What single science fiction movie would you rate as the most overrated?
I suspect many will be aghast at my selection but I would nominate 2001 A Space Odyssey. I love HAL, agree the story is solid and have nothing against Kubrick (FMJ might be the best war movie ever) but the movie is just soooo boring outside of the iconic HAL dialogue.
Gotta disagree with you about 2001. I still think it’s the most impressive and serious SF film ever made.
It’s not SF, but within the realm of fantastic cinema I’d say Highlander is overrated. I’ve never understood the love for it.
No aghastness here.
I finally saw Close Encounters of the Third Kind about a year ago, and I was underwhelmed. The ending was anticlimactic and silly, and it took too long to get there. I don’t know whether this is the movie’s fault, or mine, or whether it’s one of those movies where you had to be there at the time and it hasn’t aged well.
Alien.
Ever since the first time I tried to watch it through a million years ago, I could think was that it was the typical 80 cheesy horror movie full of stupid illogical people, that just happened to be on a spaceship this time. And I hate those movies.
Gotta agree with Close Encounters being overrated. I was severely annoyed that the movie ended at the interesting part, which is precisely where The Day the Earth Stood Still STARTED – when the flying saucer lands and opens. CE3K saw this as the climax, as if that answered things, instead of being the catalyst that actually raises questions – Why are they here? What do they want? How do we relate to them, or them to us? The problem, I think, is that CE3K saw the answers as what a lot of fokls assumed – the Aliens are nice warm, fuzzy guys who was to just love and embrace us and take us in their magic ships. It would’ve really thrown an alien monkey wrench in things if the door opened on gthe Mother Ship and, say, Gort walked out. J. Allen Hynek wou;ld’ve been scrambling to figure out how to say “Klaatu Barada Nikto” in musical tones as fast as he could.
I also agree about Alien, which featured a ship full of irrational people and stupid situations. as I’ve said before, I liked it better when it was It! The Terror from Beyond Space.
Both films looked great, and had good directors behind them, but they were really pretty dumb when you thought them through. Give me 2001 any day.
I’ll go with 'The Matrix". Reality Is Just An Illusion! Plus firearms and fancy gymnastics. Wowie. Plus the rightfully disparaged suck-ass ending explanation.
I’ll give an honorable mention to “Blade Runner”, which had a lot silliness, but did offer a visually fantastic future world. (And I haven’t seen the alternate version, which may be a major improvement.)
Or the aliens from Mars Attacks!
Hmmmm…tough decision. Do I go with the Star Trek reboot, or vote for Avatar? The latter at least was pretty, so Star Trek it is!
Alien, obviously. A stupid movie about idiots doing the dumbest thing possible and then screaming when it all goes wrong.
I wish more of Ivan Tors’ films and TV shows had a chance to be considered “overrated” or “underrated.” Sadly, most people today don’t eve know who he was. GOG and RIDERS TO THE STARS were very interesting films at the time because they dealt with “Science Fact.” That is, things that might possibly be able to happen in the future. Ivan Tors was into all that. His shows SCIENCE FICTION THEATER , SEA HUNT, THE MAN & THE CHALLENGE, and others were great examples of this. At the peak of his fame, he was the most successful TV producer in history.
I’m going with the Star Trek reboot. I normally mutter “de gustibus non est disputandum” about such matters, but I really am very, very baffled as to why anyone, least of all Star Trek fans, thought that was a good movie. And yet … 95% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, 91% audience approval. 83 on Metacritic.
I think it was very poor, among the worst Star Trek movies. Not quite as bad as Nemesis but certainly not good.
Mine is a minority opinion. I shall carry the shame to my grave.
I am going to have to agree with CE3K. I would have said Avatar, but I don’t think it’s rated that high by most people.
I do think that 2001 has been put on a higher pedestal than it deserves (it is slooooooow) but it’s still a good movie worthy of praise.
Close Encounters, on the other hand, is both slow and “wooo something is happening but who knows what woooo”. You could replace the last 5 minutes with a pixies instead of aliens and it would be a fantasy movie. If it’s that easy to switch genres it really doesn’t deserve that much praise, IMHO.
I’m a little surprised by mention of Star Trek. I mean, as an old Trekkie, the characterization bothered me, and the “it’s totally canon! We’re papering over everything else” annoyed me, but it was a decent flick and it’s not being upheld as the greatest film of our generation or anything.
Star Trek V.
The OP is looking for “over-rated” films. STV is universally derided as being utter garbage.
Or was that your point? 
Oh, you’re right. In reading the answers, I dumbed down the request in my mind to ‘suckiest sci-fi movie.’
Maybe still most over-rated if ‘rated’ is measured by ticket sales.
On second thought, never mind.
Star Wars.
I was a major Science Fiction fan, but after seeing the original, and being quite severely disappointed, I had no interest in seeing the sequels, still less the prequels. Now I find the internet is rife with fanatical Star Wars fanboys. I don’t get it, even if it is true (as may be) that the original sequels were better than the first movie. It may not be the worst SF movie ever, but it has got to be the most overrated.
I’m gonna have to thrown in a vote for Highlander. Although, to quote Knorf…
Which, is in itself, an awesome motto. I’ve not heard it before, but I’ll be using it from now on! 
I am willing to bet you are not more than 35 years old. Star Wars was the first science fiction movie to tell a story about the future that looked like the future. If you knew what had gone before, just watching Star Wars with your eyes would have been enough to tell you that it was a movie that would change EVERYTHING about the way science fiction is portrayed on the screen. Which it did.
Agree wholeheartedly. I thought that, as a movie, it was so-so, and as a Star Trek movie, it was a major downer. Basically, for the sake of making a neato movie, they destroyed the planet Vulcan! How could any Star Trek fan not leave the theater (or take the DVD out of the player) in a state of shock and mourning, compared with which the ending of Wrath of Khan was a frolic in the meadow?