12 Must-See Sci-Fi Movies to Stream Right Now (May 2025)

Modern movie lovers may not fully realize just how much of a game-changer Terminator 2: Judgment Day was in 1991. This was the first film to fully utilize a CGI main character, and the morphing special effects were revolutionary for the time. Director James Cameron made an even bigger movie than the first Terminator, and it cemented his legend in Hollywood.

This time, Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s T-800 model Terminator gets to be the hero who is sent back in time to save John Connor (Edward Furlong) from an even more advanced model, the T-1000 (Robert Patrick). John’s mother, Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), has become a buff warrior since the previous T-800 tried to murder her. With the arrival of the new T-800 model, Sarah sees an opportunity to prevent the war with the machines from ever happening at all… if they can outrun the T-1000.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day is streaming on Paramount+.

There have been a handful of RoboCop sequels, reboots and TV projects, but none of them have come anywhere near the original film in terms of quality. Director Paul Verhoeven masterfully blends a straightforward sci-fi crime story with hilarious satire and a remarkably quotable script from Edward Neumeier and Michael Miner.

Peter Weller also brought out the humanity in RoboCop through his performance as the title character. Weller’s movements are stiff and robot-like, but his face is incredibly expressive even when covered by RoboCop’s visor.

Police officer Alex Murphy never asked to be resurrected as a half-human cyborg. But he has just enough left of his soul to reclaim his identity and hunt down the men who killed him before taking on the corporate executive behind Old Detroit’s criminal empire.

RoboCop is streaming on Max.

Before director Denis Villeneuve struck box office gold with the Dune films, his masterful adaptation of Ted Chiang’s Story of Your Life was his most acclaimed movie. In Arrival, alien ships appear over the most powerful nations on Earth, and communication with the visitors is a big problem. The aliens have their own language, and it doesn’t easily fit into any human linguistics.

Needless to say, tensions are high and the nation that can communicate with the aliens first may hold an advantage over its rivals. Louise Banks (Amy Adams) and Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner) are tasked by the Americans to decipher the meaning of the alien’s language. Somehow, Louise’s exposure to this language has a profound effect on how she experiences time. She also has to figure out what it means before it’s too late to prevent a war.

Arrival is streaming on Hoopla.

Within the first few minutes of seeing Harrison Ford in Blade Runner, the very last thing viewers will be thinking about is either Han Solo or Indiana Jones. Ford’s character, Rick Deckard, is a deeply cynical man who impassionately hunts down human-like replicants in Ridley Scott’s dark vision of the future.

The rogue replicants don’t see themselves as monsters or machines, and even Deckard is stunned by Rachael (Sean Young), a female replicant who can convincingly pass as human. Before Deckard can decide what he should do about Rachael, he’ll have to get past Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) and the rest of his renegade replicants.

Blade Runner: The Final Cut is available to rent or buy on Prime Video.

Christopher Nolan’s Inception could arguably have made this list as well, but Interstellar is a more conventional choice and an exceptional movie. In the near future, Earth is on its last legs and humanity won’t be far behind unless it can collectively find a new home. That’s the final mission for former NASA pilot Joseph “Coop” Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) and Dr. Amelia Brand (Anne Hathaway). They only have limited resources to pick mankind’s new planet, and their time in space falls out of sync with the decades unfolding on Earth.

Back on Earth, Coop’s now adult daughter, Murphy “Murph” Cooper (Jessica Chastain) faces what may be an unsolvable scientific problem. Even if Coop and Amelia succeed in their mission, there’s no way to bring humanity to their new home unless Murph figures out how she can bend the rules of science.

Interstellar is streaming on Paramount+.

The original Star Wars trilogy redefined sci-fi blockbusters, and any of the three could reasonably be placed on this list. But The Empire Strikes Back gets the nod because it did such a great job of expanding the scope of the first film with an even darker story. After the rebels face a massive battle on the ice world known as Hoth, Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) encounters Yoda (voiced by Frank Oz), a Jedi Master who may be the only one who can complete Luke’s training.

Somewhere on the other side of the galaxy, Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) are relentlessly pursued by the Empire. Darth Vader (voiced by James Earl Jones) will pay any price to capture that duo because he knows that he can use them to lure Luke into a trap.

