Science fiction isn’t just for nerds anymore. In fact, that’s been true long enough that for a certain generation, it probably seems bizarre that the genre wasn’t always so popular. But the reality is that sci-fi was never meant to appeal only to a small niche. Science-fiction films might frequently create entirely new worlds, but the best of them do what any good movie should do and tell us about the world we actually live in. They deal with relatable issues and themes, not just the geeks writing novel-length theoretical treatises on fan forums.
To that end, in order to put together our list of the 100 best sci-fi movies ever made, we asked a wide-ranging panel of experts, from Nobel Prize-winning geneticist Sir Paul Nurse, to Oscar-decorated film director Guillermo del Toro, to Game of Thrones creator George RR Martin, along with a few regular old Time Out writers. As a result, it’s a list that crisscrosses the sci-fi universe, from Tatooine to Arrakis, Metropolis to Los Angeles circa, uh, 2019.
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