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Best Sci-Fi Movies On A Long Flight From The 80S And 90S That Will Mess With Your Mind

The Moviepiq team picked these sci-fi films specifically for a long flight. No filler. Every film on this list earns its place for exactly this occasion.

The best sci-fi movies on a long flight from the 80s and 90s that will mess with your mind. Includes Gattaca, Predator, Dragon Ball Z: Fusion Reborn and more...

Flights are underrated for cinema. No domestic distractions. Nowhere else to be. The altitude helps, somehow. This is a list worth saving for the gate.

Go back far enough and you find films that had no idea they'd become classics. The 80s and 90s produced more of them than any other era.

Science fiction cinema at its finest takes ideas seriously. Not as window dressing — as the engine. These films are built around questions worth asking.

Gattaca movie poster
1
1997 · ★★★½☆ 7.6/10

Vincent is an all-too-human man who dares to defy a system obsessed with genetic perfection. He is an "In-Valid" who assumes the identity of a member of the genetic elite to pursue his goal of traveling into space with the Gattaca Aerospace Corporation.

Predator movie poster
2
1987 · ★★★½☆ 7.5/10

A team of elite commandos on a secret mission in a Central American jungle come to find themselves hunted by an extraterrestrial warrior.

Dragon Ball Z: Fusion Reborn movie poster
3
1995 · ★★★½☆ 7.5/10

Not paying attention to his job, a young demon allows the evil cleansing machine to overflow and explode, turning the young demon into the infamous monster Janemba. Goku and Vegeta make solo attempts to defeat the monster, but realize their only option is fusion.

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial movie poster
4
1982 · ★★★½☆ 7.5/10

An alien is left behind on Earth and saved by the 10-year-old Elliott who decides to keep him hidden in his home. While a task force hunts for the extra-terrestrial, Elliott, his brother, and his little sister Gertie form an emotional bond with their new friend, and try to help him find his way home.

Back to the Future Part III movie poster
5
1990 · ★★★½☆ 7.5/10

The final installment finds Marty digging the trusty DeLorean out of a mineshaft and looking for Doc in the Wild West of 1885. But when their time machine breaks down, the travelers are stranded in a land of spurs. More problems arise when Doc falls for pretty schoolteacher Clara Clayton, and Marty tangles with Buford Tannen.

The science fiction films that last are the ones where the ideas are inseparable from the story. Not grafted on — woven in. These films are genuinely about something.

A Grand Day Out movie poster
6
1990 · ★★★½☆ 7.5/10

Wallace and Gromit have run out of cheese, and this provides an excellent excuse for the duo to take their holiday to the moon, where, as everyone knows, there is ample cheese.

Memories movie poster
7
1995 · ★★★½☆ 7.5/10

Three back-to-back anime films by three different directors make up this sci-fi trilogy three years in the making.

The Secret of NIMH movie poster
8
1982 · ★★★½☆ 7.5/10

A widowed field mouse must move her family -- including an ailing son -- to escape a farmer's plow. Aided by a crow and a pack of superintelligent, escaped lab rats, the brave mother struggles to transplant her home to firmer ground.

Open Your Eyes movie poster
9
1997 · ★★★½☆ 7.5/10

Handsome 25-year-old Cesar had it all -- a successful career, expensive cars, a swank bachelor's pad, and an endless string of beautiful and willing women -- until he is thrown into a strange psychological mystery after a car accident scars his face and lands him in prison.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan movie poster
10
1982 · ★★★½☆ 7.4/10

The starship Enterprise and its crew is pulled back into action when old nemesis, Khan, steals a top secret device called Project Genesis.

Films that mess with your mind work best when they've earned your trust first. The disorientation only lands if you were fully in. These get you in.

The best sci-fi films feel more relevant with time, not less. The future they imagined turns out to be a map of now.

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