New on LowEndTalk? Please Register and read our Community Rules.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
REAL DEALS HERE -- WIN BIG WITH THOUSANDS IN PRIZES + RackNerd's NEW YEAR OFFERS! (New Year 2024)
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
Pardon me for any repetition that might have crawled in with the trivia. Will be back soon with more facts!
Next up, I will share an extensive list of the top sci-fi movies of all time!
TOP SCIFI MOVIES
‘Tank Girl’ (1995)
What would the post-apocalyptic world look like if the hero was a riot grrrl and the soundtrack was curated by Courtney Love? Behold the adventures of Tank Girl (Lorri Petty), as our hero roams through the decimated Outback, years after a comet hit earth and an evil corporation seized control. It’s got some of the hallmarks of a traditional sci-fi adventure — a jet-flying sidekick played by Naomi Watts; an army of half-kangaroo, half-man beings, including one played by Ice-T — but Rachel Talalay’s adaptaion of the cult British comic diverges from the typical dystopia formula by layering everything over a very 1990s alt aesthetic, all bright colors and snappy, sexualized wisecracks. “No celebrities, no cable TV, no water — it hasn’t rained in 11 years,” Tank Girl explains early on in the film. “Now 20 people gotta squeeze inside the same bathtub — so it ain’t all bad.” —Elisabeth Garber-Paul
TOP SCIFI MOVIES
‘The Omega Man’ (1971)
Los Angeles, 1975: Biological warfare has wiped out the human race, leaving one man standing. Charlton Heston is the lone survivor from the plague, fighting off a cult of killer mutants in the deserted streets of Southern California. This extremely Me Decade adaptation of Richard Matheson’s landmark 1954 novel I Am Legend is a paranoid pandemic nightmare that turned out to be way too prophetic — for some of us, it was the movie we couldn’t stop watching in lockdown. Director Boris Sagal gives it an authentically scuzzy vibe, where Seventies L.A. is a sun-washed wasteland. At one point, Heston hides out in an empty theater showing the Woodstock documentary. He watches the hippies dance, reciting the dialogue word-for-word as a flower child gushes, “If we all can’t live together and be happy… what kind of way is that to go through life?” Heston just snickers, “They sure don’t make pictures like that any more.” In the 2020s, we’ve all been there. —Rob Sheffield
TOP SCIFI MOVIES
‘Demolition Man’ (1993)
Eight years from right now, we’ll all be eating only Taco Bell, having contactless virtual sex, and cursing a whole lot less. Welcome to the year 2032, as imagined by this 1993 amusement-park ride of a movie starring Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes. Sly is an unvarnished lawman from the Nineties thawed out of cryogenic stasis to capture Snipes’ supervillain, with help from Sandra Bullock’s overly earnest peace officer. But it’s the set pieces (a “Hall of Violence” at a museum of the 20th century, a lounge singer crooning “The Jolly Green Giant” jingle) and in-jokes (“The Schwarzenegger Presidential Library,” mysterious bathroom etiquette) that make Demolition Man a reliable source of joy-joy feelings to this day. Some say it even accurately predicted our current reality — self-driving cars and Zoom meetings anyone? —Joseph Hudak
TOP SCIFI MOVIES
‘Species’ (1995)
Natasha Henstridge catwalked so that Scarlett Johansson could run. It was the allure of the Canadian model’s bared flesh — and the torn flesh of her drooling male victims — that drew big crowds to Roger Donaldson’s kinky potboiler, a kind of proto Under the Skin about a half-alien seductress on the loose in Los Angeles, with eccentric scientists in hot pursuit. (Emphasis on the hot.) Traces of Alien DNA can be found in both the H.R. Giger effects and the probing of male anxieties; like its extraterrestrial menace, the movie exploits libido, using T&A as the bait of a satirical honeytrap and clowning on prey too horny to recognize the predator sizing it up. The humor puts tongue in cheek — and then sends it out the back of the head. —A.A. Dowd
TOP SCIFI MOVIES
‘The Running Man’ (1987)
Arnold Schwarzenegger followed up Predator with this adaptation of a Stephen King novella (written under the pseudonym Richard Bachman) a mere four months later, giving fans a double blast of sci-fi thrills that year. The Running Man imagines a future that isn’t far off from our reality-show, influencer, and veering-toward-authoritarian moment, with Schwarzenegger playing a disgraced police pilot accused of slaughtering civilians. There’s a way he can win his freedom, however: by competing in a reality-show contest televised on state TV. The catch? He has to survive encounters with WWE-style mercenaries named Subzero, Fireball, and Buzzsaw. It’s The Hunger Games meets Escape From New York, hosted by the ultimate game-show emcee, Family Feud’s Richard Dawson. Survey Says….dystopia! —JH
TOP SCIFI MOVIES
‘The Last Starfighter’ (1984)
