10 Most Perfectly Directed Sci-Fi Epics, Ranked

Epic movies are big. That’s the best way to describe them. They’re ambitious, tell grand stories within lengthy runtimes, and fairly often cross over into various other genres, often being war and/or historical films, but sometimes being works of science fiction. And any kind of epic movie is going to be difficult to execute, but sci-fi epics arguably especially so, since there’s usually a lot that needs doing on a special effects front, and a need to keep things interesting narratively across sizable lengths of time.

Something has to be pretty long for it to be considered an epic for present purposes, so if you’re wondering why there aren’t any Star Wars movies here, that’s why. That whole series is definable as an epic, but most of the best Star Wars movies don’t clock in at too much longer than two hours (and some would argue it’s more of a fantasy series than a sci-fi one). Also, the science fiction epics included below are here because they’re particularly well-directed, even if, admittedly, most of the movies here would also earn the right to be considered all-time great sci-fi epics, broadly speaking.

10

‘Woman in the Moon’ (1929)

There’s been no shortage of movies about people traveling deeper into space than whatever was actually possible at the time of the movie’s production, but not too many great ones as old as Woman in the Moon. This movie had a go at exploring what travel to the moon might look like, and was done pretty much exactly four decades before a manned mission was actually undertaken, so that makes it fascinating to watch, from a historical perspective.

Woman in the Moon had a go at exploring what travel to the moon might look like, and was done pretty much exactly four decades before a manned mission was actually undertaken.

And if you like watching older movies generally, or find the history of film interesting, then Woman in the Moon is undeniably rewarding on those fronts, too. There is one other epic science fiction movie directed by Fritz Lang that’s even more worthy of a shoutout than Woman in the Moon, admittedly, but more on that one a little later.

9

‘Dune’ (2021)

Denis Villeneuve had already made a name for himself before he directed anything in the science fiction genre, thanks to his work on movies like Prisoners and Sicario, but he’s been going hard on sci-fi since 2016’s Arrival. That one wasn’t an epic by any means, though maybe Blade Runner 2047 (2017) kind of was… almost. Still, not as much of an epic as his next two films, which both serve as an adaptation of the one novel: Frank Herbert’s Dune.

Dune (2021) is the first of them, and it’s pretty great on a technical front, even if lots of it is set-up for the most interesting part of the story that’s adapted in the following film. It’s great set-up, though, and a more than effective introduction to the world that’s fleshed out and explored further in Dune: Part Two.

8

‘Dune: Part Two’ (2024)

So, yeah, here’s Dune: Part Two, as promised. The conflict in Dune eventually leads to House Atreides being pretty much decimated, and so Paul, a young man who survived the whole ordeal, wants to get revenge on those who wronged him and his family. He does so while leaping off the deep end psychologically and morally speaking, which really serves to deepen the conflict and morality already present in the first movie.

It’s the more engaging half of the source material done justice, and it stands out because Dune (1984), though not as bad as some make it out to be, didn’t really do a very good job with adapting the book’s second half, owing to everything being condensed into a single movie. Dune: Part Two does things right, and is unsurprisingly great to watch right after Dune (2021), with the saga continuing in 2026’s Dune: Part Three, which is based on the second book in the Dune series, Dune Messiah.

7

‘Solaris’ (1972)

Solaris is quite a bit more than just a sci-fi epic, since it’s also something of a mystery film and also definable as a work of arthouse cinema, too. And then it further qualifies as a psychological drama, since it’s all about a strange mental condition affecting people on board a space station, and what happens when a psychologist is sent there with the difficult task of discerning what’s gone wrong.

Turns out, it’s complicated. And Solaris is also intentionally slow-paced and more than a little confounding, with that approach feeling more like a feature rather than an issue or some kind of bug. It was directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, and even if his style and approach to telling stories doesn’t really grab or enthrall you, it is harder to deny his talents behind the camera/as a director, with Solaris being one of quite a few movies he helmed that’s hard to fault from a directorial perspective.

6

‘Avatar’ (2009)

While Solaris is heavy on mystery and leaves a lot up to interpretation, Avatar is very broad and maybe even obvious. It’s hard to come away from this one not knowing what James Cameron was going for narratively and thematically, with a sledgehammer-like strategy of tackling colonialism and environmental destruction in its plot, but all in space, and on an admittedly fascinating-looking alien moon.

