[Melas]

You can’t pretend to like Sci-Fi and then diss both The Day The Earth Stood Still and 2001: A Space Odyssey.

[Jeff Chandler]

You can’t pretend to like Sci-Fi and then diss both The Day The Earth Stood Still and 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The Days the Earth Stood Still were preachy and boring. 2001 was pretty on the wide screen but pointless and boring. They should be avoided unless one is in need of sleep.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

***You can’t pretend to like Sci-Fi and then diss both The Day The Earth Stood Still and 2001: A Space Odyssey.****

I saw them both and didn’t care for them. My idea of Sifi movies is IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA and THE BEAST FROM 20,OOO PHATOMS. Good 1950s is great! Bad sifi is really bad.

Then there is always THE PHANTOM EMPIRE. Gene Autry fights aliens from the underworld.

[FredZarguna]

I actually enjoyed both films in their original openings. The reason was that there was very little technically well crafted Science Fiction entertainment outside of books in those days, and because, well, I was a kid (at least for The Day The Earth Stood Still.)

Revisiting them now, it's quite clear that they don't hold up. The smarmy, smug, superior attitude of Michael Rennie is perfectly acted to convey the smarmy, smug, superior attitude of the writers who apparently don't think the defense of liberty is worth dying -- or even living -- for. Sorry, but the message of the film is clear: the ideological struggle between totalitarianism and freedom is a "petty squabble" to those of us of advanced races (progressive douchebags, wherever in the universe they may be.)

As for 2001, just not a good film. With today's special effects as a backdrop, you go back to it and ask yourself, beyond a nicely done spaceship and a Frankenstein theme that's been done to death what actually is there in this film? Answer: nothing. Arthur C. Clark never impressed me, but the book is actually a good bit better than the movie, which Kubrick ruined because he refused to use the actual ending. So we get this giant embryo out in space getting ready to do ... nothing. In the book at least he averts a nuclear war. Again, nothing but Cold War liberal cliches, but at least he does something. In Kubrick's version we get the usual 60's LSD treatment and the astronaut comes out sucking his thumb. We must agree, I fear, to disagree. 2001 aint makin' my list.

And please don't tell me I "pretend" to like Sci-Fi just because my tastes have matured since adolescence. It also doesn't change my original point: the critics did not love these films because they were science fiction. They loved them because of their liberal themes or their liberal directors, and in spite of them being science fiction. Why do you think Philip K. Dick is Hollywood's favorite Sci-Fi writer?