Teenage video-game ace Alex Rogan (Lance Guest) is recruited by a peaceful alien civilization to help them win an intergalactic war. Meanwhile, Robert Preston is a scream as the kid’s E.T. guide Centauri, and the early computerized special effects put you in the middle of the deep-space dogfights. But it’s the underdog spirit of the plot — a kid in a trailer park, desperate to make something out of his life — that proved more irresistible than a tractor beam. In the end, Alex even got the girl…to join him in outer space. —JH
TOP SCIFI MOVIES
‘The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ (2005)
Let’s be real: Bureaucracy sucks. And this adaptation of Douglas Adams’ insanely popular sci-fi novel proves that even fantastical worlds aren’t exempt. Starring a post U.K. Office, pre-Hobbit Martin Freeman Arthur Dent, as the sole survivor of a destroyed Earth, director Garth Jennings’ movie uses inspiration from previous takes (not just the novel, but also the radio show and BBC TV series) to wage an absurdist take on the concept of hopping around the universe, one ride at a time. Featuring Sam Rockwell as everyone’s favorite two-headed intergalactic president Zaphod Beeblebrox and Alan Rickman voicing the depressed and anxious robot named Marvin, this sci-fi comedy leaves the bells and whistles of the medium behind for a slapdash and highly literal world, where even the smartest of artificial intelligences can’t give a satisfactory answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. —CT Jones
TOP SCIFI MOVIES
‘Men in Black’ (1997)
Barry Sonnenfeld’s adaptation of the comic book series about a secret government agency keeping the universe safe will be forever remembered for giving us the exuberant pairing of Will “I look good!” Smith and straight-faced Tommy Lee Jones. But it’s the way that turns New York City into a literal out-of-this-world freak show of alien creatures, from Frank the Pug (actually an extraterrestrial who just looks like a pug) to Tony Shaloub’s head-regenerating pawn shop owner. It’s a perfectly paced sci-fi buddy comedy that riffs off a host of conspiracy theories about visitors living among us. Strip it down to its elements, however, and Men in Black is basically about how NYC is the greatest place in the world — whether you’re from outer space or right here on Earth. —Esther Zuckerman
TOP SCIFI MOVIES
‘Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai’ (1984)
“Laugh while you can, monkey boy!” W.D. Richter’s alt sci-fi New Wave wonderment is a loony masterclass in world-building overload, as neurosurgeon-physicist-rocker/part-time test pilot Buckaroo Banzai (Peter Weller) faces off against demented Dr. Emilio Lizardo (John Lithgow). The Jamaican-accented Black Lectroids of Planet 10 help defend Banzai and his rag-tag team, the Kong Hong Cavaliers, from the Red Lectroids and their search for his matter-penetrating oscillation overthruster. Ok, but: how to explain the Orson Welles cover-up? Or Penny Priddy (Ellen Barkin), the secret twin sister of a dead wife? Comic-book irreverence and pervasive side-mouth commentary are why this straight-faced whatzit endures as a vital antidote to fatuous stories of interstellar adventure. To paraphrase the film’s Italo-fascist madman: In the miserable annals of the earth, it will be duly enshrined. —Stephen Garrett
TOP SCIFI MOVIES
‘Idiocracy’ (2006)
For years, many sci-fi stories took place in distant futures in which mankind’s intelligence had reached previously unimaginable heights, technology made lives vastly easier, and many of the problems that have plagued us had been solved. Mike Judge’s addition to the genre imagines a slightly different world that awaits us: A world in which most people — well, ok, most Americans — have devolved to the point of being dumber than fuck. Once Andrew Wilson’s Army librarian and Maya Rudolph’s streetwalker wake up in the year 2505 after a centuries-long cryogenic nap, they discover a landscape in which the anti-intellectual boneheads have become the dominant species, commercialism has run amuck, everything is both hypercomputerized and constantly broken, and President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho (god bless you, Terry Crews) shuts down hecklers at his State of the Union with a machine gun. Once upon a time, this was considered a satire, with Judge turning science-fiction conventions inside out in the name of belly laughs. Now? You worry that we’ve caught up to his Idiots-Rule vision and the “fiction” part applies less and less. —David Fear
TOP SCIFI MOVIES
‘Dune’ (1984)
