It’s too soon to say what Max has in store for sci-fi fans in 2024, but many of its best science-fiction movies are currently on loan from Disney’s 20th Century Studios. Both Avatar movies, the Alien films, and most of the Predator franchise live on Max, but sci-fi fans need more than just action.
Fortunately, the latest additions to Max’s sci-fi lineup include a classic comedy, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, as well as a more recent science fiction rom-com, How to Talk To Girls at Parties. Action fans are also well-served this month with Mad Max: Fury Road and Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials. These are just a few options from the best sci-fi movies on Max right now. Keep reading for the full lineup!
In need of some more streaming recommendations? We also have guides to the best movies on Max, the best shows on Max, and what’s new on HBO and Max that are worth looking through.
Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure
Year: 1989
Runtime: 1 hour, 30 minutes
Director: Stephen Herek
Strange things are indeed afoot at the Circle K as the sci-fi comedy Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure introduces Bill S. Preston, Esq. (Alex Winter) and Ted “Theodore” Logan (Keanu Reeves) to their future selves, courtesy of their mentor from the future, Rufus (George Carlin). Because Bill and Ted are destined to change the world for the better, Rufus lends them his time machine to help them create a history report that they need to ace to graduate high school.
However, thinking isn’t necessarily Bill and Ted’s strong point, as the dim-witted duo causes havoc throughout the time stream while bringing several historical figures to the present, including Napoleon Bonaparte (Terry Camilleri), Billy the Kid (Dan Shor), Socrates (Tony Steedman), Sigmund Freud (Rod Loomis), Genghis Khan (Al Leong), Joan of Arc (Jane Wiedlin), Abraham Lincoln (Robert V. Barron), and Ludwig van Beethoven (Clifford David).
Mad Max: Fury Road
Year: 2015
Runtime: 2 hours, 1 minute
Director: George Miller
If you were expecting a smooth transition from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome to Mad Max: Fury Road, then you’re going to be disappointed. But you won’t be disappointed by Fury Road itself, which may be among the best action movies ever made. Tom Hardy takes over the leading role of “Mad Max” Rockatansky from Mel Gibson, and he immediately loses the spotlight in his own film to Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron), who will be featured in the upcoming prequel film Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.
Max and Furiosa don’t necessarily get along – much like the strained relationship that Hardy and Theron reportedly had on the set – but they do have a common enemy in Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne), a warlord who sends his forces after this unlikely duo as they attempt to escort Joe’s estranged wives to safety.
Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials
Year: 2015
Runtime: 2 hours, 12 minutes
Director: Wes Ball
Thomas (Dylan O’Brien), Teresa (Kaya Scodelario), Newt (Love Actually‘s Thomas Brodie-Sangster), and the other survivors from The Maze Runner are back in the sequel, Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials. After being evacuated from the Glade, Thomas and his friends accept shelter from Janson (Aidan Gillen) at his facility as they learn more about WCKD and the deadly Flare Virus that devastated humanity.
However, Janson’s sanctuary isn’t what it seems, and Thomas is forced to lead his Gladers into danger once again as they cross through the wasteland known as the Scorch. But Janson and WCKD aren’t about to let their human experiments escape so easily, which forces Thomas’ group to elude WCKD troops while navigating the deadliest areas of the Scorch.
How To Talk To Girls At Parties
Year: 2017
Runtime: 1 hour, 43 minutes
Director: John Cameron Mitchell
From the title alone, it would be difficult to guess that How to Talk To Girls at Parties is a sci-fi film. But that was part of the surprise behind the original short story by Neil Gaiman (The Sandman). For awkward young men, talking to members of the opposite sex might as well be like speaking to aliens. In this case, the girl Enn (Alex Sharp) falls for at a party is an alien named Zan (Elle Fanning).
One of the reasons that Enn and Zan appeal to each other is that they’re both rebelling against their elders. Enn has embraced the punk movement, and Zan just wants to know more about life on Earth. Their burgeoning romance has unexpected consequences, leading to a showdown between the punks and the aliens.
High Life
Year: 2018
Runtime: 1 hour, 53 minutes
Director: Claire Denis
High Life is a film that requires a great deal of patience because it’s not the kind of sci-fi movie with thrills or a lot of action. Instead, it’s the story of a doomed spaceship in space that is staffed by prisoners who would have otherwise faced death sentences on Earth.
Robert Pattinson stars in the film as Monte, one of the few inmates on the ship who is relatively well-adjusted. That’s why Monte captures the attention of Dr. Dibs (Juliette Binoche), a deranged scientist on the ship who uses his DNA to create a child with another prisoner named Boyse (Pearl‘s Mia Goth). But as the ship continues on its one-way trip to oblivion, Monte may be the only person who can give his child some semblance of a life.
