I was reading this list of the 50 greatest sci-fi movies of the last 50 years, and it was all fairly predictable. There’s only a couple that I’d disagree with, but there were a few that would have made the list in place of them if I were compiling it myself, and I realised my additions were less mainstream or less critically acclaimed than were on there.
What guilty-pleasure sci-fi movies would you recommend?
For starters, ones I’ve watched a bunch of times would be:
Dredd (2012)
Pandorum (2009)
Lockout (2012)
Monsters (2010)
I’m with you on TLJ vs. Rogue One.
TLJ was trying to accomplish something really interesting with the Saga. The scene where Luke explains the nature of the Force is top-tier Star Wars, possibly the best discussion of the subject in the entire series with the exception of Yoda in Empire. The interplay between Rey and Kylo is fascinating, and the “You’re no one, but not to me. Come with me. Please.” scene is also one of my favorites in the entire series. It’s got pacing issues, and Canto Bight is deeply annoying, but almost every other criticism is fairly superficial and could have been fixed by another script revision and more judicious editing.
Rogue One is… fine, I guess. It exists to plug a plot hole that didn’t need plugging. It’s got 7/5 too many characters; none of them are terrible, in fact they’re all fairly interesting, but we spend so much time juggling them all that I’d have been happier if they’d cut a couple. They bring in heavy fucking hitter actors like Mads Mikkelsen, Forest Whitaker, and Ben Mendelsohn, give them interesting characters to play, criminally underuse them, and then summarily kill them all off without further comment. There’s basically nothing in Rogue One that isn’t done better in Saving Private Ryan
The dog fight in orbit was dope, the Death Star partial fire sequences were cool, Vader killing a bunch of guys was… kinda cool I guess but you shouldn’t really hang an entire movie on one sequence.
It did give us Andor, though, and for that it deserves some credit.