The Sci-Fi Classics
by Tweetienator | created - 03 Feb 2017 | updated - 15 Mar 2017 | PublicSome of the most iconic sci-fi movies ever made.
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1. Dark Star (1974)
G | 83 min | Comedy, Sci-Fi
In the far reaches of space, a small crew, 20 years into their solitary mission, find things beginning to go hilariously wrong.
Director: John Carpenter | Stars: Dan O'Bannon, Dre Pahich, Brian Narelle, Cal Kuniholm
Votes: 27,203
2. Blade Runner (1982)
R | 117 min | Action, Drama, Sci-Fi
A blade runner must pursue and terminate four replicants who stole a ship in space and have returned to Earth to find their creator.
Director: Ridley Scott | Stars: Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, Edward James Olmos
Votes: 822,298 | Gross: $32.87M
3. Soylent Green (1973)
PG | 97 min | Crime, Mystery, Sci-Fi
A nightmarish futuristic fantasy about the controlling power of big corporations and an innocent cop who stumbles on the truth.
Director: Richard Fleischer | Stars: Charlton Heston, Edward G. Robinson, Leigh Taylor-Young, Chuck Connors
Votes: 70,499 | Gross: $7.92M
4. Rollerball (1975)
Approved | 125 min | Action, Sci-Fi, Sport
In a corporate-controlled future, an ultra-violent sport known as Rollerball represents the world, and one of its powerful athletes is out to defy those who want him out of the game.
Director: Norman Jewison | Stars: James Caan, John Houseman, Maud Adams, John Beck
Votes: 29,205 | Gross: $30.00M
5. Logan's Run (1976)
PG | 119 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
A police officer in the future uncovers the deadly secret behind a society that worships youth.
Director: Michael Anderson | Stars: Michael York, Jenny Agutter, Richard Jordan, Roscoe Lee Browne
Votes: 60,973 | Gross: $25.00M
6. Solaris (1972)
PG | 167 min | Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi
A psychologist is sent to a station orbiting a distant planet in order to discover what has caused the crew to go insane.
Director: Andrei Tarkovsky | Stars: Natalya Bondarchuk, Donatas Banionis, Jüri Järvet, Vladislav Dvorzhetskiy
Votes: 98,158
7. The Time Machine (1960)
G | 103 min | Adventure, Romance, Sci-Fi
A man's vision for a utopian society is disillusioned when travelling forward into time reveals a dark and dangerous society.
Director: George Pal | Stars: Rod Taylor, Alan Young, Yvette Mimieux, Sebastian Cabot
Votes: 44,801
8. THX 1138 (1971)
R | 86 min | Drama, Sci-Fi, Thriller
In the 25th century, a time when people have designations instead of names, a man, THX 1138, and a woman, LUH 3417, rebel against their rigidly controlled society.
Director: George Lucas | Stars: Robert Duvall, Donald Pleasence, Don Pedro Colley, Maggie McOmie
Votes: 54,582 | Gross: $2.44M
9. Forbidden Planet (1956)
G | 98 min | Adventure, Sci-Fi
A starship crew in the 23rd century goes to investigate the silence of a distant planet's colony, only to find just two survivors, a powerful robot, and the deadly secret of a lost civilization.
Director: Fred M. Wilcox | Stars: Walter Pidgeon, Anne Francis, Leslie Nielsen, Warren Stevens
Votes: 53,130 | Gross: $3.00M
10. The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
G | 92 min | Drama, Sci-Fi
An alien lands in Washington, D.C. and tells the people of Earth that they must live peacefully or be destroyed as a danger to other planets.
Director: Robert Wise | Stars: Michael Rennie, Patricia Neal, Hugh Marlowe, Sam Jaffe
Votes: 85,697
11. The Andromeda Strain (1971)
G | 131 min | Mystery, Sci-Fi, Thriller
Top scientists work feverishly in a secret, state-of-the-art laboratory to discover what killed the citizens of a small town and how the deadly contagion can be stopped.
Director: Robert Wise | Stars: James Olson, Arthur Hill, David Wayne, Kate Reid
Votes: 40,404 | Gross: $3.42M
12. The Omega Man (1971)
PG | 98 min | Action, Drama, Sci-Fi
Dr Robert Neville has developed an experimental vaccine which makes him the only immune survivor of a biological catastrophe. A gang of homicidal mutants blame science for their condition and attempt to kill him.
