The best science-fiction movies, according to Quentin Tarantino
Since breaking through in the early 1990s with Reservoir Dogs and the screenplay for Tony Scott’s True Romance, Quentin Tarantino has blazed a decorated and highly unique trail through modern cinema. Renowned for his distinctive scriptwriting style and consummate directional command, Tarantino has consistently delivered captivating and comical stories through a distinctive lens tightly bound to his discerning eye.
Tarantino’s idiosyncratic approach to filmmaking is informed by a myriad of movies by the 20th century’s greatest directors. While his most obvious influences lie in the macho violence of westerns, dark comedies, gangster flicks and action movies, Tarantino is deeply fascinated by a broad range of styles and genres, many of which aren’t explored in his oeuvre.
Tarantino has a habit of looking back when he makes his movies; Hateful Eight, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Django Unchained were all set many decades ago, and none of his movies have yet permeated the present into the uncertainties of the future. The auteur seems most comfortable writing within tangible margins, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t got a taste for futuristic settings and science fiction.
While appearing on The Video Archives podcast with Roger Avary, Tarantino revealed one of his favourite sci-fi movies using the ‘m’ word, which he doesn’t take lightly. “The thing that I don’t want to do on this podcast is throw around the m-word. I want the m-word to mean something. The m-word is ‘masterpiece.’”
“I want the m-word to mean something; I don’t want to throw it around,” he continued. “And I don’t want to use the m-word on the very first movie we talk about.” Alas, Tarantino added: “I actually think it applies to Dark Star. It’s a science fiction masterpiece.”
Discussing the John Carpenter classic further, Tarantino said: “It’s a counterculture, anti-establishment, hippie filmmaking masterpiece. It’s an early 1970s masterpiece. I still agree that the guy playing Boiler is miscast; he looks like some buddy of theirs, some hippie buddy that they enlisted to do the movie.”
Tarantino appears to be a rather big fan of Carpenter’s trailblazing approach to filmmaking. In an interview with Stephen Colbert in June 2022, Tarantino picked out Carpenter’s 1982 movie The Thing as another favourite from the sci-fi horror shelf.
“Rob Bottin’s effects in that movie are some of the greatest practical special effects ever put on a movie theatre screen,” Tarantino said. “It’s one of the greatest horror movies ever made, if not one the greatest movies ever made.”
“One of the reasons that The Thing holds a special place in my heart is that I love horror movies — I’m a big horror movie fan — but I don’t get scared in horror movies,” he continued. “I respond to suspense. I respond to that. ‘Oh, what’s going to happen next?’ I can jump by a boo scare. But that’s not really terror… The Thing I got scared in.”
Across various interviews, Tarantino has also revealed his adoration for various adaptations of Mary Shelley’s gothic sci-fi novel Frankenstein. Speaking on SiriusXM, he once picked out Charles Barton’s comedy-horror, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, as a childhood favourite.
“Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein was probably my favourite movie when I was really, really, really young,” Tarantino said. “And the thing about why I think it was so influential was that I remember at that time period, my two favourite movies in the world were monster movies, the Universal monster movies from the 1930s, and physical comedies. When I watched this movie, it bent my mind that my two favourite genres, even though I didn’t know what genre meant, could be put into one movie. I didn’t know you could do that! I was a little boy at seven or eight making genre distinctions, and I’ve been trying to mash them up for the rest of my career.”
Below, we have created a list of science-fiction movies that Quentin Tarantino has endorsed in various interviews and in his Video Archives podcast.
The best sci-fi movies, according to Quentin Tarantino:
- Young Frankenstein – Mel Brooks
- Back to the Future – Robert Zemeckis
- The Thing – John Carpenter
- Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein – Charles Barton
- Enter the Void – Gaspar Noé
- The Host – Bong Joon-ho
- The Matrix – The Wachowskis
- Unbreakable – M. Night Shyamalan
- Mad Max: Fury Road – George Miller
- Dark Star – John Carpenter
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