Author Frank Herbert, who published the multilayered 1965 novel about an intergalactic war to control the production of “the spice” on a planet called Dune, approved of David Lynch’s adaptation. “The story is there,” he said. It still bombed nevertheless, and Lynch doesn’t want to talk about it to this day. But his version’s unwieldiness is its greatest virtue: the sweaty sleaziness of Kenneth McMillan’s sickening Baron Harkonen, the wild-haired Eraserhead-iness of Brad Dourif’s Mentat, the spiciness of Kyle MacLachlan’s blue eyes as he leads his troops. The movie has sandworms, blocky forcefield duels, and Sting with a knife. It captures the surreal aspects of the source material in a way that makes you feel high on spice as you watch it. —Kory Grow
TOP SCIFI MOVIES
‘Independence Day’ (1996)
It’s a disaster film, a conspiracy-minded sci-fi adventure, a rousing battle in space, and patriotic propaganda bar none, all delivered with smart-mouthed smarm and juggernaut spectacle. It’s an ode to star power courtesy of Will Smith, at the peak of his powers, and the decade’s favorite Cassandra, Jeff Goldblum. It’s a ’50s alien invasion B movie blown up to A-list summer-movie proportions. By the time Bill Pullman delivers his famous speech (“Perhaps it’s fate that today is the 4th of July, and you will once again be fighting for our freedom”), the audience is ready to get some payback for having the White House blown to smithereens. Cynics might say that this is all formulaic button-pushing from director Roland Emmerich. But when the buttons are so expertly crafted, it’s a testament what well-worn genre conventions, a little popcorn and a lot of dopamine can accomplish. —Katie Rife
TOP SCIFI MOVIES
‘Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure’ (1989)
Seven hundred years in the future, mankind lives in complete peace and harmony because of the music created by a couple of California stoners (Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter) in the late 20th century. When a rift in the timeline causes them to split up while still in high school, an emissary from the future (George Carlin) travels back in time to keep them together, which involves helping them pass a high school history test with help from Napoleon, Abraham Lincoln, Genghis Khan, Joan of Arc, Sigmund Freud, and Billy The Kid. Written by Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure added its own signature, slightly baked take on the time-travel movie, as well as paving the way for Beavis and Butthead and Wayne’s World. Neither of those franchises, however, created lines as timeless as “strange things are afoot at the Circle K.” —Andy Greene
TOP SCIFI MOVIES
‘Zardoz’ (1974)
Sean Connery is a mutant Brute from the Outlands clad in a red loincloth. He stows away on a massive floating stone head floating towards the Vortex, a land where bourgeois Eternals suppress themselves with hypnosis and meditation. His journey of knowledge and eventual revolution is illustrated through multiple flashbacks that come perilously close to devolving into psychedelic dreck. (Spoiler alert: “Zard Oz” is a play on The Wizard of Oz.) John Boorman’s cult epic is redolent of adult science-fiction in the pre-Star Wars Seventies: kitschy and weird, laden with sex and violence, yet undeniably literary and inventive. —Mosi Reeves
TOP SCIFI MOVIES
‘Tron’ (1982)
The Dude alights. Jeff Bridges was the picture of illuminated-cool in this early-Eighties Disney film about a video-game creator who ends up inside a computer, where he and his colleagues become avatars forced to compete in a series of Olympic-type contests. Fortunately for Clu (Bridges), his real-world counterpart designed one of the games, a moto-race called Light Cycle, and he makes a break for it, fighting a bunch of goons along the way — including his IRL boss. It’s all a lot to, ahem, process, but in 1982 it looked super cool and engaged an audience fascinated by video games. —JH
TOP SCIFI MOVIES
‘Repo Man’ (1984)
One of the rites of passage for being a cool kid in the ‘80s was getting deeply into Alex Cox’s freewheeling social satire (and its bitchin’ L.A. punk soundtrack, naturally). Emilio Estevez plays a rootless rebel who stumbles into a job repossessing vehicles, where he finds mentors (including a philosophical old grump played by Harry Dean Stanton) and gets drawn into a conspiracy involving aliens, government agents and a radioactive car. As wonderfully bizarre as the film is, it’s actually a fairly accurate document of life in Ronald Reagan’s America in 1984, where even the most anarchic youths were in constant danger of getting absorbed into the mass conformity. —Noel Murray
TOP SCIFI MOVIES
‘Born in Flames’ (1983)
Lizzie Borden’s gloriously D.I.Y. clarion call from the underground reimagines Reagan-era NYC as a dystopia already in progress, casting the present day Gotham as a “futuristic” cesspool of mass unemployment, rampant misogyny, racial tensions and riots in the streets. (Plus ça change.) Thankfully, not one but two Women’s Armies are taking action, keeping women safe from scumbags and broadcasting calls for revolution over pirate radio stations. They’ll eventually combine forces to enact genuine social change by any — and every — means necessary. The movie’s climactic bombing of World Trade Center (!) plays much differently today then it did in the No Wave ’80s, to say the least. But then again, so does Born in Flames‘ fuck you to the patriarchy, keen understanding of intersectionality, and rage against a machine that views everyone but the One-Percent as expendable. The fact that Borden integrated actual footage of uprisings and police violence only adds to urgency of its agitprop storytelling. It’s a sci-fi movie that’s as radical as its politics, and twice as incendiary. —DF
