Disney+ has some of the greatest sci-fi movies ever made, or at least some of the most popular. With a selection spanning generations, the movies on Disney+ include everything from films that came out this year to old classics from your childhood. And if you look, the streaming site is filled with treasures that you wouldn’t expect to find.
Of course, Disney+ has the entire collection of Marvel and Star Wars movies, and that alone should make your trip into hyperspace worthwhile. But Disney+ will have every part of the Avatar epic as it comes out too. There are throwbacks like Flubber and Treasure Planet, retro cult classics like Tron, and of course, all your children's favorites like Wall-E and Big Hero 6. Disney+ is the place to go for all your science fiction needs.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe
When Disney purchased Marvel in 2009, no one realized how they would change not just superhero movies, but the entire film industry. Nowadays, almost every film studio is looking to create a franchise that’s even one tenth as successful as Disney’s MCU. Plus, getting to work on a Marvel movie has become a pursuit of most people in Hollywood and a huge boost to once smaller filmmakers.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe has created its own universe of actors, directors, and special effects artists that have continued to work together outside Disney in a strange world of post-Marvel projects where they are given so much creative freedom that we get to see what kind of artists they really are, without the cape.
Escape into this vast world of superheroes, where you can follow the journeys of one, two, or six heroes as they steadily rise to greater and greater challenges. Comic book fans can see some of their favorite storylines realized in film, and play the game of looking for easter eggs the average MCU fan might miss. Or if you’re a champion binge-watcher, go for the ultimate test and spend 47 hours and 51 minutes watching every film from Iron Man to Avengers: Endgame. Disney+ has all the Marvel movies up to Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, as well as all of Sony’s Spider-Man and X-Men movies. They even organize them in fun little ways to watch them.
Star Wars
Whether you’ve been a fan since the '70s or are just looking to enjoy some of the newer movies, Disney+ has everything that ever was and is Star Wars. With the three main trilogies and two side-story films, there are 11 Star Wars movies in total. The legend of Luke Skywalker carries on in both past and future as the Sith and the Jedi are locked in continuous combat. It all might be the same story, but each trilogy has its own flavor and marks a different era in Star Wars history. And the two other films Rogue One and Solo, both expound upon some of our favorite parts of the Star Wars story.
George Lucas instantly became famous when he created A New Hope back in 1977. He was influenced by old spaghetti westerns and Akira Kurosawa’s vast catalog of samurai movies. Put those two together, and you get a gunslinging, sword-fighting, sci-fi adventure taking place on the edges of the galaxy.
George Lucas was also famous for his faithful adherence to Joseph Campbell’s monomyth, a type of story discerned from cultural tales all over the world and distilled into the narrative “Hero’s Journey” structure in Campbell’s eminent work The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Star Wars is regularly used by English professors as one of the best examples of Campbell’s ideas in action.
Avatar
James Cameron’s most anticipated series of films, Avatar and Avatar: The Way of Water are both available on Disney+. It’s important to remember they’re here, because the next time we have to wait 10 years for a sequel, you’ll want to catch up with these two films. James Cameron has always had a reputation for creating massive undertakings that span the land and sea. But he seems to know what he’s doing, since three of James Cameron's films are on the top 10 list of highest-grossing movies of all time.
The Avatar epic is as much of a science fiction story in real life as it is on screen. Cameron himself had to wait ten years in order to make the first film. He had written an 80-page treatment, and originally intended for Avatar to be released in 1999, but said the technology hadn’t caught up with his vision of computer-generated actors in leading roles.
He was only ready to make the movie after seeing characters like Gollum in Lord of the Rings and Davy Jones from the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. The Way of Water was stalled for the same reason. Along with descending seven miles into the Mariana Trench, two completely new camera technologies were invented just to film this movie.
Wall-E
Everyone remembers Wall-E; that story of the little trash collecting robot on a deserted planet moved our hearts when it first came out in 2008. This classic Pixar movie won an Oscar that year for Best Animated Feature Film. And its accolades have only gotten greater as time has gone on.
In 2021, Wall-E became the second Pixar film (after Toy Story) to be selected for preservation by the Library of Congress. And a year later, it was added to the Criterion Collection. So one day, when the Earth is covered in garbage and we’ve retreated into space, this film may still be out there, hidden deep in a government vault along with Citizen Kane and The Breakfast Club.
Flubber
Flubber was one of Robin Williams’ classic comedies, and stood out as one of the most loved family films of the 90s. In the movie, Williams plays Dr. Philip Brainard, an absent-minded professor who has already missed his own wedding – twice. He’s working hard to create some type of invention that will save Medfield College from closing. Naturally, his sweetheart, played by Marcia Gay Harden, leaves him. But little does she know he’s about to discover just what he needs to save the college and win her love back.
