Neil deGrasse Tyson may not be a film crit­ic. But if you watch the video above from his Youtube chan­nel StarTalk Plus, you’ll see that — to use one of his own favorite locu­tions — he loves him a good sci­ence fic­tion movie. Giv­en his pro­fes­sion­al cre­den­tials as an astro­physi­cist and his high pub­lic pro­file as a sci­ence com­mu­ni­ca­tor, it will hard­ly come as a sur­prise that he dis­plays a cer­tain sen­si­tiv­i­ty to cin­e­mat­ic depar­tures from sci­en­tif­ic fact. His per­son­al low water­mark on that rubric is the 1979 Dis­ney pro­duc­tion The Black Hole, which moves him to declare, “I don’t think they had a physi­cist in sight of any scene that was script­ed, pre­pared, and filmed for this movie.”

As for Tyson’s “sin­gle favorite movie of all time,” that would be The Matrix, despite how the humans-as-bat­ter­ies con­cept cen­tral to its plot vio­lates the laws of ther­mo­dy­nam­ics. (Over time, that par­tic­u­lar choice has been revealed as a typ­i­cal exam­ple of med­dling by stu­dio exec­u­tives, who thought audi­ences would­n’t under­stand the orig­i­nal scrip­t’s con­cept of humans being used for decen­tral­ized com­put­ing.) The Matrix receives an S, Tyson’s high­est grade, which beats out even the A he grants to Rid­ley Scot­t’s The Mar­t­ian, from 2015, “the most sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly accu­rate film I have ever wit­nessed” — except for the dust storm that strands its pro­tag­o­nist on Mars, whose low air den­si­ty means we would feel even its high­est winds as “a gen­tle breeze.”

You might expect Tyson to poke these sorts of holes in every sci-fi movie he sees, no mat­ter how obvi­ous­ly schlocky. And indeed he does, though not with­out also show­ing a healthy respect for the fun of film­go­ing. Even Michael Bay’s noto­ri­ous­ly pre­pos­ter­ous Armaged­don, whose oil-drillers-defeat-an-aster­oid con­ceit was mocked on set by star Ben Affleck, receives a gen­tle­man’s C. While it “vio­lates more laws of physics per minute than any oth­er film ever made,” Tyson explains (not­ing it’s since been out­done by Roland Emmerich’s Moon­fall), “I don’t care that it vio­lat­ed the law of physics, because it did­n’t care.” For a more sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly respectable alter­na­tive, con­sid­er Mimi Led­er’s Deep Impact, the less­er-known of 1998’s two Hol­ly­wood aster­oid-dis­as­ter spec­ta­cles.

If you’re think­ing of hold­ing a Tyson-approved sci-fi film fes­ti­val at home, you’ll also want to include The Qui­et Earth, The Ter­mi­na­tor, Back to the Future, Con­tact, and Grav­i­ty, not to men­tion the nine­teen-fifties clas­sics The Day the Earth Stood Still and The Blob. But what­ev­er else you screen, the expe­ri­ence would be incom­plete with­out 2001: A Space Odyssey, Stan­ley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke’s joint vision of man in space. “Am I on LSD, or is the movie on LSD?” he asks. “One of us is on LSD for the last twen­ty min­utes of the film.” But “what mat­ters is how much influ­ence this film had on every­thing — on every­thing — and how much atten­tion they gave to detail.” If you’ve ever seen 2001 before, go into it with an open mind — and bear in it the fact that, as Tyson under­scores, it was all made a year before we reached the moon.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Arthur C. Clarke Cre­ates a List of His 12 Favorite Sci­ence-Fic­tion Movies (1984)

How Georges Méliès A Trip to the Moon Became the First Sci-Fi Film & Changed Cin­e­ma For­ev­er (1902)

Blade Run­ner: The Pil­lar of Sci-Fi Cin­e­ma that Siskel, Ebert, and Stu­dio Execs Orig­i­nal­ly Hat­ed

Under­stand­ing Chris Marker’s Rad­i­cal Sci-Fi Film La Jetée: A Study Guide Dis­trib­uted to High Schools in the 1970s

Andrei Tarkovsky Calls Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey a “Pho­ny” Film “With Only Pre­ten­sions to Truth”

A Con­cise Break­down of How Time Trav­el Works in Pop­u­lar Movies, Books & TV Shows

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Denis Vil­leneu­ve’s recent film adap­ta­tion of Dune is gen­er­al­ly con­sid­ered to be supe­ri­or to the late David Lynch’s, from 1984 — though even accord­ing to many of Lynch’s fans, it could hard­ly have been worse. In a 1996 piece for Pre­miere mag­a­zine, David Fos­ter Wal­lace described Dune as “unques­tion­ably the worst movie of Lynch’s career,” not least due to the mis­cast­ing of the direc­tor him­self: “Eraser­head had been one of those sell-your-own-plas­ma-to-buy-the-film-stock mas­ter­pieces, with a tiny and large­ly unpaid cast and crew. Dune, on the oth­er hand, had one of the biggest bud­gets in Hol­ly­wood his­to­ry,” mar­shaled by super-pro­duc­er Dino De Lau­ren­ti­is. But could even a mas­ter block­buster crafts­man have made cin­e­mat­ic sense of Frank Her­bert’s orig­i­nal sto­ry, “which even in the nov­el is con­vo­lut­ed to the point of pain”?

