The 100 Best Sci-Fi Movies Of All Time

Joss Whedon's wonderful coda to the cult show Firefly probably wouldn't exist if that show hadn't been prematurely cancelled—a layer of irony that seems to fit the always jocular but never sarcastic tone of the film. The movie works for those new to the franchise, though, succinctly introducing all the major characters and themes in a tour-de-force opening.

Whedon's futuristic wild West of space pirates and psychic ingénues shows how an ostensibly benevolent government can transform into an evil empire. Despite the will of the entire Internet, there will never, ever be a sequel, even though Orson Scott Card has called this the best science-fiction film ever.

A cheery blend of anti-government paranoia, haywire sociology, and good old-fashioned grindhouse sleaze, Escape From New York takes the famous New York Daily News headline, "[President ] Ford to City: Drop Dead," and goes crazy with it.

The year is 1997 and crime is so rampant that the island of Manhattan has been declared a federal prison. Recidivism rates are low considering the philosophy is taken straight from the Roach Motel: Prisoners go in but they don't come out. When a band of terrorists hijack the president's plane and the president winds up trapped in the walled-off 212 area code, only Kurt Russell's eye-patched Snake Plissken can save him.

Past the initial premise and some cool-for-its-day opening computer graphics, Escape From New York is a film that's actually better in your memory than in reality—though nothing can take away from the chandeliers fixed to the hood of Isaac Hayes's car.

You know that part when Jake Sully is making a deal with Col. Quaritch to be his eyes and ears as he works with Dr. Augustine and her avatars? Col. Quaritch says "You get me what I need, I'll see to it you get your legs back. Your real legs." When he says that last part, he's pointing to Jake Sully's legs, and because he's actually inside a mech suit, a giant robotic arm comes out and also points at Jake Sully's legs.

I love that part.

If you thought that the episode of The Simpsons in which the robots of Itchy and Scratchy Land go on a killing spree was ripped from the TV movie Kiss Meets the Phantom, I'm afraid you were incorrect. It was ripped from the surprisingly good Richard Benjamin vehicle Westworld.

Written and directed by Michael Crichton, Westworld recognises that its own premise is a little goofy, but it still has some legitimately frightening moments. At the "adult" Disneyland, vacationers can live out their Roman, Medieval, or Old West fantasies with none of the risk—until a malfunction sends a cyber Yul Brynner on a relentless path of destruction.

Westworld offers up a mixture of early ‘70s pop psychology and a jaundiced view of unchecked technology. Between this film and The Stepford Wives, it's surprising that the animatronics industry didn't go under.

Kathryn Bigelow's film about a peddler of immersive virtual-reality recordings (think YouTube videos mixed with a VR headset) in a dystopian Los Angeles still feels surprisingly relevant. Ralph Fiennes, who is consistently great in his roles, plays Lenny Nero, a former cop who now sells illegal recordings to customers who can strap on a device, called a SQUID, and experience a moment in another person's life. Some of these recordings are innocent—like a person walking on a beach—while others are dark and sinister.

But this movie isn't simply a story about virtual reality and how people will use the technology in the future. Partially inspired by the 1992 Rodney King riots in Los Angeles, the main plot of Strange Days centers around police brutality and corruption. Police officers try to destroy evidence of an officer-involved shooting, which of course exists in the form of one of the virtual-reality recordings. In a world where recordings of officer-involved shootings and police brutality show up on the Internet far too regularly, this film feels unfortunately too real.

The fact that its studio gave this film basically no distribution or marketing push only goes to further prove the film's premise of human foolishness.

A so-good-it's-depressing satire of the increasing vapidity of our culture, Idiocracy's premise is simple: Someday humanity will be so stupid that a dope from today will seem like an absolute genius.Watching Idiocracy can be dangerous, however. It may radically color your perception of reality television and cable news. No one said science-fiction satire came without repercussions.

