The 24 best sci-fi movies on Max

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Stanley Kubrick's claustrophobic, space-faring epic confronted audiences with a hard truth: No matter how far forward technology leaps, humans will still launch themselves into ultimately doomed quests toward somewhere else in service of whatever deities the universe provides. In spite of that ultimately bleak idea, the 1968 masterpiece is a gorgeous marvel of filmmaking, so grand in scope and design that it was originally screened on specially made curved screens to better envelop the audience in Kubrick's mad vision. We promise the "Also sprach Zarathustra" opening still lands on your television screen with the weight of an otherworldly monolith. —Alex Galbraith

Where to watch 2001: A Space Odyssey: Max

Director: Stanley Kubrick

Cast: Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood

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Aliens (1986)

James Cameron's follow up to Ridley Scott's 1979 sci-fi horror film Alien, the sequel Aliens — released after years of delays and development apathy — picks up where its predecessor left off. After more than half a century in stasis, Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) is rescued and agrees to accompany her employers to an exomoon so they can exterminate the creatures that destroyed her former ship and murdered its crew. But when their mission goes similarly awry, it's up to Ripley to help evade the aliens and find a path back to Earth. The film earned Weaver an Oscar nod for Best Actress, and her performance as an action star was credited with elevating the film beyond typical B movie fare. The movie also helped establish Cameron's Hollywood reputation as a craftsman with a talent for pacing action films and a nose for employing cutting-edge visual effects. —Ilana Gordon

Where to watch Aliens: Max

Director: James Cameron

Cast: Sigourney Weaver, Michael Biehn, Paul Reiser, Lance Henriksen, Bill Paxton

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Avatar (2009)

James Cameron's cinematic brain operates roughly 15 years ahead of where technology is at any given moment. In the '90s, he conceived of the movie Avatar, a live-action film enhanced by special effects and aimed at ushering audiences into an immersive viewing experience. In the early aughts, technology finally caught up with Cameron's imagination, and he was able to execute his vision centered around colonialism, interplanetary resource mining, and a group of indigenous creatures living in harmony with nature on a planet called Pandora. A fantastical love story complete with extraordinary battle scenes, never-before-seen visuals, and thinly veiled warnings about the dangers of exploiting other cultures and their natural resources, EW's critic calls Avatar, "a quintessential movie of its time: dazzling and immersive, a ravishing techno-dream for the senses." —I.G.

Where to watch Avatar: Max

EW grade: B (read the review)

Director: James Cameron

Cast: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Stephen Lang, Michelle Rodriguez, Sigourney Weaver

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Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)

It took 13 years (and lots of underwater technology), but James Cameron finally released the follow-up to his visual masterpiece, Avatar. The second film in the series picks up 16 years after the first: With Earth's Resources Development Administration expelled, former human and current Na'vi chief Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) is living happily with his wife and children — until the RDA returns, intent on colonizing Pandora and seeking vengeance on Sully and his family. Forced to flee to a remote part of the planet occupied by a clan of reef Na'vi, our heroes now must connect with a new culture and prepare to fight for their home and way of life. —I.G.

Where to watch Avatar: the Way of Water: Max

EW grade: A– (read the review)

Director: James Cameron

Cast: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Cliff Curtis, Joel David Moore, CCH Pounder, Edie Falco, Jemaine Clement, Giovanni Ribisi, Kate Winslet

Related content: How Avatar: The Way of Water ending sets up Avatar 3

The Blob (1958)

Where later sci-fi features would have to come up with ever more arcane reasons for their alien assailant's destruction, 1958's The Blob had the luxury of needing no explanation. An otherworldly goop from the far-off reaches of space has crash landed in a small town — and it's hungry. Beyond its ability to make food coloring and jelly frightening, the B-movie schlockfest is notable for being Steve McQueen's first leading role. As the monster grows in size and color on its tyrannical tirade on Norman Rockwell's small-town America, McQueen gamely carries this slow-burn movie to its electrifying ending, with the angry red Blob meeting its match while consuming the local diner whole. The straightforward creature feature made a seismic impact on the sci-fi film genre, influencing countless future directors and inspiring a restored release through the Criterion Collection. —A.G.