Professor Brainard creates a type of flying rubber (Flubber) that squishes and moves with incredible flexibility and seems to have a mind of its own. He uses the bouncing substance to give Medfield an all-star basketball team. But Brainard’s longtime rival is looking to steal this amazing discovery for himself. Will Professor Brainard be able to fend off his greedy competitor, save Medfield College, and win his fiancée back all before the end of the semester? This Robin Williams movie is fun for the whole family and full of silly green Flubber that knows how to party all night long.
Big Hero 6
This charming, Oscar-winning film takes place at the intersection of cyberpunk, superheroes, and family fun. In a heartwarming story that will have you sobbing and cheering, Disney takes you into the proto-futuristic, Amer-Asian city of San Fransokyo, where the young Hiro constructs tiny robots to compete in back alley robot fights.
Despite his obvious talent for robotics, Hiro refuses to follow in his older brother’s footsteps and attend college to use his gifts ethically. After a horrible accident claims his brother’s life, Hiro is left only with the huggable healthcare robot his brother created, and a small clue that the accident might not have been so accidental.
Big Hero 6 was written to be loosely based on a Marvel comic by the same name. Although the movie is vastly different from the comic, you can still see an old man in a photo that looks suspiciously like Stan Lee. The father of Marvel even makes an honest cameo in the post-credits scene and reveals himself to be a superhero. So you could technically make the argument that Big Hero 6 is in the MCU, but it’s a stretch.
Lilo & Stitch
Lilo & Stitch is easily one of the most delightful children’s movies ever made, and remains one of the pillars of the Disney canon to this day. This tiny blue science experiment helped ring in a new era of Disney films, having its named counted among characters like Aladdin and Simba, and also bringing something entirely new to Disney. The original movie poster showed a group of characters from the Disney Renaissance reacting in comical horror to this strange little alien. And so Stitch made Disney his ohana. Now Disney+ has all kinds of Lilo & Stitch content.
When the developers were first animating Lilo & Stitch, they went to Hawaii to research the location. Their tour guide led them around the island, and as he did so, the writers and animators seemed to realize that he knew just about everyone. The tour guide explained that all these people were his ohana and that one didn’t have to be blood related to be family. The concept had been completely foreign to the filmmakers, but after this tour, it became the foundation of the movie.
Treasure Planet
Based on the novel Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, this animated sci-fi film really captures the spirit of the 19th century novel. Although Mr. Stevenson didn’t include any spaceships, aliens, or star maps, he did tell a beautiful story about a boy who sets off on an adventure to find incredible treasure. In both stories that treasure is a metaphor for maturity, but the very underrated Treasure Planet is perhaps more about a boy searching for his father.
Jim Hawkins lives and works with his mother in a small inn. He spends his time getting into trouble and running off on his solar sailor. When a spaceship crashes near the inn, Jim receives a tiny sphere that contains a starmap to a fabled treasure he has been reading about since he was a child. When pirates attack, the inn is destroyed and Jim and his professorial family friend hire a ship and set out on an adventure.
Tron
Tron might be one of the longest living cult film obsessions. Released in 1982, Tron began as a futuristic imagining of the world inside a computer, where everything was somewhat analogous to a video game. Inside, programs were personified as real people who live in a fascist society run by the Master Control Program. When Kevin Flynn (a young Jeff Bridges) is digitized and uploaded into the system, he must compete in a series of gladiatorial games to escape.
The cult following that kept Tron alive became fascinated with a new kind of sci-fi that put them inside the world of computers and video games. Over time, computers changed and arcades became the very symbol of a retro '80s culture, but this style served only to keep the fascination alive, turning Tron from a futuristic story into a retro one.
When Disney made Tron: Legacy 28 years later, it was successful, but not quite enough to start a franchise. Still, rumors circulate of an upcoming sequel Tron: Ares, meant to be coming out in 2025. Disney+ has both Tron and Tron: Legacy available to watch.
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
Based on Jules Verne’s epic tale, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea tells the story of the mysterious Captain Nemo who has forsaken the world of the land to live beneath the ocean waves. Professor Aronnax, accompanied by his attendant Conseil, and a brash harpooner named Ned Land, are sent with the Navy to uncover rumors of a sea monster that has been sinking ships.
When they do indeed find the monster, the three men are thrown overboard and discover that this is not a monster at all, but a technological marvel. James Mason plays Captain Nemo, and Paul Lukas, Peter Lorre, and Kirk Douglas play Aronnax, Conseil, and Ned Land respectively.
With its two Oscars in Art Direction and Special Effects, this 1954 film does a fantastic job in capturing the scenes from the novel. The film is often remembered by its creation of a daring fight with a giant squid, a scene so complex and involved that it made the movie one of the most expensive in Hollywood at the time. The film’s artistic design is also credited with being a precursor to the steampunk aesthetic. The storytelling remains faithful to the novel but in the respect that Nemo’s sub, the Nautilus, is nuclear-powered in this retelling – a keen mark of the atomic age in which the film was made.