10 Best Sci-Fi Movies Of Each Year In The 1990s

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Movies are one of life’s great escapes, and that’s especially the case when it comes to science fiction films. The genre offers an endless variety of imaginative situations and worlds — some better and some worse than our own — to deliver wonder, thrills, and thought-provoking ideas. We’re big fans of the otherworldly genre around these parts as evidenced by our epic list of over 100 of the sci-fi’s best films and our look at this decade’s best sci-fi movies so far.

But looking back in time, the 1990s saw a big shift in Hollywood’s sci-fi output thanks to the increasing advent of digital effects. That can be argued as both a positive and a negative, depending on your view, but there’s no denying that plenty of fantastic sci-fi films hit screens from 1990 to 1999. Some feature big stars, others focus on big ideas, but all of them have stood the test of time over the past three decades (or so) to remain acclaimed favorites.

Now keep reading for a look at the best sci-fi movies from each year of the 1990s.

Paul Verhoeven’s early filmography in the Netherlands saw plenty of acclaimed films, but he entered the 1990s riding high on the success of his Hollywood feature debut, 1987’s “Robocop.” That blackly comic action blockbuster led him into the most successful, high-profile decade of his career with unforgettable films like “Basic Instinct,” “Showgirls,” and “Starship Troopers,” and it kicked off with 1990’s biggest sci-fi ride, “Total Recall.” (See where they all rank on our list of Verhoeven’s films.)

Quaid (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is a musclebound everyman who works a construction job, comes home to a perfect wife (Sharon Stone), and occasionally dreams about faraway places. Those dreams about Mars become an obsession, though, and he soon discovers that they not even dreams… they’re memories. In need of answers, he sets off for Mars to discover a revolution waiting for its hero.

Schwarzenegger was arguably the biggest star in the world at the time, and Carolco — the independent studio behind three of the films on this list — let their star and director go big from start to finish. Massive sets, wild production design, and oodles of practical effects and makeup (courtesy of Rob Bottin, the mad genius behind “The Thing” and “The Howling”) are employed to bring an epic, R-rated slice of action/sci-fi to the screen. Numerous miniatures add an old school class to the film while graphic violence reminds you it’s the 1990s, baby. Chases, fights, unforgettable visuals, and a fun disregard for actual science makes this a great ride.

Remember when I mentioned above that Arnold Schwarzenegger was the biggest movie star in the world in the early 1990s? Well then, it shouldn’t surprise you to see him headlining a second year in our look at the decade’s greatest sci-fi films. This time out, it’s with a sequel to a sci-fi/slasher classic from the decade prior, and he’s joined by an even bigger name in the sci-fi genre behind the camera: James Cameron. “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” was a monster hit solidifying both star and director as major talents, and it remains one of the best sci-fi sequels of all-time.

A cyborg (Schwarzenegger) from the future arrives in the present day, and he looks just like the one who stalked and tormented Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) a decade ago. Surprise, he’s actually been sent to help her and her son (Edward Furlong), this time against an even more dangerous threat.

Tired of making sequels to other people’s films — from the lows of “Piranha 2: The Spawning” to the highs of “Aliens” — Cameron decided to follow-up his own genre hit with something far bigger. The result is a blockbuster hit that proves a sequel can do more than just rehash what came before. The film shakes up the original’s characters and story in smart, entertaining ways while digging a little deeper into the trouble with time travel. Just as importantly, it also delivers massive stunt sequences, action beats, and sci-fi genre thrills.

While most of the years on this list feature on obvious winner, 1992 was a tight, two-horse race all the way to the finish line. Two films, both about rogue cyborgs and filled with explosive gunplay, big stunts, and cool practical makeup effects, but ultimately Albert Pyun’s terrifically scrappy “Nemesis” was edged out by the bigger, more narratively focused “Universal Soldier” from director Roland Emmerich. (It even ranks pretty high on our list of Emmerich’s films.)

After an opening set during the Vietnam War showing the death of American soldiers, the present day reveals that those deceased veterans have been kept alive via scientific shenanigans and trained to become the ultimate fighting machines. Trouble erupts when two of them, GR44 (Jean-Claude Van Damme) and GR13 (Dolph Lundgren) begin recalling their previous lives. Soon the former regains his conscience, and the latter renews his bloodlust.

It’s maybe a stretch to call these guys cyborgs, but they are physically enhanced via sci-fi chemicals and backed up with lots of tech, so I’m going to allow it. Emmerich’s first big movie opened the door to a pretty epic run of hits, including “Stargate,” “Independence Day,” and “The Day After Tomorrow.” While they went increasingly digital with their effects, this one delivers mostly practical thrills with big fights and even bigger stunts. Lundgren is a terrific villain, and Van Damme gives arguably his best performance as an automaton whose humanity is slowly reawakening.

