15 Best Sci-Fi Movies On Netflix

There was a time when Netflix itself would have been considered sci-fi. High-definition movies on demand in your living room, for a monthly fee, sometimes day and date with theatrical releases? Yeah, not a thing until pretty recently, which might make you wonder how many of the sci-fi features actually on Netflix are in danger of coming true eventually. 

Netflix isn’t just a studio and purveyor of original movies, though — it’s also home to former theatrical releases from other studios, which linger on the service for short and long terms. So when the time came to round up the best sci-fi films on the service, as of this writing at least, we’ve included some of those too. Toho, Warner Bros. and Sony have made deals with the streamer that would seem to ensure decent tenures for the ones cited below, but it’s an unpredictable world, one in which streaming services have been known to delete even their own product. Just ask Warwick Davis about the cancellation of “Willow.”

With as much confidence as we can reasonably muster, however, these are the 15 best sci-fi movies on Netflix for the foreseeable future.

Like King Kong, Japan’s most famous giant monster ultimately proved so popular with children that he went from being a dangerous antagonist attacked by the military to a protector of mankind in most of his later films. “Godzilla Minus One” rolls back the clock on that, going back to the big radioactive lizard’s roots as a physical manifestation of the horrors of atomic bombing. 

In returning to the original concept but using modern special effects, director Takashi Yamazaki does here what Peter Jackson did for King Kong, except unlike Jackson, he resists the urge to sentimentalize his monster. This Godzilla is no friend to humanity, and if he has a heart, it is as unfeeling and relentless as the destruction spread by nuclear fallout. 

Turning such a perennial merchandise generator into the bad guy again might have been a commercial risk, but it paid off, with some of the best reviews of the big G’s career, and his first Academy Award.

Director Joseph Kosinski may be best known for “Top Gun: Maverick,” but his actual best film with Tom Cruise was “Oblivion,” in which the star inhabits a blocky, sci-fi building, engaged in tasks and subject to experiments that are about more than he realizes. Kosinski goes back to this particular well, on a lower budget, with “Spiderhead,” starring Cruise’s “Maverick” costar Miles Teller. This time, the futuristic facility is a low-security prison in which inmates have volunteered to be guinea pigs for new mood-altering drugs.

In his best non-Thor performance, Chris Hemsworth nails the vibe of the rich tech-bro who acts like everyone’s best pal while actually remaining their narcissistic jailer. This is the sort of guy who will take over the world if we aren’t careful; here, his manipulations initially seem careless but unfold as something far more sinister and controlled. The most unrealistic thing about the film is the notion that he’d ever seriously be worried about facing any legal consequences.

When a movie about societal collapse is executive-produced by a former president (Obama) who gave notes on how to make it more realistic, it’s worth paying attention to. “Leave the World Behind” is about what happens when your vacation home’s owners return unexpectedly because the world is burning down. Ships run ashore, animals change their migration patterns, and one of the kids develops symptoms of radiation sickness.

We never quite learn the full big picture of what is happening, maintaining the perspective of this one group of people riding out the metaphorical storm in a luxury house. Here, we are left to guess, as we would be in real life, and thus feel the urgency of the characters wanting to know more. (That hasn’t stopped us from explaining the ending of “Leave the World Behind” as best we can.)

For more than just the integrity of this article, here’s hoping the premise remains science fiction.

What’s better than a John Boyega movie? A movie with multiple John Boyegas, of course. “Creed II” cowriter Juel Taylor’s directorial debut is a Blaxploitation throwback in which an evil white villain named (naturally) Nixon, played by Kiefer Sutherland, clones, drugs, and experiments on residents of a predominantly Black community. The first indication that something might be wrong comes when drug dealer Fontaine (Boyega) gets killed by a rival, only to show up again later with no memory of what happened.

The social commentary here is on point, but it doesn’t replace characters with archetypes — they feel like they came out of a more serious drama about systemic racism, as does the setting, until it takes that sudden hard turn into science fiction. Ultimately, it is about what is figuratively and literally beneath the surface of your town.

In 2015, when the “Mad Max” franchise came roaring back into cinemas with “Fury Road,” audiences seemed hungry for more of Furiosa, the tough new road warrior played by Charlize Theron. Unfortunately, Warner Bros. and director George Miller took nine years to bring her back to theaters, this time in a prequel, with Anya Taylor-Joy. “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” disappointed at the box office for not striking while the iron was hot, but on Netflix, it deserves your attention. This is the most expansive, imaginative world-building film in the “Mad Max” series. It also has some great lines of dialogue.

Enter a small oasis of paradise called the green place, which we know will ultimately be destroyed, hidden in the nightmare of post-nuclear Armageddon Australia. Watch the young girl, Furiosa, get forcibly kidnapped and spend years trying to find a (futile) way home, manipulating dumb, macho warlords into conflict against each other along the way. Finally see the previously only talked-about Bullet Farm and Gas Town. Learn that Furiosa is more badass than Max Rockatansky because she lost everything at a much younger age, survived by pretending to be a boy, and learned everything she could about the politics and men of the Wasteland before defeating them. 