Aliens
Year: 1986
Runtime: 2 hours, 18 minutes
Director: James Cameron
Aliens was only the third film that James Cameron directed, and it was his first project after The Terminator. But Cameron’s command of the screen was already evident in this superlative sequel to Ridley Scott’s Alien. Sigourney Weaver is the only returning cast member from the original film, and she reprises her role as Ellen Ripley, the lone crewmember of the Nostromo to make it back to Earth.
As Ripley struggles to overcome her trauma and the idea of losing decades of her time in suspended animation, she is recruited for a Colonial Marine mission on the colony LV-426. This time, the Xenomorph invasion has completely overrun the entire colony. Ripley soon suspects that their true mission is to bring back samples of the creatures so the Weyland-Yutani Corporation can turn them into biological weapons.
Dune
Year: 2021
Runtime: 2 hours, 36 minutes
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Impatient viewers may have a hard time with the modern adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune because it really takes its time getting to a cliffhanger ending for the upcoming sequel. Unlike David Lynch, director Denis Villeneuve had the room to space things out, so to speak. The result is one of the most lavish sci-fi epics in decades.
Timothée Chalamet stars as Paul Atreides, but a good deal of this film belongs to Paul’s father, Duke Leto Atreides (Oscar Isaac). Despite his suspicions that he was sent to Arrakis to fail, Duke Leto genuinely believes he can improve the lives of the native Fremen and bring peace to the most important planet in the universe. Unfortunately for House Atreides, their enemies have already made plans to destroy them, and Paul may be the only one who can keep his family line alive.
Blade Runner 2049
Year: 2017
Runtime: 2 hours, 44 minutes
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Someone in Hollywood keeps letting director Denis Villeneuve take big swings with sci-fi films that don’t make much money. Fortunately, Blade Runner 2049 is an emerging cult classic in the genre and one of the most visually arresting movies of the last ten years.
Decades after the events of the original Blade Runner, a Replicant named K (Ryan Gosling) discovers evidence that a female Replicant died while giving birth to a hybrid human child. More alarmingly, K believes that he may be the hybrid child of none other than Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), a Blade Runner who went off the grid years before. And if K can’t find Deckard before the forces of billionaire Niander Wallace (Jared Leto), then the future of every Replicant may be very bleak.
Upgrade
Year: 2018
Runtime: 1 hour, 40 minutes
Director: Leigh Whannell
Grey Trace (Logan Marshall-Green) is not a violent man in Upgrade, but he soon will be. Before Grey and his wife, Asha Trace (Melanie Vallejo), were attacked, they were happy and content. In the aftermath of that incident, Asha is killed, and Grey is left paralyzed and despondent.
Billionaire Eron Keen (Harrison Gilbertson) offers Grey a chance to regain his mobility via implants powered by the artificial intelligence known as STEM (Simon Maiden). Grey soon discovers that STEM can offer him much more than mobility. It can give him the revenge he desires as long as Grey is willing to let STEM take over his body.
Source Code
Year: 2011
Runtime: 1 hour, 33 minutes
Director: Duncan Jones
Captain Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) isn’t the man that he used to be … literally! In Source Code, Colter suddenly finds himself out of the combat zone and on a civilian train heading into Chicago, seemingly in another man’s body. Then the train blows up again and again. On each pass, Colter encounters Christina Warren (Michelle Monaghan), a fellow passenger, as he slowly learns the truth about what is happening to him. Colter is in the source code, and he has a mission to fulfill before it’s too late. But there may be no release from this deadly cycle unless Colter discovers who left the bomb in the first place.
Predator
Year: 1987
Runtime: 1 hour, 47 minutes
Director: John McTiernan
The action satire Predator is the granddaddy of all its sequels and spinoff movies, but it’s also best known for cementing Arnold Schwarzenegger’s place as an action icon of the ’80s. Major Alan “Dutch” Schaefer (Schwarzenegger) leads a small team that includes Master Sergeant Mac Eliot (Bill Duke), Staff Sergeant Jorge “Poncho” Ramírez (Richard Chaves), Sgt. 1st Class Blain Cooper (Jesse Ventura), Sgt. 1st Class Billy Sole (Sonny Landham), and Sergeant Rick Hawkins (Shane Black).
But don’t get too attached to any of those guys. Just as Dutch starts to suspect that his CIA contact, Al Dillon (Carl Weathers), has sent them into an impossible situation, the team comes under attack by a being from another world: The Predator (Kevin Peter Hall). It’s a lethal creature who loves to hunt big game like humans. As his men fall one by one, Dutch takes it upon himself to bring the Predator down.
