The best flight films are ones you've been meaning to watch but keep putting off. You have the hours. You have nowhere else to be. Use them.
The 2000s feel undervalued now. A decade of films that knew what they were doing and did it without apology.
The best science fiction isn't about technology â it's about humanity. The future is the setting. The question is always about who we are.
Robert Neville is a scientist who was unable to stop the spread of the terrible virus that was incurable and man-made. Immune, Neville is now the last human survivor in what is left of New York City and perhaps the world. For three years, Neville has faithfully sent out daily radio messages, desperate to find any other survivors who might be out there. But he is not alone.
Prot is a patient at a mental hospital who claims to be from a far away planet. His psychiatrist tries to help him, only to begin to doubt his own explanations.
On the mystical island of Themyscira, a proud and fierce warrior race of Amazons have raised a daughter of untold beauty, grace and strength: Princess Diana. When an Army fighter pilot, Steve Trevor, crash-lands on the island, the rebellious and headstrong Diana defies Amazonian law by accompanying Trevor back to civilization.
Two years have passed since the final battle with Sephiroth. Though Midgar, city of mako, city of prosperity, has been reduced to ruins, its people slowly but steadily walk the road to reconstruction. However, a mysterious illness called Geostigma torments them. With no cure in sight, it brings death to the afflicted, one after another, robbing the people of their fledgling hope.
In the midst of societal conflict in the futuristic city of Metropolis, Kenichi and his uncle Shunsaku Ban set out to uncover the mystery behind the first human-like robot, Tima.
The science fiction films that last are the ones where the ideas are inseparable from the story. Not grafted on â woven in. These films are genuinely about something.
Ba'al travels back in time and prevents the Stargate program from being started. SG-1 must somehow restore history.
SG-1 searches for an ancient weapon which could help them defeat the Ori, and discover it may be in the Ori's own home galaxy. As the Ori prepare to send ships through to the Milky Way to attack Earth, SG-1 travels to the Ori galaxy aboard the Odyssey. The International Oversight committee have their own plans and SG-1 finds themselves in a distant galaxy fighting two powerful enemies.
The Resistance builds in numbers as humans are freed from the Matrix and brought to the city of Zion. Neo discovers his superpowers, including the ability to see the code inside the Matrix. With machine sentinels digging to Zion in 72 hours, Neo, Morpheus and Trinity must find the Keymaker to ultimately reach the Source.
United States President Lex Luthor uses the oncoming trajectory of a Kryptonite meteor to frame Superman and declare a $1 billion bounty on the heads of the Man of Steel and his 'partner in crime', Batman. Heroes and villains alike launch a relentless pursuit of Superman and Batman, who must unite-and recruit help-to try and stave off the action-packed onslaught, stop the meteor Luthors plot.
Leela becomes an outlaw when she and a group of ecologically-minded feminists attempt to save an asteroid of primitive life forms and the Violet Dwarf star from being destroyed, while Fry joins a secret society and attempts to stop a mysterious species known as the "Dark Ones" from destroying all life in the universe.
The films that fly under the radar often do so because they resist easy categorisation. That resistance is usually exactly what makes them worth finding.
These films earn their place in the canon not through spectacle but through the seriousness with which they treat their ideas. The wonder is a bonus.