Director: Boris Sagal | Stars: Charlton Heston, Anthony Zerbe, Rosalind Cash, Paul Koslo
Votes: 34,038 | Gross: $8.72M
13. Invaders from Mars (1953)
Approved | 78 min | Horror, Sci-Fi
A young boy learns that space aliens are taking over the minds of earthlings.
Director: William Cameron Menzies | Stars: Helena Carter, Arthur Franz, Jimmy Hunt, Leif Erickson
Votes: 8,822
14. Outland (1981)
R | 109 min | Action, Crime, Sci-Fi
A federal marshal stationed at a mining colony on the Jupiter moon of Io uncovers a drug-smuggling conspiracy. He gets no help from the workers or authorities when he finds himself marked for murder.
Director: Peter Hyams | Stars: Sean Connery, Frances Sternhagen, Peter Boyle, James Sikking
Votes: 32,343 | Gross: $17.37M
15. Aliens (1986)
R | 137 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
Decades after surviving the Nostromo incident, Ellen Ripley is sent out to re-establish contact with a terraforming colony but finds herself battling the Alien Queen and her offspring.
Director: James Cameron | Stars: Sigourney Weaver, Michael Biehn, Carrie Henn, Paul Reiser
Votes: 762,191 | Gross: $85.16M
16. Stalker (1979)
Not Rated | 162 min | Drama, Sci-Fi
A guide leads two men through an area known as the Zone to find a room that grants wishes.
Director: Andrei Tarkovsky | Stars: Alisa Freyndlikh, Aleksandr Kaydanovskiy, Anatoliy Solonitsyn, Nikolay Grinko
Votes: 144,571 | Gross: $0.23M
17. 1984 (1984)
R | 113 min | Drama, Sci-Fi
In a totalitarian future society, a man, whose daily work is re-writing history, tries to rebel by falling in love.
Director: Michael Radford | Stars: John Hurt, Richard Burton, Suzanna Hamilton, Cyril Cusack
Votes: 78,875 | Gross: $8.40M
18. Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977)
PG | 121 min | Action, Adventure, Fantasy
Luke Skywalker joins forces with a Jedi Knight, a cocky pilot, a Wookiee and two droids to save the galaxy from the Empire's world-destroying battle station, while also attempting to rescue Princess Leia from the mysterious Darth Vader.
Director: George Lucas | Stars: Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Alec Guinness
Votes: 1,448,258 | Gross: $322.74M
19. Metropolis (1927)
Not Rated | 153 min | Drama, Sci-Fi
In a futuristic city sharply divided between the working class and the city planners, the son of the city's mastermind falls in love with a working-class prophet who predicts the coming of a savior to mediate their differences.
Director: Fritz Lang | Stars: Brigitte Helm, Alfred Abel, Gustav Fröhlich, Rudolf Klein-Rogge
Votes: 185,325 | Gross: $1.24M
20. A Trip to the Moon (1902)
TV-G | 13 min | Short, Action, Adventure
A group of astronomers go on an expedition to the Moon.
Director: Georges Méliès | Stars: Georges Méliès, Victor André, Bleuette Bernon, Brunnet
Votes: 55,675
21. The War of the Worlds (1953)
G | 85 min | Action, Sci-Fi, Thriller
A small town in California is attacked by Martians, beginning a worldwide invasion.
Director: Byron Haskin | Stars: Gene Barry, Ann Robinson, Les Tremayne, Robert Cornthwaite
Votes: 38,491 | Gross: $4.36M
22. Fahrenheit 451 (1966)
Not Rated | 112 min | Drama, Sci-Fi
In an oppressive future, a fireman whose duty is to destroy all books begins to question his task.
Director: François Truffaut | Stars: Oskar Werner, Julie Christie, Cyril Cusack, Anton Diffring
Votes: 45,391
23. Planet of the Apes (1968)
G | 112 min | Adventure, Sci-Fi
An astronaut crew crash-lands on a planet where highly intelligent non-human ape species are dominant and humans are enslaved.
Director: Franklin J. Schaffner | Stars: Charlton Heston, Roddy McDowall, Kim Hunter, Maurice Evans
Votes: 192,857 | Gross: $33.40M
24. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
G | 149 min | Adventure, Sci-Fi
After uncovering a mysterious artifact buried beneath the Lunar surface, a spacecraft is sent to Jupiter to find its origins: a spacecraft manned by two men and the supercomputer HAL 9000.
