The 10 best sci-fi movies of the 21st century
Whether you’re seeking high-octane thrills and intergalactic warfare or a meditative commentary on the state of humanity, sci-fi has a lot to offer. Storytellers have been exploring the genre for well over 100 years – Georges Méliès’ famous A Trip to the Moon, regarded as one of the first motion pictures for public view, was released way back in 1902.
Some 80 years after Méliès’ contribution to cinema, the 20th century hadn’t even come to a close, and already it felt like moviegoers had witnessed every possible science-fiction story under the sun (or Suns), with the likes of Stanley Kubrick’s hallucinatory and mind-bending 2001: A Space Odyssey, George Lucas’ franchise-launching Star Wars, and Ridley Scott’s moody and noir-influenced Blade Runner.
Coming in the wake of genre-defying titles with their mind-boggling advancements in film technology, as well as real-world developments in science taking us ever closer to ‘the future’, it may have seemed ambitious – if not downright silly – to make sci-fi films in the new millennia.
Yet here are ten movies that showcase incredible imaginations and prove that science fiction still has a whole lot more to give.
The 10 best sci-fi movies of the 21st century:
District 9 (Neill Blomkamp, 2009)
Based on a short film made in 2006, Neill Blomkamp’s debut feature was a sci-fi action film that put himself and South African cinema on the map. A masterclass in world-building, the story takes place in Johannesburg in 2010, 28 years after an alien mothership has appeared over the city.
District 9 combines the found-footage format with slick cinematography and follows Wikus van de Merwe as he becomes embroiled in a plan to help a refuge alien named Christopher and his young son escape from Earth. Cleverly exploring themes of racism, xenophobia and segregation, Blomkamp’s first movie gave audiences a lot of allegories to chew on whilst also offering some of the most visually impressive and shocking action set-pieces to date.
Primer (Shane Carruth, 2004)
Shot on a budget of only $7,000, this ultra-indie sci-fi picked up the Grand Jury Prize at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival and secured itself a cult status with audiences around the world for its experimental and highly technical approach to time travel.
Written and directed by Shane Carruth, who also produced, starred in, edited and composed the music, Primer is about two engineers who, during an experiment in electromagnetism, accidentally create a time machine in their garage. What follows is a deeply complex, jargon-heavy depiction of the fallout of this discovery. Whilst Carruth’s presentation of ‘plausible’ time travel is often hard to follow, especially for the non-scientifically literate among us, the result is nevertheless an astounding piece of science fiction and independent cinema in general.
Nope (Jordan Peele, 2022)
Jordan Peele’s third feature takes his signature twisted style into the heavens and above. Peele’s follow-up to 2019’s Us introduces us to a family of horse wranglers in the Hollywood hills who begin to have some extra-terrestrial trouble after noticing a particularly out-of-place cloud in the sky.
Channelling some serious Spielberg energy, with Peele even citing Close Encounters of the Third Kind as a main influence, Nope is an expansive, epic, Western-tinged horror that was made to be seen on the big screen. Shot on wide-screen 35mm film, Peele’s latest movie is a gleefully indulgent blockbuster that showcases the director’s unrestrained imagination in all the best ways. Wound tightly with tension from the opening frame, the audience is treated to powerhouse performances from Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer, breathtaking vistas of the California hills, an unforgettably disturbing flashback sequence involving a chimpanzee — and one of, if not the most, imaginative and singular alien creature designs in cinema history.
The Animatrix (Various, 2003)
2003 was a good year for The Matrix fans. Having been made to wait three years after the seminal first instalment, we were given not one but two sequels in the same year. Reloaded gave us some phenomenal fight sequences and introduced us to some new characters, whilst Resolutions finally brought Neo’s journey to an end (until 2021, but let’s ignore that).
There was, however, a third film that may have slipped past audiences’ attention that year. The Animatrix, the Wachowski-produced anime anthology, is a collection of nine short stories that took the core themes and established lore of the live-action trilogy and expanded on them with such soul and philosophical gravity that it made the entry the most engaging and thought-provoking of the entire series. From the Book of Genesis-style origin story of the machine uprising (Mahiro Maeda’s The Second Renaissance, Parts 1 and 2) to a seemingly unrelated story of children exploring a ‘haunted’ house (Koji Morimoto’s Beyond), the eclectic and episodic nature of this film allowed it to fully explore all the possibilities the science fiction genre has to offer.
Donnie Darko (Richard Kelly, 2001)
Richard Kelly’s debut feature was so immortalised by its infamous rabbit-costumed figure and ‘Mad World’ cover that it’s easy for one to forget the film’s sci-fi premise. A then-unknown Jake Gyllenhall is a deeply disturbed teenager who, guided by haunting visions of the future, literally sleepwalks out of harm’s way when a jet engine crashes into his bedroom.
