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Best Sci-Fi Movies With Friends On A Friday That Will Mess With Your Mind

These sci-fi films were selected by the Moviepiq editorial team for a Friday night with friends. Popularity and critic scores don't factor in here. Emotional fit does.

The best sci-fi movies with friends on a friday that will mess with your mind. Includes Interstellar, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, The Empire Strikes B...

Friday night with friends is about energy. You want something that earns its place in the conversation - a film that people are still talking about on the way home.

The best science fiction isn't about technology — it's about humanity. The future is the setting. The question is always about who we are.

Interstellar movie poster
1
2014 · ★★★★½ 8.5/10

The adventures of a group of explorers who make use of a newly discovered wormhole to surpass the limitations on human space travel and conquer the vast distances involved in an interstellar voyage.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse movie poster
2
2018 · ★★★★☆ 8.4/10

Struggling to find his place in the world while juggling school and family, Brooklyn teenager Miles Morales is unexpectedly bitten by a radioactive spider and develops unfathomable powers just like the one and only Spider-Man. While wrestling with the implications of his new abilities, Miles discovers a super collider created by the madman Wilson "Kingpin" Fisk, causing others from across the Spider-Verse to be inadvertently transported to his dimension.

The Empire Strikes Back movie poster
3
1980 · ★★★★☆ 8.4/10

The epic saga continues as Luke Skywalker, in hopes of defeating the evil Galactic Empire, learns the ways of the Jedi from aging master Yoda. But Darth Vader is more determined than ever to capture Luke. Meanwhile, rebel leader Princess Leia, cocky Han Solo, Chewbacca, and droids C-3PO and R2-D2 are thrown into various stages of capture, betrayal and despair.

Inception movie poster
4
2010 · ★★★★☆ 8.4/10

Cobb, a skilled thief who commits corporate espionage by infiltrating the subconscious of his targets is offered a chance to regain his old life as payment for a task considered to be impossible: "inception", the implantation of another person's idea into a target's subconscious.

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse movie poster
5
2023 · ★★★★☆ 8.3/10

After reuniting with Gwen Stacy, Brooklyn's full-time, friendly neighborhood Spider-Man is catapulted across the Multiverse, where he encounters the Spider Society, a team of Spider-People charged with protecting the Multiverse's very existence. But when the heroes clash on how to handle a new threat, Miles finds himself pitted against the other Spiders and must set out on his own to save those he loves most.

These films use the grammar of science fiction — the technology, the strangeness, the distance — to say things that couldn't be said any other way.

Back to the Future movie poster
6
1985 · ★★★★☆ 8.3/10

Eighties teenager Marty McFly is accidentally sent back in time to 1955, inadvertently disrupting his parents' first meeting and attracting his mother's romantic interest. Marty must repair the damage to history by rekindling his parents' romance and - with the help of his eccentric inventor friend Doc Brown - return to 1985.

The Wild Robot movie poster
7
2024 · ★★★★☆ 8.3/10

After a shipwreck, an intelligent robot called Roz is stranded on an uninhabited island. To survive the harsh environment, Roz bonds with the island's animals and cares for an orphaned baby goose.

Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion movie poster
8
1997 · ★★★★☆ 8.3/10

SEELE orders an all-out attack on NERV, aiming to destroy the Evas before Gendo can advance his own plans for the Human Instrumentality Project. Shinji is pushed to the limits of his sanity as he is forced to decide the fate of humanity.

The Matrix movie poster
9
1999 · ★★★★☆ 8.2/10

Set in the 22nd century, The Matrix tells the story of a computer hacker who joins a group of underground insurgents fighting the vast and powerful computers who now rule the earth.

Avengers: Infinity War movie poster
10
2018 · ★★★★☆ 8.2/10

As the Avengers and their allies have continued to protect the world from threats too large for any one hero to handle, a new danger has emerged from the cosmic shadows: Thanos. A despot of intergalactic infamy, his goal is to collect all six Infinity Stones, artifacts of unimaginable power, and use them to inflict his twisted will on all of reality. Everything the Avengers have fought for has led up to this moment - the fate of Earth and existence itself has never been more uncertain.

The best mind-bending films don't cheat. They follow their own logic rigorously - which is exactly why the rug-pull, when it comes, is so disorienting.

Great science fiction stays with you because the questions it raises don't have answers. These films plant something and leave it to grow.

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