The Empire Strikes Back is streaming on Disney+.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is the best of the modern Star Wars films, even though its throwback aesthetic is more in line with the original movie from 1977. This is perhaps the first true war story to unfold on the big screen in the Star Wars universe, and it’s not afraid to show the consequences of that conflict.

Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) is broken out of an Imperial prison camp by the Rebel Alliance because her father, Galen (Mads Mikkelsen), has been instrumental in building the Empire’s super weapon, the Death Star. Under the supervision of Cassian Andor (Diego Luna)and his droid K-2S0 (Alan Tudyk), Jyn is meant to reunite with her former guardian, Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker), and receive a message from Galen. But once Jyn and her allies experience the terror of the Death Star firsthand, they undertake an even riskier mission to save the galaxy from its power.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is streaming on Disney+.

As recently as last year’s Alien: Romulus, the Alien franchise has successfully gone back to the same well that’s sustained the franchise for nearly five decades. But in terms of sci-fi and horror, the original Alien is unsurpassed.

Sigourney Weaver had a star-making turn as Ellen Ripley, a member of the Nostromo crew that inadvertently found proof of alien life while on a deep space mission. Unfortunately for the men and women of the ship, the xenomorph that emerges may be the most lethal predator in the universe. The creature has many different ways it can kill humans, but most of the crew’s weapons are ineffective on the xenomorph itself.

Alien is streaming on Hulu.

There have been some superlative Star Trek movies, but the reason why fans of the franchise always point to the second one is that it transcends the franchise. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan isn’t just a fantastic Star Trek flick — it’s a great movie by any measure.

William Shatner had perhaps his career best performance as Admiral James T. Kirk, a man who is feeling every bit of his age now that he’s no longer captain of the Enterprise. On a routine training mission with Captain Spock (Leonard Nimoy) and most of his original crew, Kirk is shocked by the sudden return of Khan Noonien Singh (Ricardo Montalbán). Khan blames Kirk for leaving him and his superhuman followers trapped on a barren planet, and he means to extract his revenge from the admiral one piece at a time.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is streaming on Paramount+.

All of the modern Planet of the Apes movies have been a significant step forward over the original films from the ‘60s and ‘70s. But Dawn of the Planet of the Apes stands out as The Batman director Matt Reeves gave the apes and the humans a compelling story that determines the future of their world.

Caesar (Andy Serkis) has emerged as the leader of the apes, and he’s learned not to trust humans. When a new colony of humans emerges near Caesar’s territory, Malcolm (Jason Clarke) and his family go a long way towards changing Caesar’s mind by proving their trustworthiness. However, Koba (Toby Kebbell) — one of Caesar’s followers — won’t accept any peace with humans. War is Koba’s only acceptable outcome, even if he has to kill Caesar to make that happen.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is available to rent or buy on Prime Video.

The Matrix was a game-changer just over 25 years ago, thanks to its eye-popping special effects as well as a mind-bending story that managed to fool the audience right up until the moment that the film’s biggest surprise was unveiled. What is the Matrix? Hacker Thomas Anderson a.k.a. Neo (Keanu Reeves) has been haunted by that question for years.

An enigmatic woman named Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) and a reputed terrorist, Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), have the answers that Neo is seeking. But once Neo discovers the nature of the Matrix, his battle is only beginning.

The Matrix is available for rent on Prime Video.

2001: A Space Odyssey may be too cerebral for some modern movie fans, but director Stanley Kubrick and writer Arthur C. Clarke delivered an all-time sci-fi classic with this groundbreaking film.

After mankind discovers an alien monolith that may have guided the evolution of humanity, Dr David Bowman (Keir Dullea) and Dr Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood) embark on a lonely mission to Jupiter to investigate it. Along the way, Bowman and Poole become distrustful of their AI computer pilot, HAL 9000 (voiced by Douglas Rain). That’s fair, because HAL is suspicious of them, and it may ensure that no one lives to find out what’s waiting for humanity at the end of this journey.

2001: A Space Odyssey is streaming on Max.