The 10 Best Sci Fi Movies of All Time
Aliens, robots, outer space, future Earths, time travel, exquisitely posed questions about the place of humanity within the grand cosmic void -- science fiction is about the intimacy of exploration and the enormity of ideas.
Ever since 1902's A Trip to the Moon, directed by Georges Méliès, writers and directors have sought to transfer their exciting hot takes on mankind's ultimate fate to the big screen. With that in mind, we've scooped up the 10 best sci-fi films for your approval/outrage.
Our selection process? Well, aside from being just a great piece of moviemaking, the top 25 entries required a significant impact on the genre, stories and ideas that raised the bar on what good storytelling can be, pop-culture reaction, originality, and of course editor's choice.
You can also take a look at our list of the best sci-fi movies on Netflix for a more recent selection or check out the biggest upcoming sci-fi movies in 2024.
10. Forbidden Planet (1956)
Where to Watch: Fubo, MGM+
Would you like some Shakespeare with your sci-fi? Good, because that's what this 1956 trendsetter is -- the Bard's The Tempest, only relocated from an isolated island to an isolated planet. Also altered from the original play? Robby the Robot has a bigger part.
We typically think of sci-fi movies from the 1950s as being cheap or B-grade, but Forbidden Planet is nothing of the kind. A big-budget tale with amazing visual effects that still work today, shot in glorious color and CinemaScope, the picture is like an old fresco from the Sistine Chapel -- curiously ancient and not-of-this-time, but undeniably beautiful and mesmerizing. Also, again with robots.
Leslie Nielsen plays the commander of the Earth ship C-57D, a sort of proto-Captain Kirk in what is in many ways a nascent version of the Star Trek scenario (Gene Roddenberry would acknowledge his debt to this film in the years after that franchise's success). Finding only the mysterious Dr. Morbius (Walter Pidgeon) and his daughter Altaira (Anne Francis) on the planet Altair IV, Nielsen's character eventually learns that there is one other resident of this world... the Monster from the Id!
9. The Thing (1982)
Where to Watch: Rentable on most platforms
An alien with the ability to take the form of any life that it absorbs infiltrates an Antarctic research base, and soon the 12-man team that works there is up to their eyeballs in slaughter, suspicion and paranoia. John Carpenter's best film has itself planted right in the middle between the horror movie and sci-fi movie lines.
As a sci-fi film, a cross between Alien and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the movie succeeds at asking the question "Who Goes There?", much like its literary source material did, by forcing our survivors to figure out who they really are as The Thing puts their humanity to the test. The tension escalates and Kurt Russell gives one of his best performances as team leader MacReady.
The practical special effects hold up better than you'd think, and we defy you to not have your mind blown when the head of a victim sheers itself from its burning corpse and spider-walks away. If you haven't seen this movie, remedy that now.
8. Planet of the Apes (1968)
Where to Watch: Starz apps
Spawning four sequels, two reboots, a TV series, a cartoon, comics, toys and every kind of marketing tie-in you can dream of, the original 1968 Planet of the Apes isn't just a great sci-fi film, it's also one of the very first genre franchises to come out of Hollywood.
The wonderfully misanthropic George Taylor (Charlton Heston) heads into outer space to get away from all those damned dirty hippies in the far-off future of 1972, only to wind up living among all those damned dirty apes in the far-far-off future of the 40th century. Perhaps the apes makeup and concepts of the film have worn thin by today's standards, but this was state of the art stuff back in the day. A movie where apes evolved from men? There's got to be an answer!
The answer is simple: Whereas this first film is the most polished, highbrow and grandiose of the original series, the sequels that followed all added value to the overall concept, never resting on their monkeyshines laurels but instead furthering and expanding upon the ideas of the original picture. But the 1968 film, with its upside-down world social commentary and Big Ideas about science, religion and history, is where it all started. And where it will all start again and again and again...
7. Metropolis (1927)
Where to Watch: Fubo, Hoopla, Pluto TV (w/ ads), Crackle (w/ ads)
Filmmakers around the world were still working to understand the complexities of cinema in the 1920s. It took a visionary director like Fritz Lang to provide early evidence of the storytelling heights film could aspire to.
Metropolis is not just a great sci-fi film, it's easily one of the best films of the silent era. The movie presents a future society divided by class warfare, with the rich elite living in the towering skyscrapers above, and the lowly workers toiling below. As a relic of the German Expressionism movement, Metropolis shows impressive visual design and effects work.
The film continues to make an impact, and has inspired countless other sci-fi projects onscreen and off. A longer cut of the film was also discovered in 2008 in Argentina; it seems Metropolis is one of those rare films that truly does get better and more relevant with age.
6. Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
Where to Watch: Disney+
The Empire Strikes Back takes the "escape your hometown" joyride aspects of its groundbreaking predecessor and adds an adult sensibility and thematic through-line that brings a real depth to George Lucas' galaxy far, far away. While one hesitates to use the well-worn terms "dark" and "stylish" when describing director Irvin Kershner's installment in the series, the film nonetheless is the darkest and most stylish of the Star Wars movies.
