Rotten Tomatoes, the movie review aggregator site that gave us the list of 93 Best and Worst Comic Book Movies has gone and created a list of the 100 Best Reviewed Sci-Fi Movies… ever. Basically, it created a weighted scoring system to reward movies for A) having a large number of reviews (they’re mainstream, wide-release films) and B) those reviews being positive. The result is a muddled, largely useless mess of mass-appeal winning out over true high-quality science fiction. For example…

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (#69) beats out Return of the Jedi (#87)? C’mon, the Ewoks weren’t that bad. Galaxy Quest (#13) beats out every Star Trek film it set out to mock? Do critics really hate Trekkies that much? The fact that Back to the Future (#22) beats out Blade Runner (#36) should tell you all you need to know about what the average movie reviewer is looking for in a science-fiction film.

When we finally round into the top 10, we find Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Ridley Scott, and James Cameron all represented — but not necessarily for their best works — and sharing digs with some unlikely (though not necessarily unwelcome) newcomers. What’s really on display, however, is the blatant disconnect between hard-core sci-fi fans — who would never have come up with these results — and movie critics, many of whom wish they never had to review “mere” sci-fi in the first place.

Rotten Tomatoes Top 10 Best Reviewed Sci-Fi Movies

  1. E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial
  2. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
  3. Metropolis
  4. Alien
  5. Minority Report
  6. The Empire Strikes Back
  7. Children of Men
  8. The Host
  9. Star Wars
  10. Aliens

So, anybody else got a problem with this?