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
Year: 2014
Runtime: 2 hours, 11 minutes
Director: Matt Reeves
Before he went on to helm The Batman, director Matt Reeves took over the Planet of the Apes prequel trilogy with the second film, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. In this installment, a decade has passed since Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Caesar (Andy Serkis) has set up an ape colony near San Francisco. Despite tensions with a new colony of human survivors, Caesar comes to trust and befriend Malcolm (Jason Clarke), the first man who truly tries to reason and coexist with the apes.
However, one of Caesar’s followers, Koba (Tobey Kebbell), is willing to betray Caesar for the chance to kill the humans. And on the other side, the human leader, Dreyfus (Gary Oldman), is preparing for war with the apes. The battle lines have been drawn, and the oncoming tragedy may be inevitable despite the best efforts of both Caesar and Malcolm.
Avatar
Year: 2009
Runtime: 2 hours, 42 minutes
Director: James Cameron
Avatar is still the reigning worldwide box office champion, and it’s back on Max. In the film, director James Cameron took audiences to a distant world called Pandora, where humanity is attempting to take the natural resources from the native people, the Na’vi. Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) replaces his late brother on a mission to Pandora that allows him to inhabit a Na’vi-like body to befriend the Na’vi and gain their trust while working for Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang).
Jake quickly bonds with a Na’vi woman, Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), who takes it upon herself to teach him about life on Pandora. But the more time Jake spends on Pandora, the more he realizes he’s on the wrong side. Unfortunately for Jake, it may already be too late to save the Na’vi’s world from Quaritch and the colonizers from Earth.
Spaceballs
Year: 1987
Runtime: 1 hour, 37 minutes
Director: Mel Brooks
Spaceballs is more of a Star Wars spoof than a real sci-fi movie on its own terms. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t a fun science fiction story! Mel Brooks takes aim at all of the big franchises of the ’80s and also co-stars in the film as both Yogurt the Wise and the evil President Skroob of Planet Spaceball. Skroob, Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis), and Colonel Sandurz (George Wyner) plot to kidnap Princess Vespa (Daphne Zuniga) and steal all of the air from her planet.
The ones who can save the day are the roguish mercenary Lone Starr (Bill Pullman) and his alien sidekick, Barf (John Candy). This story plays out in very familiar ways, but it’s also relentlessly funny and it never stops being silly. If you’re willing to laugh at your favorite genre, then this is the movie for you.
Under the Skin
Year: 2013
Runtime: 1 hour, 49 minutes
Director: Jonathan Glazer
Asteroid City‘s Scarlett Johansson stars in Under the Skin as an alien woman who seduces men and feeds them to some kind of alien void. This film stands out because Under the Skin refuses to explain its premise in simple terms, and Johansson’s character never even gets a real name.
When the woman begins feeling empathy for one of her victims, she flees her fellow aliens and attempts to determine if she has an identity of her own. However, she has no true concept of what humanity is really capable of. And she’s about to find out the hard way.
Strange Days
Year: 1995
Runtime: 2 hours, 26 minutes
Director: Kathryn Bigelow
Director Kathryn Bigelow and her ex-husband, The Terminator‘s James Cameron, collaborated on Strange Days, an underrated sci-fi classic from the mid-90s. In the near future, memories recorded on SQUID devices have become the drug of choice in Los Angeles. Ex-LAPD officer Lenny Nero (Ralph Fiennes) turned his back on the law to deal in memories, much to the chagrin of his friend, Lornette “Mace” Mason (Angela Bassett).
But when Lenny comes across a memory recording of Iris (Brigitte Bako) being raped and murdered, it thrusts him deeper into the dangerous criminal underworld.
Avatar: The Way of Water
Year: 2022
Runtime: 3 hours, 12 minutes
Director: James Cameron
Disney’s gain is apparently also Max’s gain. Through a content-sharing deal, James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of Water is streaming on Max, and it might be the last new 20th Century Studios release to do so. The Way of Water picks up 16 years after the original film, as Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and his wife, Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña), live peacefully on Pandora while raising a family, including their adoptive daughter, Kiri (Sigourney Weaver).
When humanity re-invades Pandora, Jake learns that his old adversary, Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), lives on through his recorded memories in a cloned Avatar body. To protect themselves from Quaritch’s vendetta, Jake and Neytiri take their family into hiding and attempt to make new allies among the Na’vi. But they can’t hide forever…
X-Men: Days of Future Past
Year: 2014
Runtime: 2 hours, 12 minutes
Director: Bryan Singer
Inspired by a classic comic book storyline with the same name, X-Men: Days of Future Past is one of the few superhero movies that works as a straightforward sci-fi film as well. In the present, mutants are on the verge of extinction, and things are so bad that even Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and Magneto (Ian McKellen) are working together to survive. In a desperate plan to change the past, the X-Men send the mind of Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) back to the ‘70s to change the past.