Han Solo's uncertain fate, Luke's terrible realization about his father, Lando's betrayal, the defeat of the Rebels at Hoth... these were all gut-punch moments that had us reeling then and, in some ways, still do, even if the soft-pedaling of Return of the Jedi undoes so much of Empire's hard work. But that's a discussion for a different list.
5. The Matrix (1999)
Where to Watch: Max
The Matrix, from the inventive boundary-pushing Wachowskis, captured the imaginations of sci-fi lovers everywhere and offered them a type of film they hadn't seen before. Though the franchise never became the "new star Wars" everyone hailed it as at the outset, the first film of the trilogy remains a savage and nihilistic roller coaster of butt-kicking awesomeness.
This Keanu Reeves movie is brimming with all sorts of philosophical questions. What is reality? Is the world around us an illusion? Whose kung fu is strongest? The film yearned to be more intelligent and thoughtful than the average action movie, yet it was never afraid to put aside the musing for some well-choreographed bullet-dodging and martial arts mayhem. The Matrix's slow-motion combat ballet inspired legions of imitators, but none have lived up to the original, not even the Matrix sequels.
4. Alien (1979)
Where to Watch: Hulu
The tagline "In Space, No One Can Hear You Scream" defined the Alien film series. It was Ridley Scott's movie that first pit Warrant Officer Ripley against the acid-bleeding xenomorph, and while on the surface Alien is a "monster in the house" creature feature, here the house is a spaceship and the monster is a mouth-tongued beastie that lays eggs and uses people's chests as doors.
The fun here is that the science fiction goes less Star Trek and Star Wars, and more gritty, which makes the scares more urgent, more real. This is a future where ships look more like oil derricks than the Enterprise. Putting a blue-collar crew in the middle of our first truly great "monster in space" movie created a new subset of the genre, one that Hollywood has milked ever since with less-than-consistent results.
Alien changed the careers of both its director and leading lady. It introduced one of the best movie monsters ever. And it reminded us how great the genre can be when it combines expert storytelling with new and different concepts. And mouth tongues.
3. Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977)
Where to Watch: Disney+
Yes, Empire has AT-AT battles and Boba Fett and the iconic "I am your father" twist. But in terms of pure science fiction action and adventure, nothing can top the original Star Wars.
A New Hope wowed viewers from the opening shot of the Star Destroyer pursuing the fleeing Rebel ship to the final ceremony where Luke Skywalker and Han Solo were crowned as galactic heroes. In between these two points was everything a sci-fi/fantasy fan could hope for: humble heroes pulled into larger worlds, roguish scoundrels, princesses in peril, a menagerie of weird and wonderful aliens, and epic space battles that held the fates of planets in the balance.
With A New Hope, George Lucas took everything that was great about the classic adventure serials of the early 20th century and updated that with a modern flourish. It is not the most complex or dense of the Star Wars movies. It's simply the most pure fun anyone can hope to have watching a movie.
2. Blade Runner (1982)
Where to Watch: Rentable on most platforms
A future built on a science that allows men to play God. Their creation? An artificial intelligence more human than human, forced into slave labor and born with a ticking-clock expiration date. It is up to an ex-cop by the name of Deckard, an ex-Blade Runner, to put down a group of these renegade Replicants. This is the bare-bones context in which Ridley Scott's masterpiece resides. Surrounding that core conceit is the stuff that great sci-fi is made of, moral and ethical themes that are not easy to navigate and are even more difficult to satisfy dramatically on screen.
Using Philip K. Dick's source material as a blueprint to build a detective story around that which wants to be about more than just Deckard catching his prey, Scott effortlessly knows how to tell this story -- you feel it in every shot, every cut, every music cue. Scott and his production team create a future Los Angeles built on neon and skyscrapers that stab a permanent rain-streaked sky. From the top down, Blade Runner is film noir science fiction -- as unique and alive as the androids its protagonist must retire. The film's impact on visual storytelling cannot go unmentioned.
Blade Runner is also a classic and triumph of the genre because no singular viewing delivers the same experience; you'll notice a new detail here or catch a different subtext in a line of dialogue there. You'll think you get the message of the movie, but then you realize you're just touching the surface. It may a take a few more years and a touch more hindsight for Blade Runner 2049 to crack this list, but Denis Villeneuve's sequel, 35-years after the fact, is also a visual feast that expertly expands on the original.
1. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Where to Watch: Max
Stanley Kubrick's 1968 epic existentialist arthouse addition to the space exploration genre may be light on actual "story," but it's way high on hypnotic splendor, standing tall as one of the major artistic works of the 20th century.
Divided into four main parts (the apes, Heywood Floyd's mission to the moon, the Discovery One's Jupiter flight, and the LSD finale), the film's plot in an extreme nutshell is about an alien monolith that is discovered by astronauts, and how it leads to a close encounter of the third kind and beyond. Oh, it's also about the evolution of man from ape to Something Else.
Technically masterful and innovative, thematically challenging and enthralling, visually and aurally exquisite and unforgettable, 2001 is everything a great sci-fi movie should be. But don't take our word for it: Pop a stress pill some time and check it out yourself.