Prime Video's extensive streaming library is certainly impressive. In-between their high-profile streaming exclusives and notable licensed library content, their plethora of science-fiction offerings combines vintage classics and modern masterpieces alike. Science fiction enthusiasts can rejoice! You now have cyberpunk dystopias and blissful utopias in equal measure, readily available at the click of a button. All we need now are replicators, lightsabers, and light-speed travel.
Want some intelligent examinations of alien life? Or how about a guy in an armored suit blowing things up for an hour and a half? Just about every taste is accounted for at Prime Video. Because of this, we thought we'd highlight the best of the best that this streaming service has to offer in terms of science-fiction films? You may be surprised at what's buried in Prime Video's content library.
Eva (2011)
Kike Maíllo’s science fiction film lives on in the viewers mind long after the credits have rolled. Eva traffics the familiar tropes of science-fiction but aces them all the way, and manages to retain an overall ethos of humanity and compassion.
Set in a distant future where robots co-exist with humans, a renowned cybernetic engineer Alex (Daniel Brühl) returns to his hometown to finish a project he had seemingly run away from. Tasked with developing a new child android dubbed S1-9, Alex spends time with a 10-year-old named Eva, who he finds out is the daughter of his brother David and his former lover Lana.
Eva’s storyline presents a futuristic world which is steeped in human emotion, highlighting human relationships in a technological society rather than the other way round. As such, it's almost a precursor to last year's masterpiece, After Yang.
Coherence (2013)
A crossbreed between a psychological thriller and a sci-fi film, Coherence is what you get when filmmaking ingenuity meets budget constraints. A resourceful film that’s proof that inventive filmmakers can create a lot with little, Coherence takes place in a suburban house where friends hang out over dinner and drinks. Coinciding with the soirée is a comet that’s scheduled to pass over the country, which in turn causes things to get weird, very weird.
Shot on a shoestring budget, it’s evident that Coherence is financially malnourished, but that doesn’t take away from its creative prowess and excellent performances. As soon as the film delves into its premise, it shifts gears at an eerie pace, gluing the viewer right onto the screen.
Escape From New York (1981)
Operating on the holy trinity of chaos, Escape From New York is set in a dystopian future where Manhattan is turned into a giant prison that’s inhabited by humanity’s dregs — murderers, thieves, terrorists and the lot. A zoo without bars, with no government or system enforcing laws upon the land, the President of the United States crash lands there and is stuck among the finest degenerates of the world. In order to retrieve him, the federal agencies coerce street-smart criminal Snake Plissken (Kurt Russel), to rescue the president as he's on his way to the prison to serve a life sentence for a failed gold heist.
With the president’s fate in Snake’s hands, John Carpenter wastes no time in pleasantries, diving deep into the world of destruction and debauchery and placing his bets on the unlikeliest of candidates to pull off the most unlikeliest of heists.
Nope (2022)
With Nope, Jordan Peele moved to a more hybrid type of horror film that came with its own set of moral commentary. Touching upon humanities need to capture and broadcast spectacles, Peele’s parable threw light on the dark side of this trait.
Unlike most of his previous work that rated high on the spook meter, Nope is less frightening than it is thoughtful, questioning the moral fabric of humanity and the direction it’s heading in, told within the structural framework of sci-fi more than horror.
Vivarium (2019)
Vivarium provides a more ethereal spin to the sci-fi genre, one that will make you question everyday interpersonal relationships along with technology's impact on them.
A dizzying film to watch, Vivarium paints a bleak picture of marriage that's within the confines of a tech driven world. This interplay of technology and human relationships is what’s at the heart of Lorcan Finnegan’s drama, as it maintains an eerie grip on the viewer from start to finish.
Jurassic World Dominion
Jurassic World: Dominion is a Jurassic Park movie for long-time fans of the series. Years after the events of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, dinosaurs now live among humans in every corner of the planet. But when the planet's two apex predators come face to face with each other, difficult questions must be asked when one has to rise above the other. Along with featuring a returning Chris Pratt, you may be happy to see the return of Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, and Sam Neill to the wonderful world of dinosaur blockbusters.
The conclusion of the modern-day Jurassic Park trilogy pulls no punches in delivering a thrilling science-fiction story. Is it cheating to bring out Jeff Goldblum just for some nostalgia points? Absolutely. But, on the plus side, you get to see more Jeff Goldblum.
