70) The Andromeda Strain
One sci-fi author who’s among the best for creating material that’s perfect for the big screen is Michael Crichton. The Andromenda Strain may not have the fan base or the excitement value of Jurassic Park, but it’s still an incredible piece of sci-fi horror.
And yes, horror is the proper way to describe it, as the situation created in the film is up there with the tensest of horror. Andromeda is so terrifying because there is almost nothing that can control it. Watching it reproduce in a vacuum when exposed the sort of radiation that should have easily killed it is terrifying enough in itself. Watching the cast mirror those feelings only increases the horror of the situation.
The visual effects in this one are absolutely stunning as well. The film was nominated for Best Art Direction, and the special effects were done by Douglas Trumbull, whose other credits include 2001: A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, and Blade Runner. So yeah, a pretty solid combination right there.
This one is a lot slower than many great sci-fi films, but when done right, as this film is, the pace simply increases the tension. With its smart dialogue and terrifying premise, The Andromeda Strain is definitely deserving of a spot amongst the greatest science fiction movies of all-time.
69) Monsters
Gareth Edwards’ directorial debut, set in a future where giant extraterrestrials freely roam the quarantined US-Mexico border region, is all the more impressive for its ultra-low budget and crew, weighing in at less than $500,000 and 7, respectively. The film follows a photojournalist (Scoot McNairy) who travels to Mexico in order to bring his boss’s daughter (Whitney Able) back to the US, only to find that the only way to the border is to hitchhike through alien-infested areas.
Edwards knows how to get great performances out of his actors, and the real-life romance between McNairy and Able (now married) makes their on-screen relationship all the more entertaining to watch. But let’s get to the sci-fi.
Monsters is most thematically similar to District 9 out of all of the films on this list – both are fresh takes on the alien invasion trope that analyze humanity’s reaction to alien life while making a statement about current issues. In District 9, it was racism, and here, it’s immigration. The film’s aliens are very much visitors to Earth – they hitched a ride on a NASA probe to one of Jupiter’s moons – but the US government greets them with a massive wall, missiles, and attack helicopters, convinced of their danger to the American way of life. It’s worth noting that the aliens are never seen to attack humans without provocation in the film.
Edwards balances a constant sense of suspense with occasional flashes of wonder whenever the titular monsters are glimpsed on screen. One of the film’s final scenes, in which one magnificent alien is seen seemingly dancing with another, is almost heartbreakingly beautiful and made all the more appealing by the fact that Edwards created all of the film’s special effects himself.
Monsters is the rare sci-fi film that combines great storytelling with powerful themes, solid acting, and innovative direction.
68) Timecrimes
A harrowing tale bringing up issues of destiny, free-will, and just how great of an impact our actions can really have, Nacho Vigalondo’s Timecrimes is one of the finest examples of how a low budget doesn’t rule out high-concept science fiction.
There aren’t really any special effects here, it’s all just a practical take on temporal loops. It’s not a movie for those who want explosions and witty banter. Rather, it’s just a movie for those who want to have their mind blown, and then blown again, and then wrapped up into a giant, mushy soft pretzel.
Sci-fi, with its expected big budgets, has historically been dominated by Hollywood. There have been some quality low-budget ones, but they’re rare, and even rarer are quality foreign language films in the genre. Well, Timecrimes is definitely one of the best, not only when compared with foreign language sci-fi, but with time travel movies and science fiction on the whole.
At its core, it’s the story of the worst day ever being relived over and over again. But unlike Groundhog Day, the man living that day has actually caused all the problems through so many different timelines that it’s nearly impossible to keep up. The story is so smart and so meticulously crafted that it’s only after multiple viewings that you can see how perfectly everything fits together. The smallest details come into play to make it an almost perfect time travel thriller.
67) Super 8
Despite a slight re-emergence in recent years, there’s been a struggle for original sci-fi to make it to the big screen, at least through major studios. Thankfully, filmmakers like J.J. Abrams haven’t given up, and there may not be a better example of his original sci-fi than Super 8.
There’s certainly a danger involved with the creature invading Earth, but this is by no means sci-fi horror. Rather, the danger is countered by a sense of wonder, a wonder about what might be beyond our skies, and it’s an optimistic wonder. That balance between hope and fear is what defines the best movies of the genre, and Super 8 nails that mark.
You can tell there’s a heart behind it that few modern sci-fi movies share. In a way, it seems to be Abrams’ story. He was the same age in 1979 (the year the film is set) as the protagonists are. It’s his tribute to growing up during that time, specifically during the rise of home video, with dreams of being a filmmaker. And that definitely shines through in the most beneficial of ways.