Director: Stanley Kubrick | Stars: Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, William Sylvester, Daniel Richter
Votes: 718,699 | Gross: $56.95M
25. Barbarella (1968)
Approved | 98 min | Adventure, Comedy, Fantasy
In the 41st century, an astronaut partakes in sexy misadventures while seeking to stop an evil scientist who threatens to bring evil back into the galaxy.
Director: Roger Vadim | Stars: Jane Fonda, John Phillip Law, Anita Pallenberg, Milo O'Shea
Votes: 37,681
26. A Clockwork Orange (1971)
R | 136 min | Crime, Sci-Fi
In the future, a sadistic gang leader is imprisoned and volunteers for a conduct-aversion experiment, but it doesn't go as planned.
Director: Stanley Kubrick | Stars: Malcolm McDowell, Patrick Magee, Michael Bates, Warren Clarke
Votes: 880,545 | Gross: $6.21M
27. Westworld (1973)
PG | 88 min | Action, Drama, Sci-Fi
A robot malfunction creates havoc and terror for unsuspecting vacationers at a futuristic, adult-themed amusement park.
Director: Michael Crichton | Stars: Yul Brynner, Richard Benjamin, James Brolin, Norman Bartold
Votes: 62,907 | Gross: $16.06M
28. Zardoz (1974)
R | 105 min | Adventure, Fantasy, Sci-Fi
In the late 23rd century, a savage trained only to kill finds a way into the community of bored immortals that alone preserves humanity's achievements.
Director: John Boorman | Stars: Sean Connery, Charlotte Rampling, Sara Kestelman, John Alderton
Votes: 24,534 | Gross: $0.07M
29. Phase IV (1974)
PG | 84 min | Horror, Sci-Fi, Thriller
Suddenly, desert ants form a group intelligence and wage war on the humans. It's up to a couple of scientists and a girl to stop them
Director: Saul Bass | Stars: Nigel Davenport, Michael Murphy, Lynne Frederick, Alan Gifford
Votes: 9,539
30. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
PG | 115 min | Horror, Sci-Fi
When strange seeds drift to earth from space, mysterious pods begin to grow and invade San Francisco, replicating the city's residents one body at a time.
Director: Philip Kaufman | Stars: Donald Sutherland, Brooke Adams, Jeff Goldblum, Veronica Cartwright
Votes: 69,753 | Gross: $24.95M
31. Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979)
PG | 89 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
A 20th century astronaut emerges out of 500 years of suspended animation into a future time where Earth is threatened by alien invaders.
Director: Daniel Haller | Stars: Gil Gerard, Erin Gray, Pamela Hensley, Henry Silva
Votes: 6,853 | Gross: $21.67M
32. The Black Hole (1979)
PG | 98 min | Action, Sci-Fi
A research vessel finds a missing ship, commanded by a mysterious scientist, on the edge of a black hole.
Director: Gary Nelson | Stars: Maximilian Schell, Anthony Perkins, Robert Forster, Joseph Bottoms
Votes: 27,944
33. Mad Max (1979)
R | 88 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
In a self-destructing world, a vengeful Australian policeman sets out to stop a violent motorcycle gang.
Director: George Miller | Stars: Mel Gibson, Joanne Samuel, Hugh Keays-Byrne, Steve Bisley
Votes: 222,038 | Gross: $8.75M
34. The Ice Pirates (1984)
PG | 94 min | Action, Adventure, Comedy
In a distant future scarce of water, space pirates get caught after stealing ice from a spaceship. They are sold to a princess looking for her dad. He might have found a planet abundant with water.
Director: Stewart Raffill | Stars: Robert Urich, Mary Crosby, Michael D. Roberts, Anjelica Huston
Votes: 11,831 | Gross: $14.26M
35. Escape from New York (1981)
R | 99 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
In 1997, when the U.S. president crashes into Manhattan, now a giant maximum security prison, a convicted bank robber is sent in to rescue him.
Director: John Carpenter | Stars: Kurt Russell, Lee Van Cleef, Ernest Borgnine, Donald Pleasence
Votes: 157,271 | Gross: $25.24M
36. The Thing (1982)
R | 109 min | Horror, Mystery, Sci-Fi
A research team in Antarctica is hunted by a shape-shifting alien that assumes the appearance of its victims.
