25 Movies About The Future Everyone Should Watch

Christopher Nolan made himself a modern star of the science fiction genre when he released "Inception," which he followed up in 2014 with the even more ambitious "Interstellar." A space odyssey that pulls heavily from Stanley Kubrick's "2001," "Interstellar" stars Matthew McConaughey as a NASA pilot in the year 2067. Drastic ecological changes have made Earth increasingly inhabitable, leading a coalition of scientists to look for other worlds to colonize and ways for humanity to survive.

If you're a fan of modern sci-fi, you've probably already seen "Interstellar." But if you haven't yet, or even if it's been a while, it's deserving of a return visit. The visuals and Hans Zimmer's commanding musical score are just as beautiful and haunting now as they were upon the film's initial release, and with climate change more of an urgent crisis than ever before, the themes of "Interstellar" have only become more powerful and vital. It's a movie that grapples with the very real possibilities of what could become of Earth in the future, while also celebrating our potential for human cooperation and scientific advancement.

To top it all off, "Interstellar" is just a masterfully crafted film. Nolan's talent for pacing, drama, and mystery is clearly evident here, and the performances from McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Michael Caine, and the rest of the cast are exceptional.

There's an amazing sci-fi movie about human nature and the future written and directed by the Wachowski sisters, and no, we're not talking about "The Matrix." Yet.

"Cloud Atlas" is a complicated, polarizing, and even controversial film. One need only look at it's 66% rating on Rotten Tomatoes to see the division it caused amongst critics, but that score doesn't tell the whole story. At 172 minutes, "Cloud Atlas" is a massive film that covers six distinct storylines in six completely separate time periods, which are connected only by stray documents that survive from one arc to the next. It's the same structure used in the David Mitchell book on which the film is based, but there's disagreement on how well that structure actually works on screen.

Creatively, "Cloud Atlas" is very distinct. The main characters in each of the timelines are played by the same ensemble cast — led by Tom Hanks and Halle Berry — who switch roles and even ethnicities and genders multiple times over the course of the film. This experimental casting approach earned understandable criticism, leading to further polarization. At its core, however, there's something wholly unique about "Cloud Atlas." It's a story about the future, but also a story about the past — about how humans fall into the same patterns of behavior in every era, both good and bad. It's about imprisonment and freedom and identity and connectedness, and it can be pretty messy at times, trying to cram all that together into a single movie. But there's just nothing else like "Cloud Atlas," even a decade after its release.

Pixar films cover a wide range of settings: children's bedrooms filled with sentient toys, retro superhero cities, the depths of the ocean, and yes, even the future. "WALL-E" is still considered by some to be the best animated feature the studio has ever produced (via Vulture), and for good reason. At the time, the vista shots of Earth alone were enough to put all previous animated films to shame. Even covered in cubes of trash, the world created by Pixar in "WALL-E" is stunning, and remains so today. The narrative of heartless corporations turning Earth into an uninhabitable wasteland is more resonant now than ever, and there's still a lot of fun in the simple love story between WALL-E and EVE.

If WALL-E has one drawback, it's that the film's two halves feel a bit uneven. The near-speechless first act is beautiful, haunting, and sweet. The animators milk so much emotion out of WALL-E and EVE that, by the time the film arrives on the human ship, the expectations for the rest of the movie are sky high. Unfortunately, the Axiom portion of "WALL-E" feels a bit more boilerplate. The human characters don't resonate nearly as strongly as the robots do, and the villain storyline feels kind of shoehorned in. Still, "WALL-E" stands as one of the best movies Pixar has ever made and one of the most impressive cinematic achievements of all time.

Want to visit the future? "Dune" is about as future as can get — roughly 20,000 years in the future, to be more specific. By the time the actual story of "Dune" begins, humanity has been without A.I., robots, and advanced computers for 10,000 years already — the result of a sort of holy war long in the franchise's past (but our future, it's a little hard to keep track of) in which all such "thinking machines" were destroyed for the threat they posed. That makes "Dune" — Frank Herbert's original novel as well as the 1984 David Lynch and 2021 Denis Villeneuve film adaptations — a particularly unique vision of the future.

For our purposes here, we'll focus on Villeneuve's recent adaptation, but Lynch's film also has merit and Herbert's novel remains an absolute classic decades later. In this "Dune" future, there are no A.I. or virtual realities. Instead, advancement comes through purely humanistic means — selective breeding and genetics programs that span thousands of years, and enhanced mental faculties brought on by rigid training and prolonged exposure to the mind-altering drug melange, more commonly known as spice. But just like the technological advancements in more traditional sci-fi, the human advancements of "Dune" also have their less ethical components.

