When the new millennium arrived, the pressure was on for the '00s to have great sci-fi movies. After all, one of the best and most important science-fiction films of all time, 2001: A Space Odyssey, famously took place in (what was then the future) of the '00s. Surely the actual decade wo♋uld have some good sci-fi flicks to offer? It's probably fair to say that nothing as important as Kubrick's masterpiece came out in the '00s, but lots of great movies did.
Sci-fi in the 2000s showed the breadth of the genre. There were incredible works of cinema that used sci-fi premises sparingly, wielding them as a tool to explore humanity and dense themes. There were blockbuster space-age adventures, pᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ🔜ᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚutting to use rapidly improving CGI technology. And there was also a lot of shlock—but guilty pleasures can be good!
Here are the 32 greatest sci-fi moviꩲes of the '00s.
32. Jason X
Year: 2001
Director: Jim Isaac
After nine previous movies, the masked slasher icon Jason had brutally murdered so many teenage campers that you couldn't keep track of them all. Famously, he took Manhattan in the eighth movie. So where else was there for Jason to go for the t🐈enth film than outer space in the far future? Although the movie is breathtakingly stupid, watching a cybernetically upgraded Jason kill people aboard a spaceship in the year 2455 is also pretty fun — especially that one gnarly kill using liquid nitrogen.
31. Alien vs. Predator
Year: 2004
Director: Paul W. S. Anderson
A feature-length payoff of an Easter egg that appeared at the end of 1990s Predator 2, which featured a Xenomorph alien skull on one of the Predators' trophy walls, Alien vs Predator is hardly high art. It's exactly what it says on the tin, and that's to its credit. AvP, as it's known in shorthand, understands how contrived its premise is, and yet still manages to deliver a pretty good Alien vs Predator battle with engaging stakes and some cool setpieces in an ancient extraterresꦐtrial pyramid buried underneath the Antarctic.
30. 2012
Year: 2009
Director: Roland Emmerich
Having already unleashed aliens, Godzilla, and climate change on the world in his previous disaster movies, director Roland Emmerich decided to go all in and trash the whole planet in 2012, a blockbuster based on the then-in-vogue Mayan prophecy that the world would end in 2012. (That the so-called "Mayan prophecy" was not actually a prophecy at all and had been soundly debunked was immaterial.) 2012 is a silly movie, and the contrast between John Cusack leading man as he tries to ✤save his family with the literally billions of people dying as the planet goes to hell is unintentionally absurd. It's a hoot, though.
29. Treasure Planet
Year: 2002
Directors: John Musker and Ron Clements
Disney's sci-fi take on Robert Louis Stevenson's swashbuckling pirate novel Treasure Island bombed at the box office when it first came out, perhaps in part because audiences at the time weren't interested in traditional animation anymore. That's a shame, because Treasure Planet is a unique delight—and one that holds up visually a lot better than many of the othe🃏r computer-animated movies of the era do. Swapping galleons for starships but keeping the (solar) sails, Treasure Planet is a nifty spin on a familiar adventure.
28. Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla
Year: 2002
Director: Masaaki Tezuka
There were five films in the Godzilla franchise's Millennium era—and some were a lot better than others—but Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla might be the most purely fun. Pitting the King of the Monsters against a third version of his iconic robot double, Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla plays like a live-action giant robot anime, full of cool, action-packed fights and city-smashing action. It also has one of the better human protagonists in any Godzilla movie, and it's to the film's credit that Lieutenant Akane Yashiro's efforts to pilot Mechagodzilla and put her past demons to rest are as engaging as the kaiju fighting. (Well… almost.)
27. The Core
Year: 2003
Director: Jon Amiel
The Core asks the question, "What if we did Armageddon but went down instead of up?" The result is perhaps the dumbest depiction of science in all of cinema history, but gosh-darn if The Core isn't as fun as it is stupid. Following Aaron Eckhart, Hilary Swank, and the rest of a crack team as they bore into the center of the Earth in an effort to blow up the planet's core to get it spinning again, restarting the planet's magnetic field in the process, The Core busts out all the tropes you'd expect from a '00s disaster movie. It rules. Take your brain ou🤪t and put it on a little shelf for a couple of hours. Don't fight The Core. Give in to its dumb delights.
26. Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith
Year: 2005
Director: George Lucas
There's been an ongoing effort by certain Millennials and members of Gen Z to reclaim the Star Wars Prequels and claim that they are "Good, Actually." Let's not go that far, but the trilogy-capper, Revenge of the Sith, is the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best Star Wars movie of the prequel bunch. This is the movie that shows the moment when Anakin Skywalker gave in to the Dark Side and the Galactic Republic officially fell under Emperor Palpatine's t💖hrall. It's an admirably 𒁃dark movie, and while there are plenty of flaws to be found, there's also plenty of action, excitement, and thematic weight.
25. A Scanner Darkly
Year: 2006
Director: Richard Linklater
Few movies look like Richa🌸rd Linklater's adaptation of Philip K. Dick's dystopian novel. Starring Keanu Reeves, A Scanner Darkly is rotoscoped, meaning it is animation that's been traced over live-action footage. Linklater's a fan of this method; his 2001 movie Walking Life and Apollo 10 1⁄2: A Space Age Childhood, from 2022, are both rotoscoped. The technique works especially well in A Scanner Darkly, giving the entire film both a realism and uncanniness that works well with the plot, which heavily features hallucinogenic drugs that have overtaken the country, and paranoid surveillance fears.