Director: John Carpenter | Stars: Kurt Russell, Wilford Brimley, Keith David, Richard Masur
Votes: 465,971 | Gross: $13.78M
37. The Day After (1983 TV Movie)
TV-PG | 127 min | Drama, Sci-Fi
The effects of a devastating nuclear holocaust on small-town residents of eastern Kansas.
Director: Nicholas Meyer | Stars: Jason Robards, JoBeth Williams, Steve Guttenberg, John Cullum
Votes: 18,116
38. Alien (1979)
R | 117 min | Horror, Sci-Fi
The crew of a commercial spacecraft encounters a deadly lifeform after investigating a mysterious transmission of unknown origin.
Director: Ridley Scott | Stars: Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, John Hurt, Veronica Cartwright
Votes: 949,253 | Gross: $78.90M
39. The Terminator (1984)
R | 107 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
A human soldier is sent from 2029 to 1984 to stop an almost indestructible cyborg killing machine, sent from the same year, which has been programmed to execute a young woman whose unborn son is the key to humanity's future salvation.
Director: James Cameron | Stars: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Michael Biehn, Paul Winfield
Votes: 923,187 | Gross: $38.40M
40. The Matrix (1999)
R | 136 min | Action, Sci-Fi
When a beautiful stranger leads computer hacker Neo to a forbidding underworld, he discovers the shocking truth--the life he knows is the elaborate deception of an evil cyber-intelligence.
Directors: Lana Wachowski, Lilly Wachowski | Stars: Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving
Votes: 2,050,381 | Gross: $171.48M
41. Silent Running (1972)
G | 89 min | Drama, Sci-Fi
In a future where all flora is extinct on Earth, an astronaut is given orders to destroy the last of Earth's botany, kept in a greenhouse aboard a spacecraft.
Director: Douglas Trumbull | Stars: Bruce Dern, Cliff Potts, Ron Rifkin, Jesse Vint
Votes: 31,430 | Gross: $0.69M
42. The Blood of Heroes (1989)
R | 90 min | Action, Sci-Fi, Sport
In a future where most of mankind and technology is wiped out, six people travel from place to place playing a brutal form of football with a dog skull. They hope one day to play in the league in a city.
Director: David Webb Peoples | Stars: Rutger Hauer, Joan Chen, Delroy Lindo, Anna Katarina
Votes: 7,565 | Gross: $0.88M
43. Event Horizon (1997)
R | 96 min | Horror, Sci-Fi, Thriller
A rescue crew is tasked with investigating the mysterious reappearance of a spaceship that had been lost for seven years.
Director: Paul W.S. Anderson | Stars: Laurence Fishburne, Sam Neill, Kathleen Quinlan, Joely Richardson
Votes: 196,965 | Gross: $26.67M
44. Sunshine (2007)
R | 107 min | Sci-Fi, Thriller
A team of international astronauts is sent on a dangerous mission to reignite the dying Sun with a nuclear fission bomb in 2057.
Director: Danny Boyle | Stars: Cillian Murphy, Rose Byrne, Chris Evans, Cliff Curtis
Votes: 267,138 | Gross: $3.68M
45. Interstellar (2014)
PG-13 | 169 min | Adventure, Drama, Sci-Fi
When Earth becomes uninhabitable in the future, a farmer and ex-NASA pilot, Joseph Cooper, is tasked to pilot a spacecraft, along with a team of researchers, to find a new planet for humans.
Director: Christopher Nolan | Stars: Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Mackenzie Foy
Votes: 2,095,470 | Gross: $188.02M
46. Moon (2009)
R | 97 min | Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi
Astronaut Sam Bell has a quintessentially personal encounter toward the end of his three-year stint on the Moon, where he, working alongside his computer, GERTY, sends back to Earth parcels of a resource that has helped diminish our planet's power problems.
Director: Duncan Jones | Stars: Sam Rockwell, Kevin Spacey, Dominique McElligott, Rosie Shaw
Votes: 376,469 | Gross: $5.01M
47. Gattaca (1997)
PG-13 | 106 min | Drama, Sci-Fi, Thriller
A genetically inferior man assumes the identity of a superior one in order to pursue his lifelong dream of space travel.
