Best Sci- Fi Movies of the 2. Century (So Far) There’s a lot of evidence to suggest that in some ways we are living in a golden age of science- fiction cinema, which is most appropriate for the era that kicked off with the year 2.

For one thing, there’s a lot more of it; I was honestly surprised in some ways to see just how many sci- fi movies have been released since the turn of the century (and millennium). But more importantly, there have been so many good (and even great) genre efforts released that even the list of runners- up posted at the end of this article represents a formidable survey of some really strong pieces of work. And it’s not all expensive, effects- driven stuff: the cheapest movie on this list cost under $1. You might notice that a few rather huge blockbusters are missing from this list as well, in particular Avatar and Star Wars: The Force Awakens. That doesn’t mean they’re bad films; in fact I loved The Force Awakens.

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The First Teaser for American Horror Story: Cult Tells Us Nothing, But It Sure Is Full of Creepy-Ass Clowns. Star Trek is a 2009 American science fiction adventure film directed by J. Abrams and written by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman. It is the eleventh film in the.

But all that movie does is resurrect the brand and sort of restate the original story, while Avatar’s incredible world- building was let down by the most obvious narrative James Cameron could have chosen. We’ve also left superhero films out of the equation: while many of them utilize sci- fi elements, they’re really a genre unto themselves nowadays. Sci- fi is above all a genre of ideas, and each of the films selected below offers up something that arguably expands or bends one’s mind and in many cases is relevant to the world we live in right now. That’s truly what the best science fiction does, and that’s why we believe the movies below are the best - - so far - - of the 2. A. I.: Artificial Intelligence (2.

At first glance the more humane, optimistic Steven Spielberg taking over a project from the deeply cynical Stanley Kubrick (who asked Spielberg to direct it four years before the former’s 1. But their sensibilities were actually reversed on this, as A. I. But somehow it all works, held together by Kelly’s confident vision and a great central performance from a young Gyllenhaal.

Minority Report (2. Spielberg tackles Philip K. Dick in one of the director’s most ambitious works to date. Tom Cruise plays John Anderton, part of an elite unit tasked with preventing murders before they happen thanks to the abilities of mutants known as Pre. Cogs who can see the future. Romantic Movies 2009 Maze Runner 2 (2015).

But Anderton finds himself accused of a murder he has yet to commit and must go on the run. In addition to being a sizzling, highly visceral chase thriller, Minority Report creates a deeply unsettling and immersive near- future world and touches on themes of determinism, government intrusion and media infiltration into our everyday lives - - making the movie just as relevant as ever. The only flaw: a triumphant ending that feels almost physically out of place with the rest of the film.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2. This masterpiece is one of many of what I call “hidden” science fiction films - - stories in which the sci- fi element, while crucial, is subtly integrated into the contours of what appears to be a non- genre narrative. In this case, the option to have one’s memories erased via a scientific procedure provides the framework for a story about memory and love that is poignant, heartbreaking and profound in what it says about relationships. Michel Gondry’s fragmentary direction suits Charlie Kaufman’s reverse- engineered gem of a screenplay, while Kate Winslet and especially Jim Carrey are flawless as the emotionally damaged couple who elect to forget each other - - even if their memories linger on like messages from a ghost dimension. Primer (2. 00. 4)Shane Carruth wrote, directed, shot, edited, scored, and starred in this extremely low budget ($7,0.

I guess you save a lot when you do everything on the movie!) mind- bender about two engineers (Carruth and David Sullivan) who stumble upon a way to travel through time and proceed to twist the fabric of reality as well as their own lives into increasingly labyrinthine and overlapping duplicates. The movie’s dry, grounded approach to showing how two schlubs make an earthshaking discovery in a garage and then proceed to let their worst instincts take over and fuck things up give an immediacy that is gripping even if you don’t always know what the hell is going on. Carruth went on to make the even more impenetrable Upstream Color (2. Serenity (2. 00. 5)The great thing about writer/director Joss Whedon’s thrilling “space Western” is that you don’t have to know the TV show it was spun off from, Firefly, to appreciate and enjoy it (I still have never seen the series, which had only a brief nine- episode run on Fox). Whedon’s deft touch with ensemble casts and terrifically drawn characters, his ear for sharp, witty dialogue and his elegant way with narrative and setting are all put to excellent use in this tremendously entertaining, funny and resonant adventure. War of the Worlds (2.