24. Splice
Year: 2009
Director: Vincenzo Natali
A deeply messed-up mo♋vie, Splice follows Adrien Bro🌱dy and Sarah Polley as genetic engineers who throw all ethics to the wind and create a human-animal hybrid. The pair name the creature Dren, and raise it together—both as a science experiment and as their daughter in some twisted sense. Things get blurrier and viscerally upsetting as Dren quickly matures. Splice crosses the line of good taste at least twice, and it's certainly not for everyone, but you can't say it doesn't go for it.
23. Moon
Year: 2009
Director: Duncan Jones
Sam Rockwell stars as a man nearing the end of a long, lonely three-year shift manning a mining operation on the moon. Just before it's his turn to go home, he begins to have hallucinations—and then encounters a very real doppelgänger with an identical job and identical memories. Moon is one of the more acclaimed indie sci-fi movies of the decade, and for good reason, as it uses its small scale 🐠and clone conceit to tell a fascinating story about humanity and individuality.
22. Atlantis: The Lost Empire
Year: 2001
Directors: Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise
The '00s were before Disney owned Marvel and Star War𓆉s, so there were quite a few efforts by the company to make movies that "boys" would like in addition to the princess movies that were more "girl"-coded. That effort resulted in movies like Atlantis: The Lost Empire, a steampunk adventure to the mythical underwater city. Full of cool machines, big monsters, and magic, Atlantis was a bomb rather than the hit Disney so desperately wanted it to be. It has since been reclaimed as a cult classic, and rightfully so—watching Atlantis now is like taking a fresh dip in original water compared to the glut of IP storytelling that dominates the box office.
21. The Matrix Reloaded
Year: 2003
Directors: The Wachowskis
The sequel to 1999's The Matrix—one of the most innovative, acclaimed, and 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best action movies ever made—was highly anticipated. Yet, The Matrix Reloaded disappointed fans when it first came out. Perhaps they weren't expecting a philosophical treatise and a somewhat stagnant protagonist. While it's true that neither Reloaded nor its follow-up, Revolutions, can match the first Matrix, both♕ are admirable, enjoyable action flicks with a lot of big ideas and exciting setpieces. If the Architect's explanation isn't your speed, Reloaded still has the highway chase, which is one of the coolest action sequences ever put to film.
20. Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust
Year: 2000
Director: Yoshiaki Kawajiri
The second film adaptation of the long-running Japanese horror-fantasy-sci-fi series, Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, takes place in a post-apoc🍒alyptic world that features futuristic technology alongside Gothic society and grotesque monsters. It's a fascinating and effective blend of genres, and Bloodlust has the titular vampire hunter on the tail of a young human woman who has seemingly been abducted by a powerfu🌸l vampire noble. It's a neat set-up, one that offers plenty of action and violence, but where Bloodlust really gets the heart pumping is with the reveal that there may be something more to the relationship between the vampire and his so-called "captive."
19. Cloverfield
Year: 2008
Director: Matt Reeves
One of the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best found-footage horror movies also offers a unique perspective on the giant monster subgenre. Cloverfield, which debuted with muc🍬h fanfare and secrecy, follows a group of friends in New York City when a huge kaiju attacks Manhattan. While most Godzilla movies zoom out to a bigger picture to showcase the scale of the destruction—and usually check in with the generals or scientists trying to stop the beast—Cloverfield keeps things contained to the friends' POV, as everything we see is whatever they captured with their camera. They're overwhelmed, in the dark, and have no idea what's going on, and that makes the monster attack feel more real and terrifying.
18. The Host
Year: 2006
Director: Bong Joon Ho
Of course Parasite director Bong Joon Ho's monster movie wouldn't be like any old monster movie. The Host follows ♋a scrappy, dysfunctional Seoul family who must band together after a creature emerges from the Han River and takes their youngest daughter captive. A quirky family drama with a righteously angry streak, The Host more 🐷than delivers on the monster action, especially when the creature—some sort of mutant riverlife—emerges from the water in broad daylight, unexpectedly early into the film's runtime, and wreaks havoc. If Jaws got its power from holding back on how much of the shark viewers would get to see, The Host gets part of its from subverting that and putting the creature out in the open terrifyingly soon.
17. Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem
Year: 2003
Director: Kazuhisa Takenouchi
Daft Punk's Discovery is one of the greatest electronic albums ever released, so it's only fitting that a feature-length music video accompanying the record would be great, too. Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem is a dialog-free anime film that tells a sꦰtory accompanying the album, following a band of alien musicians who are kidnapped and forced to play on Earth until they're res⭕cued by a brave space pilot. It's stylish, exciting, and the soundtrack is awesome, naturally.
16. Star Trek
Year: 2009
Director: J.J. Abrams
The first of the rebooted Star Trek movies manages to pull off a very tricky task. It's at once a fitting continuation of the beloved Original Series' legacy (that manages to still be technically in continuity with the old show in the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Star Trek timeline) while also being a new, stand-alone franchise with an exciting energy and a bright young cast, including Chris Pine, Zoe Saldaña, and Zachary Quinto. To paraphrase Captain Kirk's famous line, the '09 Star Trek feels like it's boldly going where no one has gone before while stayin🌄g respectfully indebted to what preceded it.
15. The Animatrix
Year: 2003
Directors: Andy Jones, Mahiro Maeda, Shinichirō Watanabe, Yoshiaki Kawajiri, Takeshi Koike, Kōji Morimoto, and Peter Chung
As an anthology film, not every segment of this anime compilation expanding on the history and lore of The Matrix is a classic. However, the ones that are, like a story about a track and field athlete who pushes himself so hard he temporarily bre𝔉aks free of the simulation, are well worth your time. The Second Renaissance, a haunting two-part segment that documents the history of the human-machine war that led to the creation of the Matrix in the first place, is almost certainly the best thing to come out of the franchise other than the♏ original 1999 film.