Where to watch The Blob: Max

EW grade: B (read the review)

Director: Irvin Yeaworth

Cast: Steven McQueen, Aneta Corsaut, Earl Rowe, Olin Howland

Related content: Scream Factory releasing bonkers The Blob remake on Collector's Edition Blu-ray

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014)

Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) ended with the newly freed primates seeking independence and a fresh start inside San Francisco's Muir Woods. Fast forward 10 years to the beginning of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes where a pandemic has decimated the world's population and reduced cities to shanty towns while the genetically evolved apes continue to thrive in their new home. With their power reduced — both literally and figuratively — a group of humans is dispatched to the woods to negotiate with the primates, but when their bond with the animals is irrevocably shattered, the two species are forced into a war that will determine the fate of the world. Andy Serkis gives his most powerful motion capture performance to date as Caesar, the wise and magnanimous leader of the apes, and the movie perfectly sets the stage for 2017's War for the Planet of the Apes, the final film in the franchise's prequel trilogy. —I.G.

Where to watch Dawn of the Planet of the Apes: Max

EW grade: B+ (read the review)

Director: Matt Reeves

Cast: Andy Serkis, Jason Clarke, Gary Oldman, Keri Russell, Toby Kebbell, Kodi Smit-McPhee

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Dune (2021)

Frank Herbert's Dune novels are dense treatises on colonialism, climate change, and the nature of power. The spice-addled mish-mash of spiritualism and Sun Tzu was considered nigh unfilmable, especially after David Lynch's unfortunate 1984 attempt. But that was before director Denis Villeneuve wowed audiences by cutting the first book in half and plopping Hollywood's hardest-working waif (Timothée Chalamet) into an unforgiving landscape riddled with monstrous, holy worms. The resulting film throws the viewer into the confusing tumult of young Paul Atreides' life, using the foreboding nature of the source material to ramp up the story's internal tension and confusion. A score of war drums and whispers never lets the viewer find their feet on the ever-shifting sands of Arrakis, which EW's critic calls "the kind of lush, lofty filmmaking wide screens were made for." —A.G.

Where to watch Dune: Max

EW grade: B (read the review)

Director: Denis Villeneuve

Cast: Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin, Stellan Skarsgård, Dave Bautista, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Zendaya, Chang Chen, Sharon Duncan-Brewster, Charlotte Rampling, Jason Momoa, Javier Bardem

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Dune: Part Two (2024)

Dune fans who felt let down by the amount of screentime enjoyed by Zendaya’s character, Chani, are in for a treat during the second half of Denis Villeneuve’s two-part adaptation. Now a fully fleshed-out person with far more autonomy and substance than the character enjoyed in the original book, Zendaya’s Chani invites Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) into her community and teaches him the ways of the Fremen. But Chani’s feelings for Paul — the would-be colonizer of her people’s home — are complicated, and Villeneuve does a great job of allowing Zendaya and Chalamet to explore this nuanced relationship, centering their love as a grounding force amidst the rest of the film’s bonkers plot. —I.G.

Where to watch Dune: Part Two: Max

Director: Denis Villeneuve

Cast: Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Josh Brolin, Austin Butler, Florence Pugh, Dave Bautista, Christopher Walken, Léa Seydoux, Stellan Skarsgård, Charlotte Rampling, Javier Bardem

Related content: How Dune Messiah informs Zendaya’s expanded role in Dune: Part Two

Ex Machina (2014)

In a world quickly burning thanks to the worst excesses of our billionaire class, this moody horror story about a tech entrepreneur who doesn't care who he hurts might hit too close to home, though it is excellent cinema. This exploration of the mundane evil of innovation for its own sake is worth putting the outside world aside, however briefly. Oscar Isaac stars as reclusive techno-hermit Nathan Bateman, who tricks an employee (Domhnall Gleeson) into his glass-and-steel labyrinth of a home in order to test out his latest creation: a nearly human android named Ava (Alicia Vikander). The creeping dread of the opening act becomes an incessant pounding in the ears as Bateman's true motives become clear and Gleeson's Caleb realizes he's as much a test subject as a stress tester. —A.G.

Where to watch Ex Machina: Max

EW grade: B (read the review)

Director: Alex Garland

Cast: Oscar Isaac, Domhnall Gleeson, Alicia Vikander

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Her (2013)

In the last few decades, humans have become overly dependent on our cell phones, but in Spike Jonze’s sci-fi film Her, that dependence transforms into romantic love. A movie about a lonely writer (Joaquin Phoenix) who falls for his A.I. virtual assistant, Her arrived in theaters six years after the iPhone made its debut, and Jonze’s film finds clever ways to portray technology’s steadily tightening grip on humanity. As EW’s critic writes, Jonze “clearly has a lot on his mind about how seductive technology is and how much easier life would be if we could insulate ourselves from messy human emotions.” But since humans are doomed to feel, you should feel good about turning on Her, a movie that is guaranteed to make you feel better about your relationship with your phone. —I.G.