Director: Andrew Niccol | Stars: Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman, Jude Law, Gore Vidal
Votes: 322,930 | Gross: $12.34M
48. Minority Report (2002)
PG-13 | 145 min | Action, Crime, Mystery
John works with the PreCrime police which stop crimes before they take place, with the help of three 'PreCogs' who can foresee crimes. Events ensue when John finds himself framed for a future murder.
Director: Steven Spielberg | Stars: Tom Cruise, Colin Farrell, Samantha Morton, Max von Sydow
Votes: 583,833 | Gross: $132.07M
49. The Fifth Element (1997)
PG-13 | 126 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
In the colorful future, a cab driver unwittingly becomes the central figure in the search for a legendary cosmic weapon to keep Evil and Mr. Zorg at bay.
Director: Luc Besson | Stars: Bruce Willis, Milla Jovovich, Gary Oldman, Ian Holm
Votes: 505,588 | Gross: $63.54M
50. Dark City (1998)
R | 100 min | Fantasy, Mystery, Sci-Fi
A man struggles with memories of his past, which include a wife he cannot remember and a nightmarish world no one else ever seems to wake up from.
Director: Alex Proyas | Stars: Rufus Sewell, Kiefer Sutherland, Jennifer Connelly, William Hurt
Votes: 212,106 | Gross: $14.38M
51. Starship Troopers (1997)
R | 129 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
Humans, in a fascist militaristic future, wage war with giant alien bugs.
Director: Paul Verhoeven | Stars: Casper Van Dien, Denise Richards, Dina Meyer, Jake Busey
Votes: 320,769 | Gross: $54.81M
52. Predator (1987)
R | 107 min | Action, Adventure, Horror
A team of commandos on a mission in a Central American jungle find themselves hunted by an extraterrestrial warrior.
Director: John McTiernan | Stars: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers, Kevin Peter Hall, Elpidia Carrillo
Votes: 454,249 | Gross: $59.74M
53. Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
PG-13 | 113 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
A soldier fighting aliens gets to relive the same day over and over again, the day restarting every time he dies.
Director: Doug Liman | Stars: Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt, Bill Paxton, Brendan Gleeson
Votes: 735,903 | Gross: $100.21M
54. Flash Gordon (1980)
PG | 111 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
A football player and his friends travel to the planet Mongo and find themselves fighting the tyranny of Ming the Merciless to save Earth.
Director: Mike Hodges | Stars: Sam J. Jones, Melody Anderson, Max von Sydow, Topol
Votes: 61,460
55. Enemy Mine (1985)
PG-13 | 108 min | Action, Adventure, Drama
During a long space war, the lives of two wounded enemies become dependent on their ability to forgive and to trust.
Director: Wolfgang Petersen | Stars: Dennis Quaid, Louis Gossett Jr., Brion James, Richard Marcus
Votes: 51,389 | Gross: $4.27M
56. Dune (1984)
PG-13 | 137 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
A Duke's son leads desert warriors against the galactic emperor and his father's evil nemesis to free their desert world from the emperor's rule.
Director: David Lynch | Stars: Kyle MacLachlan, Virginia Madsen, Francesca Annis, Leonardo Cimino
Votes: 178,836 | Gross: $30.93M
57. Tron (1982)
PG | 96 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
A computer hacker is abducted into the digital world and forced to participate in gladiatorial games where his only chance of escape is with the help of a heroic security program.
Director: Steven Lisberger | Stars: Jeff Bridges, Bruce Boxleitner, David Warner, Cindy Morgan
Votes: 129,166 | Gross: $33.00M
58. El barón contra los Demonios (2006)
96 min | Action, Adventure, Fantasy
In the closing stages of the 21st Century, an enigmatic warrior, called the Baron, leads the crusade that the religious organization Exorcio Deus Machine is conducting against the forces of... See full summary »
Director: Ricardo Ribelles | Stars: Juan Carlos Romeu, Helena Lecumberri, Alejandro Ribelles, Xavier Bertran
Votes: 183
59. An Impossible Voyage (1904)
Not Rated | 24 min | Short, Action, Adventure
Using every known means of transportation, several savants from the Geographic Society undertake a journey through the Alps to the Sun which finishes under the sea.
Director: Georges Méliès | Stars: Georges Méliès, Fernande Albany, Jehanne d'Alcy, May de Lavergne
Votes: 3,993
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