1. Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky)
2. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick)
3. Blade Runner (Ridley Scott)
4. Metropolis (Fritz Lang)
5. Je t’aime, Je t’aime (Alain Resnais)
6. Solaris (Andrei Tarkovsky)
7. THX-1138 (George Lucas)
8. The Thing (John Carpenter)
9. The Incredible Shrinking Man (Jack Arnold)
10. Alien (Ridley Scott)
11. War of the Worlds (Byron Haskin)
12. A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick)
13. The Manchurian Candidate (John Frankenheimer)
14. Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith (George Lucas)
15. Them! (Gordon Douglas)
16. Forbidden Planet (Fred M. Wilcox)
17. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (Hayao Miyazaki)
18. 2046 (Kar-Wai Wong)
19. King Kong (Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack)
20. Bride of Frankenstein (James Whale)
21. Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope (George Lucas)
22. Repo Man (Alex Cox)
23. The Thing From Another World (Christian Nyby)
24. Zardoz (John Boorman)
25. Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (Terence Fisher)
26. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Steven Spielberg)
27. Robocop (Paul Verhoeven)
28. The Day the Earth Stood Still (Robert Wise)
29. Aliens (James Cameron)
30. Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan (Nicholas Meyer)
31. Minority Report (Steven Spielberg)
32. Frankenstein (James Whale)
33. Matango (Ishiro Honda)
34. Creature From the Black Lagoon (Jack Arnold)
35. The Day The Earth Caught Fire (Val Guest)
36. Planet of the Apes (Franklin Schaffner)
37. The Crazies (George A. Romero)
38. The Gladiators (Peter Watkins)
39. Godzilla (Ishiro Honda)
40. Shivers (David Cronenberg)
41. Superman (Richard Donner)
42. Quatermass II (Val Guest)
43. The Terminator (James Cameron)
44. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Don Siegel)
45. Robinson Crusoe On Mars (Byron Haskin)
46. City of Lost Children (Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet)
47. High-Rise (Ben Wheatley)
48. John Carter (Andrew Stanton)
49. This Island Earth (Joseph Newman)
50. Paprika (Satoshi Kon)
51. Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (George Miller)
52. Children of Men (Alfonso Cuaron)
53. Dr Mabuse, the Gambler (Fritz Lang)
54. Curse of Frankenstein (Terence Fisher)
55. The Andromeda Strain (Robert Wise)
56. Soylent Green (Richard Fleischer)
57. War of the Worlds (Steven Spielberg)
58. Alphaville (Jean-Luc Godard)
59. The Man Who Fell To Earth (Nicolas Roeg)
60. Atragon (Ishiro Honda)
61. Rollerball (Norman Jewison)
62. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Philip Kaufman)
63. It Came From Outer Space (Jack Arnold)
64. I Married a Monster From Outer Space (Gene Fowler Jr)
65. The Time Machine (George Pal)
66. The Fury (Brian De Palma)
67. The Final Programme (Robert Fuest)
68. Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi (Richard Marquand)
69. Dark Star (John Carpenter)
70. The Abominable Snowman (Val Guest)
71. The Creation of the Humanoids (Wesley E. Barry)
72. Delicatessen (Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet)
73. Privilege (Peter Watkins)
74. Fantastic Voyage (Richard Fleischer)
75. Flash Gordon (Mike Hodges)
76. The Illustrated Man (Jack Smight)
77. Destination Moon (Irving Pichel)
78. Dune (David Lynch)
79. Planet of the Vampires (Mario Bava)
80. Black Moon (Louis Malle)
81. Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer)
82. Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (Irvin Kershner)
83. The Land That Time Forgot (Kevin Connor)
84. Womb (Benedek Fliegauf)
85. Mission to Mars (Brian De Palma)
85. Moon (Duncan Jones)
86. Interstellar (Christopher Nolan)
87. Pacific Rim (Guillermo Del Toro)
88. Watchmen (Zack Snyder)
90. The Abyss (James Cameron)
91. These Are The Damned (Joseph Losey)
92. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (Richard Fleischer)
93. Deathwatch (Bertrand Tavernier)
94. The World, The Flesh, and the Devil (Ranald MacDougall)
95. Logan’s Run (Michael Anderson)
96. The Land Unknown (Virgil Vogel)
97. Back to the Future (Robert Zemeckis)
98. A Trip to the Moon (Georges Melies)
99. You Only Live Twice (Lewis Gilbert)
100. Slaughterhouse-Five (George Roy Hill)
List: The 100 Greatest Science Fiction Films
This is a list of my top 100 science fiction films put together for Wonders in the Dark’s upcoming Science Fiction countdown. I’ll give a few notes about my priorities here. Science fiction is a category with infamously porous borders, adjoining a host of genres – horror, thrillers, westerns, fantasy, drama, you name it. Some films often counted as sci-fi I’ve taken more to be what-if satirical studies of the present day with slight futuristic implications, like Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, or; How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), Godard’s Week-End (1967), or Billington’s The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer (1971). I’ve also weighted some genre straddlers according to how well I feel they are exemplary of this specific genre; thus Bride of Frankenstein, which would be in my top ten horror films, is somewhat lower here. On the other hand, I argued myself to the point where I included several films where their sci-fi element is arguably only implied amongst what could otherwise be called a fantasy landscape, for instance, King Kong, 2046, or Black Moon, because they, in their way, nonetheless enter realms other sci-fi works regularly annex usually with the fig-leaf of pseudo-scientific explanations or affects of parable. Only the top fifty of these choices will be counted towards the countdown’s eventual tallying; this extended roster is my way of living with myself. Altogether, this was mostly great fun to assemble.