Rolling Stone Top 40 Sci-Fi Movies of the 21st Century

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Ask any science-fiction movie fanatic what their go-to films are, and you’ll get a lot of great answers back: Metropolis, Blade Runner, 2001, The Day the Earth Stood Still, the original Godzilla, The Thing etc. But let’s face it – those answers are so last century. Great sci-fi movies didn’t decide to party like it’s 1999 then call it a day; a host of thrilling, intelligent, offbeat, funny and frightening SF films have hit art houses and multiplexes since Y2K.

In 2014, we concocted a list of the Best Sci-Fi Movies of the 21st Century — a quick and dirty survey of the best the genre has had to offer since the millennium’s beginning. More than a few major science-fiction flicks, however – from franchise-expanding blockbusters to arthouse headscratchers – have dropped since then, so it was time for an overhaul and an update. We’ve now expanded our list to 40 titles, to better highlight the best and brightest SF films of our still-new–ish millennium. Some noteworthy favorites of ours just barely missed the cut (very sorry, Alex Rivera’s Sleep Dealer) or some major titles were dinged on quality-control issues. (Avatar may have been a gamechanging film for 3D, but “unobtainium”? Really?!?) We’re confident, however, that there’s a place in the canon for these relative latecomers.

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  1. 33 new

    Donnie Darko

    2001, in 21 top lists Check
  2. 13 new

    District 9

    2009, in 10 top lists Check
  3. 1 new

    Children of Men

    2006, in 12 top lists Check
  4. 7 new

    Gravity

    2013, in 12 top lists Check
  5. 27 new

    Cloverfield

    2008, in 3 top lists Check
  6. 38 new

    Source Code

    2011, in 0 top lists Check
  7. 35 new

    Sunshine

    2007, in 1 top list Check
  8. 2 new

    Ex Machina

    2014, in 5 top lists Check
  9. 25 new

    Primer

    2004, in 6 top lists Check
  10. 17 new

    A Scanner Darkly

    2006, in 3 top lists Check
  11. 16 new

    Snowpiercer

    2013, in 2 top lists Check
  12. 31 new

    Monsters

    2010, in 3 top lists Check
  13. 37 new

    The Girl with All the Gifts

    2016, in 0 top lists Check
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Last updated on Jan 8, 2019; source