Here Are 8 Of The Best Sci-Fi Movies To Watch On Amazon Prime Video

Here Are 8 Of The Best Sci-Fi Movies To Watch On Amazon Prime Video
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When we started compiling this list, we thought there’d be a tonne of sci-fi movies on Amazon Prime Video, so many that it was going to be hard to cull them all down into a ‘best’ list. To our surprise, that isn’t the case, but there are still a bunch of hidden science fiction gems on the shopping giant’s video streaming platform.

So we’ve taken a little bit of a pivot. We’ve found you eight sci-fi movies on Prime Video that we think you should watch if you’re a fan of the genre.

Best sci-fi movies on Prime Video

In no particular order, here are the best sci-fi movies on Prime Video worth your time, according to Gizmodo Australia.

Minority Report

There are lots of good Spielberg sci-fi movies, but one of (arguably) the best is this Tom Cruise film about a man who stops criminals before they commit crimes, and is then accused of committing a future crime himself. Rewatching Minority Report in 2022 (its 20th anniversary, mind you) a few things instantly became clear. First, this film hasn’t aged at all. One or two shots look a little wonky effects-wise but everything else, from the visual and practical effects to the compelling story, award-worthy production design and hugely talented cast, all feel timeless.

Chaos Walking

Chaos Walking is set on a distant alien planet called New World. The first wave of human colonists discover that men, and only men, develop a psychic ability known as “The Noise” that perpetually projects their inner monologue in a cloud around their heads. (Oh, seemingly every woman in society has been wiped out, but don’t fear for there is Viola, a young survivor of a crash-landed shuttlecraft from the incoming second wave of human resettlers, who know nothing of what’s happened to their predecessors). Anyway, it’s an interesting premise, but it’s been criticised for its surface-level approach. See for yourself, it’s worth a watch regardless.

Ready Player One

This one is divisive among the team. It isn’t so much a movie about loving old video games and other cultural artifacts. It’s about loving to love those things, which makes Steven Spielberg’s film adaptation of the bestselling novel feel hollow despite – or maybe because of – the relentless pop culture references it throws at you. Many references are now outdated, but Ready Player One does make a good social commentary with a little bit of Spielberg sci-fi spectacle sprinkled in.

Last Survivors

Last Survivors is a mystery/sci-fi movie about a father and son who live off-grid and battle to survive against that which lies beyond the barriers of the woodland Utopia they have built together. It’s a typical survivalist film, but it deals with how best to endure a crisis and it’s actually quite an engaging watch.

Back To The Future

It’s shocking how few truly great science fiction comedy films there are, but BTTF would still tower above the rest even if there were tonnes. It’s clever and yet never stops being about Marty McFly and his family. It manages to come up with a coherent theory of time travel, in which you can rewrite the past and the effects are seen nearly instantaneously (luckily, Marty is only missing like an arm and a leg before the timestream rights itself) and never becomes inconsistent. And it’s surprisingly daring, jumping feet first into the tricky waters of time-travelling incest. Plus, it’s one of those science fiction movies that everybody, even genre-hating snobs, will admit to loving.

RoboCop

Another totally subversive science fiction movie from the 1980s, this film picks up Tron’s obsessions with corporate fascism and runs in a different direction, with the evil OCP trying to take over Detroit’s police force and remake the struggling city as Delta City. RoboCop himself is one of the best examples of sci-fi’s struggle with the ways technology changes or negates our humanity, and 20 years before The Dark Knight, this film managed to delve into similar questions about how far we’ll go to keep society safe from crime. A surreal blend of cyberpunk, Frankenstein and action movie, this film remains Verhoeven’s greatest statement.

The Blackout: Invasion Earth

The Blackout: Invasion Earth comes to us from Russia and packs sci-fi tropes in the first half and flat-out action in the second. The plot for this one is quite simple: life on Earth is rapidly destroyed except for a small area in Eastern Europe. Contact between most towns in Europe has been severed, yet there’s one place with electricity. And aliens.

Edge of Tomorrow

Edge of Tomorrow, starring Emily Blunt and Tom Cruise, takes place five years after a race of nearly invincible aliens called Mimics invaded Earth, turning 2020 into a futuristic hellscape where soldiers of the newly minted United Defence Force have to don bulky mech-suits just to stand a chance against them. It shows how quickly society can adapt when faced with an unprecedented threat, though in this case, it was by creating a massive military-industrial complex. A little different from the 2020 hell that actually was.

There you go, eight of the best sci-fi movies to binge on Amazon Prime Video. Head over to Prime Video to sign up.

If you’re interested, we’ve also got opinions on the best sci-fi movies to watch on Netflix, the best sci-fi movies to watch on Binge and the best sci-fi movies to watch on Stan.


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At Kotaku, we independently select and write about stuff we love and think you'll like too. We have affiliate and advertising partnerships, which means we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page. BTW – prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of posting.

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