Villeneuve's film is gorgeous in its audiovisual presentation, it has a star-studded cast, and it brings the distinct world of Herbert's novel to life in breathtaking fashion. "Dune" is much more than a story about the future — it's a story about human nature, faith, politics, religion, science, and family.

When Hayao Miyazaki made "Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Studio Ghibli hadn't even been officially founded yet. But don't let that fool you — this 1984 sci-fi epic still has all the same traits that would make Miyazaki's later work so great. "Nausicaä" takes place in the far future, a thousand years after an apocalyptic war devastated human civilization and mutated much of the planet's wildlife into deadly beasts.

The main themes here are ones that would continue to resonate through Miyazaki's later films: environmentalism, the importance of living in harmony with nature, and the inherent evil of war and violence. The world shown in "Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind" pulls from other far-future stories, but its influences don't stop it from looking and feeling strikingly original at the same time. It's a vision of the future that's both cautionary and frightening, but also lovely and peaceful, and it showed early on what the world should expect from Miyazaki's epic films.

Alex Garland's "Ex Machina" is about as near as a near-future can be, with the only real leap from our reality being the A.I. at the center of the film's plot, Ava (Alicia Vikander). Domnhall Gleeson and Oscar Isaac are the only other major actors in the film, as the story itself is very self-contained. But make no mistake, that hyper focus works in the film's favor.

"Ex Machina" is a film about A.I., but it flips the script on the standard formula for such movies. The villains here are human, and the dangers are dangers that humans create — in most cases, dangers to the A.I. itself. It's a story about how men — some decent, some reprehensible — dominate the software industry, and what that could mean for future technological developments. Isaac's character of Nathan Bateman is detestable, and his experiments with A.I. come from all the wrong motivations. But in the interest of avoiding too many spoilers for those who haven't seen the film, we'll leave it at that, along with the strong recommendation that you watch it.

The 1990s were a period of immense success for Disney's animated feature films, so much so that it's often referred to as the "Disney Renaissance." "Beauty and the Beast," "Aladdin," "The Lion King," "Mulan," "Tarzan" — all these films and more came out in the span of just one decade, making it one of the most important and acclaimed eras in the company's history.

But we're not here to talk about all the incredibly successful Disney movies that everybody already knows about. We're here to talk about one from 2002 — just a couple years after the end of the renaissance — that too many people have forgotten. "Treasure Planet" is, as the name implies, a sci-fi retelling of Robert Louis Stevenson's classic adventure novel "Treasure Island." It's a gorgeously animated, brilliantly-constructed space saga filled with early 2000s teen angst (right down to a sad boy ballad from the lead singer of The Goo Goo Dolls).

"Treasure Planet" has a powerful future aesthetic, which is definitely the main draw. Spaceships look like pirate ships with giant fusion engines strapped to the back, space itself is full of colorful nebulas and herds of migrating creatures, and every planet and spaceport blends Elizabethan style with future tech in a way that's not quite steampunk and not quite cyberpunk. It's fresh, and the story is touching and fun. "Treasure Planet" may not reside in the Disney pantheon, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't.

There are so many heavy and dark movies about the future, but sometimes you need something lighter — something classic. To be fair, only one of the three "Back to the Future" movies, "Back to the Future Part II," has much actual screen time in the future. Like many of the older films on this list, that future date — 2015 — is long behind us now. But come on, hoverboards? Who doesn't love hoverboards?

"Back to the Future" is weird — arguably, at times, too weird. It has problems. But there's still so much to love about the wacky time-traveling hijinks that made it a classic in the '80s. Christopher Lloyd is on another planet of oddball acting, and every second that he's on screen is entertaining. Turning a DeLorean into a time machine? Iconic. Turning a train into a time machine? Equally iconic. It's weird, campy, fun, and weird again.

All these years later, we're still asking: Where are our hoverboards?

Bong Joon-Ho set the world on fire in 2019 with "Parasite," but the Korean director already had an impressive filmography to his name by then, including "Snowpiercer." 

Starring Chris Evans, Song Kang-ho, Ed Harris and Tilda Swinton, "Snowpiercer" is set in a future where efforts to reverse global warming have turned the Earth into an uninhabitable cold planet, where the only place humans can survive is aboard the titular train that circumnavigates the globe at high speeds. Of course, things aren't exactly equal on Snowpiercer, and the class division between the haves and have-nots eventually escalates into open conflict.

