sci-fi film made in New Zealand it's about someone who's the last person on Earth there's some experiment science experiment gone wrong in the sky and he's the this is not the first first time people have addressed the last man on Earth uh there's several of these Omega Man was one of them uh there's also one with Will Smith I Am Legend So one of the earlier films on this was called The World the Flesh and the devil starring of all people Harry bellafante who we lost just a couple of years ago uh he was also the last man on Earth so these last man on Earth stories intrigue me because you have to ask how inventive is that last person on Earth to stay alive a quiet Earth you see this he happened to be a physicist this last man on Earth in that film and I just liked watching how inventive he became until he found a couple of other people who also thought that they were the last people on Earth and you learn what they had in common why they were the last people on Earth and no one else survived it so it's just a a well-made Sci-Fi drama and I'm going to put that let you know I'm going to put that up in a if you get there's anyone have DVDs anymore in if you listen to the extras in this film I think they're still available if you buy it even online as a streamer the extras I am in the in the producer's narration of that film The Producer heard that I like this film he invited me in for the for the narration track so you'll hear all of my perspectives on that film uh if you listen to that track so I invite you to check it out uh it was one of the producers or the directors we just sat in studio and watched the film and I just talked about it and it was fun all right what else do I have here oh arrival not the one that had Charlie Sheen from back I think in the 80s that's the one that was released recently so in arrival the alien is living up inside these pods and they travel up in there and you see the alien behind this glass like an aquarium glass and there's like liquid let's assume it's water on the other side and there's this octopus looking alien but it doesn't have eight legs it has like six or seven legs right got to make a different otherwise it's not alien right so so and and it takes its ink it's like octopus ink and draws on that glass and everyone says oo a it's trying to talk to us and the government picks two people not more than two people two people to interact with this alien and it's oh we need a linguist and a physicist no you don't okay excuse me it's an alien trying to communicate you're going to get an astrobiologist not leave the physicist at home physicist are good for many things not that bring an astrobiologist and I'm thinking a cryptographer I'm just thinking okay love me some linguists don't get me wrong wrong but you know and then I tweeted that when the movie came out and then I felt bad cuz I'm casting shade on linguist how often is there a linguist in a movie like hardly ever yet we get astrophysicists all the time so I felt bad I did honestly I shouldn't cast that much shade but that didn't change the truth of the matter that if you want to find out what an alien is saying you're going to send a cryptographer pure and simple but anyhow here we are drawing these little circular patterns with little squiggles on the edges and everyone is analy they're analyzing what they see and I'm thinking at no time in the movie are they saying maybe what they're looking at is backwards because this heptapod or septo pod whatever not an octopod was drawing it from their point of view no one thought about that I so it was okay of course they bring in the military and they got their weapons like they think their weapons are really going to do something anyhow if interesting film an attempt to portray an alien that did not look human so they get a few thumbs up for that few thumbs up I'm G to take uh I'm going to put that in C see just for going there otherwise I and it's definitely worth watching because they play with the timeline of life is time on a loop or is in a so they try to get a little deep and philosophical on you I don't have a problem with that I I don't think they fully executed that as brilliantly as I could have been but it's fine fine it's fine for even just going there all right I had to add one more just to follow arrival and that would be the Europa Report let's put that right next to arrival at C Europa Report is a lowbudget sci-fi film and it's about a mission to Jupiter's moon Europa to look for life there's an ocean of liquid water beneath the Frozen surface of Europa where we think maybe if there's life anywhere maybe it's there and I have a cameo in that it's brief and they just use pre-existing footage of me on the news talking about why we should go to Europa but I add this here and now because it's kind of an interesting take the entire movie is is is video cam footage during the mission inside the the control thing panel on their helmets and it's an assemblage of all of those cameras so it's it's an interesting sort of premise that's why it's called the Europa Report it's the report given back to the authorities after this Mission so spoiler alert they do find life on Europa and