Where to watch Her: Max

EW grade: B (read the review)

Director: Spike Jonze

Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Adams, Rooney Mara, Olivia Wilde, Scarlett Johansson

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How to Talk to Girls at Parties (2018)

Punks square off — and fall in love with — aliens in the sci-fi romantic comedy, How to Talk to Girls at Parties. Based on a Neil Gaiman short story and set at the height of London's punk revolution in the 1970s, the film follows a group of British punk kids who stumble upon a party attended by alien teenagers. There, worlds and feelings collide, conformity battles individualism, and shy teenager Enn (Alex Sharp) falls in love with the rebellious alien Zan (Elle Fanning). A genre-defying romp that is heavy on the charm and camp, How to Talk to Girls at Parties benefits from its terrific cast, which includes Nicole Kidman, who EW's critic describes as "a sort of sneering den mother of the underground who looks like David Bowie playing Andy Warhol, or Cruella De Vil on the skids." —I.G.

Where to watch How to Talk to Girls at Parties: Max

EW grade: B– (read the review)

Director: John Cameron Mitchell

Cast: Elle Fanning, Alex Sharp, Nicole Kidman, Ruth Wilson, Matt Lucas

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High Life (2019)

For-profit prison systems be damned: in Claire Denis’ sci-fi thriller, High Life, criminals are sent straight to space. The prisoners, all serving death sentences, are dispatched into the solar system with a mission, and are required to participate in some ethically dubious fertility experiments conducted by the scientist onboard the spaceship. EW’s critic says, “The movie looks like any number of slightly ominous sci-fi films, but its themes are more mysterious and elliptical.” Lovers of Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris will dig the movie’s ‘70s arthouse sci-fi aesthetic, and Robert Pattinson fans will once again be reminded of the actor’s versatility and penchant for the weird. —I.G.   

Where to watch High Life: Max

EW grade: B– (read the review)

Director: Claire Denis

Cast: Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, André Benjamin, Mia Goth

Related content: Why Robert Pattinson says he feels like a 'total fake' at the start of a film

Jurassic World (2015)

Nothing can top Jurassic Park, but Jurassic World — released two decades after the original film — was the first of the franchise’s six movies to come close. Set in a dinosaur theme park where lagging attendance has necessitated that geneticists come up with even more inventive and dangerous creatures, Jurassic World finds itself under attack when a transgenic dinosaur escapes and starts going after the guests. Viewers looking for hearty emotional fare should look elsewhere: This is a film that prioritizes CGI dinosaur battles above all else. But EW’s critic promises “when it comes to serving up a smorgasbord of bloody dino mayhem, it accomplishes exactly what it sets out to do beautifully.” —I.G.  

Where to watch Jurassic World: Max

EW grade: B+ (read the review)

Director: Colin Trevorrow

Cast: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Vincent D'Onofrio

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The Lobster (2016)

No one sees the world quite like Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos (Poor Things), whose 2016 film The Lobster offers one of the funniest, most deranged, and thoroughly absurd takes on our culture's approach to dating, marriage, and love. A black romantic comedy that pokes fun at society's suspicion around single people, The Lobster exists in a world where singles are allowed 45 days to find a life partner and then are transformed into the animal of their choice if they don't. David (Colin Farrell) has selected the lobster as his preferred animal, and after his wife leaves him, he is taken to a hotel and instructed to find someone compatible. But when an incident involving a potential life partner forces him to flee into the woods to live with the loners, David discovers that it doesn't matter where you are or who you're with — falling in love is a struggle. —I.G.

Where to watch The Lobster: Max

EW grade: A (read the review)

Director: Yorgos Lanthimos

Cast: Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, Olivia Colman, Ben Whishaw, John C. Reilly

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Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

It took 30 years for George Miller to make a follow up to his original Mad Max trilogy, the last of which — Mad Max: Beyond the Thunderdome — premiered in 1985. But the three decades in between iterations of the franchise were not wasted, and Mad Max: Fury Road hits the gas immediately, sprinting off into a dystopian desert wasteland for a high-speed pursuit that wastes no time on exposition. We pick up with Mad Max (Tom Hardy, assuming the mantle of his predecessor, Mel Gibson), who has been taken prisoner by an evil warlord. Unbeknownst to the warlord, his lieutenant — Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) — is about to break his wives out of the Citadel. The results play out in violent fashion, capturing, as EW’s critic writes, “the same Molotov-cocktail craziness of Miller’s masterpiece, 1981’s The Road Warrior.” —I.G. 