Today, "Snowpiercer" has gained some major cultural presence in the English-speaking world because of a TV adaptation on FX (which is also worth checking out). And if you really want to go back to the source, you could check out the original French graphic novel "Le Transperceneige" by Jacques Lob. For right now, though, let's just cover the movie, which received high acclaim upon release and is still great now. It's a strong narrative idea, executed with striking visuals and a great ensemble performance from all involved.

There are plenty of stories about classism in the post-apocalypse, but the distinct style and world-building of "Snowpiercer" set it apart from the rest of the competition. It's fresh, exciting, unsettling at times, and a great watch from start to finish.

Alfonso Cuarón's "Children of Men" is a grim gritty vision of dystopia — a near-future Earth where the entire human race becomes infertile, thrown into disarray by the secret discovery of one young woman capable of giving birth. The movie stars Clive Owen, Clare-Hope Ashitey, Julianne Moore, Michael Caine, and Chiwetel Ejiofor, with a story adapted from P. D. James' 1992 novel of the same name.

"Children of Men" is worth watching for the cinematography alone, which features some of the most staggering long takes in modern cinema. But there's a lot more to the film than just a beautifully dreary production design and impressive camera choreography. The performances are powerful, throwing the raw desperation of the film's reality into the faces of those watching it. It's a movie about hope, but also one about tragedy and cruelty. Like most of Cuarón's films, "Children of Men" is masterfully crafted, from a sharp screenplay to the editing and everything in between. The only reason not to watch it is that it is, to be fair, a bit of a bummer. But even within the film's persistent pessimism, there are still glimmers of better things to come.

In the same way "Blade Runner" made neo-noir cyberpunk a popular sci-fi aesthetic, George Miller's "Mad Max" series set the standard for desert wasteland post-apocalyptic tales, which has since become commonplace in science fiction. From the leather-and-steel aesthetic of the wasteland gangs to near deification of gasoline, "Mad Max" established a lot of big tropes. Today, the series is probably best known for the Academy Award-winning "Mad Max: Fury Road," which is arguably the best entry in the entire franchise. However, there's also still fun to be had in Miller's original "Mad Max" trilogy.

Despite its influence on the future of film, the original "Mad Max" is a little hard to go back to. The production just looks a little old and cheap, which to be fair, it is. But "Mad Max 2," also known as "The Road Warrior," still holds up quite well, and if you enjoy the weirder elements of "Fury Road," "Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome" is also worth checking out. The whole series just has a specific aesthetic that, no matter how many times it is mimicked, has never quite been fully replicated.

"12 Monkeys" is a wild trip of a movie. Directed by "Monty Python" alum Terry Gilliam and starring Bruce Willis, Madeleine Stowe, and Brad Pitt, the film takes place in a future where most of humanity has been wiped out by a mysterious virus. Or, at least, part of the film takes place in that future. The rest is set in various other time periods prior to the extinction event, as Bruce Willis' James Cole character continues to be sent back in time again and again to try to prevent the virus' release.

The story gets confusing pretty quickly, but that's part of the fun in any Gilliam film. "12 Monkeys" is largely about the subjectivity of memory, and that idea manifests in a narrative form that does its best to confuse the viewer. What's real, and what's imagined? It's less a movie about big twists and more a movie about uncertainty — and it rewards repeat viewings.

There's also a TV adaptation from Syfy that's pretty good in its own right, so if you catch the original film and like what you see, maybe give that a chance too.

2018's "Sorry to Bother You" may be the strangest film on this entire list, but it's also one of the best. Written and directed by Boots Riley and starring LaKeith Stanfield, Tessa Thompson, Omari Hardwick, and Terry Crews, it's a surreal dark comedy about capitalist corruption, labor exploitation, anti-Black racism, and genetic mutation. The film packs a lot into just 112 minutes, and it's all brilliantly comic while also being incredibly dark.

The basic plot of "Sorry to Bother You" revolves around lead protagonist Cash (Stanfield) starting work as a telemarketer, where he finds great success after he begins using his "white voice" on the phone. His world is clearly dystopian, but it also resembles our own very closely, making the more brutal divergences more striking. Through the story, Cash becomes involved with a growing labor movement, an upper class of rich and immoral corporatists, and a strange scientific experiment with dramatic repercussions (you may already know what happens, but if not, you'll certainly never predict it).

It's gripping, powerful, fun, and stylish — an impressive showing from all the creators involved, and just like any great sci-fi, profoundly thought-provoking.