The 10 Most Fun Sci-Fi Movies of All Time, Ranked
Jeremy has more than 2800 published articles on Collider to his name, and has been writing for the site since February 2022. He's an omnivore when it comes to his movie-watching diet, so will gladly watch and write about almost anything, from old Godzilla films to gangster flicks to samurai movies to classic musicals to the French New Wave to the MCU... well, maybe not the Disney+ shows.
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Brainy and contemplative science fiction movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Solaris, and Blade Runner (well, the latter to some extent) are nice and all, but what about science fiction that aims to be a bit more fun? It’s not like fun sci-fi movies are entirely mindless, either, but there are a good many of them that feel more focused on entertainment value than anything else, and that’s well and truly okay, at the end of the day.
Take a look at the following titles, for example, since they all rank among the most broadly enjoyable and fun sci-fi movies of all time. They're not necessarily the best (though some arguably are), but instead the most crowd-pleasing and easy to like; the sorts of movies you could show to someone who says “Oh, I don’t really like science fiction, as a genre,” and there’s still a more-than-decent chance they'd dig them.
10 'Guardians of the Galaxy' (2014)
If you're talking superhero movies that are all-out crowd-pleasers, Guardians of the Galaxy (as in the first one) could be the ultimate one, though some of the Avengers movies are pretty close. Then again, they're not quite as heavy on the sci-fi elements as this one, with Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) doubling down on science fiction stuff to a greater extent than any other Marvel Cinematic Universe movie up until that point.
And it did so marvelously, all the while making a bunch of fairly obscure comic book characters instantly iconic and recognizable. Guardians of the Galaxy doesn’t have a lot going for it narratively, other than some stuff that sets up a couple of future Avengers movies, but it doesn’t really need much by way of plot to be great. It’s the characters, style, soundtrack, and humor that all add up to really carry this film, and make it so effortlessly enjoyable to watch.
9 'They Live' (1988)
They Live is worthy of a spot here because it contains a scene where two men fight pretty much to the death because one of them wants the other to put a pair of sunglasses on, and that other man doesn’t want to. So they have a one-on-one fight that rivals some of the best battle scenes in cinema history, all over something that sounds very silly, but does make sense in context.
Well, some sense. The sunglasses let whoever’s wearing them see a certain truth about the world, and that truth involves aliens who are hiding within society, only visible when you wear the glasses and stuff. It’s wonderfully silly, funny, and effortlessly clever, all the while riding the line between feeling very of its time and somehow ahead of its time, all at once. It is pretty much as masterful as B-grade movies get.
8 'Godzilla: Final Wars' (2004)
Of the many Godzilla movies out there, Godzilla: Final Wars might not necessarily be one of the very best, but it is one of the most broadly enjoyable. The premise here concerns numerous monsters being unleashed on the world by an alien race who want to conquer the planet, which necessitates unleashing a particularly powerful version of Godzilla, since there’s no other apparent way to combat such a threat.
So, Godzilla kind of gets to have a series of rematches against monsters he’d already fought in the 50-year-long history of the series, and it’s all glorious and perfectly over-the-top. On top of that, Godzilla: Final Wars also keeps things fast-paced and action-packed when it comes to the non-kaiju-related stuff, too. It’s an all-out and consistently ridiculous action/sci-fi movie in the best of ways.
7 'Everything Everywhere All at Once' (2022)
As the title promises, or threatens, Everything Everywhere All at Once is very much about a lot of things, all of it crammed into a single movie. As a result, calling it “just” a sci-fi movie isn't accurate, but that is a significant genre here, since the plot ultimately revolves around the idea of a multiversal danger, and the main character is a woman who has to utilize her multiple/alternative selves to save all the universes.
Everything Everywhere All at Once is also an intimate family drama at the same time, all the while also finding space to showcase a great many wild action sequences, and then lots of it’s also extremely funny.
And then Everything Everywhere All at Once is also an intimate family drama at the same time, all the while also finding space to showcase a great many wild action sequences, and then lots of it’s also extremely funny. It’s a good time, to put it bluntly/mildly, not to mention well and truly one of the best films of the decade so far.
6 'Face/Off' (1997)
Another movie that’s more than “just” a piece of science fiction, Face/Off is also a very over-the-top action movie, and lots of it proves very funny, even if it’s hard to know just how much of it’s supposed to be comedic. Probably a lot, but also probably not all of it, since there’s some very sincere and undeniably hammy melodrama here, but screw it, it’s wonderful. It all works. This movie is perfect.