guess what it looks like it looks like an octopus Okay so people there some octopus lovers out there maybe they think octopuses will octopod will take over the world one day anyhow okay so let's keep going oh had to go there Armageddon Armageddon a fully entertaining film don't get me wrong fully enter it's funny all the acting is brilliant Bruce Willis Saves the World from a killer Comet okay Bruce Willis the oil driller saves the world okay uh Armageddon violates more laws of physics per minute than any other film ever made well I used to think that until I saw moonfall coming out of Co that one violates moral laws of physics but until then it was Armageddon so I don't care that it violated the laws of physics because it didn't care it really didn't care so that's going to be in the C category no it's not high on my list but it's not as low as it might have otherwise been Landing right at a c a gentleman c as it was once called let's keep going next Up Close Encounters of the Third Kind that one I'm GNA have to put that down at a d yeah yeah I mean it's fun watching the aliens come visit and the mother ship it really gave storytelling meaning to the concept of a mother ship we were being uh visited by all manner of other alien smaller ship the Mother Ship shows up it tells us in advance where it's going to land and it arrives at at at Devil's Tower Wyoming and okay and so here are all these alien spacecraft and somehow the government is keeping this a secret that's a little weird to me everybody has eyeballs they can look up they had cameras not everyone had cameras you can go home and get a camera we could have done that oh no but the government is keeping this a secret really please really and let me invoke a bit of presentism on it the entire receiving area when the aliens finally land and they're exchanging musical notes Back in Forth 100% of the people in that receiving it the scientist the engineers the the the all of those people 100% of them were white men just saying now what's weird is I didn't think that or notice it at the time that's what presentism is you have modern values modern sensibilities modern understanding of what Progressive change means in society and then you look back and apply that then you you criticize everything it's a a weird interesting State of Mind to have uh so but yeah there were none none there might have been one black person back when we had token black scientists but not yet token female scientists before they became fully part of that entire Enterprise anyhow the aliens come down the the the Mother Ship comes they lower the ramp they walk down and by the way aliens made handicap accessible flying saucers long before we ever thought of it notice the aliens always come down ramps you never see them climbing downstairs okay just a just a shared observation about the history of aliens arriving on Earth so uh I put that down at a d worth a watch but you're not going to come away saying oh my gosh that was amazing no no you're not okay let's keep going deep impact oh my gosh oh that's up at an a they got their physics right unlike Armageddon where all the asteroids all the pieces of the main Comet are hitting hitting major monuments there's one of the one of the pieces of in Armageddon hits the it decapitates the Chrysler Building here in New York City keeps going goes through the front door of Grand Central Terminal and takes out the clock in the middle of Grand Central Terminal excuse me 70% of earth's surface is water and you you going to hit my Chrysler Building in my hometown what do those pieces have GPS or something let's take out all the human no it's like random rocks colliding with Earth Deep Impact you can still destroy New York City if you want you can do it with a tsunami and that's exactly what they did in Deep Impact it hits the ocean as it's more likely to do they had actual NASA advisors on that check out Deep Impact high quality film good physics and you get to see the disaster scenes which is why anyone watches movies such as that all right so next up 1951 The Day the Earth Stood Still that one oh my gosh where am I going to put that yeah I got to put that at the top S no there's no weird aliens there's no violence there's no blood it's just it's a suspenseful drama of how we might react learning the that aliens have come to visit it's the 1950s so of course it's a perfectly silvery Flying Saucer oh and of course it does have a ramp if memory serves okay so but watch that for how much thought they put in to the human interactions with each other in the face of this visitation so it's a classic of it genre of its era check it out next up Independence Day my favorite part of that film is when Will Smith is in the desert and there's a crashed alien vessel there he pops the hatch punches the alien in the face and says Welcome To Earth and drags the alien across the desert of course where else to Area 51 uh I it's an entertaining film no doubt no doubt uh but I I don't know I was a little disappointed they didn't give credit what credit was due this movie is basically based on War of the World by HD Wells how do I know that they really admit that but do you remember