Full disclosure: I haven't seen either The King's Speech or The Social Network. Nor do I intend to see either. Ever.
The two films are glorified documentaries, based on real events and real people. I make a point not to watch glorified documentaries, especially when I can just read a history book instead.
There are two points I need to make immediately. One, a glitzy heartless CGI-fest is not going to win any critical support from me, and two, that doesn't mean that I refuse to watch films that incorporate historical events; The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, one of the greatest films ever made, was set (with admittedly only marginal accuracy) in the American Civil War, while Apocalypse Now was set in Vietnam. But neither of these were about the historical events; both films merely used the war as a backdrop for the main characters' adventure. The brief to these films' writers was certainly more than "go look up event X in a history book, glorify it a bit, put in a romantic subplot and turn it into a 100-page script."
Now before I forget, Apocalypse Now was based on a novel, and I've got a whole rant about that coming. But Apocalypse Now is significantly divorced from its source material. Unlike, say, Harry Potter, you don't need to read the novel to have half an idea as to what's going on.
Anywho, I thought I'd go ahead and unleash my own version of the Academy Awards. But since honestly Hollywood's output is generally so pathetic, I decided that just focusing on one year would be a pointless exercise. Instead, I'm going to go ahead and list my favorite science-fiction films from the past decade.
Why science fiction? Why not every genre? Well, because outside of science-fiction (and fantasy, but see Disqualification #1), you have The Dark Knight, Toy Story 3, and well, that's about it.
So before I get to naming the big three, let me get some impressive disqualifications out of the way first.
Disqualification #1: The Lord of the Rings Trilogy
Wait, am I serious? Yes, yes I am. While The Lord of the Rings was awesome in every way, it also taught kids that they no longer need to read. Am I being petty? Yes. Yes I am. The music was awesome and the visual effects represented the greatest technological leap forward since an Imperial Star Destroy zoomed over our heads back in 1977. So let's praise LOTR for what it accomplished, but let's not kid ourselves into thinking that it was anything more than an expensive adaptation of an already-existing story.
Disqualification #2: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Even if this hadn't been one of the worst movies I'd actually convinced myself to see this decade, I'd still disqualify it for the exact same reasons as I did The Lord of the Rings. It's an adaptation with bells on. No prize.
I thought about disqualifying all the Star Wars prequels and The Matrix sequels because they aren't self-contained stories, but rather stories split up over multiple movies to sell more tickets and, in Star Wars's case, toys. But they all pretty much sucked, so there.
And now, the list.
Honorary Mention: Star Trek
Star Trek without Shatner? Blasphemy! Well, I mean, TNG and DS9 pulled it off (insert abuse towards Voyager and Enterprise here), so...
What helped this movie tremendously was a) the fact that the writers obviously cared about their source material and weren't just milking it for a quick dime, and b) Leonard Nimoy. What hurt this movie was, well, it didn't really have a heart. The character who gets the biggest Emotional Grief Moment is, well, Spock. Who is an alien. Who's not supposed to show emotions. The film was essentially a glitzy CGI shoot-em-up, but done with enough loving nods to the original show and films (though I do have to say that seeing this film first and knowing what Kirk does with the Kobayashi Maru scenario kind of wrecks part of The Wrath of Khan) to forgive it.
Star Trek was leagues better than the last two Next Generation films, the Star Wars prequels, or the Matrix sequels. But it paled in comparison to each of the next three, which are all so good it was honestly hard to rank them.
Third Place: Wall-E
I adored this film. It's not based on a previous film, novel, comic book, television show, or candy wrapper, so go it. The reason it comes in third is because I felt it was just a tad heavy-handed. Yes, it's a kid's movie so it can't exactly be subtle. But remember the original Toy Story? There were jokes in there that kids didn't get, or at least shouldn't have gotten ("laser envy," anyone?) What I'm saying is that there was stuff for adults in there too. The closest we got with this film was a HAL-9000 knockoff, which admittedly clued us in pretty quickly to who the villain was going to be.
Second Place: Serenity
Yes, not even my die-hard Whedonist sympathies can keep this film in the number-one slot. Much like Wall-E, it's got a heart and a message, and it isn't too subtle either; you can practically hear the teacher at the beginning say "we've got free health care! Whether you want it or not!" Nevertheless, Whedon went out of his way to not make his villains stereotypical space Nazis. "The Alliance is not the Evil Empire," indeed; it's just a bunch of well-intentioned extremists. Not unlike today's politicians. My only real complaint about it is that it works somewhat less as a standalone film than it does as a series finale to Firefly. Still, in the competition of "Feature Films Based on Television Shows," this one trumps Star Trek, a film that had about 3-4 times Serenity's budget. Admit it: you cared a lot more when Wash got skewered then you did when Vulcan did the big firework.
First Place: Inception
Inception ranks first on my list partly because, while I'm a diehard Whedonist and was thus inclined to overlook Serenity's shortcomings, I actually went into Inception prepared to pick it apart as The Matrix with just a slightly different premise. I was biased against it, but I came out quite liking it. Yes, it's a spectacle, but it also presents an unfolding and deeply captivating story. It's not hard to believe that this film was a decade in the making; from my perspective, it seems to have more in common with Memento than The Dark Knight. This film rates above the other two because: there's no obnoxious message being beaten into you with a sledgehammer, there's no need to watch 14 hours of supplementary materials to get the whole story, and the main character is truly three dimensional, as opposed to a love-struck mime or a version of Han Solo that actually does shoot first.
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