While the first few years of the 1990s were dominated by muscular action stars holding their own in sci-fi blockbusters, their sweaty grip started to wobble when faced with some even bigger beasts. That’s right, we’re talking dinosaurs as only the father of blockbuster cinema, Steven Spielberg (a master of sci-fi himself), can deliver. Much as his “Jaws” defined the birth of the blockbuster, “Jurassic Park” is arguably the film that redefined the summer blockbuster as being built on the back of the digital effects revolution.

John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) is a billionaire who’s never been told no, and the latest example of that is his creation of a new island theme park teeming with living, breathing dinosaurs. He invites three skeptical scientists (Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum) for a preview weekend, but human greed, Mother Nature, and plenty of poor choices collide to create a disastrous weekend for everyone involved.

Popcorn films often use future technology as a simple device to propel a story, but Spielberg’s blockbuster — adapted from Michael Crichton’s bestseller — gives it a strong basis in actual science. It’s simplified, to be sure, but this was probably the first introduction for some future scientists to the basics of DNA extraction, manipulation, and more. That adds an intelligent, thought-provoking layer that never gets in the way of the fun, thrills, and epic set-pieces. Groundbreaking digital effects are paired beautifully with practical dinosaur creations (from the great Stan Winston), and the sensory adventure continues with elaborate production design, entertaining performances, Spielberg’s genius, and an unforgettable score by John Williams.

Dinosaurs may have walked the Earth and ruled the box-office the year before, but filmmakers and studios weren’t yet prepared to match that scope in 1994. There were contenders in Roland Emmerich’s “Stargate” and the television show crossover of “Star Trek: Generations,” but the year’s best sci-fi film came with the return of the Muscles from Brussels, Jean-Claude Van Damme. Peter Hyams’ “Timecop” pairs the physical brawn of the early 1990s with some fun time travel hijinks for a high-energy adventure.

Time travel exists, and since people can’t help but ruin a good thing, a special agency is created to monitor its usage so that no one meddles with the past to affect the present. Agent Max Walker (Van Damme) discovers a powerful politician doing just that and kicks off a near-literal race against time to stop the greedy Senator McComb (Ron Silver).

Director Peter Hyams (whose son, John Hyams, directed two of the “Universal Soldier” sequels with Van Damme) made genre gems across a few decades including sci-fi classics like “Capricorn One” and “Outland.” He’s also responsible for two of Van Damme’s best efforts — this and 1995’s “Sudden Death,” both of which take spots on our list of Van Damme’s best films. Here, he helps craft a straightforward but compelling action/sci-fi ride about the moral complexities of time travel, and if you thought a government job was enough to stop Van Damme from doing epic split kicks, well guess again. The fights and action beats are fun, Silver is always a wonderfully slimy villain, and we even get to see what happens when someone touches their future self.

1995 was filled to the brim with sci-fi movies, whether they be big, small, smart, or dumb as a doorpost. Kathryn Bigelow’s “Strange Days” could easily take this spot, but its actual sci-fi element is fairly minimal, and “Species” is a contender as the kind of big, fun, R-rated B-movie we almost never get these days. We’re giving it to Terry Gilliam’s “12 Monkeys,” though, as it uses a post-apocalyptic setting and time travel to tell a story about madness, both real and perceived, and the ways in which we affect those around us.

Years after a deadly virus has decimated nearly all of humankind, underground scientists send James Cole (Bruce Willis) back to 1996 in the hopes of identifying the virus and those responsible. Time travel is an imprecise science, but Cole eventually comes to discover some surprising truths about the virus, the culprits, and his own role in it all.

Gilliam was already well-versed in the fantastical — “Time Bandits,” “Brazil,” “The Fisher King” being among his best — by the time he reached the mid 1990s and delivered his last truly successful film. He’s made six more movies since, but none of them have been both critical and commercial wins. Part of its success is a cast that also includes Madeleine Stowe, Christopher Plummer, and a terrifically unhinged Brad Pitt, but the film’s twisty time travel narrative and emotionally affecting story turns are every bit as compelling. That it’s also the rare big studio feature to go out on a downer note is something worth praising too.

While most years of the 1990s feature more than a few contenders for best sci-fi movie of the year, 1996 is something of an anomaly. There are fun ones like “Independence Day” and “Multiplicity,” but truly great ones? For that we have just one true contender, the eighth entry in a big screen franchise based on a long running television show. Fans of the franchise will love it most, but even the non-Trekkers among us should admire and enjoy the dark thrills of “Star Trek: First Contact.”