Of all the films on this list, this really is the hardest one to categorise. Playing with the sci-fi genre in the same way Kurt Vonnegut does with his books (it’s worth noting that Kelly adapted Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle into an unproduced screenplay), Donnie Darko is a trippy odyssey into the human psyche, a bleak 1980’s coming-of-age tale and – sometimes – an outright horror. Kelly’s commitment to the psychology of characters and the distinct tone throughout elevates the film to a very special height, with it playing similarly to if Paul Thomas Anderson made a sci-fi back in the 1990s. Think Magnolia with time travel, and you’re on the right track.
Moon (Duncan Jones, 2009)
Yet another debut feature, director Duncan Jones’ first film heralded a new, gargantuan cinematic talent. Whilst his subsequent endeavours never quite reached the same heights, Moon is a breathtaking psychological sci-fi film which showcases one of the most moving performances from Sam Rockwell.
Nearing the end of an isolated mining mission, Sam Bell – a lone employee of Lunar Industries – starts to have vivid hallucinations of mysteriously familiar figures on his station. Plunging into delirium and paranoia, Bell begins to unravel very unsavoury truths about both himself and his mission, exacerbated by his sardonic AI companion named GERTY. Whilst offering us gorgeously shot landscapes of the lunar surface and scientifically-informed depictions of future tech and industry, Jones makes sure to always keep his central character at the forefront, resulting in the most emotionally impactful entry in the sci-fi genre.
Interstellar (Christopher Nolan, 2014)
Whilst Christopher Nolan is no stranger to sci-fi, with dream-based thriller Inception coming four years prior and the time-travel espionage Tenet arriving in 2020, his ninth film is the one most classically rooted in the genre, from its depiction of astronauts right down to its title. It’s also his best.
With Physics Nobel laureate Kip Thorne acting as both exec producer and scientific consultant, Interstellar showed audiences some of the most jaw-dropping visual effects seen across any genre. Informed by stone-cold theoretical physics, depictions of wormholes, other planets and a particularly impressive black hole won the film ‘Best Visual Effects’ at the 87th Academy Awards. Add to that a star-studded ensemble cast, a profound and resonating story about humanity overcoming adversity, an iconic score from Hans Zimmer and a sense of scale and breadth not matched since Stanley Kubrick’s 2001… and you have a winner on your hands.
WALL-E (Andrew Stanton, 2008)
Directed by Pixar veteran Andrew Stanton, WALL-E is the story of a lonely clean-up robot – in the year 2805 – who discovers the first specimen of organic life on an otherwise uninhabitable and deserted planet earth. When he meets the sleek and hyper-sophisticated EVE, a probe from a spaceship containing what’s left of humanity, he falls in love and embarks on a journey across the galaxy.
From the moment the film opens with its gorgeous tableaux of the cosmos, accompanied by ‘Put On Your Sunday Clothes’ from Hello, Dolly!, you know you’re in for something uniquely special. The whole spectrum of human emotion is experienced when watching this film, and by the end, you’ll have been guided by the filmmakers through a myriad of themes ranging from love, capitalism, greed, ecological disaster and the potentially dire consequences of our fixation with technology. With every year that passes, the film takes on even more relevance, which is just one of the reasons why it’s so high on this list.
Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017)
Pinning down the best Denis Villeneuve sci-fi is no mean feat, but his ambitious follow-up to the undisputed 1982 classic that is Blade Runner is a masterpiece in how to do a sequel right.
Set 30 years after the original, we follow replicant LAPD agent ‘K’ as he slowly uncovers a staggering truth that rattles the very foundations of what being a human is.
Villeneuve’s contribution to the world of Blade Runner does what every sequel wishes it could; expand upon the original whilst introducing new concepts that are so powerful and thought-provoking that they somehow reverberate backwards, elevating the first film to new, previously unknown heights. You didn’t know you wanted more Blade Runner, but Villeneuve gave it to you, and it was greater than you could have possibly imagined.
Under The Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2013)
Jonathan Glazer’s third feature is vastly different from its source material, using Michel Faber’s novel as a springboard for an exclusively cinematic and singularly terrifying experience. Slow-burning and richly textured, the film follows an almost unrecognisable Scarlett Johansson as an alien-in-disguise, using her human form to stalk the Glaswegian streets and seduce unwitting men.
Combining hidden cameras and street photography — half of the ‘performances’ are completely genuine — with stunningly abstract visual effects, Under The Skin is one of the few films in which its form mirrors its story. Scarlett Johansson’s transformation from a Hollywood actress to someone who real people on the street don’t look twice at cleverly mirrors the metamorphosis her character undergoes and the discovery of one’s humanity that comes with it. Top it off with a blood-chilling score by first-time composer Mica Levi, and the result is a sci-fi that is unlike anything that came before.
