All 3 Brad Pitt Sci-Fi Movies, Ranked

Brad Pitt has been in the screen acting business since the 1980s, and has been one of Hollywood's big names since his string of hits in the 1990s. Over the decades, the number of projects he's acted in has reached three digits. Varying as they may be in quality, every Brad Pitt movie shows what the actor can bring to the screen and across a number of genres.

Because of the sheer extent of Pitt's work, it may be surprising to learn that the A-lister has only starred in three sci-fi movies over the course of his career thus far. Did he grow weary of the genre after his experiments with it turned out to be turkeys, or is it simply because he's vetted his projects carefully? 

Considering the overall quality of his sci-fi work, the evidence certainly points toward the latter. Let's take a look at all three of Pitt's science fiction films, and rank them from worst to best based on each's Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer scores.

Director Marc Forster's 2013 sci-fi disaster movie "World War Z" experienced a complicated journey to the big screen, but ultimately represented the unabashed blockbuster leg of Brad Pitt's acting work. Loosely adapting Max Brooks' book "World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War," the movie depicts a world ravaged by a sudden and violent zombie outbreak that threatens to destroy humanity. Our only hope is Pitt's former United Nations man Gerry Lane, who teams up with the combined forces of the World Health Organization and assorted agencies to find out the cause of the zombie epidemic — and hopefully create a vaccine.

Though "World War Z" is at the bottom of this particular list, it's far from a turkey, and definitely not the worst Brad Pitt movie out there. The movie made over $531 million at the global box office against a $190 million budget, and its 67% Tomatometer critic and 72% Popcornmeter audience score on Rotten Tomatoes stem from reviews deeming it a big, exciting movie.

"Ad Astra" is a far more thoughtful and somber affair than viewers might expect from a big movie where Brad Pitt plays an astronaut out to save the universe. This may explain the divide between critics and audiences on James Gray's 2019 film; On Rotten Tomatoes, "Ad Astra" boasts an impressive 83% Tomatometer rating but a significantly worse 40% Popcornmeter score.

Don't go in expecting laser fights with aliens, because "Ad Astra" delivers a different kind of thrill. Here, Pitt is Roy McBride, who's sent on a mission to Neptune to deal with an antimatter problem that threatens to devastate everything. The tricky part is that the issue stems from a base that Roy's own father, the highly regarded Clifford McBride (Tommy Lee Jones), commands — and Roy may have to destroy the whole station if he fails to reestablish contact with Clifford's project.

It's a simple enough premise, but what transpires is far more complex and philosophical than you'd assume from an $80 million space movie. "Ad Astra" is a gorgeous film with powerful performances, but while its plot concerns the entire universe's fate at stake, the story it actually tells is all about family and a sense of belonging. It's not an easy movie, but it's one that stays with the viewer.

If "Ad Astra" divided fans and critics, the same can't be said for the 1995 sci-fi thriller "12 Monkeys," Terry Gilliam's best movie. The film boasts an impressive 88% Tomatometer score on Rotten Tomatoes, and its Popcornmeter score is the exact same -– and Brad Pitt is a crucial component of its allure.

Much like "World War Z," the film explores a Hail Mary attempt to combat a humanity-threatening virus. However, "12 Monkeys" opts to do so with time travel. Here, a prisoner called James Cole (Bruce Willis) is sent from 2035 to 1996 to investigate the origin of a deadly virus that has killed the vast majority of people in his own time. Unfortunately, he hits some major hurdles: Cole initially lands in the year 1990, and his peculiar behavior earns him a stint at a psychiatric hospital. Two important 1990s players soon emerge in the form of the sympathetic Dr. Railly (Madeleine Stowe) and anti-consumerist inmate Jeffrey Goines (Pitt), the latter being the leader of the Army of the Twelve Monkeys, a mysterious group that's thought to be behind the virus.

Everyone on both sides of the camera is on point in "12 Monkeys," but the manic intensity Pitt infuses Jeffrey with make the character one of his best early-game roles. While he's not exactly the centerpiece here, Pitt optimizes every second of his screen time, and the film's $168 million global box office haul against a $29 million budget certainly aided the actor's career prospects.