For a Friday with friends, you need a film that doesn't require perfect silence to work. Something engaging enough that it holds attention even in a room with people in it.
The 2010s produced a generation of films that refused to be just one thing. Smarter than they needed to be. Better than expected.
Great sci-fi uses the impossible to illuminate the real. Distance from the present is what allows these films to say things that otherwise couldn't be said.
When Alita awakens with no memory of who she is in a future world she does not recognize, she is taken in by Ido, a compassionate doctor who realizes that somewhere in this abandoned cyborg shell is the heart and soul of a young woman with an extraordinary past.
One year after the events of Captain America: The First Avenger, Agent Peggy Carter, a member of the Strategic Scientific Reserve, searches for the mysterious Zodiac.
In a dystopian society where the Capitol forces each district to send two young tributes to fight to the death in a televised spectacle, a girl volunteers to take her sister's place, setting the stage for a struggle of survival and defiance.
When a massive, gilled monster emerges from the deep and tears through the city, the government scrambles to save its citizens. A rag-tag team of volunteers cuts through a web of red tape to uncover the monster's weakness and its mysterious ties to a foreign superpower. But time is not on their side - the greatest catastrophe to ever befall the world is about to evolve right before their very eyes.
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.
Caesar and his apes are forced into a deadly conflict with an army of humans led by a ruthless Colonel. After the apes suffer unimaginable losses, Caesar wrestles with his darker instincts and begins his own mythic quest to avenge his kind. As the journey finally brings them face to face, Caesar and the Colonel are pitted against each other in an epic battle that will determine the fate of both their species and the future of the planet.
Four couples gather for dinner the night a mysterious and powerful comet passes overhead.
The life of an unsuccessful writer is transformed by a top-secret 'smart drug' that allows him to use 100% of his brain and become a perfect version of himself. His enhanced abilities soon attract shadowy forces that threaten his new life.
Fourteen years after Third Impact, Shinji Ikari awakens to a world he does not remember. He hasn't aged. Much of Earth is laid in ruins, NERV has been dismantled, and people who he once protected have turned against him. Befriending the enigmatic Kaworu Nagisa, Shinji continues the fight against the angels and realizes the fighting is far from over, even when it could be against his former allies. The characters' struggles continue amidst the battles against the angels and each other, spiraling down to what could inevitably be the end of the world.
A teenager with no memory of his past finds himself among a group of boys living in a walled enclosure surrounded by a massive, ever-changing maze. As he struggles to adapt to their rules and society, he begins to uncover clues that may lead to escape and the truth behind their confinement.
An ending is everything. It's the last thing you carry with you. These films understand that - and they make it count.
The best sci-fi films feel more relevant with time, not less. The future they imagined turns out to be a map of now.