Outer space. Extra-terrestrial life. New worlds. Advanced technology. Artificial intelligence. Science-fiction takes us to places beyond our imagination, dreaming up exciting yet impossible futures and worlds that can shape our own technological advances. Some of the greatest science-fiction delivers outstanding visuals complete with mind-bending ideas, probing everything from the human experience to the future of humanity. It’s a genre that constantly changes with each film released – from colourful adventures to dark, dystopian tragedies, set in the present, the far future or a galaxy far, far away.
This list will look at the Top 12 Science-Fiction films that follow at least one of the above criteria. This list will only include live-action features, focusing on individual films instead of entire franchises to keep it fair on standalone features.
12. The War of the Worlds (1953)
The original novel by H.G. Wells is one of the earliest stories to detail a conflict between aliens and mankind and one of the most influential works in science-fiction canon. Just 15 years after the now-infamous radio broadcast by Orson Welles, The War of the Worlds was finally adapted to the screen by director Byron Haskin. This feature film adaptation brought the war between Martians and man to life for the first time with a distinctive look that won the film an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects. This film serves as one of the most definitive sci-fi pictures, popularising the alien invasion narrative and several sci-fi conventions we have come to know in the film genre.
11. Arrival (2016)
First contact between man and life from the stars has always been popular in science-fiction but Arrival approaches this convention in a unique way. One of the more recent entries on this list, Arrival is another sci-fi adaptation, this time about a short story titled, Story of Your Life. The film sees giant spaceships arrive everywhere on Earth and instead of bombing them, the US Army enlists a linguist to communicate with the lifeforms inside the ships before tensions lead to war. The story is thought-provoking with Jeremy Renner and Amy Adams delivering amazing and confident performances with a narrative that expands on the idea of first contact with alien life. Arrival was nominated for numerous accolades including Academy Awards & Golden Globes and is considered by many critics to be one of the best films of 2016.
10. E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
You’d expect most films about aliens coming to Earth to be action-packed stories where humanity must fight for their lives against extra-terrestrial invaders. E.T. is the polar opposite in every sense. Spielberg’s coming-of-age tale about a young boy and his alien friend remains one of the most heartfelt stories put to cinema. Suburban American youngster Elliot befriends a small alien visitor left behind on Earth in a parable about lonely children that tackles the emotional fallout of divorce. While there’s the inevitable need for E.T. to go home, it’s foregrounded by childhood joy as Elliot and his alien friend get up to various antics and mischief. The imagery of Elliot and E.T. flying in front of the moon on the bike while the impeccable John Williams score plays in the background is one of the most iconic cinematic sci-fi moments.
9. Back to the Future (1985)
The concept of time travel is one of the most difficult aspects of sci-fi to pull off with the methods and rules changing in every film. Yet few films are as perfectly constructed as Back to the Future. Robert Zemeckis and co-writer Bob Gale created a tale that’s always intriguing and satisfying to watch, even if they were on a rushed post-production schedule with some incomplete special effects. Michael J. Fox rode his role as Marty McFly to movie star status, together with a great ensemble cast including Christopher Lloyd as Emmett “Doc” Brown, making Back to the Future one of the greatest sci-fi films and one of the greatest films ever made. With two sequels following at the end of the decade, Back to the Future cemented the most popular understood model of fictional time-travel, even if later time-travelling films have tried to invalidate it.
8. Alien (1979)
It’s fitting that Ridley Scott’s Alien feels in many ways unknowable, with several elements that feel genuinely alien. As the Nostromo touches down on the ragged surface of a distant planet and the crew discover a hall filled with extra-terrestrial eggs, the crew have no idea what’s in store for them until it’s too late – and once their quarantine measures are disabled, the once peaceful ship turns into a nightmare. From the dark corridors of the space-freighter to the nightmare imagery of H.R. Giger, and the arrival of Sigourney Weaver’s heroic Ripley, Alien remains a landmark of science-fiction. Though this film is just as much a horror, some science-fiction makes us dream of the stars and the possibility of life beyond our solar system, whereas Alien warns us of the potential violence and chaos we may encounter on other worlds.
7. The Matrix (1999)
Mixing elements of The Twilight Zone to The Terminator, The Matrix took audiences by storm with its ingenious ideas, philosophies, and style. The Wachowskis gave Hollywood a major science-fiction upgrade which spoke to the generational malaise, the rise of technology, and a pre-millennial society ready to break out of its programming. Keanu Reeves stars as Neo, a hacker who learns he and the rest of humanity are living in a simulation known as the Matrix while serving as fuel for sentient machines. In learning this truth, he also learns how to break it – bending the laws of physics, seeing through code, and uploading Kung-Fu moves to his brain. It’s a deeply stylish film with incredibly visionary effects – notably the invention of bullet time and the static camera rig that made it possible.
