The 10 Best Sci-Fi Films Of All Time

With ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ scorching box offices—more than $100 million worldwide in its first weekend– it’s a good time to list what Swarajya believes to be the 10 best sci-fi films of all time. So here goes. The films are presented in chronological order. And a useful advance warning: Star Wars is not on the list. Humungously successful? Yes. But best? Sorry, we have our doubts.

1)  Metropolis (1927)

Language: German (Silent)

Director: Fritz Lang

A massive city of the future where a creamy layer of the rich live atop a mountain of subterranean labour. With its amazing production design (which has influenced hundreds of sci-fi films, right up to Mad Max: Fury Road), its over-the-top narrative style and stylized performances, Metropolis is a hypnotic experience.

2)  2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Language: English

Director: Stanley Kubrick

A primate ancestor of man throws up a bone in the air, and it turns into a spaceship in the far future. Strauss’ majestic Thus Spake Zarathustra plays as we watch the sun rise behind Jupiter. A super-computer goes rogue. A man ascends to the next level of consciousness. 2001 is a mystical experience that has to be experienced rather than analyzed (as it of course has been, endlessly).

3)  Solaris (1972)

Language: Russian

Director: Andrei Tarkovsky

Tarkovsky is one of the two directors who appear twice on this list. The core idea of Solaris is that alien intelligence might not take the form we think, and its intentions may be beyond our comprehension. The film is often compared to 2001, but Tarkovsky is much more concerned with the human condition—lost love, memories, melancholy—than Kubrick was. Beautiful and enigmatic.  Not to be confused with Steven Soderbergh’s mediocre 2002 remake.

4)  Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

Language: English

Director: Steven Spielberg

There seems to be something out there, and that something is trying to contact us. But only a few individuals on earth are receiving the message. The story of these individuals and mankind’s first contact with aliens, Close Encounters is a film imbued with a sense of wonder that infects the audience, a rare achievement.

5)  Alien (1979)

Language: English

Director: Ridley Scott

Like Tarkovsky, Scott too appears twice on this list. Alien is a scream-out-loud horror story set in deep space, with some unforgettable—and heart-stopping—sequences. The suspense never flags, partly because you never see the murderous alien creature till the very end, and even then, you sense its horrific features more than see them.

6)  Stalker (1979)

Language: Russian

Director: Andrei Tarkovsky

The story follows three men who enter the mysterious and guarded Zone, nursing dreams of wish-fulfillment. A journey into the heart of darkness through a dismal decaying landscape, Stalker raises the ultimate questions about human existence and appears to reach a nihilistic answer. And then comes the magical final scene which shines with hope.

7)  Blade Runner (1982)

Language: English

Director: Ridley Scott

Blade Runner creates a densely imagined world like never done before (and since). In a near-future Los Angeles which is overpopulated, tech-heavy, and perpetually rain-drenched, Harrison Ford hunts down rogue “replicants”, androids who look human, behave human, and now want to be human. A visual triumph and a mesmerizing piece of cinema.

8)  The Matrix (1999)

Language: English

Director: Lana and Andy Wachowski

As a critic put it, The Matrix is “the ultimate expression of existential paranoia in sci-fi…the Wachowskis’s jet-speed cyber-action classic doesn’t just question the meaning of life, but its very existence.” Add cool leather apparel, sexy martial arts and awesome computer-enhanced action scenes to vague philosophical statements, and you have a terrific entertainer.

9)  Gravity (2013)

Language: English

Director: Alfonso Cuaron

Beyond the cliffhanger thrills, Gravity is the greatest 3D cinema experience ever. With divinely inspired camera movements, it makes the audience free-float in deep space where there is no up, no down, no north, no south. Alternating between shots that show unimaginable distances and extreme close-ups, Gravity manages to beautifully converge the infinity of space with the tight human drama that is unfolding in it.

10)  Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

Language: English

Director: George Miller

Miller’s 3D re-imagining of his earlier Mad Max trilogy is almost certainly the best action film ever made. Using fever-dream imagery, headbanging sound, quicksilver cuts and subtly slowing or increasing film speed, Miller makes Fury Road rocket through its 120 minutes and gives the audience the eye-popping, jaw-dropping, heart-pounding ride of their lives.