The 15 Best Hard Sci-Fi Movies That Define the Genre

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.

Doesn’t contain Moon, 12 Monkeys, The Arrival, Alien, District 9… there are quite a few movies I would out ahead of Ad Astra and Sunshine at the very least. And possibly Gravity and Solaris too. Also, listing 2001 in 15th place???
doesn’t contain Arrival (2016) wtf
I agree, that was one of the most thought provoking scifi films I’ve seen in a long time.
Conspicuous in its absence: anything animated, like Ghost in the Shell (1995), which I'd argue is harder than quite a few things on this list.
- Lol I saw that movie this year and it was a valiant effort, but I thought it was ridiculous to see Charlie as a crazy astronomer.
Great movie, but I'm not sure it's considered "hard SF." There's no real basis to anchor much of the science in it.
- I'd say the same thing about "Sunshine" and "Interstellar".
  Some movies I might consider including, in no particular order:
  Moon (2009)
  2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984)
  Silent Running (1972)
- Both the book and the screenwriting required the invention of a form of alien linguistics which recurs in the plot. The film uses a script designed by the artist Martine Bertrand (wife of the production designer Patrice Vermette), based on scriptwriter Heisserer's original concept. Computer scientists Stephen and Christopher Wolfram analyzed it to provide the basis for Banks's work in the film.[32][33] Their works are summarized in a GitHub repository.[34] Three linguists from McGill University were consulted. The sound files for the alien language were created with consultation from Morgan Sonderegger, a phonetics expert. Lisa Travis was consulted for set design during the construction of the scientist's workplaces. Jessica Coon, a Canada Research Chair in Syntax and Indigenous Languages, was consulted for her linguistics expertise during the review of the script.[35]
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrival_(film)
- IRC when I watched it, it seemed to make references to the work of Niklas Luhmann, systems theory and of course Sapir–Whorf.
  Sure, those aren't hard sciences, but then again Asimov's the Foundation is also about sociology.
  Certainl y as deserving to be on the list as Solaris or Stalker. I absolutely love those movies, but they're very religiously inspired rather than science based.
Doesn't contain The Arrival either. Or Moon, or Alien or Twelve Monkeys… Basically there are a lot of more deserving candidates then Gravity, Ad Astra and Sunshine.
Haven't heard of half of them. And no Alien? What silliness.
Strongly agree! A sci fi movie list with no “Arrival” is … DOA.
thank you
I thought it was time 6 on the list.
Bah…. Never mind. That was another list loaded below that one.
I'm guessing you don't know what hard sci-fi is.
I've seen... Primer and Gattaca.

Gravity is on this list? That movie had the most ridiculous physics.

And a ghost
That was the fictional part of the science fiction.
- There's no science at all in Gravity, it's just straight fiction.
It's been a long time since I've seen it. I don't remember loving the movie, but I thought it got kudos for getting the physics right. No?
- They flew from the Hubble Space Telescope to the ISS using a Manned Maneuvering Unit, nothing about that is "getting the physics right".
- The media got paid for writing positive stuff about it. It was a really shitty movie and I will never understand it's high rating in my life...
  George Clooney was actually super annoying in it too. It was like putting the Oceans 11 character in a space suit with no changes in personality.

Gravity and Ad Astra don't belong on this list. Also they suck.

I hate Ad Astra so much. I was so hyped for it and then almost left the theater when we were watching it.
Gravity is not too terrible. Rewatched it recently. It’s a fun watch the first time but it’s too shallow for subsequent views.
Gravity is not bad IMHO, but it lost its hard sci fi cred ::: spoiler with the Sixth Sense shenanigans::: .
That's very subjective. I hate Interstellar because I think it's laughably dumb but many other people have a raging hard-on for that shitty movie. Ad Astra was very weird and very boring, but I liked the interesting visuals.

That site is awful. Has a nice little "Accept all" button for its popup, but you gotta go through thousand partners it sells your data to in order to even try to reject.
This is some serious malicious intent shit.

1506 partners. Insane.
Ublock origin
Hmmm, strange, I just got the pop-up saying I was running an ad blocker, but there was an option to continue without disabling and nothing further came up.

Hard to define 'hard', a few more I liked: (no ranking)

The Time Machine (both the Pal and the Wells films; quite different)
Dark City (1998, Pryas)
Forbidden Planet (1956, Wilcox)
The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951, Wise)
Fifth Element (hilarious, Besson, 1997)
Alien (Scott, 1979)
13th Floor (Rusnak, 1999)
Stargate (1994, Emerich)
Steamboy (2004, Otomo)

Movies made from famed series I'd REALLY LIKE to see:

Ringworld (Niven, a crime noone's DARED to try).
Some setting of Riverworld. (Farmer)
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?!)

Dark City is an amazing movie!
- One of the rare examples of sci-fi mixed with a skillfully unfolded mystery. Even when you know 'the answer', there are plenty of 'how did they do that' film-making mysteries.
  I forgot to mention his entirely 'I, Robot', VG 2004 film ... maybe because robots don't don't seem so science-fictionish these days...
There's too much kinky sex in Ringworld to be accepted by puritanical audiences.
Ringworld has an adaptation! It's one of the most popular video games.
- What? Where? What's it called?
They did Johnny Mnemonic from Stephenson, low budget I guess. Imagine Cryptonomicon 💖.
Jonathan Stross Laundry files could be so good too (and so botched I guess).
I would love a lush tv series version of diamond age that really lingers on the setting.

This is just a SciFi Movie list rather than a hard SciFi one.

I agree that The Martian is hard SciFi tho.

Yeah, very disappointing, was looking for more hard sci-fi stuff.
I don't think the author of this article or 99% of the people in this thread understand what hard sci Fi is.
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

I know Internet lists and opinions and all that, but I'm sorry but any list that puts 2001 behind Interstellar is one to ignore, at least the rankings.