An alien attack is underway as the Borg target Earth and go head-to-head with any and all available starships in Starfleet. The Borg appear to lose, but they actually manage to slip away into the past where they succeed at changing human history to prevent Earth’s contact with other alien species. No contact means no Starfleet and an Earth assimilated by the Borg — so Capt. Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) and crew head back in time to save the future.

The first “Star Trek” film to not include any of the original show’s cast is also one of the franchise’s best. Science fiction is its core genre, obviously, but the film delivers big with beats and set pieces teasing horror and delivering action spectacle. The Borg are unavoidably creepy beings, and the film embraces that terror while also cranking out action scenes at a pretty high rate. The end result is a truly thrilling ride for fans and non-fans alike.

People like to talk about why this or that movie could or would never be made today, but there’s usually a very good reason for it. You know, like “Blazing Saddles” uses the n-word for laughs, or Buster Keaton’s “The General” couldn’t be made today because the entire cast has since passed away. These are insurmountable reasons, but with Robert Zemeckis’ “Contact” the issue is simply one of desire. No studio today would bankroll a $90 million, action-free movie about alien contact in which we never actually see the friggin’ aliens.

Dr. Ellie Arroway (Jodie Foster) works with SETI to search the skies and monitor intergalactic airwaves for signs of intelligent life, and one day she gets that sign. What looks like gibberish is actually a very detailed schematic for building a transportation device of some kind, but who will build it? Who gets to ride in it? And where is it going?

Carl Sagan’s novel — it was originally crafted as a film treatment, but when no studio would bite, he adapted it into a novel instead — is a smart, thought-provoking look at the collision between science and faith, and it handles that conflict with a deft, rational hand. Zemeckis’ film captures its tone and themes beautifully and delivers an extremely compelling look the people and processes in place if such an event was to occur. Foster is fantastic here as a scientist thrilled at the prospect of alien contact, and the supporting cast fills in the gaps of human responses and reactions with memorable turns by Matthew McConaughey, James Woods, John Hurt, Angela Bassett, and more.

“Dark City,” “Pi,” “Deep Impact,” “The Faculty,” “Soldier” — 1998 saw plenty of very good sci-fi films, but if pressed to pick just one to represent the best the year had to offer, well, go big or go home. Michael Bay’s “Armageddon” makes little sense to the point that even Ben Affleck wondered on the film’s infamous DVD commentary track why training oil drillers to become astronauts would possibly make more sense than training astronauts to drill a hole, but the film’s success rests in an abundance of both personality and epic destruction.

A meteor shower lays waste to several North American cities, but the worst might be yet to come when it’s discovered that a large, planet-killing asteroid is due to hit the Earth in under three weeks. The world’s greatest minds decide that landing on the asteroid, drilling a hole, and dropping in a large bomb is humankind’s best bet, so they gather a rogue’s gallery of professional hole makers and train them for a life-or-death mission.

The smarter, denser version of a world-ending asteroid can be found in Mimi Leder’s “Deep Impact,” but for pure entertainment full of laughs, action, big screen performances, and nonsensical spectacle, it’s Bay’s film all day long. The science is sketchy, but it’s all presented with conviction and sass. Bruce Willis and Affleck share the screen with a murderer’s row of talent including Billy Bob Thornton, Will Patton, Steve Buscemi, Keith David, Peter Stormare, and more. Sure, the animal cracker scene remains unforgivable, but everything else here is dumb, great-looking fun.

There could really be no other choice when it comes to picking the best sci-fi film of 1999. Yes, of course, I considered “Galaxy Quest,” as it remains a sci-fi/comedy masterpiece, but “The Matrix” is both a modern classic and among the most influential sci-fi films ever made. Lana and Lilly Wachowski’s second feature is an epic tale of awakening and understanding as one man helps pierce the veil of reality to reveal life’s greatest truth. Too pompous for you? Well, it wowed studio executives for a reason, and you’ll be happy to know it’s also a slickly beautiful and action-heavy piece of pop perfection.

Thomas Anderson (Keanu Reeves) leads a boring life until the day a woman (Carrie-Anne Moss) in black leather comes calling with a surprising revelation. Thomas’ life, and the lives of every other person going about the days, is merely a facade created by machines, and their actual bodies are sitting in goo pods acting as batteries for these mechanical overlords. The only way out is in, and it starts with cool clothes and martial arts lessons.

There’s little to be said about “The Matrix” that hasn’t already been discussed in the 27 years since it hit theaters, but that doesn’t stop people from talking about it. The film’s themes and concepts have been interpreted, reinterpreted, and even co-opted, but if you brush aside the noise, what you’ll find is a fantastic adventure fueled by wonder, adrenaline, and extraordinary amounts of imagination. It’s the ideal sci-fi film to end a decade on, one that counters a cynical truth with aggressive optimism, and it is endlessly entertaining to boot.