Spielberg’s third sci- fi outing of the millennium proved to be his darkest yet, a modern- day retelling of H. G. Wells’ landmark novel that managed to be fairly faithful to the book (including visualizing the alien tripods close to how Wells described them) while using it as a metaphor for the fear and horror that gripped the country in the wake of 9/1. Tom Cruise is right on the money as an everyman who deals with forces and circumstances beyond his comprehension, while also taking the familiar Spielberg role of the deadbeat dad. Images from this film - - running people being vaporized on the street, a burning train roaring down a track and a nightmarish river awash with dead bodies - - are among the most frightening Spielberg has ever committed to film.

And don’t blame him for the abrupt ending - - it’s right out of Wells. Children of Men (2. Despite not connecting with audiences on its initial run, Children of Men is still revered as one of the best films of the 2. Director Alfonso Cuaron adapts author P. D. James’ book about the slow descent of human society into chaos - - thanks to the complete cessation of new children being born - - in harrowing, immersive, yet deeply emotional style.

Clive Owen has never been better as burned- out civil worker Theo, who must guide a young woman with a secret through the anarchy descending around them in a last bid for hope and survival. Technically dazzling from its production design to its stunning single- take sequences, full of sorrow, despair, beauty and ultimately faith in human compassion, Children of Men remains a devastating classic 1. The Fountain (2. 00. Like Children of Men,The Fountain was not embraced by audiences upon its release and not altogether beloved by critics either.

Filmmaker Darren Aronofsky (Requiem for a Dream, Black Swan, Noah) tells three different stories - - one set in the past, one in the present and one in the far future - - all starring Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz as characters who may be the same in each timeline. A meditation on love, death, metaphysics, the meaning of existence and the power of time and memory, The Fountain may lack enough clarity to appeal to mainstream audiences but if you can solve its puzzle the message it delivers is a profound one. Jackman and Weisz hold all three stories together and visually the movie is a gloriously kaleidoscopic sensory feast. Sunshine (2. 00. 7)Ah, poor, perpetually underrated Sunshine.

The third collaboration between director Danny Boyle and novelist- turned- screenwriter Alex Garland is a crisp, tense, gripping space melodrama in which a team of scientists must fly to the sun and plant a nuclear device that will help the dying star reignite and save humanity. The psychological effects of the journey soon lead to trouble. Cillian Murphy and future Captain America Chris Evans top a sturdy cast that manage to eke personality out of their somewhat thin characters, and the visuals and sense of impending dread are top notch. I even like the third act reveal even if some critics felt it pushed the story into slasher/horror territory.

Science fiction - Wikipedia. Artwork by David Revoy for the preproduction of the fourth open movie of the Blender Foundation, .

Science fiction often explores the potential consequences of scientific and other innovations, and has been called a . Author and editor Damon Knight summed up the difficulty, saying . Glassy, who argues that the definition of science fiction is like the definition of pornography: you do not know what it is, but you know it when you see it. Wells and Edgar Allan Poe type of story—a charming romance intermingled with scientific fact and prophetic vision. Science fiction is the improbable made possible.

Science fiction elements include: A time setting in the future, in alternative timelines, or in a historical past that contradicts known facts of history or the archaeological record. A spatial setting or scenes in outer space (e. A True Story, written in the 2nd century AD by the Hellenized Syrian satirist Lucian, contains many themes and tropes that are characteristic of modern science fiction, including travel to other worlds, extraterrestrial lifeforms, interplanetary warfare, and artificial life, and is considered by some to be the first science fiction novel. Francis Bacon's The New Atlantis (1. Isaac Asimov and Carl Sagan considered Kepler's work the first science fiction story.

Wells and Jules Verne created a body of work that became popular across broad cross- sections of society. It is a seminal depiction of an alien invasion of Earth. In the late 1. 9th century, the term . This produced additional offshoots, such as the 1.

Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin Abbott Abbott. The term would continue to be used into the early 2. Olaf Stapledon. In the early 2. American SF writers, influenced by Hugo Gernsback, the founder of Amazing Stories magazine. The 1. 92. 8 publication of Philip Francis Nowlan's original Buck Rogers story, Armageddon 2. Amazing Stories was a landmark event. This story led to comic strips featuring Buck Rogers (1.

Brick Bradford (1. Flash Gordon (1. 93. The comic strips and derivative movie serials greatly popularized science fiction. In the late 1. 93. John W. Campbell became editor of Astounding Science Fiction, and a critical mass of new writers emerged in New York City in a group called the Futurians, including Isaac Asimov, Damon Knight, Donald A. Wollheim, Frederik Pohl, James Blish, Judith Merril, and others. Heinlein, Arthur C.

