When it comes to classic science fiction movies, which, for the purposes of this list, will be classified as those made before 1970, there’s an embarrassment of riches. From silent classics to groundbreaking masterpieces with a healthy helping of interstellar adventures and invasion movies in between, the early to late-mid 20th century is an entire universe of sights, frights, and extra special extra-terrestrials. If you’re a fan of sci-fi, then chances are you’ve seen many of these classics, but if you haven’t, and you’re looking to fill in some gaps in your cinematic knowledge, then look no further.
Compiled below are ten stone-cold classics of the sci-fi persuasion that represent the true breadth of the genre. Some are singular works, and others were merely the beginning of what would become massive franchises, but they’re all seminal efforts with a continued and sustained influence. Without them, other classics from later decades may have never been made. Beyond their impact, these are all just great movies worthy of the time it takes to watch them. With our own future as a species looking increasingly bleak, there’s no better time to hunker down and spend the rest of 2026 watching these classic sci-fi movies.
‘A Trip to the Moon’ (1902)
It doesn’t get more foundational than Georges Méliès‘ A Trip to the Moon. Inspired by the writing of Jules Verne, this silent classic is the original sci-fi movie. Its imagery has been burned into film history, and its legacy is a salient reminder of the importance of film preservation. A Trip to the Moon is as classic as sci-fi movies get, and with a runtime well under half an hour, there’s no excuse not to watch it.
As the title suggests, the film follows a group of astronomers on a trip to the Moon. They get there by way of a capsule that crashes into the eye of the Man in the Moon, in one of the most iconic shots in film history. Their expedition includes all sorts of fantastical sights, but is also beset by some insect-like aliens that wish to do them harm. It’s all the cosmic wonder and dread of space movies wrapped up in a silent-era classic that’s filled with some truly spectacular visuals. Méliès wasn’t just a pioneer of science fiction but of cinema, boldly going where no filmmaker had gone before.
‘Metropolis’ (1927)
In simple terms of innovation and epic storytelling, there are few sci-fi films that can compete with Fritz Lang‘s Metropolis. Just a decade and a half after Méliès took audiences on a trip to the moon, Lang was bringing them into a dystopian future of towering skyscrapers and robotic beings. Metropolis is equally influential as Méliès’ film but ever more expansive, telling a sprawling story of class warfare with awe-inspiring visuals. It’s inspired everything in the genre, from Blade Runner to Star Wars, but it’s just as enthralling as those later efforts despite being nearly 100 years old.
In its depiction of the future, the wealthy elite live at the literal highest level of society in their skyscrapers while the workers bleed and sweat in the darkest depths to keep the machinery running. The contrast between the haves and have-nots is illustrated by a conflict between the powerful master of the city and his son, who becomes a part of the workers’ rebellion. Economic disparity is a popular theme in science fiction, going back to the works of classic authors like H.G. Wells and all the way up to some of the most current sci-fi films and series. Metropolis tells a tale as old as time with a striking visual style that remains timeless.
‘Frankenstein’ (1931)
Image via Universal Pictures
While it’s undoubtedly a horror classic, Frankenstein is also definitively science fiction. The novel by Mary Shelley, which inspired the play which served as the basis for James Whale‘s classic film, is often considered the original sci-fi novel, and the very creation of the infamous monster is based on a vague sort of science as opposed to something more supernatural. Whale’s film diverged from Shelley’s novel in many ways, but it remains the most iconic adaptation, creating a vision of Frankenstein’s Monster recognizable to every generation.
The plot of Frankenstein is so ingrained in the public consciousness that most people know it even if they’ve never seen a frame of the film or read a word of the novel. It’s the classic mad scientist trying to play god by creating life with body parts stolen from cemeteries and sewn together and the brain of a criminal. The film is a visual feast, marrying gothic sensibilities with science fiction in perfect harmony. Just as Boris Karloff‘s soulful portrayal of the misunderstood monster became the archetype, so too did Colin Clive‘s as the titular doctor and his lab where his creation comes to life.
‘The Thing From Another World’ (1951)
Bypassing the ’40s, which had a few fan favorites if not bona fide sci-fi classics, we come to the golden era of the ’50s, where alien invasions and atomic monsters reigned supreme. When it comes to the former, there are too many classics to list. From Invaders From Mars to The War of the Worlds, plenty of films made audiences paranoid about aggressive extraterrestrial visitors. While it’s been somewhat eclipsed by its remake directed by John Carpenter, The Thing from Another World is good old-fashioned ’50s sci-fi fun.
Based on the novella Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell Jr., this first adaptation is actually far less faithful than the Carpenter film. Instead, it pulls more than a little inspiration from Frankenstein in its depiction of a plant-based alien discovered in the Arctic ice by a team of soldiers and scientists. When they bring their frozen creation back to their research station, it quickly thaws and begins wreaking havoc. Directed by Christian Nyby, the film retains the unmistakable fingerprints of producer Howard Hawks in its rapid-fire banter. The Thing from Another World is old-school sci-fi entertainment that you’ll have a great time with.
‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’ (1951)
On the opposite end of the threat spectrum from The Thing is Klaatu from the classic The Day the Earth Stood Still. As opposed to the paranoia preached by other invasion films and the thinly veiled fears they spread about outside threats to the American way of life, this Christ-like alien comes in peace and with a dire warning for humanity. The film comes from the legendary director Robert Wise, whose contributions to classic cinema cannot be overstated.