All good movies on the list, though.

2001 is so hard to watch. I've started so many times but keep getting distracted. Interstellar, while not perfect, kept my interest better.
I agree. At this point I get excited when I think a list has mostly the right things on it (this one is hot and cold there) - getting the order right, or even close, seems like too much to ask.

No Europa Report, probably the hardest of sci-fi movies ever (9.5 on Mohs scale)? Most movies on that list are somewhere around 5...6 on the Mohs scale, with some (GATTACA, 2001, Ex Machina) around 7...8 and only Martian at 9. Sunshine, Stalker and Coherence are not hard scifi at all, 2...3.

- Lol the Mohs scale is a hardness scale for gemstones/minerals sorry to disappoint. Goes from 1 to 10, 10 being diamond 1 being talc.
  I honestly feel bad taking it away, I want an awesome scientific scale rating how hard scifi is.

District 9? Thoughts welcome

Yeah that's a good add

Sweet, I added Solaris and Stalker to my list of movies to watch. Still need to see Primer at some point too.

Really excited to see Coherence on a list with so many other greats. It’s a great thriller movie and one of my favorites to watch with others. Provokes fun conversation about “what would you do in that situation?”

Finding this on the list was nice because I'd watched Coherence on some pirate streaming site and then forgot the name of the movie. Such a great movie.
Great movie but REALLY not hard scifi.

Thanks for sharing this.

What an interesting list. I am very surprised at how many of these I've never heard of and how good those look.

I own some of these but I think I'll try to buy the rest.

I had the same reaction: the ones I've seen are excellent, but some I've never heard of, so I've got some things to watch!

Website: asks me to disable adblocker.

Me: guess I won’t be seeing that list then.

There's a "continue without disabling" link.

Okay, your comment is at the top, so here is my take on the list:
There is a lot of overlap on this list and other "best (whatever) scifi" that pop up every so often. Yes Blade Runner was iconic and influential, but I already knew that.
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) | Good start. great visuals. lacks some context in the ending that are half explained in interviews and such. Personally, I like the book's take on it more.
Interstellar (2014) | A Nolan film. Also great visuals. This is one of the first movies I saw that somewhat accurately portrays what black holes are supposed to look like. It has a bunch of scenes where space or relativity or physics, etc, things are explained to experts that should already know what is being said. It works to get that info the viewer, but I found it a bit jarring
Gattaca (1997) | Anything produced by Danny DeVito (yes that one) gets my money. This is a big "What If" movie where the question is "In a world where most everyone can select the genetic makeup for their children, how does someone born naturally fit in and live?".
Solaris (1972) | Never seen it, but I've heard good things. I tried to watch the remake with George Clooney, but I couldnt get in to it.
Ex Machina (2015) | Great movie on the idea of an actual concept call the "Turing test". I will point out there are some trigger warnings
Coherence (2013) | never seen it. I added it to my list
Sunshine (2007) | I couldnt get in to this one. It may be because I just wasnt in the mood for some hard space scifi (They are trying to re-start the sun, how cool does that sounds?), or it could be because of the content. I've heard of a lot of people liking it, so check it out if it sounds interesting to you.
Primer (2004) | This is a great take on how suddenly having the ability to time travel might affect someone. There are some nested time line stuff that could be hard to follow, but overall great
Stalker (1979) | Haven't seen. it sounds intriguing though
Gravity (2013) | This is science fiction in the sense that this story is fictional and takes place in space. Without being a nasa expert, everything seems to be within today's level of technology. You could think of it as a disaster movie, but set in space. Overall fun, but in a different way than some of the other movies on this list
THX 1138 (1971) | I hated this movie. I find it derivative of Ayn Rand's Anthem, or Ray Bradbury's Farenheit 451. Those books, plus THX 1138 feature a protagonist who is a cog in their own dystopia who breaks free and goes on a massive escape, eventually finding that the world is not as destroyed as they were told to believe. I felt like it suffered from all the same criticisms that George Lucas was given during the original star wars trilogy, but without anyone to refine his idea into something more unique or appealing.
Ad Astra (2019) | Great visuals, boring story about a man who cant move on from his deadbeat dad
Contact (1997) | Carl Sagan's story about humanity being contacted by an alien race and given further instructions. It does an interesting exploration of science vs faith when confronted by aliens
The Martian (2015) | Silly space action where a botanist figures out how survive on Mars and contact Nasa who have no idea that he is alive
Blade Runner (1982) | Humans have created manufactured clone robot people. they dont like being slaves by default and revolt. Now they are hunted to extinction. Harrison Ford is the type of officer assigned with tracking down some on Earth. Amazing visuals, weird narrative. There are like, 5 different cuts of this movie and I dont find any of them particularly good. I like the sequel more.
- Sounds like you're interested in sci-fi movies with a deeper philosophical story to tell. For that reason, definitely watch Tarkovsky's Solaris. From what I understand, it bears literally no resemblance to the 'remake'.
  I know Stalker often gets put in the sci-fi category, but I'm not sure it will satisfy someone setting out with typical expectations of the genre. It's a great film though, and the dream sequences are peerless in film history.
  Tarkovsky's films very much run against the grain of Western cinema - they are often experimentally slow, to offer an extended exploration of a philosophical or aesthetic idea. They're extremely strange and unique movies. I would say, essential viewing, when you have the time and mindset to be taken on a journey that at times will feel painful. Though, I think that's Tarkovsky's intent to some degree.

They forgot Annihilation.

Nothing about that movie is hard. Top tier cosmic horror though.
Also not hard SF. I haven't seen the movie, but I read the book.
We all forgot Annihilation and for good reason.