Ah, the 1990s. A decade of flannel and oversized jerseys, grunge rock and bubblegum pop, Super Nintendo and snap bracelets, ♛VHS and MTV, and of course, some of the best movies of all time. In the 1990s, sci-fi movies specifically continued to draw in millions of moviegoe🌳rs. But which of the decade's sci-fi movies are actually the greatest of all time?

While the 1980s is fondly remembered for its brand of s🦩cience fiction, the decade that followed has equally worthy classics. Throughout the 1990s, computers rapidly evolved to afford filmmakers brand new tools to experiment and push the envelope. It's no surprise, then, why '90s movies are chock-full of primitive CGI and other feats of visual effects. But even if some sci-fi movies didn't have the budgets to match, they still stand the test of time.

In remembrance of the 1990s and its legacy in movies, h🅰ere are 32 of the greate🐠st sci-fi movies of the 1990s.

32. Alien 3 (1992)

A troubled production and David Fincher himself disowning the whole thing can't hold down the haunting beauty of Alien 3. Set some time after 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:James Cameron's Aliens, Alien 3 follows Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) as the only survivor who winds ✨up in a maximum security prison where, inevitably, a xenomorph is unleashed. While David Fincher has disavowed Alien 3 due to the amount of studio meddling he endured durꦕing production, Alien 3 brings the series back to its horror origins, mixing it with righteous anger that explores the AIDS crisis in metaphor.

31. The Thirteenth Floor (1999)

Predating the metaverse and speculating our future in virtual reality, the 1999 thriller The Thirteenth Floor – based on the 1964 novel Simulacron-3 by Daniel F. Galouye – interrogates themes like identity, consciousness, and our🦩 own understanding of reality. In The Thirteenth Floor, Craig Bierko plays Douglas Hall, a computer scientist overseeing a VR simulation of 1937 Los Angeles. But like the L.A. noirs of yesteryear, Douglas finds himself suspected of murdering his own mentor. The answers to all his questions is on the thirteenth floor, where a beautiful woman (played by Gretchen Mol) awaits. A 1973 German TV movie, titled World on a Wire, is based on the same Galouye novel as The Thirteenth Floor and draws more critical acclaim among cinephiles, but The Thirteenth Floor offers its own brand of science fiction goღodness that is worth checking out.

30. Waterworld (1995)

It's one of the biggest box office failures in Hollywood history, yet Waterworld endures. In a future Earth where the polar ice caps have melted to submerge all of Earth underwater, a mariner (Kevin Costner) teams up with a woman (Jeanne Tripplehorn) to escape a hostile artificial island and find the mythical "Dryland." Between🙈 its novel world building and good old fashioned spectacle, Waterworld swims more than sinks – never mind the first shot is Kevin Costner drinking his own pee. That its legacy lives on at Universal Studios as a popular stunt show is a testament to Waterworld's power.

29. Demolition Man

The future has gone soft, and only the combined machismo of Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes can make it hard again. In this sci-fi blockbuster, Stallone plays a renegade cop, John Spartan, who is cryogenically frozen until he's awoken in the year 2032; he's thawed out to arrest his old nemesis, a crime lord (Snipes). Sandra Bullock co-stars as the police lieutenant assigned to assist John Spartan and help him adjust to a wildly different future. In stark contrast to oꦿther sci-fi movies that imagined the future as bleak and dangerous, Demolition Man's vision of a lawful utopia becomes a playground for Stallone and Snipes to blow up.

28. The Guyver (1991)

Despite its misleading poster that implies Mark Hamill transforms into a mighty morphin' superhero (he doesn't), The Guyver is a must-see midnight classic for action aficionados and B-movie obsessives everywhere. Based on the Japanese manga series, The Guyver 🤡follows Sean Barker (Jack Armstrong), a martial arts student who becomes the host of an alien power source that turns him into "The Guyver" – a bioboosted avenger to fight against a gang of evil ali♉ens called Zoanoids. The Guyver is directed by Screaming Mad George and Steve Wang, and co-stars Mark Hamill as a CIA agent who gets caught up in the plot.

27. Johnny Mnemonic (1995)

Before he hacked into The Matrix, Keanu Reeves was Johnny Mnemonic. Based on William Gibson's short story from 1981, Johnny Mnemonic takes place in the "future" of 2021; Reeves plays a freelance courier who transports sensitive corporate data via brain implants, at the cost of his personal memories. Originally meant to be an experimental film, Reeves' Hollywood stardom after the box office hit Speed compelled the studio to retool Johnny Mnemonic into a big summer action movie. While the end result is a mixed bag, Johnny Mnemonic is still memorable as one of few cyberpunk tentpoles, with its skepticism and cynicism towards𒐪 unchecked capitalism still relevant all these years later.

26. The Arrival (1996)

The 2016 hit Arrival is arguably the definitive movie about mankind's first contact with aliens. But a whole 20 years earlier, there was The Arrival. Charlie Sheen stars in this sci-fi thriller as a radio astronomer named Zane Zaminski who comes across an alien signal. Teaming up with a climate sc✅ientist (Lindsay Crouse), Zane races to find the truth behind the signal's origins while his life is in jeopardy. Part "first contact" movie and part conspiracy thriller, The Arrival may not be the greatest movie about humans and aliens, but there's no denying it's a lot of fun.

25. Timecop (1994)

Jean-Claude Van Damme is in rare form in Timecop, a big screen version of the Dark 🥃Horse comic strips. From director Peter Hyams, Timecop follows a police officer (Van Damme) in the Time Enforcement Commission who must stop an evil politician from corrupting the past for his personal gain. Timecop is still quintessential Van Damme, with its time travel premise an excuse for JCVD to roundhouse kick dudes in the face, but Van Damme also demonstrates some serious range in the movie's more dramatic scenes.