A difficult film that still rides waves of backlash and reverse-backlash, The Black Hole was Disney's costly attempt to make its own Star Wars. But back then Disney had no idea how to make live-action movies, and the result is a strange hodge-podge of kid-friendly robots, awesome special effects, 2001-esque psychedelic freak-out (see video above) and Ernest Borgnine in zero gravity.

Those of us who are old enough to have seen this in the theater may recall an afternoon of equal parts joy, boredom, and terror—and an annoying feeling when later reading 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and realising that it's missing a giant red robot named Maximilian.

Mixing big-budget action sequences with a time-loop twist turned into a surprisingly awesome film. Edge of Tomorrow looks and feels like a video game, and it makes you hunt for clues and tricks to complete the journey. Tom Cruise takes on the role of unprepared soldier William Cage, who is tasked with fighting off an alien invasion, while Emily Blunt's Rita Vrataski becomes the real hero of the story. Rita has been playing the game for a long time, and she trains William on how to fight back.

The aliens in this film, called Mimics, are beautifully imagined as a mass of dark tentacles with a head. By beautiful, I mean absolutely frightening.

A cri de coeur for environmentalists, this take on interstellar preservation manages to be both whiz-bang fun and an early appearance of what would become sci-fi tropes. While protecting the last surviving plant life, Bruce Dern scoots around a giant spacecraft and plays cards with fun helper robots. Silent Running's adorable bots came years before Star Wars, and the massive "last chance for humanity" ships predate Battlestar Galactica.

The film was co-written by Michael Cimino, who would later make The Deer Hunter, and Steven Bochco, who'd later make, among other things, Hill Street Blues. The director, Douglas Trumbull, is one of the most respected special-effects wizards out there, getting his start with short films for the 1964 World's Fair and still working on projects such as Tree of Life. I mention all this so you'll keep your mind off the dreadful Joan Baez song that nearly ruins the entire film.

John Carpenter's They Live may seem like science fiction, but many of us know it to be documentary truth: Advertising is actually the work of belligerent space aliens intent on subduing and exploiting the populace. Oops! I've said too much.

If we were ranking the top sunglasses-related, never-ending fight scenes, we'd list this film much, much higher.

H.G. Wells's 1898 novel is perfect source material for a paranoid 1950s technicolor adventure. Yes, the filmmakers bleached most of the social commentary from the novel in favor of simple thrills. For sequences of pure earth annihilation, though, few films from the era can compare. The organic-looking ships and laser sound effects set the aesthetic tone for many films to come.

There are many different iterations of this Wells text, from Orson Welles's radio play to the esoteric 1978 rock opera featuring members of the Moody Blues to Spielberg's 9/11-informed film version. But this one is still the best.

Although Galaxy Quest received the forceful endorsement of none other than George Takei, who called it "a powerful piece of documentary filmmaking," I was at first resistant to see the film because I was afraid it would be another "get a life" pop-culture wedgie for sci-fi fans. In truth, Galaxy Quest proved to be a loving, if lovingly tongue-in-cheek, ode to Star Trek and its fandom.

Yet even with Tim Allen's Shatner bravado and Alan Rickman's Patrick Stewart/Leonard Nimoy superciliousness, it is hard not to get caught up in the actual space adventure behind the satire. That's this film's true magic: Behind all the geek-culture sarcasm, it's still a ripping good yarn.

The last truly whacked-out film from the master of body horror (please, please come back to us and leave the Jung biopics to someone else!), David Cronenberg's eXistenZ was a prescient look at the way role-playing video games will take over our culture. Okay, so the immoral side-missions in Grand Theft Auto aren't quite of this life-altering nature, but I do think there are gamers out there who would manipulate their nervous systems if it meant a more immersive environment.

eXistenZ is icky and gooey in just the right places, featuring a lot of gross stuff going into and coming out of Jude Law's mouth. It is certainly of a piece with Cronenberg's earlier Videodrome even if I'm not completely sure what happens at the end of either.

On one level, it's The Poseidon Adventure in space, but on another, it's a beautiful tone poem on humanity's timeless force of will. Sunshine is also impeccably designed, without one image that isn't worthy of a frame.