in war the worlds h2l how we finally defeated the aliens the aliens succumbed to germs to which we had immunity to which we had developed resistance and those aliens had only just arrived they fell victim to germs to a virus basically well how did we defeat the aliens in Independence Day Jeff Goldblum the the computer expert uploads a virus to the alien it's the same plotline the same plotline so I don't mind people copying but I thought maybe a get a little homage there to HD Wells who thought that up in 1895 when he first published his novel so it's an entertaining film it shows evil aliens of course the movie is highly pre-programmed to pull at your I'm going to root for America and the White House and the president and the I don't know it it was I felt it didn't give me room to have my own feelings them constantly being manipulated by every scene and every script line so I liked it but on this scale it's got to go down here to a d oh what's left uh the Terminator oh my gosh oh my gosh uh the Terminator it's really a good film no doubt about it and good it fully executed in all the ways it wanted to and needed to the acting was brilliant uh Arnold schinegger has what five lines in the movie I don't think he was fully trained as an actor yet your clothes give them to me um I'll be back anyhow very well done very well executed but I have an issue if you don't want Sarah Connor to give birth to the person who would grow up and lead the revolution that would render your kind non-existent because it's a time travel movie then um do you have to like kill everybody you know he could have done gone back before then and prevent Sarah Connor's parents from meeting each other then she'd never be born and neither would the the person who rose up and then but then of course that's a five minute movie okay just get in the way of their first encounter so I get it I I get it by the way he came through time butt neaked and like why this so we can see all of his musculature you remember where he got his clothes he uh got them from the the viewing station at Griffith Observatory where these punks are looking through the they're fighting each other for the telescope love it any time people are fighting each other to look through a telescope that's a good day for me uh and then he takes their their their punk rockers and so he gets their clothes a leather jacket the chains the boots it's all their clothes that's why he looks so badass uh and by the way you know who one of those punk ass people were one of those evil angry thugs was Bill Paxton yes okay in case you missed it anyhow he comes through Time naked because no no living tissue can come through that's part of his human exoskeleton yet he has hair and hair is biologically dead so he should have come through bald I'm just saying and with no fingernails just saying they didn't do their biology work on that one anyhow where am I going to put Terminator it was so well done uh and and I'm going to give it I'm going to give it a b because I'm evaluating science here another thing they did well was the shotgun hitting him he would recoil from the momentum of the shot so James Cameron it's his film knows physics and engineering and included that fact in every time he got shot so he did that right so I'm going to up it a little more here yeah let's let's give it an a there you go last needs no introduction hands down 2001 A Space Odyssey 1968 that goes to the top of the class s yeah it gets weird and you kind of think am I on LSD or is the movie on LSD one of us is on LSD for the last 20 minutes of the film okay so I fine what matters is how much influence this film had on everything on everything and how much attention they gave to detail it had an actual science advisor Based On A Story by Arthur C Clark 2001 A Space Odyssey uh it's Canon 1960s Canon and it was made a year before we walked on the moon so check it out I won't say any more about it but if you've never seen it just watch it oh and by the way the entire beginning of the Barbie movie was taken from the beginning of 2001 A Space Odyssey if you did not know that all right that's how influential it is 2001 A Space odsy 56 years later influences a movie about the Barbie doll enough said I'm done here these are my favorites in and and and non-f favorites in order I so I I don't I don't expect others would agree with this that's not the point because they're my favorites I'm not even forcing them on you but they're my favorites in the in the science genre I have other movie favorites have nothing to do with science of course we all do but these that's this how I'd sort them up so uh I look forward to seeing your comments about my comments Neil degrass Tyson here as always keep looking [Music] up I'll be back

Channel: StarTalk Plus

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Keywords: Neil deGrasse Tyson, Neil, deGrasse, Tyson, Niel deGrasse Tyson, Niel, Space, Physics, StarTalk, StarTalk Plus, StarTalk+, Universe, Astrophysics, Cosmos, Smart Guy, Aliens, Stars, Planets, Pluto, Nebula, Nebulae, Big Bang, Milky Way

Id: TAKXQKMTAU0

Length: 34min 35sec (2075 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 10 2024