24. Gattaca (1997)

Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman lead this late '90s sci-fi classic, a parable that grapples with the ethics of eugenics and class discrimination. Hawke stars as Vincent Freeman (ironic name), a genetically inferior "in-valid" who conspires to live out his dream of space travel by acquiring the genes of a lab-made "valid" man (Jude Law). Joining the Gattaca space program, Vincent falls in love with a beautif𒉰ul woman (Thurman), but his plans to stay in space are threatenedܫ when a murder investigation kicks off. 

23. Dark City (1998)

In this bleak science-fiction thriller about memory and identity, Rufus Sewell plays an amnesiac man named John Murdoch, who is found accused of murder. Racing against time, John works to clear his name while trying to figure out what his real name is in the first place. All the while, John evades shadowy forces ✃called "The Strangers." While Dark City, from The Crow director Alex Proyas, was a huge box office bomb, it has endured as a cult classic, particularly with how it influenced the much bigger, far more successful film The Matrix released a year later. Around 2010, in discussing his hit movie Inception, Christopher Nolan cited Dark City as a touchstone.

22. Contact (1997)

Jodie Foster teams up with director Robert Zemeckis for Contact, a late 1990s sci-fi thriller about man's first – ahem, contact – with alien life. Foster plays a SETI scientist wh♚o comes across possible evidence of extraterrestrial life. She is immediately thrust into the position of becoming Earth's emissary, the representative for all mankind. Predating the 2016 film Arrival and swerving into more brainy territory than blockbusters like Independence Day, Contact shows the sheer intensity of man's discovery that we are not alone. 

21. Small Soldiers (1998)

Sometimes, big movies come in very small packages. From Gremlins director Joe Dante, Small Soldiers follows a teenager named Alan (played by Gregory Smith) whose family toy store becomes a war zone between warring factions of super intelligent toys manufactured with bleeding-edge computer chips intended for the Department of Defense. (A young Kirsten Dunst co-stars as Christy, the girl next door and the main character's love interest.) A satire of the milit𒊎ary industrial complex and its propaganda chokehold over children, as well as Reagan-era media franchises like G.I. Joe, Small Soldiers is no mere toy story.

20. The Fifth Element (1997)

The fate of the world and the future of humanꦍity rests in the hands of Bruce Willis. In Luc Besson's 1997 classic The Fifth Element, the Die Hard star plays Korben Dallas, a flying taxicab driver in 23rd century New York City who welcomes a very strange customer in Leelo (Milla Jovovich). Together, the two team up to stop an ancient evil threat from destroying Earth. While The Fifth Element didn't win over many critics upon release 🥂in May 1997, it has enjoyed cult classic status, especially through a very meme-worthy Chris Tucker as flamboyant radio deejay Ruby Rhod.

19. Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999)

Four words: "Duel of the Fates." Oh, you need a little more? In 1999, George Lucas' Star Wars franchise came back to life with the first installment of the divisive prequel trilogy. While the overall execution of the prequel saga remains up for debate, there's no question that Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom🍒 Menace was a pop culture juggernaut aꦍnd merchandising monster as May 1999 rolled around and audiences went back to a galaxy far, far away. In this prequel movie, the Jedi Order discover a young slave boy named Anakin (Jake Lloyd) who wields immense capacity for the Force. Their decision to induct him as one of their own will have grave consequences for the galaxy, as civil war brews between political factions. 

18. Independence Day (1996)

In the 1990s, few movies felt as big and explosive as Independence Day. From disaster master Roland Emmerich, disparate groups of humanity converge after an alien invasion and plan a massive counterattack on the only holiday that all of America can agree on: the Fourth of July. Following in the traꦑdition of alien invasion movies like War of the Worlds and The Day the Earth Stood Still, Independence Day marked a new era for special effects filmmaking as well as energizing the career of sitcom star turned Hollywood action hero Will Smith. 

17. Face/Off (1997)

Throughout the 1990s, Hong Kong director John Woo brought his operatic flavor of action to Hollywood; among his greatest movies in this era was, and still is, Face/Off. John Travolta and Nicolas Cage co-star in this improbable science fiction thriller where the two men – on🐭e playing an FBI agent and loyal family man (Travolta), the other a master terrorist (Cage) – switch 𝔍faces after experimental surgery, leading to an intense showdown. The "science" of Face/Off is definitely fiction, but who cares when there's slow-motion explosions, Mexican standoffs, and speedboat chases?

16. Stargate (1994)

The movie that launched the Stargate empire. In 1994, director Roland Emmerich along with writer Dean Devlin oversaw Stargate, an original science fictio🐲n adventure centered around an ancient circular wormhole that allows instant travel across the universe. Kurt Russell and James Spader co-star in the film, with Jaye Davidson as an alien posing as the Egyptian god Ra. A rousing mix of space military action and archeology, Stargate plays with popular conspiracy 𒁃theories which posit that aliens had a role in the history of human civilization. Stargate notably launched a  franchise which includes a handful of spin-off television shows – like Stargate SG-1 and Stargate: Atlantis – as well as direct-to-video sequels, comic books, and more. 

15. The Rocketeer (1991)

Before Disney had the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the pulp superhero The Rocketeer blasted off to the skies. An adaptation of the comic book by Dave Stevens, The Rocketeer follows a stunt pilot named Cliff (Billy Campbell) who comes into possession of a pro🔥totype rocket-powered jet pack. Cliff soars above 1938 Los Angeles as "The Rocketeer," a skybound superhero who fights against Nazis while evading the FBI. The Rocketeer is a wide-eyed throwback to the pulp adventures of Depression-era, pre-war America, imbued with lively spirit by director Joe Johnston, who later helm𒈔ed Captain America: The First Avenger in 2011.