Once his present-day mind inhabits his younger body, Wolverine recruits the younger versions of Xavier (James McAvoy) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender) to find Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence). If they fail to stop Mystique from killing Dr. Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage), then their future is doomed.
Monsters vs. Aliens
Year: 2009
Runtime: 1 hour, 35 minutes
Directors: Conrad Vernon and Rob Letterman
On her wedding day, Susan Murphy (Reese Witherspoon) is transformed into a giant and thrust into the bizarre world of DreamWorks Animation’s Monsters vs. Aliens. Alienated from her old life and renamed Ginormica, Susan is forced to live and work with other creatures, including B.O.B. (Seth Rogen), Dr. Cockroach (Hugh Laurie), and The Missing Link (Will Arnett).
When aliens attack Earth, Ginormica and her newfound friends are offered their freedom if they battle the invaders on behalf of humanity. But if the monsters want to save the world, they must overcome the alien overlord, Gallaxhar (Rainn Wilson).
Edge of Tomorrow
Year: 2014
Runtime: 1 hour, 53 minutes
Director: Doug Liman
It’s hard to believe it’s almost been a decade since Edge of Tomorrow hit theaters, but it remains one of the best modern sci-fi films. In the near future, Earth has been invaded by aliens that are steadily conquering the world. Cruise stars as William Cage, an officer who is demoted to private and sent into a doomed battle against the aliens. However, Cage soon discovers that exposure to the aliens’ blood has given him the ability to relive the same day over and over again. This often means that Cage has to die to reset the day, usually in painful ways.
The legendary warrior, Sgt. Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt), takes it upon herself to help Cage use this newfound ability to become a true soldier. But much to Cage’s horror, he and Vrataski are seemingly always doomed to die long before they can defeat the alien threat.
2001: A Space Odyssey
Year: 1968
Runtime: 2 hours, 23 minutes
Director: Stanley Kubrick
The word “masterpiece” tends to get thrown around a lot in film criticism. But 2001: A Space Odyssey more than lives up to the hype even decades later. director Stanley Kubrick and writer Arthur C. Clarke crafted an unforgettable sci-fi epic that is told more through visuals than anything spoken aloud.
Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood star respectively as Dr. David Bowman and Dr. Frank Poole. Together, David and Frank are part of a deep space mission to investigate a massive alien monolith that may be connected to the origins of humanity millions of years earlier. Unfortunately for David and Frank, their onboard artificial intelligence, HAL 9000, is developing some very dangerous and paranoid tendencies that may threaten more than just their mission.
Ex Machina
Year: 2015
Runtime: 1 hour, 48 minutes
Director: Alex Garland
You’ll find that machines turning on humans is a common theme in sci-fi, and so too is the idea that machines can be almost indistinguishable from humans. Ex Machina plays with both notions by giving the AI known as Ava (Alicia Vikander) a human face and a very feminine demeanor. Ava is also a lot better at being human, or at least pretending to be human, than her creator, Nathan Bateman (Oscar Isaac) suspects.
Domhnall Gleeson also stars in the film as Caleb Smith, an ordinary employee of Nathan’s who is invited to examine Ava to determine if she genuinely has a humanlike consciousness. Almost immediately, Ava manipulates Caleb and tries to turn him against Nathan.
The Terminator
Year: 1984
Runtime: 1 hour. 47 minutes
Director: James Cameron
Terminator 2 is also on Max, and it is visually superior to its predecessor, but in terms of story, The Terminator blows it away. This was only James Cameron’s second theatrical film in the director’s chair, but it set the stage for everything he did afterward while also making Arnold Schwarzenegger into a star.
Linda Hamilton stars as Sarah Connor, an unassuming waitress who has no idea that she’s been marked for death by machines in the future. That’s why the relentless T-800 (Schwarzenegger) has been sent back in time to murder her. To save Sarah, a man named Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) travels from his future to her present in order to keep the Terminator from altering history.
The Matrix
Year: 1999
Runtime: 2 hours, 16 minutes
Director: The Wachowskis
The Matrix was such a game-changing film that it’s surprising that none of its sequels are anywhere near as good as the original. No one can tell you what the Matrix is, and it’s worth the surprise on the off chance that you haven’t seen it yet. Keanu Reeves stars as Neo, a hacker by night and a lowly programmer by day.
After years of searching for the hacker known as Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), an enigmatic woman named Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) arranges for Neo to finally meet the man he has been looking for. And the choice that Morpheus presents to Neo remains one of the greatest surprises in cinema history … especially if you don’t know what’s coming.
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