Brand New Bracket Challenge: The Greatest Science Fiction Film Of All Time

In our newest bracket challenge, we're winnowing 64 slices of science fiction cinema down to one grand champion. Join us as we begin our quest to crown the greatest sci-fi film of all time.

It’s time to begin the newest installment of our famed Bracket Challenge™. In this go-round we are lining up 64 slices of science fiction cinema to crown the greatest Sci-Fi film of all time.

Once the action gets rolling, things will proceed much as they have in past bracket challenges. Each week will feature a series of matchups for you to vote on. Over the course of several months, and matchup by matchup, we’ll work our way down to crown one grand champion.

It’s highly unlikely that anyone in our audience has seen all 64 of the films on this list. I know that I sure haven’t. And while I have seen the vast majority of the titles that made the tournament, there are a number of these movies that I will need to rewatch or screen for the first time.

To make sure that we are all making informed decisions in the voting booth during the Bracket Challenge™, I’ll be presenting a set of four matchups each week with a synopsis, a trailer, and available streaming options so you can have an opportunity view the films before you vote. This approach should allow our community a chance to view these films and take their time to vote on particular matchups. It also gives our community the opportunity to discuss these films in a bit more depth, and to use the comments section to make a case as to why their film of choice should make a deep run into the tourney.

Let’s begin with the full bracket and seedings before I introduce this week’s set of matchups. My extensive research into what films would make the tournament, and how the seeding would go was eventually built around a series of a few greatest science fiction film lists published in the last few years.

The primary sourcing for the seedings came from a terrific list ranking the best Sci-Fi of all time at Time Out. Always wary to pull too devoutly from one set of critics or from just one publication, I also heavily considered similar lists from Rolling Stone, Empire, and Entertainment Weekly.

In addition to the lists mentioned above, I consulted with a number of other folks who have extensive knowledge on the subject. I’ll refrain from outing them here, but rest assured that I did get input from a handful of learned film scholars as well as opinions from average movie goers, each of varying age and personal history. The seedings in these sorts of tournaments are never going to satisfy the entire crowd, but hopefully you can see that this effort was constructed with great care and consideration.

Your top 4 seeds are

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey

2. Blade Runner

3. Close Encounters Of The Third Kind

4. Alien

   

Amongst this field of 64 stone cold sci-fi classics you’ll find multiple entries from directing titans like Spielberg, Kubrick, Cameron, Carpenter, Tarkovsky, and Villeneuve. While many of these films play as straight dramas with tinges of science fiction, you’ll also find heavy traces of noir, horror, psychological thrillers, spaghetti westerns, samurai epics, mysteries, and even the occasional dash of comedy.

Here is your field of 64 films vying to become the greatest science fiction film of all time.

This week’s quartet of matchups features a genre-defining film, an early classic, the first Spielberg offering, decoding alien languages and a lot more. Let’s get into the matchups.

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Voting will remain open until Tuesday, June 24. Four more first round matchups will be open for voting on Wednesday, June 25. Make sure to subscribe to get regular updates.

Cheers,
Matty C