Clarke, Olaf Stapledon, and A. Working outside the Campbell influence were Ray Bradbury and Stanis. Campbell's tenure at Astounding is considered to be the beginning of the Golden Age of science fiction, characterized by hard SF stories celebrating scientific achievement and progress. Gold, and a new generation of writers began writing stories with less emphasis on the hard sciences and more on the social sciences. In the 1. 95. 0s, the Beat generation included speculative writers such as William S. In the 1. 96. 0s and early 1. Frank Herbert, Samuel R.

Delany, Roger Zelazny, and Harlan Ellison explored new trends, ideas, and writing styles, while a group of writers, mainly in Britain, became known as the New Wave for their embrace of a high degree of experimentation, both in form and in content, and a highbrow and self- consciously . Le Guin and others pioneered soft science fiction.

Dick, such as Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The Star Wars franchise helped spark a new interest in space opera. Cherryh's detailed explorations of alien life and complex scientific challenges influenced a generation of writers.

Lois Mc. Master Bujold's Vorkosigan novels brought the character- driven story back into prominence. Stargate SG- 1, a TV series, premiered on July 2. Spin- offs include the animated television series Stargate Infinity, the TV series Stargate Atlantis and Stargate Universe, and the direct- to- DVD films Stargate: The Ark of Truth and Stargate: Continuum. Stargate SG- 1 surpassed The X- Files as the longest- running North American science fiction television series, a record later broken by Smallville.

This topic has been more often discussed in literary and sociological than in scientific forums. Cinema and media theorist Vivian Sobchack examines the dialogue between science fiction films and the technological imagination. Technology impacts artists and how they portray their fictionalized subjects, but the fictional world gives back to science by broadening imagination. How William Shatner Changed the World is a documentary that gave a number of real- world examples of actualized technological imaginations. While more prevalent in the early years of science fiction with writers like Arthur C. Clarke, new authors still find ways to make currently impossible technologies seem closer to being realized.

Some accurate predictions of the future come from the hard science fiction subgenre, but numerous inaccurate predictions have emerged as well. Landis, David Brin. Forward, while mathematician authors include Rudy Rucker and Vernor Vinge.

Other noteworthy hard SF authors include Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Hal Clement, Greg Bear, Larry Niven, Robert J. Sawyer, Stephen Baxter, Alastair Reynolds, Charles Sheffield, Ben Bova, Kim Stanley Robinson, Anne Mc. Caffrey, Andy Weir and Greg Egan. Soft science fiction.

Noteworthy writers in this category include Ursula K. Le Guin and Philip K. Common themes in cyberpunk include advances in information technology and especially the Internet, visually abstracted as cyberspace, artificial intelligence, and cybernetics and post- democratic societal control where corporations have more influence than governments. Nihilism, post- modernism, and film noir techniques are common elements, and the protagonists may be disaffected or reluctant anti- heroes. Noteworthy authors in this genre are William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Neal Stephenson, and Pat Cadigan.

James O'Ehley has called the 1. Blade Runner a definitive example of the cyberpunk visual style. The first major time- travel novel was Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. The most famous is H. Wells' 1. 89. 5 novel The Time Machine, which uses a vehicle that allows an operator to travel purposefully and selectively, while Twain's time traveler is struck in the head. The term time machine, coined by Wells, is now universally used to refer to such a vehicle.

Back to the Future is one of the most popular movie franchises in this category; Doctor Who is a similarly popular long- running television franchise. Stories of this type are complicated by logical problems such as the grandfather paradox. Time travel continues to be a popular subject in modern science fiction, in print, movies, and television. Alternate history. These stories may use time travel to change the past, or may simply set a story in a universe with a different history from our own.

Classics in the genre include Bring the Jubilee by Ward Moore, in which the South wins the American Civil War, and The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick, in which Germany and Japan win World War II. The Sidewise Award acknowledges the best works in this subgenre; the name is taken from Murray Leinster's 1. Sidewise in Time. Harry Turtledove is one of the most prominent authors in the subgenre and is sometimes called the . Stories include detail about military technology, procedure, ritual, and history; military stories may use parallels with historical conflicts. Heinlein's Starship Troopers is an early example, along with the Dorsai novels of Gordon Dickson.

Joe Haldeman's The Forever War is a critique of the genre, a Vietnam- era response to the World War II–style stories of earlier authors. Williamson, S. Stirling, and John Carr. The publishing company Baen Books is known for cultivating several of these military science fiction authors. This can stem either from natural causes such as in Olaf Stapledon's novel Odd John, Theodore Sturgeon's More Than Human, and Philip Wylie's Gladiator, or be the result of scientific advances, such as the intentional augmentation in A.