If you're not sold, Face/Off sees John Travolta playing Nicolas Cage and Nicolas Cage playing John Travolta, thanks to that quite literal face swap promised by the title. The two hate each other, but end up swapping lives, and then they keep fighting/going after each other. It’s such a wonderfully stupid movie, and one of the most iconic from the 1990s, sci-fi or otherwise, without a doubt.
5 'Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse' (2018)
Another superhero movie, like Guardians of the Galaxy, though it might be easier to compare Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse to Everything Everywhere All at Once, seeing as the concept of a multiverse is instrumental here, too. Miles Morales is one version of Spider-Man, and then he comes into contact with various other Spider-people, and that gets pretty chaotic, but without going out of control.
If you want things spiraling out of control, you’ve always got the sequel Across the Spider-Verse; that one’s got your back. Even then, that one doesn’t get so wild to the point of being incomprehensible, though it lacks the cleanness and overall perfection of Into the Spider-Verse (and, at the time of writing, it’s hard to know whether all of what it set up will pay off, since Beyond the Spider-Verse has yet to come out, at this stage).
4 'Pacific Rim' (2013)
The plot of Pacific Rim involves humanity building giant robots so they can adequately combat giant monsters that are trying to take over the planet. It scratches the same itch as a good many old-school Godzilla movies, to the point where the monsters are even officially called “kaiju,” and then it’s also heavily indebted to mecha anime series, but all of it’s done with a properly massive/Hollywood budget.
There’s a commitment to ridiculousness here that makes Pacific Rim super endearing, because, like, why not combat a ridiculous problem with a ridiculous situation? Sure, Guillermo del Toro has technically directed classier movies, and some of them even kinda count as sci-fi movies (see Frankenstein and possibly The Shape of Water), but Pacific Rim remains far and away his most broadly enjoyable film.
3 'Back to the Future' (1985)
Back to the Future could well be the ultimate time travel movie, like, ever, and that’s reason enough for it to show up here. It’s also an undeniable crowd-pleaser, which helps, because there are other great time travel movies that might not necessarily be everyone’s cup of tea, like Primer or perhaps even Looper, since that one’s a bit darker and it also doesn’t end as well as it begins.
But Back to the Future is just a banger from start to finish, perfectly telling a story about a teenager who has to ensure his own existence happens by not messing up in the past by doing anything that'll stop his father and mother falling in love. If you want to see something a little more complex, then you’ve always got Back to the Future Part II, which complicates things by having scenes that take place in the future and the past, all the while adding to what “already” happened in the past in the first movie.
2 'Jurassic Park' (1993)
There are no better dinosaur movies than the first Jurassic Park, and so it’s pretty easy to include here. The dinosaurs are brought to life through science, which makes it sci-fi, and then the movie’s exciting and continually engaging to watch because it puts some very endearing characters on an island where the dinosaurs are loose, so they're in danger and have to survive, yada-yada-yada.
This movie stands out, arguably, against the other movies here because the characters really aren’t having a fun time, but if you're watching, you will be. They're in a horror movie, and you're watching something that’s occasionally scary, but admittedly probably more of an adventure/thriller sort of thing, from the outside and all. Jurassic Park is just perfect entertainment, and even if a future dinosaur movie happens to be great, it’s almost guaranteed to be not quite as great as this one.
1 'Star Wars' (1977)
Since it’s pretty much the quintessential crowd-pleaser, science fiction-related or otherwise, it’d feel wrong to put any other movie except the very first Star Wars here. This is pretty much perfect entertainment, and it’s hard to imagine too many people watching this and not getting some kind of enjoyment out of it, since it’s got all the tropes/conventions you'd expect, but thankfully lined up and executed perfectly.
There’s a young hero, an old mentor, a princess to rescue, some memorable villains, an old/wise mentor, and a bunch of other things, and then it all builds to an absolutely perfect climax. Star Wars does nothing wrong, and then The Empire Strikes Back arguably does even more things right, but that film’s darker tone technically makes it ever so slightly “less” fun. So, here’s Star Wars. It’s undeniably great. It’s undoubtedly fun. Admit it: you can’t resist it.
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