We took a trip through decades of the genre and came up with a list of the most important and best hard science fiction movies of all time. They are the essence and the foundations of the book of sci-fi rules that’s still being written as we, the audience, become much more self-aware of our relationship with technology, the future, and whatever those two will bring.
Gravity is on this list? That movie had the most ridiculous physics.
Their list:
15 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) 14 Interstellar (2014) 13 Gattaca (1997) 12 Solaris (1972) 11 Ex Machina (2015) 10 Coherence (2013) 9 Sunshine (2007) 8 Primer (2004) 7 Stalker (1979) 6 Gravity (2013) 5 THX 1138 (1971) 4 Ad Astra (2019) 3 Contact (1997) 2 The Martian (2015) 1 Blade Runner (1982)doesn’t contain Arrival (2016) wtf.
Hard to define ‘hard’, a few more I liked: (no ranking)
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The Time Machine (both the Pal and the Wells films; quite different)
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Dark City (1998, Pryas)
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Forbidden Planet (1956, Wilcox)
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The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951, Wise)
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Fifth Element (hilarious, Besson, 1997)
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Alien (Scott, 1979)
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13th Floor (Rusnak, 1999)
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Stargate (1994, Emerich)
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Steamboy (2004, Otomo)
Movies made from famed series I’d REALLY LIKE to see:
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Ringworld (Niven, a crime noone’s DARED to try).
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Some setting of Riverworld. (Farmer)
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ANY of Neal Stephenson’s SF books, esp. Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, Diamond Age, Anathem.
(Not even the BBC? I mean, who expected Doctor Who to get THIS far?!)
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This is just a SciFi Movie list rather than a hard SciFi one.
I agree that The Martian is hard SciFi tho.
Solid first few, then it went to kid’s films? Really not impressed by the list at all, like the furthest they reached back was Blade Runner and only mentioned it because it’s popular, not because it was a genre defining film.
Blade Runner absolutely brought cyberpunk to the big screen, it was absolutely genre defining for a lot of people. Prior it was just Neuromancer that imagined it.
Plus they had “Metropolis” from 1927, did you read the whole list? Lol
