Which of these is the greatest sci-fi film?

i would say alien (1979)

I figured that, especially accompanied by the famous opening notes from Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra, but it all seemed so pompous especially having spent the previous couple hours watching astronaut-procedural stuff. I don't know what I would have replaced it with, but that super-baby thing was like being hit over the head with a giant diaper. I don't think the scriptwriters or Kubrick had any idea how to render transcendence especially since they are not transcendent.

I was thinking along those lines after I posted about 2001...I thought that Kubrick had one helluva a task before him...just how do you show a god like evolved human being? For me, the space fetus works well. The very idea of seeing a giant fetus in space is shocking especially in 1968 and it leaves enough open that we can interpret the ending however we want. I don't know what else he could've done that would've got the idea across and been visually stunning and still not give too much a way.


I do understand how a person could find the ending of 2001 pompous, that's how I felt about The Tree of Life and just about every movie made by Malick that I've seen. Often for me it's the ending of movies that I feel misses the mark.


If I had Kurbrick's ear during editing of 2001, I would've said: cut the proto-human monkey stuff down to 10 minutes, expand on the sequence on the moon where they find the buried monolith, then cut the flashing lights tunnel down by at least 50%, because less is more.