In every sci-fi film ever

25. White walls.

26. visual references to either the Wild West or Film Noir

27. Chinese merchants

28. Neon signs in Japanese, even though the film is set in a predominantly English speaking country.

flamethrowers as standard-issue gear

30. a diner

31. complete absence of institutional racism

32. Computers are controlled using some massively impractical interface involving hand gestures.

33. curved corridors

34. funny hair-dos

35. simple devices replaced with more complicated, energy-hungry devices

36. Shiny chrome android that can't pick anything up or do any kind of physical work, so it might as well have been a grey box on wheels.

37. Surveillance cameras everywhere.

38. escape pods

39. sleeping cubicles

38. All pop music a kitsch rehash of some genre from the 1950s thru 80s

41. Electronics surplus store owned by a shop keeper who seems to be actively trying to put people off from buying anything by being rude and unpleasant.

42. Robot that communicates with bleeps and bloops when it could just as easily have a proper voice.

43. Alien race that all dress like Earth Wind & Fire in the 70's.

^^^ wd watch a movie about an alien race that was Earth Wind & Fire tbh

44. Supposedly violent and dangerous street gang who look like a bunch of stage school kids going on a trip to the funfair.

45. aliens kill people in a rape-y way for some reason DO U SEE?

46. Bizarre future sport that's a cross between BMX, basketball, and paintballing.

47. Public videophone booths.

48. contract killer/drug smuggler with a heart of gold

49. The alien sidekick character has some bizarre allergy to water/orange juice/hummous, that turns out to be important at some critical point in the movie.

50. Small child who is a computer genius.

51. Audio surveillance bug that has a huge flashing light on it.

52. Bomb has bright red numbers counting down to detonation, and beeps every second.

53. Alien character corrects well known human scientist on some aspect of quantum physics.

54. this guy:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-pvnRmfPyLCk/T6_oucuOS-I/AAAAAAAAHHk/-JpPCC7WepU/s320/That-Guy-Michael-Ironside-Free-Willy.jpg

55. Character named after sci-fi author most of the audience aren't familiar with.

Sentient onboard ship's computer with variegated moral compass

57. Thin weedy looking evil dude turns out to be super strong and easily beats the shit out of the hero and his muscular partner.

58. Stripperific female character turns out to be highly dangerous killdroid.

59. Tiny gun that can blow massive holes through concrete walls, demolish city blocks, etc..

^"NOW THAT'S WHAT I'M TALKIN' 'BOUT!"

60. Global mega corporations with names in the format '<Japanese name> <Hispanic name>'.

61. "...but then, what IS... reality? Is it for US to tell them what it really is?..."

62. biologist so impressed by alien capabilities that she urges her shell-shocked crewmates not to kill it

63. Prominently displayed logo of company that has since gone out of business.

64. All important character names begin with Qua- sound.

65. All important character names end with coughing-up-a-hairball sound.

66. Alien speaks with exaggerated Russian accent.

67. Place names have a number randomly tagged onto the end, ie, "Welcome to the city of Manchester 5!".

68. Name of future city is just the name of a real life present day city with 'New' in front of it, ie, 'New Boston', 'New Berlin', 'New New York'.

69. pod head + wiggly appendages + spindly exoskeleton = horrific, unknowable alienness

70. tall, elegant alien slowly tilts head to the side, radiating compassion

palms gradually extend outwards, a gesture of pure peace and goodwill

71. more blinking lights than is conceivably necessary

72. some kind of monk

222. Someone is having a game of chess (possibly with a future/space twist).

223. "Oh, my true form would be too strange for your human eyes. What you see now is mere illusion... I can take any form. Perhaps you might prefer ~this~ one. Or maybe ~this~... is more to your liking...?"

loved when South Park parodied that one in their Walmart episode, with that man they had embodying 'the Heart of Walmart' simply changing hats

BEMBTE

85. city of the future resembles 20th century community college campus designed in the brutalist style

― slugbuggy, Sunday, January 6, 2013 1:11 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

love love love this one, keep idly kicking it around as a pretense for a dissertation after watching "Warrior of the Lost World," shot largely in Rome's suburban Corviale housing complex which was still under construction at the time. (Plus some scattered office buildings and stuff.) Would love to know more of the story behind that. When they got permission, were the authorities like, "sure, we'd love to see our bright new social-democratic mega-project represented as a dystopian nightmare-scape occupied by faceless uniformed techno-fascists! And Donald Pleasance!"

