Celebrity astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has never been shy about expressing his opinion about movies on X/Twitter — and, specifically, weighing in as to whether they got the scientific elements right or not. On a recent episode of his show StarTalk, meanwhile, he decided to actually share a detailed list of the sci-fi movies that he thinks are the best of the best, detailing what they got right, what they missed the mark on, and why some of them are so good that they deserve a “hall pass” for any errors.
His picks are conventional in some respects while also surprising in others. For example, he was surprisingly underwhelmed by Denis Villeneuve’s 2016 movie Arrival, in which mankind makes contact with aliens in a film of breathtaking scope and pathos. Tyson, though, carped that if aliens really did arrive on Earth, we’d be better served by greeting them with a cryptologist rather than the linguist played by Amy Adams in the film.