The sci-fi selection on HBO Max includes classics from throughout film history as well as recent blockbusters and a few hidden gems. Here are 10 of the best sci-fi movies to stream on HBO Max.
Update, 3/23/23: After reviewing our guide, we found that Blade Runner 2049, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, and V for Vendetta all left HBO Max, so we’ve replaced them with three new picks.
Colossal
A mix of Godzilla-style kaiju movie and coming-of-age drama, Nacho Vigalondo’s Colossal is unlike anything else out there. Anne Hathaway is excellent as an alcoholic writer who moves back to her hometown to get her life together. She reconnects with an old friend played by Jason Sudeikis, who’s supportive and helpful, but always with ulterior motives.
Oh, and she manifests as a giant monster in Seoul, South Korea, whenever she steps into a particular location at a particular time. Vigalondo uses the structure of a sci-fi disaster movie to tell a story about recovery, maturity, and toxic masculinity.
Dune
Adapting Frank Herbert’s classic sci-fi novel Dune has been a nearly insurmountable task in the past, but director Denis Villeneuve gets it here, capturing the grandeur and the weirdness of Herbert’s world. This Dune adapts the first half of the novel, set thousands of years in the future on a harsh desert planet.
Timothée Chalamet plays Paul Atreides, a royal heir who also may be a prophesied leader of the planet’s native people. Villeneuve immerses the audience in a beautiful, forbidding world full of mysterious characters, setting up an epic battle to come.
RELATED: The 10 Best Comedy Movies on HBO Max in 2022
Ex Machina
Filmmaker Alex Garland deconstructs the allure of sexy female androids in Ex Machina. Tech mogul Nathan Bateman (Oscar Isaac) creates just that kind of android, then invites employee Caleb Smith (Domhnall Gleeson) to his remote compound to meet and interact with Ava (Alicia Vikander).
Vikander makes Ava both enticing and intimidating, and Garland gives the entire movie a tone of ominous dread. Ava is just intelligent and manipulative enough to be dangerous, even as the arrogant humans always think they have control over her.
Godzilla
City-stomping giant lizard Godzilla became a bit of a pop-culture punchline over the years, but the original 1954 Japanese Godzilla is a serious and effective disaster movie. The movie takes on the still-fresh legacy of the atomic bomb, presenting Godzilla as a literal manifestation of the dangers of unchecked nuclear proliferation. There’s a real sense of menace as the monster rampages through Tokyo, and while Godzilla himself may look a bit silly, the movie is anything but.
RELATED: The 10 Best Horror Movies on HBO Max in 2023
Gravity
A showcase for Oscar-nominated star Sandra Bullock, Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity offers a master class in suspense, as Bullock’s astronaut Dr. Ryan Stone must find a way back to Earth after space debris damages her space shuttle. George Clooney co-stars as Lt. Matt Kowalski, a more experienced astronaut who puts Stone’s safety above his own.
Gravity is as much a survival drama as a sci-fi movie, emphasizing the harsh desolation of the vacuum of space, where even the slightest miscalculation can be instantly fatal. Cuarón brilliantly conveys that vast, unforgiving emptiness.
The Matrix
Synthesizing influences from cyberpunk, anime, martial-arts movies, existential philosophy, and more, The Matrix revolutionized both sci-fi and action movies, and it remains extraordinarily influential more than two decades after its release. From its revolutionary special effects to its questions about the nature of reality, the Wachowskis’ film is consistently dazzling and mesmerizing.
It’s a fast-paced thriller about humans battling against the control of all-powerful machines, a love story between freedom fighters played by Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss, and a marvel of sci-fi world-building.
RELATED: The Best Sci-Fi Movies on Amazon Prime Video in 2022
Moon
A showcase for actor Sam Rockwell, Moon features essentially just one onscreen character, as Rockwell’s Sam Bell operates a lunar mining facility by himself. Or is he by himself? Director and co-writer Duncan Jones springs impressive plot twists as Sam investigates strange memories and suspicious behavior by the friendly-sounding robot (voiced by Kevin Spacey) that helps him run the base.
Rockwell commands attention for the entire running time, and Jones explores big ethical questions while telling a suspenseful, engaging story.
Solaris
Russian cinema master Andrei Tarkovsky delivers a stark meditation on human existence with Solaris. Based on the novel by Stanislaw Lem, Solaris takes place on a space station above a mysterious planet. A psychologist is sent to investigate the strange behavior of the station’s inhabitants, and he discovers that they’ve been encountering apparitions of their dead loved ones.
Solaris features haunting imagery and performances as the characters struggle to understand the planet’s effects on them as well as to discern what’s real—and whether that even matters.
RELATED: Where to Stream Every ‘Predator’ Movie in 2023
Tenet
Christopher Nolan’s Tenet is a deliberately confusing espionage story about time travel, or rather about characters navigating time both backward and forward. The dense plot may be tough to figure out, but Nolan delivers on the amazing action set pieces, especially in scenes that appear early in the movie and then later return, only moving in the opposite direction.
There are enough narrative threads to follow that the potentially world-ending stakes are clear, and Nolan retains an air of mystery that makes the movie more intriguing rather than frustrating.
2001: A Space Odyssey
Stanley Kubrick’s sci-fi classic 2001: A Space Odyssey is a fascinating mix of intellectual challenge and trippy mind-bender. The movie starts at the dawn of man with primates discovering tools, before zooming into the future to show a self-aware computer slowly turning on its human masters.
Kubrick asks questions about the nature of existence and also takes a psychedelic journey into the cosmos. Killer computer HAL 9000 is chilling, but the movie is most unsettling in its abstract, inexplicable finale.
