Best Science Fiction Movies

Compiled 2026-10-24. The main table copies the science-fiction countdown published on 2020-07-31 and modified on 2025-09-16, 149 films in all. No. 1 is Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). No. 4 is Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927). No. 150 is Garth Jennings’s The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005). The page has no rank 90, and this table keeps that number blank. The publish date, the modified date, the archive date, and the compile date stay separate. The top 10 and the top 25 are the first 10 and first 25 rows of this table.

The 149 films

The 149 rows follow the countdown and leave rank 90 blank. Years and directors are copied from the archive.

How this ranking was built

Compiled 2026-10-24. The full-text archive was published 2020-07-31 and modified 2025-09-16. Rotten Tomatoes posted it. Alex Vo is the byline. The page title is 150 Essential Sci-Fi Movies to Watch Now, and the page also calls itself 150 Best Sci-Fi Movies of All Time. The page runs from No. 150 down to No. 1. This table runs from No. 1 to No. 150. The archive has no rank 90, so the table keeps that number blank and lists 149 films. The top 10 and the top 25 are the first 10 and first 25 rows.

On 2026-10-24 the live page left the title blocks empty. That live page says published 2020-07-31 and modified 2026-08-13. The newest capture that still prints the titles is 2026-01-10. This table follows that capture. Director names are the Directed By lines in the archive. Captures from 2025-09-19 and 2025-08-08 also omit rank 90, so that film was left blank.

Chinese and Russian titles are Wikidata labels. Chinese labels are simplified.

12 films have no Chinese Wikidata label, so the Chinese cell keeps the English title: No. 17 Akira, No. 24 Ghost in the Shell, No. 33 WALL-E, No. 44 Fantastic Planet, No. 91 The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension, No. 92 The Brother From Another Planet, No. 97 Repo Man, No. 109 Paprika, No. 112 Liquid Sky, No. 118 Heavy Metal, No. 129 Metropolis, No. 141 Wizards. 10 films keep the English title in the Russian cell.

The picture, and the other movie pages

Rows S through D hold all 149 films, at most 30 a row. Row B stops at No. 89 and row C starts at No. 91, leaving No. 90 empty. The drag-and-drop pool is the same 149 films.

Action: best action movies. Horror: best horror movies.