When the alien Klaatu lands on Earth, with the giant robot Gort as his bodyguard, he’s attacked before he can impart his message and a gift to humanity. As he heals, he walks among the humans, observing their potential for good and learning their history of violence. He warns them that their development of atomic weaponry has become a concern to other advanced civilizations, and if they continue their course of destruction, they will surely be annihilated. The Day the Earth Stood Still presaged not only a legion of nuclear monster movies, but our nuclear anxieties that would only become more pronounced in the decades that would follow.
‘Godzilla’ (1954)
Of those legions of atomic monster movies that stormed through the 1950s, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms was the first, but the most iconic would come one year later from Japan. Godzilla pioneered the kaiju subgenre of monster movies, and while some of the gigantic beasts that headline those films have all kinds of origins, the King of the Monsters was nuclear-borne. What makes this original classic by Ishiro Honda so effective, even after decades of imitators and dozens of sequels and reboots, is how stark a symbol the titular monster is for nuclear holocaust, with skin designed to emulate the scars of survivors of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
Unlike many of his atomic American counterparts, Godzilla isn’t just a marauding monster who needs to be destroyed. His rampant destruction of Japan is the act of an animal guided by rage and mutated by nuclear radiation. Like Frankenstein’s monster, he’s a victim of scientific ambition and human nature, and like King Kong, his death is treated as a tragedy instead of triumph. Godzilla is a classic of Japanese cinema made heavy with the trauma of the only nation to suffer the effects of an atomic bomb.
‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’ (1956)
Giant atomic monsters or aliens in UFOs all offer major external threats, but even more terrifying is the loss of our humanity and identity. That’s the fear that takes hold in the sci-fi classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Based on the novel The Body Snatchers by Jack Finney, the multi-faceted film has been interpreted as both a criticism of McCarthyism and Communism. No matter how you choose to interpret it, there’s no denying that Don Siegel‘s film possesses an eerie, unnerving quality.
Set in the California town of Santa Mira, the film follows a local doctor who begins to suspect that the hysteria being experienced by the town’s population is extraterrestrial in origin. His suspicions are confirmed when he discovers that the populace is quickly being replaced by pod people formed from alien spores. Some have argued against political interpretations of its plot, but the film remains chilling, no matter what context you ascribe to it. It’s a quiet invasion classic that’s been remade several times, but which remains unsurpassed in its impact.
‘Forbidden Planet’ (1956)
Alien invaders inspired plenty of fear in the ’50s, but the prospect of visiting alien planets inspired a sense of adventure, best illustrated in the massively influential Forbidden Planet. Considered a major precursor to modern sci-fi films and serving as a direct inspiration for Star Trek, this colorful Cinemascope interstellar adventure is top to bottom iconic. The costume and set design are like the best sci-fi pulps brought to life, while the electronic score and characters like Robby the Robot continue to be referenced and riffed on in movies and television series made decades later.
Directed by Fred M. Wilcox, the film features a plot many have noted as reminiscent of William Shakespeare‘s The Tempest, following a crew of space travelers investigating the disappearance of a previous expedition on a distant planet. There they find the only survivor, a mad scientist named Morbius who shares the planet with his daughter and a giant invisible monster. Forbidden Planet charted a course through the stars and away from the space invaders and atomic monsters on Earth, and we have an entire subgenre of sci-fi escapism to thank it for.
‘Planet of the Apes’ (1968)
Sci-fi in the ’60s got weird in all the best ways. The quietly political films of the ’50s became full-blown social satires like John Frankenheimer‘s haunting Seconds or Francois Truffaut‘s adaptation of Ray Bradbury‘s Fahrenheit 451. At the nexus of all this social commentary and cosmic quirkiness is the pop culture phenomenon started by Planet of the Apes. Almost a decade before Star Wars, this sci-fi classic would build a sci-fi franchise with sequels, a television series, a cartoon show and lots of toys and merchandise.
Best known for directing epics, Franklin J. Schaffner adapts Pierre Boulle‘s novel on a large scale with Ben-Hur and Moses himself, Charlton Heston, as the lead. Heston plays an astronaut named Taylor who crash-lands on a strange planet where apes reign over humans. After his companions are killed and he’s taken captive, Taylor plots an escape that ends with one of the most iconic twist endings in film history. Even though the surprise that the planet of the apes has been Earth all along has long been gone, the ending remains a perfectly pessimistic finale to an incredible sci-fi adventure.
‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ (1968)
There’s a definitive demarcation line of sci-fi that falls on the release of Stanley Kubrick‘s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Though the film would receive an initially mixed critical reception and wasn’t a success at the box office during its initial release, its combination of visual storytelling and groundbreaking visual effects not only raised the bar for the genre, but also set a challenge for future filmmakers. Almost every major sci-fi filmmaker, from Steven Spielberg to Christopher Nolan, has cited the film as an inspiration, and films like Solaris were made in direct response to it. It is arguably the most essential sci-fi film ever made.
Based on the work of Arthur C. Clarke, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Kubrick, the film is concerned with man’s place in the universe, beginning with our Dawn and taking us into the then-future year of the title. On both occasions, an alien monolith has a dramatic effect on evolution, leading to a space expedition where astronauts contend with a rogue AI and a surreal and visually extravagant ending that portends a more hopeful future for humanity. It’s not an overstatement to say that 2001 could be the greatest film ever made, but even if you don’t believe that astronomical hype, every sci-fi fan needs to watch it.