The 10 Best Sci-Fi Movies of All Time

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)​

Stanley Kubrick’s hallucinatory epic is the ultimate head trip. Some think it’s head-scratchingly oblique; others consider it a mindblower. Like all movies this far-out and ambitious, your mileage may vary. Either way, there’s no denying Kubrick’s vision in this tale (based on Arthur C. Clarke’s short story) about an alien monolith and man’s quest for knowledge since the Dawn of Man. The beautiful bulk of the film traces a space exploration and the up-then-down relationship between astronaut Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea, 89) and his onboard computer operating system, HAL. Their friendship ends badly. 2001 is bursting with big ideas, and even if you walk away from it puzzled, you’ll at least be sure that you’ve been on a journey.

Watch it: 2001: A Space Odyssey

Alien (1979)

​The crew of a space cargo ship are awakened when the onboard computer detects signs of life on a nearby planet. The rules of their charter insist that they go down to the planet and check things out. Big mistake. Because what they inadvertently bring back with them is a terrifying alien parasite with a tendency to suction-cup onto its victims’ faces, laying eggs that hatch baby aliens to burst out of their unlucky host’s chest like a bloody jack-in-the-box. Director Ridley Scott, 88, introduced a new kind of sci-fi horror film with Alien — one modeled on the old haunted house formula of things going bump in the night. And the suspense is downright excruciating. But best of all was Scott’s decision to turn one of the crew’s female members (Sigourney Weaver, 76) into the film’s toughest and most competent human hero.​

Watch it: Alien

The Thing (1982)

This vise-tight (and gruesomely gory) take on the 1951 sci-fi original is a masterful exercise in subzero dread. Kurt Russell, 74, leads an all-male ensemble playing American researchers whose Antarctic base is infiltrated by a dog that’s infected by a murderous alien being and becomes its host. Released the same summer as E.T., this visitor from another planet is anything but cute and cuddly. It’s a bloodthirsty parasite that passes from one person to the next and won’t have accomplished its ultimate goal until every member of the team is basically replicated and turned inside-out. Yes, The Thing is heavy on gooey, gross effects. But beneath the splatter, director John Carpenter, 78, serves up a haunting meditation on paranoia and trust.​

Watch it: The Thing

Blade Runner (1982)

​Speaking of The Thing, here’s a fun fact: Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner opened in theaters on the same day in the summer of 1982. And as hard as it may be to believe, they both bombed with critics and at the box office. Of course, now both are enshrined in the sci-fi canon. Based on a pretzel-logic Philip K. Dick novel, this stunning future noir stars Harrison Ford as a detective pursuing four on-the-run androids while grappling with the thorny mystery of what it means to be human and whether we can believe our own memories. There are several versions of the film (chiefly one with Ford’s voiceover and one without), but regardless of which you watch, this gorgeous puzzle box of a film will leave your jaw on the floor and your mind scrambled.​

Watch it: Blade Runner

​The Matrix (1999)​

Keanu Reeves, 61, plays a clueless, mild-mannered computer programmer who ventures down the rabbit hole and enters an alternative universe (or is it the only true universe?) and is rechristened Neo, a would-be digital messiah recruited to save humanity from its mind-fogging tech overlords. Beneath the surface of the high-tech action-movie fantasia brought to us by the sibling directors known as the Wachowskis, The Matrix feels more and more like a chilling cautionary tale about our willingness to hand ourselves over to the shadow world of the internet, where the line between our real selves and our online avatars gets blurrier every day.

Watch it: The Matrix

Total Recall (1990)​

It was hard to narrow down this list to include just one movie based on a Philip K. Dick story. So here’s another. A deliciously dark satire set mostly on Mars, Total Recall is every bit as clever and twisty as Dick’s Blade Runner. Since it also stars Arnold Schwarzenegger, 78, at his action-hero peak, it balances deeper ideas with giddy, over-the-top mayhem. If you don’t believe that an “Ahnuld” movie can give your brain a workout, give this one a watch and get back to us. This is the definition of glorious excess.

Watch it: Total Recall

Dune: Part One (2021)​

Forget the lifeless 1984 adaptation of Frank Herbert’s 1965 cult novel about a distant desert planet loaded with a priceless substance called “spice” and the warring tribes that fight for it. Because director Denis Villeneuve’s retina-sizzling take on the material is an instant classic. Timothée Chalamet is outstanding as a visionary young seeker named Paul Atreides, who may or may not be the messiah that the inhabitants of the planet Arrakis have long been waiting for. Meanwhile, Villeneuve, 58, packs every frame with breathtaking images without sacrificing the richness of Herbert’s narrative, giving us the most transporting sci-fi film in years.

Watch it: Dune