Cillian Murphy and a starship crew are mankind's last chance for survival. They must drop a great big macguffin to reignite the dying sun or else all is lost. Despite action and adventure, Sunshine is still the type of film that inspires deep questions in its audience. How can one keep fighting in the face of insurmountable odds? What, and whom, are you willing to sacrifice in support of the greater good?

Sunshine isn't just a dynamite science-fiction film; it is a marvelous look at a group of desperate people coming together to face an impossible challenge. The score by John Murphy and Underworld is absolutely what I want to be playing when my body is liquefied by solar flares.

A father and daughter who communicate through another dimension. Space missions that take decades. A solution to control gravity on other planets. Christopher Nolan's sweeping, epic film is what most big-budget sci-fi films aspire to be, but Nolan actually pulled it off, thanks to great characters and a story that is focused on people rather than abstract technology. Think of it as Inception in space.

Interstellar is also great because the plot, at least part of it, is based on real science. Physicist Kip Thorne acted as science adviser on the film, and he had a say in how the wormholes and black holes in the film looked. The result is possibly the best wormhole scene on film to date, outside of Contact, which also incorporated Thorne's vision of wormholes.

Infamously chosen over Spielberg's E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial by Columbia Pictures, Starman may've been an unwise business move, but it was hardly a creative disaster. This touching love story between Jeff Bridges and Karen Allen is like E.T. for grown-ups, but mixed with notes that later show up in Contact, Ghost, and maybe Rain Man.

Starman is a prime example of sci-fi that even people who don't like sci-fi will love. Once past the premise (dude from space looks like dead husband) it's hard not to cheer along as our heroes embark on a road trip to safety with the big bad government in hot pursuit. The follow-up TV series with Robert Hays may not have been the best idea, however.

Sure, The Force Awakens is partially fueled on nostalgia and includes many nods to previous films in the franchise. But the best thing about this film is the new characters. It introduced us to orphan scavenger Rey (Daisy Ridley), former stormtrooper Finn (John Boyega), and X-wing pilot Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac), among others. It allowed us to see the Star Wars universe through the eyes of a new generation, and it did what its original creator failed to with the prequels—make us excited about Star Wars again.

We don't know yet how this new trilogy will compare to the original three films, but it's already certain that The Force Awakens is destined for sci-fi legend if only for its long-awaited return. Although it certainly uses dazzling CGI, The Force Awakens returns to form with real sets, costumes, and stunts.

And just when you thought that no one could create a better Star Wars robot than the sassy R2-D2, The Force Awakens rolls out the adorable BB-8. More robots, please!

Few movies have captured the fun, zany spirit of 1950s pulp while also managing to be so, well, good. The groundbreaking effects, sharp script, and solid performances from Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith made Men in Black an instant classic.

This movie is also great for anyone who has ever driven into Manhattan from Long Island. It's hard to look at those dilapidated structures from the 1964 World's Fair in Flushing Meadows, Queens, and not laugh, knowing what squiggly, slobby aliens are lurking among them.

Back in the '90s when life coaches like Tony Robbins started telling people to get "in the zone," I had to laugh. Surely they must have known that it isn't that easy to get in the Zone.

In Andrei Tarkovsky's trippy film Stalker, the Zone is a forbidden wasteland where the usual rules of perception and physics are not sacrosanct. In the heart of the Zone is "the Room," and inside the Room is where, so it is said, one's deepest wish becomes a reality.

To get there, a person must hire a guide (called a Stalker), and the road is fraught with endless long takes of slowly moving rivers laden with symbolic iconography. Tarkovsky's deliberate camerawork and evocative tone creates some weird, moody cinema.

In Dreamscape, Dennis Quaid has the ability to enter other people's dreams, and at first it seems like he'll be able to help them combat their psychological issues in a series of cool color-saturated fantasy sequences. Then he uncovers a plot to start World War III and must stop the evil powers the only way he knows how: by taking a nap!

Here's one thing I know: All movies could use a dash of David Patrick Kelly as a lizard monster.