TOP SCIFI MOVIES
‘District 9’ (2009)
In Neill Blomkamp’s grimy sci-fi fantasy, the aliens aren’t deadly invaders. They’re persecuted prawn people, herded into South African shanty towns by a private military firm, exploited by Nigerian warlords, and shunted into a generally miserable existence. Then a hapless bureaucrat (Sharlto Copley) who’s been tasked with relocating them is forced to walk a mile in their exoskeletons. One of the bleakest, nastiest film to ever get an Oscar nomination for Best Picture, this sci-fi take on Apartheid and other social ills uses a mockumentary format to pull the viewer in — you half expect Michael Scott to pop out from around a corner and start shooting — then grinds away at the ugliness of humanity. It’s easy to admire, even when it makes you want to take a shower. —Chris Vognar
TOP SCIFI MOVIES
‘2046’ (2004)
Wong Kar-wai’s sequel to the rapturously romantic In the Mood for Love goes back to the future, examining the emotional fallout of journalist Chow Mo Wan (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai), who’s exorcising his unrequited love, in part, by writing a sci-fi novel. 2046 ambitiously shifts between timelines and genres, going from the 1960s to the fictional world of Chow’s book, which is set in a sleek, dystopian mid-21st-century landscape where the characters’ ennui mirrors that of their heartbroken author. Although not commonly found on lists like this, the movie reflects what’s best about science fiction: recalibrating how we see the world thanks to its groundbreaking vision of the fluidity of the past and the present — and the fragility of our hold on reality. —Tim Grierson
TOP SCIFI MOVIES
‘Ad Astra’ (2019)
Emo astronaut Brad Pitt, heart-hardened from intergalactic daddy issues, finally gets word from his absentee father (Tommy Lee Jones) who’s been MIA after 29 years on a trip to the edge of the solar system. So mission-focused Pitt rock-hops, first to the moon and then Mars, before venturing to Jupiter and beyond in order to save the world and have one last talk with his Pops, not in that order. Director James Gray merges Heart of Darkness with 2001: A Space Odyssey to create the blazing cold fusion of this chilling trip into the unknown. It’s got everything from the horror of a zero-gravity baboon attack to a lunar Doubletree Hotel — but the real scream you’ll never hear in space is the one you make confronting the metaphysical maelstrom of your own flesh and blood. —SG
TOP SCIFI MOVIES
‘The Fifth Element’ (1997)
Put aside, for a moment, any feelings you may currently have about director Luc Besson and journey back to 1997, when our minds were blown by his irrepressibly zany sci-fi odyssey. Bruce Willis is your typical 23rd century cabbie and ex-military guy named Korben Dallas who unexpectedly finds himself the caretaker of Milla Jovovich’s Leeloo. She is, despite her human body, the titular fifth element, i.e. the last piece of a weapon that can defeat an ancient evil, and suddenly Korben is thrust into an adventure with the future of the world at stake. Everything in The Fifth Element is over the top — from the technicolor costumes to the delirious performances from Gary Oldman as the bad guy and Chris Tucker as intergalactic emcee Ruby Rhod. It’s a completely campy sci-fi overload. —EZ
TOP SCIFI MOVIES
‘Never Let Me Go (2010)
Based on Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel, this is science fiction rendered in a deeply melancholy key, a story of looming mortality and youth tossed away for an allegedly higher cause. It’s also a smoldering love triangle, featuring Andrew Garfield, Keira Knightley and Carey Mulligan as a trio of “donors” that come to realize they’re not quite human, despite how much they hurt. Music video maestro Mark Romanek shoots in muted greys, giving the film’s rural English settings an elegiac texture appropriate for a tale of time passing by before it runs out entirely. —CV
TOP SCIFI MOVIES
‘Time After Time’ (1979)