The film is produced by Spielberg, and it feels like the great Spielberg films of old. Sure, this has been called Abrams’ tribute to E.T., but what’s wrong with that? It’s as much a coming of age story as it is an alien invasion flick, and the result is a movie that should induce nostalgia for childhood and for a time when more sci-fi felt like Super 8.
66) Pacific Rim
A true cinematic miracle, Pacific Rim sees beloved director Guillermo del Toro writing an impossibly exuberant love letter not only to monster movies, of both the Japanese daikaiju and Western varieties, but to cinema’s most basic capacities for imagination and spectacle. Del Toro is nothing if not one of the most passionate filmmakers working today, and Pacific Rim, a work devoid of cynicism and bursting at the seams with earnest exuberance, is as clear and celebratory an expression of that passion as he – or most directors, for that matter – has yet to create.
While the film may have arrived at the wrong moment in cinematic history for viewers conditioned to the Christopher Nolan style of ‘real-world’ angst, Pacific Rim is both a deliriously earnest throwback to a simpler but no less emotionally poignant form of archetypal character building and storytelling, and a jaw-dropping example of what modern special effects can achieve at their very best (see the clip below).
To say the film is exhilarating would be an understatement – this is cinematic creativity and imagination at its best, a film that will make lifelong movie lovers out of children, and has the capacity to return adults to a mindset of real, meaningful innocence. That is a rare trick indeed – unprecedented in recent times, in fact – and one I shall always treasure the film for delivering.
65) The Abyss
The year 1989 was a boom time for “under the sea” movies, be they horror pictures like Leviathan or DeepStar Six or family fun like The Little Mermaid. And then there was The Abyss, James Cameron’s highly anticipated follow-up to Aliens, and his least successful film financially.
Like a lot of great sci-fi movies, including many films on this list, The Abyss has been thought better of with time, and it’s probably the last time that Cameron was able to engage creatively without the weight of overwhelming expectations. After The Abyss, Cameron kept getting bigger, and maybe that’s why this film felt, and feels, so much more intimate and character-driven than something like Avatar.
For instance, Abyss is about half over before it realizes its a close encounters story. What begins as a working class hero screed about roughneck oil drillers pressed into service by the navy to recover a downed nuclear sub builds from sightings of glowy marine craft, to the iconic scene of first contact between the crew and the pseudopod, a living tentacle of water that the aliens use to explore the rig. The film can also be read as the last grasp of Cold War paranoia, as the SEAL team, led by the increasing unstable Coffey, worry about Soviet interference, and then freak out about the aliens’ intentions. The special edition of the film adds a note of ominousness with the aliens with a threat of global tsunami and a Day the Earth Stood Still message of “drop the hate,” along with their admiration of Bud’s sacrifice.
The Abyss is also a crucible for a lot of the themes Cameron likes to play with, and maybe a couple of things going on in his personal life. An example of the latter is Bud’s contentious relationship with his ex-wife Lindsey, which probably somewhat mirrored Cameron’s then deteriorating marriage with his producer Gale Anne Hurd. But a little less gossipy is Cameron’s desire to revisit the idea of humanity’s diametric capacity for self-sacrifice and self-destruction, our precarious dependence on machines for our survival, as well as a fascination regarding the mysteries of the ocean deep. Much of Cameron’s working life post-Titanic has been in the development of underwater exploration technology. Whether that fascination was born from The Abyss or was there all along, there’s not doubt that the film casts a long shadow on the director’s career.
64) Solaris
Many of us only know Solaris from Steven Soderbergh’s 2002 adaptation, but the original 1972 film directed by Andrei Tarkovsky is just a bit different. Tarkovsky called his version of the Russian novel by Stanislaw Lem a “drama of grief and partial recovery,” and was explicit in attempting to avoid what he saw as the shallowness of western science fiction. Solaris also happens to be one of the most beautiful, poignant, and inexplicable science fiction films ever made.
The story, such as it is, follows psychologist Kris Kelvin (Donatas Banionis) as he travels to a space station. Three scientists have been emotionally and psychologically affected by their proximity to Solaris, an oceanic planet apparently devoid of life. Kelvin finds himself similarly affected: he begins to have hallucinatory visions of his wife, who committed suicide many years before.
