Science Fiction Movies: The best science fiction movies transport us to worlds beyond our comprehension while conjuring up futuristic scenarios that inevitably influence our technological advancements. Great science fiction explores everything from the human experience to the future of humanity with mind-blowing imagery and ideas. It’s a genre that encompasses many stories, from quick-witted, brightly colored space adventures to somber dystopian tragedies, set in the present, the distant future, or even in the distant past in a far, far away galaxy.
If you’re looking for a list of the greatest science fiction films ever made, you’ve come to the right place. The Team Empire hivemind has assembled in the cloud to create a list of the most iconic works of science fiction film, from contemporary classics to ground-breaking greats. There is something on this list of three directors for everyone, from Spielberg to Scott, Kubrick to Carpenter. Read on to succeed.
What Are Science Fiction Movies?
Science fiction (or sci-fi) is a film genre that employs speculative, fictitious scientific depictions of phenomena like extraterrestrial lifeforms, spacecraft, robots, cyborgs, interstellar travel, time travel, or other technology that aren’t fully recognized by mainstream science. Politics, social issues, and philosophical topics like the human condition are frequently the subjects of science fiction movies.
Beginning with Georges Melies’ A Trip to the Moon (1902), which used photographic trick effects, the genre has been there since the early days of silent film. Metropolis was the following notable example and the first feature-length work in the genre (1927). Most of the genre’s output from the 1930s to the 1950s were B pictures with modest budgets. The science fiction cinema genre was given increased attention after Stanley Kubrick’s seminal 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey. After the success of Star Wars (1977), high-budget science fiction movies with lots of visual effects gained popularity with viewers in the late 1970s. They helped create the foundation for the blockbuster hits of later decades.
Science fiction movies are one of the eleven super-genres listed in screenwriter and academic Eric R. Williams’ taxonomy of screenwriting, which he claims may be used to categorize all feature-length narrative films. The remaining eight subgenres are action, crime, fantasy, horror, love, slice-of-life, sports, thriller, war, and western.
The Best 3 Science Fiction Movies of All Time
Image source: collider
1. Silent Running (1972)
Douglas Trumbull was the director Bruce Dern, Cliff Potts, and Ron Rifkin was the stars. With humanity confronting the depletion of its natural resources, Silent Running is a kind of proto-Wall-E. Douglas Trumbull had previously contributed his VFX expertise to the film of revolutionary masterpieces like 2001, but Silent Running gave him more creative freedom as a filmmaker.
One of the crews on a greenhouse ship carrying some of the last few plants from a destroyed Earth is Freeman Lowell, played by Bruce Dern. But when his spacecraft is told to remove the flora and head back, Lowell rebels and keeps taking care of his plants with the assistance of three lovable robot assistants. It is a cautionary tale about the environment that alternates between being dramatic, quiet, and reflective.
2. Blade Runner (1982)
Ridley Scott is the director. Sean Young, Rutger Hauer, and Harrison Ford are the stars. What science fiction movie can top Ridley Scott’s enduring classic Alien? His other genre masterwork, the unbeatable Blade Runner, is the first misunderstood masterpiece that has endured decades and numerous recuts to become the height of science fiction filmmaking. Based on Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, Blade Runner paints a dark picture of a dystopian 2019 Los Angeles, an imperious, flame-belching hellscape where Harrison Ford’s cop Rick Deckard is tasked with finding a group of human-engineered Replicants who have escaped from a working colony and returned to Earth.
He begins to doubt his humanity, literally and figuratively, as he “retires” them one at a time. Blade Runner is an idea-driven work of science fiction that explores what it means to be human. But it’s also a feast for the eyes, with its depiction of a futuristic metropolitan environment, complete with enormous TV screens, brilliant neon lights, and busy city streets, which are still breathtaking to see. It’s practically unbeatable because of the eerie Vangelis synth score, Rutger Hauer’s arresting performance as Replicant leader Roy Batty (his “time to die” monologue is a complete spine-tingler), and the actor’s captivating performance.
3. Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
Irvin Kershner is the director. Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, and Carrie Fisher are the stars. If Star Wars introduced us to a brand-new cinematic galaxy, Empire gave it a more powerful, deeper, and richer sense of scale. The first film’s success encouraged George Lucas to try again. He teamed up with Irvin Kershner to tell the tale of Luke learning from Master Yoda, Han and Leia traveling to Cloud City, and Darth Vader delivering the mother of all twists.
Episode V broadened the scope with more fantastic model work, head-spinning dogfights, the icy Hoth battle, and a fierce lightsaber duel between Luke and Vader. Because of its heartbreaking and revolutionary familial disclosures, it is bigger and better than the original Star Wars. Although it isn’t the cinema of ideas in science fiction, its blockbuster spectacle is almost unrivaled.
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