The Road
The notion that Cormac McCarthy's 2006 post-apocalyptic masterpiece The Road was unfilmable was a popular notion around Hollywood...for three years. And thank God they got around to filming it as a good Cormac McCarthy adaptation will always have a place in the cinema. Viggo Mortensen stars as the unnamed "Man" and Kodi Smith-McPhee as his son. Together, they navigate a harsh, apocalyptic landscape after an unnamed world-ending event.
There is little dialogue in The Road and as a matter of a fact, there's very little sound in general. The Road is one of the "smallest" science fiction stories possible and it's a perfect example of how the genre can focus on the human rather than the larger than life.
Lost in Space
We're going to be honest with you. Lost in Space is a mediocre film at best that received apocalyptically bad reviews. Here's a choice quote from The Washington Post review: "A galactic slump of a movie that stuffs its travel bag with special effects but forgets to pack the charm."
But we say that perception is unfair. Yes, Lost in Space is a strangely deadly serious adaptation of a fun, campy '60s Star Trek knock-off. Still, it's kind of...cool? Watch it for yourself and see how advanced the set and costume designs are for a "bad" '90s film. That's not even to mention the unexpectedly modern reliance on time travel as a plot point.
Ignore the wooden dialogue as much you can and appreciate a movie that at the very least produced some very cool toys.
Metropolis
1927's Metropolis can likely lay claim to being the first feature length science fiction film (1902's A Trip to the Moon being the first non-feature). It's legitimately amazing how "modern" it seems, too. Metropolis is a German silent film and tells the story of an urban dystopia in 2026 (woah, we're almost there!). It's more than a little influenced by the Communist revolution of the time.
The film follows Freder, the well-off son of the city's ruler and Maria, a poor worker and the relationship between them. Beyond just the modern influences, Metropolis is visually impressive with landscapes that are somewhere between steampunk and outright Biblical.
John Dies at the End is not just a movie for spoilers-in-titles enthusiasts. It's also a deeply funny, wickedly creative science fiction flick. Even its origins are properly sci-fi. It began as a webserial from Cracked writer David Wong (real name Jason Pargin) and then made it's way to becoming a novel and finally was adapted into a 2012 film.
John Dies at the End crams a remarkable amount of sci-fi trappings into one film. There are designer drugs that cause the user to time travel, monsters, and alternate dimensions. It's a perfect distillation of the genre crafted by a fan.
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Armageddon
Armageddon is an easy target to the disaster-movie-phobes and you should not listen to their lies. Sure, it's directed by explosion fetishist Michael Bay. Sure, it's essentially a two-hour music video for Aerosmith's worst song. And sure, Roger Ebert counted it as one of his least favorite films.
But Armageddon also happens to rule. It's both preposterous and preposterously entertaining. An asteroid is hurtling towards Earth and humanity's only hope to save itself is NASA...and Bruce Willis' team of oil drillers. They've got to land and drill a hole on the asteroid so the nuke will work, you see.
Armageddon definitely leans far more toward the "fiction" part of "science fiction" and every now and then that's exactly what we need.
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