It’s such an ingenious idea that you wonder why someone didn’t think of it sooner: In 1893, H.G. Wells (Malcolm McDowell) has not just come up with the basis of his novel The Time Machine — he’s actually invented one. Unfortunately, he happens to mention this to an acquaintance of his, a surgeon whose off-hours activities have earned him the nickname Jack the Ripper (David Warner). The serial killer transports himself to present-day San Francisco, in search of new prey; Wells soon follows him, determined to stop this Victorian-era madman once and for all. Based off an unfinished novel by Karl Alexander, writer-director Nicholas Meyer’s speculative-history romp makes the most of its fish-out-of-water gags — Wells is beguiled by this thing called a “McDonalds” — as well as the chilling notion that London’s most notorious 19th century boogeyman would be outclassed in the world of 1979. (“Back then, I was a freak… here, I’m an amateur.”) Throw in a romance between Wells and Mary Steenburgen’s bank teller-slash-potential Ripper victim, and you have a truly great what-if time-travel story. —DF
TOP SCIFI MOVIES
‘World on a Wire’ (1979)
More than two decades before The Matrix popularized the notion of simulation theory, director Rainer Werner Fassbinder took the concept for a test drive. Originally aired over two nights on German television, his epic-length paranoid thriller follows a researcher (Klaus Löwitsch) overseeing a computer project involving, essentially, NPCs that don’t know they’re NPCs. Gradually, he begins to wonder how real his world is. Fassbinder updated ancient questions of perception and reality to a new age of rapidly advancing computer technology. When the film was rediscovered in 2010, it suddenly looked even more relevant — an ur-text inspiration for the nesting-doll mindbenders of the Wachowskis and Christopher Nolan, as well as a cautionary tale for a species too buried in Second Life to question the nature of their first one. —AAD
TOP SCIFI MOVIES
‘God Told Me To’ (1976)
A sniper is picking off passerbys in New York City; when police detective Anthony Lo Bianco asks him why he did it, the killer replies, “God told me to.” Soon, a number of average citizens begin turning into psychopaths without the slightest provocation, each calmly claiming the same divine motive as that original perpetrator. Writer-director Larry Cohen’s odd, unsettling thriller starts off as your typical Horror-City urban nightmare, reiterating the idea of NYC as a dangerous cesspool to Middle America’s drive-in crowd. Then it takes a serious turn toward the weird, and starts introducing notions of alien abductions, Chariots of the Gods-style conspiracy theories, psychic powers and faith-vs.-science arguments into the mix. It’s a vastly underrated stealth sci-fi movie, one of those scuffed-up ’70s gems that smuggles a lot of mind-blowing ideas under the cover of a grotty grindhouse flick. —D.F.
TOP SCIFI MOVIES
‘Things to Come’ (1936)
H.G. Wells himself wrote the script for this dystopian epic, which predicts the course of history from 1940 to 2036. Prestige producer Alexander Korda spared no expense in turning one of an all-time great science-fiction author’s words into pictures, and he hired the visionary fantasy director/production designer William Cameron Menzies to bring a sense of grandeur to the sprawling saga of an ordinary Englishman (Raymond Massey) who watches the world slide from devastating wars into hyper-controlling fascism. Eventually, he — and we — observe society settle into a kind of wary techno-utopia. Like many of the best movies about the future, this one is really about the past, converting the lingering anxieties of the Great Depression — along with some haunting memories of World War I — into a provocative cautionary tale. —NM
TOP SCIFI MOVIES
‘Attack the Block’ (2011)
Evil extraterrestrials versus British hood rats — guess who wins? This funny, fast-paced sci-fi comedy (featuring future Force Awakens hero John Boyega and future female-Doctor-Who Jodie Whittaker) pits a bunch of neighborhood kids in a rough section of South London against an otherworldly invasion. And damned if their street smarts aren’t the only thing that stands between our species and total annihilation. The fact that it flips the script and makes the so-called underclass the heroes was reason enough to embrace this scrappy take on Eighties blockbusters, but it also brings its action and alien-scares A-game (those glowing teeth!) as well. —DF
TOP SCIFI MOVIES
‘Phase IV’ (1974)
Graphic designer Saul Bass had become well-known throughout Hollywood for his modernist, abstract and extremely innovative credit sequences. When he directed his only feature film, however, he steered away from the stylish and straight into the creepy-crawly. A mysterious event causes ants to evolve at a highly rapid rate. When a colony constructs seven geometrically similar towers in Arizona for reasons unknown, two scientists (Nigel Davenport and Michael Moriarty) set up a base camp to study and communicate with them. It quickly becomes apparent that these tiny creatures have a much larger agenda in mind than simply talking to curious Homo sapiens. Let’s just say it’s called Phase IV for a reason, and by the time you find out what their ultimate plan is, you may never want to go on a picnic again. Should any ants be reading this blurb, let me just go on the record as saying that I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords! —DF