With its two parts hav­ing been released in the twen­ty-twen­ties, Vil­leneu­ve’s Dune prac­ti­cal­ly cries out for Youtube video essays com­par­ing it to Lynch’s ver­sion. The one above from Archer Green first high­lights their dif­fer­ences through one scene that was mem­o­rable in the nov­el and both films: when, being put to the test by the Rev­erend Moth­er Gaius Helen Mohi­am, the young hero Paul Atrei­des, played in the old Dune by Kyle MacLach­lan and the new one by Tim­o­th­ée Cha­la­met, inserts his hand into a box that inflicts extreme pain. Super­fi­cial­ly sim­i­lar though they may appear, the two sequences reveal defin­ing qual­i­ties of each pic­ture’s look and feel — Vil­leneu­ve’s is shad­owy and full of ancient-look­ing details, while Lynch’s looks like a piece of retro-futur­is­tic Jacobean the­ater — as well as the con­trast between how they dra­ma­tize the source mate­r­i­al.

The new Dune is “a very mod­ern-look­ing film that goes for a real­is­tic and ground­ed aes­thet­ic, and it feels more like a seri­ous pres­tige sci-fi movie,” says Archer Green, “where­as old Dune is more sur­re­al­ist: it’s elab­o­rate, grungy, and ulti­mate­ly quite over the top.” Their hav­ing been made in dif­fer­ent eras explains some of this, but so does their hav­ing been made at dif­fer­ent scales of time. Viewed back-to-back, Vil­leneu­ve’s Dune movies run just over five and a half hours. Lynch open­ly admit­ted that he’d “sold out” his right to the final cut in exchange for a major Hol­ly­wood project, but he also sel­dom failed to men­tion that the stu­dio demand­ed that the film be “squeezed” to two hours and 17 min­utes in order to guar­an­tee a cer­tain min­i­mum num­ber of dai­ly screen­ings.

This pres­sure to get the run­time down must have moti­vat­ed some of what even in the nine­teen-eight­ies felt old-fash­ioned about Lynch’s Dune, like its extend­ed “expo­si­tion dumps” and its “hav­ing char­ac­ters’ thoughts audi­bi­lized on the sound­track while the cam­era zooms in on the char­ac­ter mak­ing a think­ing face,” as Wal­lace put it. The film’s fail­ure “could eas­i­ly have turned Lynch into an embit­tered hack, doing effects-inten­sive gorefests for com­mer­cial stu­dios” or “sent him scur­ry­ing to the safe­ty of acad­eme, mak­ing obscure, plot­less 16mm’s for the pipe-and-beret crowd.” Instead, he took the pal­try deal sub­se­quent­ly offered him by De Lau­ren­ti­is and made Blue Vel­vet, whose suc­cess he rode to become a major cul­tur­al fig­ure. In a way, Lynch’s Dune fias­co gave Cha­la­met the even­tu­al oppor­tu­ni­ty to become the defin­i­tive Paul Atrei­des — and MacLach­lan, to become Spe­cial Agent Dale Coop­er.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Side-by-Side, Shot-by-Shot Com­par­i­son of Denis Villeneuve’s 2020 Dune and David Lynch’s 1984 Dune

Hear Bri­an Eno’s Con­tri­bu­tion to the Sound­track of David Lynch’s Dune (1984)

The Dune Col­or­ing & Activ­i­ty Books: When David Lynch’s 1984 Film Cre­at­ed Count­less Hours of Pecu­liar Fun for Kids

The Glos­sary Uni­ver­sal Stu­dios Gave Out to the First Audi­ences of David Lynch’s Dune (1984)

The 14-Hour Epic Film, Dune, That Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky, Pink Floyd, Sal­vador Dalí, Moe­bius, Orson Welles & Mick Jag­ger Nev­er Made

The Wide-Rang­ing Cre­ative Genius of David Lynch (RIP): Dis­cov­er His Films, Music Videos, Car­toons, Com­mer­cials, Paint­ings, Pho­tog­ra­phy & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.