Charlize Theron couldn’t reprise Furiosa, but Netflix did give her a comic-book superhero franchise to star in, based on a lesser-known Image Comics title by Greg Rucka and Leandro Fernandez. As Andromache (“Andy”) of Scythia, she leads a group of nigh-immortals, secretly operating as mercenaries who help people, almost like “The A-Team” if they lived forever-ish. Indeed, there’s a catch to their regenerative powers: one day they’ll stop working without warning and from then on, the warrior becomes mortal. To protect themselves, they have a strict set of rules to follow, and when one is inevitably broken, things come crashing down.

With the kind of diverse cast certain audiences often say they want, and action sequences whose impact depends upon characters the viewers actually end up caring about, “The Old Guard” may not have had capes or colorful costumes, but went above and beyond a lot of more basic spy movies on Netflix. Its ending offers enough genuine changes in the status quo to make the inevitable sequel (yes, “The Old Guard 2” still happening) promise more than just a retread.

Zombies aren’t necessarily considered sci-fi in and of themselves. However, in Zack Snyder’s return to the world of the undead since his directorial debut with the “Dawn of the Dead” remake, the prime zombie this time is “Zeus” (Richard Cetrone), a villain with some heavily implied alien origins. He escapes en route from Area 51, and promptly overruns Las Vegas, so the government builds a wall around the city and prepares to nuke it. Before that goes down, however, a crack team led by Dave Bautista’s Scott Ward has to break in and rescue a safe containing $200 million.

With its imagery of quarantine camps outside the city, “Army of the Dead” felt more timely than ever when it released in 2021. The neon imagery of Las Vegas provided a more colorful aesthetic than “The Walking Dead” fans had become accustomed to, and Zack Snyder shot the action sequences like better reenactments of zombie video games than any of the “Resident Evil” movies ever managed. You may end up thinking more about zombie sex than you ever wanted to, though.

(See how it ranks compared to Zack Snyder’s other movies.)

Christopher Nolan went epic in his tale of outer space exploration, with his depiction of an ecologically collapsing Earth arguably the most scarily plausible aspect of it. Matthew McConaughey stars as NASA pilot Ben Cooper, who comes out of retirement to explore strange new worlds, and with luck, find one on which humanity can settle for a fresh start.

Time dilation and relativity becomes a key plot point, as Cooper’s daughter Murph quickly grows up to become Jessica Chastain, and a scientist like her father. Meanwhile, Dad doesn’t have the best of luck finding hospitable new worlds, and eventually ends up in a strange four-dimensional space between worlds that deposits him in the future. There’s obviously a lot of speculation involved, but Nolan took pains to ensure that his science was at least plausible. 

As is often the case in Nolan movies, many lines sounded muffled in the sound mix next to roaring engines and other special effects. Thanks to subtitles on Netflix, this need no longer be a problem, and you can finally figure out what Michael Caine’s Professor Brand is actually saying.

From “Gravity Falls” writers Mike Rianda and Jeff Rowe, and “Spider-Verse” producers Chris Miller and Phil Lord, “The Mitchells vs. the Machines” is an animated family comedy about how AI imperils filmmakers. Sort of. Teenage Katie Mitchell (Abbi Jacobson) is an aspiring filmmaker who becomes humanity’s last hope in a battle against intelligent machines led by the human-hating Alexa-ish AI creation called PAL (Olivia Colman). Using a version of the animation style developed for “Into the Spider-Verse,” the movie humorously contrasts family connections with online connections, and the ways the two can be pitted against each other. It also has a giant Furby trying to kill everyone.

Released in 2021, and featuring an all-star comedy cast (Danny McBride, Maya Rudolph, Eric Andre, Fred Armisen, Beck Bennett, and even Conan O’Brien), “The Mitchells vs. the Machines” stands in contrast to the way Disney movies at the time would tout extremely minor LGBT characters as progress. It’s casual about Katie’s gay identity, and doesn’t make it part of her conflict with her father.

In a movie that stars Ryan Reynolds, Mark Ruffalo, Zoe Saldana, Jennifer Garner, and Catherine Keener, it’s 12 year-old Walker Scobell who steals the show as the young version of Reynolds. He doesn’t just impersonate the star’s now-familiar mannerisms, but embodies his spirit as well. It’s a tremendous breakthrough performance that helps elevate the “Back to the Future” meets “Terminator” riff by Reynolds’ current favorite director Shawn Levy. 

Though the movie’s not as complex or classic as the films that clearly inspired it, its storytelling is elegant and satisfying in a basic way. Pilot Adam (Reynolds) flies back in time to save his wife Laura (Saldana), and encounters his younger self (Scobell) while attempting to stop time travel tech, which their dad (Ruffalo) invented, from falling into evil hands. Needless to say, future assassins and a big evil corporation are out to get them.

With Scobell handling the smart-mouth stuff, Reynolds gets to be a little more serious and sad than usual, as he knows his younger self is masking trauma from their father’s death. Many of us need to be in better touch with our own inner child; “The Adam Project” literalizes the concept, while never forgetting to remain a zippy sci-fi adventure.

