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.
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.
Or The Arrival (1996)
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.
I saw it as a kid and didn’t even realize it was Charlie Sheen until decades later. The glasses and facial hair really disguised him from me.
Saw it a few years ago and it gave me strong Hitchcock vibes. Agree that watching Sheen in a serious movie was a little weird, but the movie was decent
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)
Agreed, and those are all good adds, especially Moon.
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]
If you’re trying to say that the fact that they invented a realistic language for the film makes it hard SF, I think that’s quite a stretch. What’s the basis for
spoiler
a language changing a human’s concept of time and allowing them to remember the future
?
Sure, good point, I think of the movie Arrival as two parts:
For most of the movie, a scientist is struggling with a novel interesting scientific problem with guidance from subject matter experts who have established environmental knowledge but not theoretical insight, with a great deal of interference from funders, with inter-team rivalries and a collaborator / competitor tension with similar teams around the world. The problem in question is based on linguistics with the type of thoroughness that is never shown on screen and rarely in print SF. (Compare it to the “Shaka when the walls fell” episode of TNG. I like that episode! But it’s cartoony by comparison.) So both the practice and the principle of the research shown has a scientific basis, and if the movie had ended with the lead scientist solving the problem then I think we’d all agree it’s Hard SF. However, we also have the last part of the film.
You question the scientific plausibility of the last part of the film. Regarding the story the film is based on, apparently:
In the “Story Notes” section of Stories of Your Life and Others, Chiang writes that inspiration for “Story of Your Life” came from his fascination in the variational principle in physics. -source
but I don’t know enough to judge that and though it was kind of uplifting, the last part of the film was qualitatively different from the first, and I agree seems a lot less “Hard SF”.
To recap, I argue that at least the first part (a majority?) of the movie is Hard SF. Now the question is: does the last part disqualify it from a) being on this list and b) being Hard SF? Regarding a), the authors of the list say “Contact is hard sci-fi by association because it’s not a very realistic film” so they are taking a very forgiving definition of Hard SF. Therefore I stand by my assertion that Arrival is qualified to be on that list. By virtue of the quality with which the first part of the movie proceeds, I argue that it also deserves to be on that list. Regarding b) whether Arrival is Hard SF beyond the definition used by that list I am less certain.
I’m with you on the first part, but the fact that the whole conclusion to the story - the solution to the mystery - ends up being as close to fantasy as to SF to me makes it not a hard SF film. But we’re talking about terms for things that exist on a spectrum, not crisply defined black and white. I don’t begrudge your take on it, I just feel differently.
what’s the basis for
fiction
I don’t think we’re connecting here. Hard science fiction is science fiction with an emphasis on scientific accuracy or plausibility. It’s sort of a subgenre, and this list is about movies in that subgenre. It doesn’t mean that there aren’t great SF movies outside of that subgenre, but this isn’t about those.
Although now I have to question the inclusion of Interstellar on this list, because it gets pretty far out there as well, especially at the end.
Yeah, valid point
Ah, gotcha, obviously I didn’t understand the proper connotations of “hard” here.
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, though decades old & sounding like it’s from Star Trek, is the basis, from actual linguists. Highly implausible for humans & long outdated, but as the film’s linguist consultant quips, “for aliens, all bets are off.”
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.
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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.
Haven’t heard of half of them. And no Alien? What silliness.
thank you
I thought it was time 6 on the list.
Bah…. Never mind. That was another list loaded below that one.
I’ve seen… Primer and Gattaca.
Strongly agree! A sci fi movie list with no “Arrival” is … DOA.
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.
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.
Both of them had no real personality in the whole movie, it was carried by CGI all in all.
For me it was just the sheer improbability of getting out alive. Missions to space are about precision and there’s no room for error. I figure that anyone on the ISS will be on the escape module before such relatively large detectable debris even hits. The film was a bit of a dramatisation to say the least.
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.
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.
Ublock origin
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?!)
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…
They sold parts of the filming set to the first matrix movie by the way!
Ringworld has an adaptation! It’s one of the most popular video games.
What? Where? What’s it called?
I have no idea what they’re talking about. The only Niven “Known Space” Ringworld games are all DOS based from decades ago.
However, Halo and Outer Wilds have both taken shots at ringworlds, but they are not Known Space universe.
Yeah I was talking about Halo.
I read Ringworld after playing Halo, thinking “haha I’ll check out this thing that looks like it influenced this game that I enjoyed” but then it turns out Bungie just lifted a bunch of stuff wholesale.
I would love a lush tv series version of diamond age that really lingers on the setting.
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).
There’s too much kinky sex in Ringworld to be accepted by puritanical audiences.
There are at least a couple of Riverworld attempts. Haven’t seen either
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riverworld_(2003_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riverworld_(2010_miniseries)
Your list is far better.
I loved Niven’s books, one of my favorite sci-fi authors. However, he might be a hot potato for studios, he had some proclivities that are indefensible.
Plus, I don’t know how you’re gonna make films about Luis Wu fucking his way around the Ringworld with various aliens. Really gonna have to sanitize the story a bit, or all of Niven’s aliens are going to have to be transformed to Star Trek aliens, basically humans with some weird shit on their nose and forehead.
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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
Yeah, very disappointing, was looking for more hard sci-fi stuff.
Edit: Because nobody listed it, Stowaway was good and reasonably hard sci-fi.
Hard to find a general public that’ll justify the expenditure. Books on the other hand…
District 9? Thoughts welcome
Yeah that’s a good add
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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?”
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.
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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!
Sweet, I added Solaris and Stalker to my list of movies to watch. Still need to see Primer at some point too.
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.
Website: asks me to disable adblocker.
Me: guess I won’t be seeing that list then.
There’s a “continue without disabling” link.
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.