So, it’s very different screenplay-wise to Solaris, but there are things about the screenplay that might irk some people with Solaris, and very different things about the screenplay to Avatar that some might criticize. Yet both films look great and also feel bold when it comes to the filmmaking, so even if Tarkovsky and Cameron are wildly different filmmakers who made (or make, in Cameron’s case) movies for very different reasons, both are very talented directors in their own ways.

5

‘On the Silver Globe’ (1988)

On the Silver Globe is basically the opposite of a crowd-pleaser… like, a crowd-displeaser. Or a crowd-antagonizer? It’s a difficult movie. If you were to break down the plot, it might not sound too alarming, since it’s about traveling off the Earth in search of another planet to start a new civilization on, and you might think, “Yeah, sounds like a bit of a sci-fi/adventure sort of movie.”

It is science fiction, and there is that travel side of things narratively, yet where it goes – and what it does – with this premise makes it anything but easy to watch. On the Silver Globe is like a nightmare for much of its runtime, but it’s nightmarish with purpose, and the whole thing (though infamously and regrettably unfinished) is monumental as a distinctive creative vision on the part of director Andrzej Żuławski (whose best-known film remains Possession, though there’s an argument to be made that On the Silver Globe is his best work).

4

‘Until the End of the World’ (1991)

Wim Wenders is no stranger to road movies, but nothing else he’s done comes close to covering as much ground with the road trip at its center as the one in Until the End of the World. That’s fitting, because it’s also a monumentally long movie, with the director’s cut being so much better than the theatrical cut, even if you do have to dedicate almost five hours of your time to watching it.

Hey, the theatrical cut is a big effort time-wise, too, since you’ll need about three hours for that. And if you can already find three uninterrupted hours, maybe you can add another two on without too much trouble. This is a sometimes chaotic, sometimes exciting, and sometimes moving film that travels across much of the world before diving into thematically dense (and eerily prescient) science fiction ideas as it enters its second half. It’s got so much to offer, and can count itself among the most underrated sci-fi epics ever made for sure.

3

‘Interstellar’ (2014)

If you want an epic with a comparable premise to On the Silver Globe, but you don’t want to feel horrifically depressed, then Interstellar has always got your back. There are some sort of sad scenes here, sure, but nothing that’s absolutely soul-crushing or overly visceral/violent/nasty. It’s a bittersweet sci-fi epic, being about sacrifices (sometimes of the unexpected/unprecedented variety) made in an effort to ensure humanity’s survival, which requires moving off a dying Earth.

It goes big in the ways you’d expect, and it’s another film worth mentioning here that’s hard to fault, if you’re looking at its ambition and technical qualities. Whether it’s the most tightly written and edited Christopher Nolan movie is up for debate, but if you’re looking for the film that most succinctly showcases his knack for crafting spectacle, then it’s got to be Interstellar.

2

‘Metropolis’ (1927)

Two years before Woman in the Moon, Fritz Lang directed Metropolis, which continues to hold up as one of the all-time greatest dystopian films ever made, and clearly one of the most influential, too. It’s less of an epic in the traditional sense, compared to Woman in the Moon, but there is still a lot that’s being tackled within a single film here, and it does run for a pretty lengthy 2.5 hours (okay, two minutes off, but still).

The narrative here is straightforward by today’s standards, yet also distressingly (still) relevant, given it’s about a society divided between the wealthy and the working class, with the former exploiting the latter to live luxuriously while the workers all continually suffer. There’s also a robot thrown in there, some big set pieces, and various philosophical, sociological, and even religious issues either explored, questioned, or alluded to. And it does it all while being a purely visually told story, thanks to Metropolis being a silent movie. The level of ambition here is, even to this day, quite astounding.

1

‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ (1968)

If you were to watch 2001: A Space Odyssey without knowing anything about it (hard to do nowadays, owing to how often it’s been referenced and/or parodied), then you’d still probably feel like you were in for something special, or at least unique, basically straight away. The film starts in an odd and disarming way, given that it takes place in prehistoric times with humanity’s ancestors, all as a prologue before jumping forward to what was, in 1968, the relatively near future (close to the turn of the 21st century).

There’s some more directly science fiction stuff there, tackled for a while, before 2001: A Space Odyssey goes all out in suggesting a future for humanity, going forward in time a great deal, just as the opening scenes went back very far in time. So, basically, it’s a movie about humanity and evolution, and it makes you feel like you’ve seen a lot, and traveled a huge distance time-wise, within a single movie. It might well be the most impressive sci-fi epic ever made, and if you wanted to argue it was the best thing Stanley Kubrick ever did, as a filmmaker, you probably could without too much difficulty.