Wasn't "Conquest of the Planet of the Apes"- the fourth one, I think- shot in a section of Century City, LA that looked like that?

137. A character cites three historical examples, two of which are from real history, followed by a made-up one from our hypothetical future.

― abanana, Monday, 7 January 2013 03:49 (5 hours ago) Permalink

^good one!

Classic example is the original Star Trek ep "Court Martial" where Kirk is on trial. His lawyer's closing statement goes on about human laws and rights throughout the ages: the Code of Hammurabi, the Magna Carta, the US constitution, the Martian declaration of independence and the "Statutes of Alpha 3"

"The Savage Curtain. " It was Colonel Green, and Kahless the Klingon, not Attila.

First episode of TOS I ever remember seeing.

Oh, good find on Conquest of the Planet of the Apes! UC Irvine campus, apparently.

http://ucisca.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/s01585_007.jpg

And didn't Logan's Run use the Dallas city hall as the above-ground world?

http://www.bluffton.edu/~sullivanm/texas/dallas/cityhall/angledistant.jpg

224. Atmospheric report deems planet's air conveniently Earth-like, breathable.

137. A character cites three historical examples, two of which are from real history, followed by a made-up one from our hypothetical future.

― abanana, Monday, 7 January 2013 03:49 (5 hours ago) Permalink

^good one!

Classic example is the original Star Trek ep "Court Martial" where Kirk is on trial. His lawyer's closing statement goes on about human laws and rights throughout the ages: the Code of Hammurabi, the Magna Carta, the US constitution, the Martian declaration of independence and the "Statutes of Alpha 3"

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FamousFamousFictional

225. Helmets and the taking off of them

Thought this thread revival was for this twitter:
https://twitter.com/HardSciFiMovies

(the SF film equivalent of Make a Song Title More Reasonable )

Classic example is the original Star Trek ep "Court Martial" where Kirk is on trial. His lawyer's closing statement goes on about human laws and rights throughout the ages: the Code of Hammurabi, the Magna Carta, the US constitution, the Martian declaration of independence and the "Statutes of Alpha 3"

Watching wing commander, came here to post "unguided hyperspace jumps" and it's the first post in the thread! What a terrible movie.

* heroes sentenced to work in hellish outer-space mines
* planet-overthrowing rebellion consists, as far as we can see, of eight (8) people in random mad-max getup living in one (1) cave
* life-sucking/parasitic/zombie creature that scientists gradually realize is composed of pure energy

A+

lol

Maybe also the triumph of humans vs said protean energy entity (HAL?) vis a vis man’s “humanity,” emotion, instincts, perseverance

Right. Also

Strategic location of and destruction of alien power supply unveils these pretentious, often toga-wearing interstellar intellectuals to be in fact some kind of puny, looked-down-upon life form, some sort of street pigeons of space.

Earlier tonight overheard my girlfriend, an addictive consumer of junk sci fi, angrily exclaim from the next room:

“Come ON! Why is it always a HIVE mind??”

You want maybe a Hadoop Mind?

226 alien looking exactly like a human except with e.g. blue or orange skin

227 puzzle, code, language or devastating situation barely solvable using current Earth technology within 1-24 hours

232. As plot is stalling out, supporting scientist character pops in to report that they've finished running some tests on the creature, comatose survivor, mysterious signal, or strange energy pulse they picked up from the spaceship earlier. They don't quite know what to make of it, but the heroes had better come take a look.
232a. The comatose survivor has finally woken up and is acting very strangely...

233. Breathless back-of-envelope calculations of how quickly a creature that multiplies at this rate could spread to cover the planet.

234 Female 'other' (alien, robot, whatever) turns out to be evil.