The summer blockbuster season is now well on its way and considering all of the thunder gods, mermaids, mutants, and Johnny Depps flying around we can’t help but jabber on about SFF movies.
In that spirit, we’re happy to announce the final results of the Tor.com Decade’s Best Science Fiction/Fantasy Movies Viewer’s Poll!
More than 200 of you cast nearly 3500 votes over the course of seven days in April 2011 for over 400 movies, and from that we shook out 12 movies (more on that in a bit) that the science fiction and fantasy fans of Tor.com feel are the best movies of the past 11 years*.
*Hereby known as a “Tor.com Decade.”
In the same manner as our Best SFF Novels of the Decade Poll, we’ll be rolling out appreciations of these movies over the course of this week. Below the cut, take a look at the best SFF movies of this millennium!
The Top Ten:
The top ten Best SFF Movies of the Decade, chosen by Tor.com popular vote:
- The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring – 172
- The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King – 151
- The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers – 147
- Serenity – 107
- Inception – 92
- WALL-E – 88
- Pan’s Labyrinth – 80
- The Dark Knight – 78
- Spirited Away – 67
- District 9 67
- Moon 66
- Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind 60
We may need to get our abacus serviced because that top ten sequence includes twelve movies! The decision behind this was mostly editorial, as Kate Nepveu’s Lord of the Rings Reread have already covered the individual movies extensively here on Tor.com. (And quite recently, as well.) But we’ve never looked at the film trilogy as one work before.
This also opened up two slots to talk about Moon and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, two very interesting entries in the Best SFF Movie Poll!
The Appreciations:
The Best SFF Movie Poll is a good deal more lighthearted than our Best SFF Novel Poll, and it’s in that spirit that we sought out some of our best bloggers to share their excitement over the top 12 movies:
The Lord of the Rings: An Appreciation by Kate Nepveu
Serenity: An Appreciation by Rajan Khanna
Inception: An Appreciation by Danny Bowes
WALL-E: An Appreciation by Bridget McGovern
Pan’s Labyrinth: An Appreciation by Mike Perschon
The Dark Knight: An Appreciation by Steven Padnick
Spirited Away: An Appreciation by Matt London
District 9: An Appreciation by Emmet Asher-Perrin
Moon: An Appreciation by the rejectionist
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: An Appreciation by Ryan Britt
The Data:
You can download a spreadsheet of the results here, sorted by year, with write-in votes added in at the bottom. There’s not too much data forthcoming from this poll, but we did find it interesting that the Best SFF Movies of the Decade skew in favor of science fiction, while the Best SFF Novels of the Decade skewed towards fantasy. There’s an interesting argument to make there, we think. Is science fiction easier to convey in film? Does it lend itself to more variety in regards to movie plots?
Thanks for voting in the poll! We hope you enjoy the results and appreciations!