Where to watch Mad Max: Fury Road: Max

EW grade: B (read the review) 

Director: George Miller 

Cast: Charlize Theron, Tom Hardy, Nicholas Hoult, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Zoë Kravitz, Courtney Eaton, Riley Keough, Abbey Lee

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The Matrix Resurrections (2021)

Children were born and grew into legal adults in the years since the last Matrix movie was released. But that 18 year gap was well spent; The Matrix Resurrections — directed solely by Lana Wachowski — finds a compelling way to yank the film out of the internet's infancy and into the modern technological era. The stunts are impressive, but it's the romance between Neo and Trinity (Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss) that not only revives the franchise, but elevates it to heights that Reloaded and Revolutions could only ever dream of. Neo — who now goes by the name Thomas Anderson — has developed several successful video games based on his distant memories of the Matrix, but his inability to distinguish between dreams and reality has him running to his therapist for help. Well worth a watch, The Matrix Resurrections reminds us why we loved getting red-pilled the first time, or, as our reviewer puts it, "All that's old is Neo again." —I.G.

Where to watch The Matrix: Resurrections: Max

EW grade: B+ (read the review)

Director: Lana Wachowski

Cast: Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, Neil Patrick Harris, Jonathan Groff

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RoboCop (1987)

Set in a crime-ridden Detroit is RoboCop, Paul Verhoeven’s sci-fi action/social satire classic. After police officer Alex Murphy (Peter Weller) is killed in the line of duty, his body is reconfigured by the mega corporation Omni Consumer Products and transformed into that of a cyborg law enforcement agent. The former Officer Murphy — now referred to as RoboCop — has no memories of his family or previous existence, but is armed with directives to serve the public trust, protect the innocent, and uphold the law. Thus, RoboCop is dispatched into the city where he works to eliminate the local criminal population, but finds himself distracted by flashes of his former self and memories of his former life. In a world populated by crime lords and executives fueled by ruthless ambition, it’s refreshing to watch Peter Weller as RoboCop explore the vulnerability and humanity buried deep below his layers of steel and computer programming. —I.G. 

Where to watch RoboCop: Max

EW grade: A (read the review)

Director: Paul Verhoeven

Cast: Peter Weller, Nancy Allen, Daniel O'Herlihy, Ronny Cox, Kurtwood Smith, Miguel Ferrer

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Scanners (1981)

David Cronenberg's visceral blend of body horror and sci-fi first came to American audiences thanks to this Canadian cult classic. Before he was turning the ravishing good looks of Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis on their heads via a not-so-sterile experimental machine in The Fly, Cronenberg confronted audiences with the goop inside our heads with Scanners. In this bombastic dystopia, the heightened fear of the Cold War and the rise of a revitalized right wing tears the psyches of former hippies turned yuppies inside out, a phenomenon that Cronenberg realizes in vivid shades of red. These "scanners" harbor psychic and telekinetic powers, making waves in underground rings, national security, and in the unsuspecting heads of those around them. The subsequent story is nothing short of mind-bending (and blowing, considering the famous head explosion stunt). —A.G.

Where to watch Scanners: Max

Director: David Cronenberg

Cast: Jennifer O'Neill, Stephen Lack, Patrick McGoohan, Lawrence Dane, Michael Ironside

Related content: The 10 essential David Cronenberg films

Solaris (1972)

Consider Andrei Tarkovsky's moody and meditative space story a graduate-level response to 2001: A Space Odyssey. Just as grand in ambition, though less likely to be a hit if you throw it on at a party, this 1972 film dares to ask what the rules are in an endless cosmos and while intentionally avoiding spoon-feeding us easy answers. Tarkovsky eschews the flash of his non-Soviet contemporaries, opting to use sci-fi in the manner of the era's novelists as a way to examine the as yet undiscovered contours of the human mind. The resulting film is short on special effects and long on philosophy, luxuriating in its nearly three-hour runtime to ponder human nature, unchanged even in the far-off era of long-distance space travel. —A.G.