6. Jurassic Park (1993)
By the 90s, the prospect of animal and human cloning seemed outdated. How best to recapture attention? Dinosaur cloning. Adapting Michael Crichton’s novel into a revolutionary blockbuster about a prehistoric theme park gone wrong. Steven Spielberg delivers a spectacle in keeping with the story’s sci-fi credentials intact – man tampers with nature and suffers the unpredictable consequences. Jurassic Park is also one of the first major motion pictures to utilise photorealistic CG creatures, and by no means is it outdated by today’s standards. The CGI and animatronic dinosaurs hold up, even making certain modern effects seem terrible by comparison. Spielberg is the master creator at the heart of this brilliant tale, giving us convincing visuals, unforgettable scares and great characters that make Jurassic Park a blockbuster for the ages.
5. Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991)
I know I covered this film on my “Top 10 Action Films” list some time ago, but Judgement Day is just as deserving of a position on this list. After establishing its concept of time-travel in Terminator, James Cameron gave 110% for this sequel – a liquid-metal foe, the bad guy becoming the good guy and a new plot to bring about Judgement Day. The result is one of the greatest sequels of all time, with memorable action, a thrilling transformation from Sarah Connor as a hardened hero, and a formidable villain in Robert Patrick’s T-1000. The quality of the special effects in this film shows that Cameron was ahead of his time as each sequence starring both Terminators are some of the best in sci-fi special-effects. Beyond the spectacle, there is more character development – notably with Schwarzenegger’s T-800 as it forms a bond with Edward Furlong’s young John Connor and begins to grow through their interactions, making for a great dynamic pair.
4. Inception (2010)
While Christopher Nolan did a lot of good to bring credibility to the comic book genre with the Dark Knight trilogy, it was the film he made after The Dark Knight (2008) that was truly revolutionary. In many ways, the set-up for Inception was a simple heist film; however, the trick that made this unique from other heist movies was that the team needed to steal something from inside someone’s head. This led to them using technology that allows them to enter the dreams of their unsuspecting targets and go deeper into their dreams until they get what they need. This sounds very similar to The Matrix, but Inception stands out thanks to its characters and unique story. Inception has the hallmarks of a good sci-fi picture. It creates a fictional world with rules the story must abide by, making the situation seem more real. This, combined with some ground-breaking visuals and set-pieces, most of which captured practically rather than digitally, makes this film a worthy science-fiction movie.
3. Blade Runner (1982)
Ridley Scott is a master at producing sci-fi classics with both Alien and this masterpiece, Blade Runner. The film conjures a bleak vision of an alternate future Los Angeles, 2019 – an imperious flame-spewing hellscape where Harrison Ford’s Rick Deckard is tasked with tracking down a group of human-engineered Replicants who have escaped to Earth from an off-world working colony. As he ‘retires’ them, Deckard comes to question his humanity, both literal and metaphorical. With ruminations on what it means to be human, Blade Runner is an ideas-driven sci-fi and a visual feast too, with its interpretation of a futuristic urban landscape which is still amazing to behold. Together with a haunting Vangelis synth score and Rutger Hauer’s performance as Replicant leader Roy Batty (whose “time to die” speech is still iconic), Blade Runner remains one of the most interesting and gritty science-fiction narratives.
2. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Though Stanley Kubrick’s monolithic work of sci-fi might not have a tangible linear plot, it took a huge step forward for science-fiction filmmaking which is appropriate as the film is about evolution. The film takes us on a mesmerising leap across time, from primitive mankind discovering their first tool to men in the future developing their most advanced. It’s dizzying stuff, realized with the technical ingenuity Kubrick is renowned for, open to endless interpretation and with enough narrative to remain watchable. From the gigantic, rotating sets, to Strauss’s The Blue Danube, and its climactic light show, 2001 is visual poetry. An extraordinary piece of work that has influenced decades of cinema since, entrusting the viewer to follow on an instinctual sensory level.
1. Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
If A New Hope gave us a new cinematic galaxy, Empire made that galaxy feel so much deeper and richer, but also more dangerous. Following the success of the original, George Lucas shot for the moon, teaming up with director Irvin Kershner to continue to story. Luke trains under Master Yoda, Han, Leia, and the others go the Cloud City and Darth Vader drops one of the biggest twists in cinema. The Empire Strikes Back ramped up the scope with astonishing model work, daring dogfights, the snowy opening battle and the iconic duel between Luke and Vader. It is bigger and better than its predecessor and some of the other Star Wars films, influential with its unhappy ending for the heroes and game-changing climax that redefines the hero and the villain of this galaxy-wide conflict.
This is the list of my top science-fiction films. This is my own opinion and if you disagree with this list or think there is a film better than the other, that’s fine with me. This was a really hard list to do, I enjoy all of these films and it was hard to rank some of them above the others, hence why there are twelve films listed here instead of ten. All the same, I hope you like these films all the same or if you haven’t seen them yet, give them a chance and watch them.
Jacobs Reel Reviews 