A plot summary of Solaris is not enough to encapsulate the depth of feeling that Tarkovsky attempts to express in this slow-moving film. Like the slightly more mainstream 2001: A Space Odyssey, Solaris paints its picture through sound and image. It’s a film devoid of the action aspects we tend to associate with sci-fi; an experience rather than a cohesive narrative. The film moves fluidly among time frames as Kelvin dreams of his past and find himself embracing the image of his lost wife.
Solaris confounds rather than elucidates, yet one is left with the feeling of having experienced something deeply profound.
63) The Time Machine
Plenty of movies have traveled a century into the future, many a few centuries, but to take film not a century, not a millennium, but 800,000 years into the future, well, that’s a feat that only George Pal’s The Time Machine can boast (at least among movies that are actually any good).
Based on the HG Wells story of the same name, The Time Machine stars Rod Taylor as H. George Wells himself, a wealthy English inventor who spends his days tinkering in his laboratory. One night, just before the turn of the 20th century, he invites a group of friends over to display his latest invention: a time machine. Of course, they scoff at his claims, but that doesn’t stop him from traveling forward in time, first to World War I, then to World War II, then to the 1960s, then all the way to the 802701, where he encounters a world inhabited by Eloi and Morlocks.
Time travel movies have become a favorite subgenre of sci-fi, but far fewer films go forward instead of backwards. The past is easy to replicate. The future involves predictions and creating a new world. For any film to go that far forward is remarkable, but it’s especially so for something made in 1960. The passage of time is almost entirely done through stop motion animation, and you’ll be hard-pressed to find a finer display of that technique. The film even won the Academy Award for special effects because of that impressive work. The other, more practical effects are pretty sharp as well, making for an interesting world to be immersed in and a remarkable piece of science fiction.
62) Minority Report
A film overflowing with big ideas, dizzying plot turns and spectacular action sequences, Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report is a tremendous blend of film noir and futuristic science fiction. His first collaboration with Tom Cruise (who gives an urgent, enthralling performance), Spielberg’s film is both essential as a human drama and a twisty mystery.
Cruise plays John Anderton, the leader of a “pre-crime” unit in Washington D.C. Simply, the thoughts of three Pre-Cogs can pick up signals of premeditated murders and transfers these images to Anderton and his crew, who can then arrest people before they (allegedly) commit murder. The plot thickens, however, when Anderton appears in the Pre-Cogs’ vision. Alas, he goes on the run, trying to evade his own unit and figure out if he is being set up by what he believes could be an imperfect system.
Spielberg’s vision of the future, which he adapts from a Philip K. Dick short story, is technically inventive. However, the film is not just masterful for its visual splendor, but for its absorbing narrative, its tender philosophical questions and its deep character study. Cruise is in top form as a lonely man hoping for a human connection in a largely engineered world. Samantha Morton also gives a chilling performance as Agatha, the Pre-Cog who accompanies Anderton on his escape.
Minority Report is a rarity: a riveting blockbuster with a pulse and a brain, challenging its audience with ideas as it overwhelms viewers with virtuoso action. A sequence with tiny spider robots is among the most gripping moments from Spielberg’s oeuvre, maximized by a dazzling tracking shot (from Janusz Kaminski) and a chilling John Williams score. It is just one of many stimulating moments from this terrific sci-fi thriller, which remains a high point for Spielberg and Cruise.
61) The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy
It shouldn’t have worked. Douglas Adams’ classic novel is, in theory, simply too dense, inspired, and absolutely loopy to be successfully adapted by anybody but the master himself – especially in Hollywood, where voices as singular as Adams’ tend to get scrubbed entirely away by the time ‘action’ is finally called on set.
Yet the finished film does work, perhaps not 100% of the time, but more successfully than anybody could have imagined. Adams’ voice is all over the film, with nearly every moment feeling completely in the spirit of his unique, wonderful vision, and the DNA of his original screenplay – written years and years before production started, and re-written several times over for the finished product – evident throughout.
All versions of Hitchhiker are different from one another, of course, and the film reimagines the mythos nicely, all with a really tremendous style – first-time filmmaker Garth Jennings directed the hell out of this movie – and the absolute best casting of the core characters across any version of Hitchhiker (perhaps this will change by the time The Hobbit trilogy is done, but I still think of Martin Freeman as Arthur Dent first, and Bilbo Baggins second).
It must be remembered that The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, in all its forms, is superior, wickedly smart science-fiction, employing the genre for its greatest and most reliable purpose: to look at the problems of today – and for Adams in particular, the many, many idiosyncrasies of humanity – through the vast prism of scientific thought. The 2005 film may fall short of perfection, but as a testament to what Adams’ work represents, it could not be more satisfying.