Dropped by Disney after they took over Fox and Blue Sky, “Nimona” is full of radical energy and allegories that make big studios afraid. A punk-rock shape-shifter in a medievalist future world, Nimona, voiced by Chloe Grace Moretz, is an anarchic free spirit who teams up with a disgraced knight (Riz Ahmed) to clear his name and take on the repressive, hypocritical authorities. When one of Nimona’s older forms is revealed, secrets are unearthed that threaten to destroy everything.

Nimona’s pretty clearly a trans/nonbinary allegory from trans creator ND Stevenson (“She-Ra and the Princesses of Power”). It’s also a blast, with Moretz giving off the same kind of chaos-demon vibes as Michael Keaton in “Beetlejuice.” The character’s ability to quickly transition between animal forms leads to entertaining action sequences, while the climax, which taps into the real-life tragedy of dysphoria-related suicide, is a heartbreaker. The aesthetic, which one might call Medieval Times meets “Blade Runner,” is as unique as Nimona themselves.

It’s literally the movie Disney didn’t want you to see, but that’s not the only reason why you should. It’s a lot more fun than most of their recent output, too.

Fans expecting closure from “Dune: Part Two” may be disappointed, as it ends almost as abruptly as its predecessor. However, it does, succeed where David Lynch’s version failed, in recognizing that Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) is no savior of the universe. He takes the Messiah role to save his own skin, and to avenge his family’s unjust conquest by the rival Harkonnens. Tragically, it soon becomes clear that many will die in the Fremen holy war that must follow his ascension.

Those unfamiliar with the book will get the epic desert planet battles promised, but with a bonus sting in the tail, when the victory feels like just another step in a never-ending cycle of war, with religion used as a justification. Come for grand-scale sci-fi; stay tuned because you feel seen by a fictional political system closer to our global situations than may be comfortable.

If you enjoy it, here are 15 more great movies like “Dune” to check out.

The “Empire Strikes Back” of the “Spider-Verse” trilogy ups the ante and ends on a dark cliffhanger, but in between are 140 minutes of multiverse escapades that live-action Marvel still tries and fails to duplicate. The villain, of course, is a cosmic continuity nerd: Miguel O’Hara (Oscar Isaac) a.k.a. Spider-Man 2099, has been so traumatized by the notion of essential plot points that he has appointed himself guardian of making sure every Spider-Man story does what it’s supposed to. The movie’s mere existence serves as counterpoint to his argument on a meta-level, but within the movie, the very different experiences of Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld) and Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) suggest that perhaps lives could be better if everyone didn’t stick to the script.

Featuring different animation and design styles for each universe visited, from Leonardo da Vinci-style parchment drawing to Bollywood and even the live-action Venom universe, ‘Across the Spider-Verse” gloriously breaks most of the rules, playing with alternate realities like they’re different instruments in a vast orchestra. The MCU multiverse stories like “Loki,” “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” and “Deadpool & Wolverine” tend to still feel stuck within limited parameters. “Across the Spider-Verse” makes you feel like anything can happen at any time, and will be a totally new feast for the eyes and comic-book sensibilities every time it does.

The last man on Earth (George Clooney), suffering from a terminal illness, keeps himself alive by going about his daily routine, attempting to contact a returning space probe to warn the crew that an apocalypse happened in their absence. Then, one day, he finds out he’s not completely alone after all.

“The Midnight Sky” sometimes plays a bit like a live-action “WALL-E,” but can afford to be pessimistic in ways a Disney-Pixar movie can’t. Earth isn’t coming back from what ails it here; instead, the last people who depend upon it have to let go gracefully. When Clooney’s Augustine has flashbacks to his earlier life, he’s played by Ethan Peck, the new official “Star Trek” Spock — even the onetime handsomest man on Earth gets replaced by someone younger, and life goes on, in different ways.

Almost every awards season, there’s a movie featuring an aging star dealing with their time passing by, and attempting to fix one major regret before it’s too late. Clooney’s still a bit young to be doing that, and Netflix didn’t get much awards traction with it, but rarely does that idea get the big-budget, sci-fi treatment like it did here. 

Someone casually skimming Netflix thumbnails might wonder how the goofball-charming Plasticine protagonists of “Wallace and Gromit” films remotely qualify as sci-fi, but anybody who has ever watched them needs no explanation. Wallace’s convoluted, Rube-Goldberg devices to make simple tasks even simpler by extremely complicated means propel the plot forward, and in “Vengeance Most Fowl,” an AI garden gnome named Norbot gets hacked by the felonious Feathers McGraw, a penguin who ran a-fowl of the inventor and his dog years prior (in the short “The Wrong Trousers”). Norbot promptly assembles an army of gnomes who proceed to carry out their evil boss’ plan of vengeance.

Wallace and Gromit adventures typically riff on other genres and go off in new directions, but as the first direct sequel to a previous short, the feature “Vengeance Most Fowl” mainly riffs on other Wallace and Gromit movies. It helps, but isn’t essential, to have seen the duo before, and since all their films are great, and most of them are shorts, that should be a task both fun and doable. Of course, one could always construct an elaborate device to show them all to you at once, but therein lies trouble, as Gromit well knows.