Where to watch Solaris: Max

EW grade: B (read the review)

Director: Andrei Tarkovsky

Cast: Donatas Banionis, Natalya Bondarchuk, Jüri Järvet, Vladislav Dvorzhetsky, Nikolai Grinko, Anatoly Solonitsyn

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Spaceballs (1987)

For the ultimate science fiction genre experience, consider Mel Brooks’ adventure spoof, Spaceballs. A satire that parodies beloved films like Star Wars, Planet of the Apes, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Alien, Spaceballs may bring the jokes, but it has easily the most heart of any Mel Brooks movie. Brooks tells EW that he still hears from Spaceballs fans, saying “I don’t think there was more than one or two critics who liked it, but by far the most letters I get are from people who love Spaceballs.” And if that’s not enough to sell you, George Lucas once complimented Brooks on the comedy’s adventure arc, so you know it's good. —I.G. 

Where to watch Spaceballs: Max

Director: Mel Brooks 

Cast: Mel Brooks, John Candy, Rick Moranis, Bill Pullman, Daphne Zuniga, Dick Van Patten, George Wyner, Joan Rivers

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Stalker (1979)

Another film by Andrei Tarkovsky, Stalker shares Solaris' preoccupation with the human mind and soul. The film's title refers to the main character, a guide known as the Stalker who works as an escort, ushering interested parties through an ominous and hazardous wasteland to a site called the Zone. Inside the Zone is a room that is said to be capable of granting visitors their innermost desires — though often at a heavy cost. With a plot propelled by philosophical questions and musings, Stalker sees a writer and a professor journey into the Zone, and along the way, they meditate on the nature of human desire, selfishness, and what it means to truly know oneself. Considered one of the greatest films of all time — sci-fi or otherwise — Stalker is a movie that asks many questions but provides few conclusive answers. —I.G.

Where to watch Stalker: Max

Director: Andrei Tarkovsky

Cast: Alexander Kaidanovsky, Anatoly Solonitsyn, Alisa Freindlich, Nikolai Grinko

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Time Bandits (1981)

For those who like a little anarchy with their popcorn (and who have an appreciation for uh, unconventional endings) this genre-breaking oddity conjures a grotesque and beautiful magic that could only have come from the mind of a Python. Terry Gilliam, the man responsible for The Fisher King, Brazil, and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, has, in Time Bandits, created a title suitable for "the whole family" (sort of). It tells the story of young Kevin, a boy whose parents make the Dursleys look decent, who is kidnapped by ​​time-traveling dwarves and taken on a wild journey chock-full of stop-motion animation effects. Like the best of Roald Dahl, Gilliam (who co-wrote the script) presents adults as idiots, children as heroes, and adventure as a priority, all in a non-sentimental yet moving manner. —Debby Wolfinsohn

Where to watch Time Bandits: Max

Director: Terry Gilliam

Cast: John Cleese, Sean Connery, Shelley Duvall, Katherine Helmond, Ian Holm, Michael Palin

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Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)

The war continues in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, the second film in the Transformers franchise. And this time, Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) and crew are in college — when they’re not battling Decepticons. With a script that travels from the East Coast Ivy League to the pyramids in Egypt, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is the kind of globe-trotting, science fiction action film that makes for an ideal summer blockbuster, even if you’re watching it alone on your couch at home. You don’t need to have watched the first film to enjoy the second, but a viewing of the original does help demonstrate how much the franchise evolved in two years. As EW’s critic writes, Revenge of the Fallen is “huger, louder, smashier, and — on the mechanical level — more crazily, audaciously imaginative.” —I.G.

Where to watch Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen: Max

EW grade: B (read the review)

Director: Michael Bay

Cast: Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson, John Turturro

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Under the Skin (2013)

Superstardom is a realm so far from the average person's experience as to be entirely alien. Scarlett Johansson took a break from her skyrocketing career in the Marvel Cinematic Universe to examine what it would be like to view humanity from the outside. In this art-house split from her endless churn of summer blockbusters, Johansson plays an alien disguised as a human woman. Throughout the film, which is directed by Jonathan Glazer and includes an intoxicating score courtesy of Mica Levi, she lures several people back to her lair to study them, ultimately submerging their bodies in a black abyss. Though she never seems to fully understand the everyday people she brings back to her house of horrors, she does develop a sort-of empathy for her test subjects as the film hurtles toward its brutal conclusion. —A.G.

Where to watch Under the Skin: Max

Director: Jonathan Glazer

Cast: Scarlett Johansson

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