Robocop (1987)
Dead or alive, you're coming with him. RoboCop remains a high-point of Paul Verhoeven's filmography, creating an over-the-top science-fiction satire film with a plentiful amount of ludicrous effects. Peter Weller plays Alex Murphy, a cop in near-future Detroit who is unfortunately gunned down in the line of duty. But when Murphy is revived as a heavily-armored amnesiac cyborg by Omni Consumer Products, a web of lies and deceit unfurls itself as conspiracies are discovered, and grim realities are faced.
Infamous for its gratuitous violence, stellar set designs, and memorable quotes, RoboCop is easily one of the better science-fiction action films of the 80s. Its dark humor and satirical edge give it something a little extra compared to its high-octane contemporaries, and it at times feeling eerily prescient of the technological world we live in.
The World's End
The often-forgotten third entry in Edgar Wright's Cornetto Trilogy, The World's End takes a different approach to a typical "underdog hero saves the world" story. When five long-time friends decide to go on one last pub crawl in order to relive their youth, they find themselves at the center of an alien invasion that threatens humanity. What else is there to do other than down a few pints and kick some extraterrestrial heads in?
Directly paying tribute to classics like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, this science-fiction action comedy offers an interesting character study of a man still firmly stuck in the past, with the film's alien invasion giving him a means to grow and develop into a more well-rounded person. Terrific choreography, witty humor, and a rounded cast make The World's End yet another entertaining adventure from Wright's filmography.
Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure
Before he would enter the Matrix, and way before he killed hundreds of mobsters and assassins, Keanu Reeves took on a surfer-dude persona along with Alex Winter in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. A comparatively lighthearted science fiction film focused around time travel, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure sees a pair of California goofballs blessed with a time machine via an interdimensional George Carlin, allowing them to travel between different periods in time. When they realize they can utilize this newfound device to ace their history report, they put two and two together and bring historical figures from the past back into the present.
Reeves and Winter are so infectiously positive, oblivious, and well-meaning, it makes Bill & Ted one of the comfiest viewing experiences you may ever have. It is a movie that you genuinely cannot take seriously, which ultimately works to its benefit.
Interstellar
A Christopher Nolan classic, 2014's Interstellar turned heads during its initial release before cementing itself as one of his most compelling films. Set in the near-future, humanity finds itself in the middle of a global famine, leaving a group of astronauts on a journey to discover a new home. Through the utilization of a newly-discovered wormhole, they're able to jump to a new galaxy in an instant — though each planet they discover chisels away at their hope, piece by piece.
Out of every Nolan film, Interstellar remains one of the most viscerally beautiful. Heavily utilizing miniatures and practical effects alongside CGI, the breadth of the universe is captured in one of the most captivating dramas of the last decade. By all means, if you want to see Matthew McConaughey make you cry, this is the film to do it.
Arrival
An award-winning, clinical take on what might happen when we're visited by extraterrestrials, Denis Villeneuve's Arrival sees Amy Adams playing an expert linguist tasked with an impossible objective. When alien crafts land along the surface of Earth, she has to determine if their presence is an act of peace, or an announcement of war.
If you were sold on Villeneuve as a director from his work on the new Dune films, you'd be doing yourself a disservice if you skipped Arrival. Amy Adams absolutely steals the show, and combined with a brilliant score by the late Jóhann Jóhannsson, this globe-spanning film is as compelling as it is unnerving, highlighting the divisions in how humanity would approach such an alien presence.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Based on the beloved science fiction novel of the same name, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy may not be a perfect adaptation, but it certainly gets more right than it does wrong. On a regular day, Arthur Dent (Martin Freeman) discovers that the Earth is to be destroyed to make way for an intergalactic highway, and that his friend, Ford Prefect, is actually an alien working on a guide book for exploring the galaxy. What follows is a humorous adventure loaded with British wit, along with appearances from Sam Rockwell, Alan Rickman, Mos Def, and Zooey Deschanel.
While it may be hard to follow if you're unfamiliar with the source material, there isn't anything quite like The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy elsewhere. As the directorial debut of Garth Jennings, it would be a stepping stone to his eventual directorial roles in Illumination's Sing franchise.
Event Horizon
Arguably the most ambitious film by Paul W. S. Anderson, Event Horizon is an infamous science-fiction horror film that continues to split opinions and ignite imaginations. Combining the supernatural with super-science, a crew led by Laurence Fishburne and Sam Neill find themselves examining an abandoned spaceship after a mysterious distress signal is sent out. But after discovering an enormous portal, all Hell breaks loose in more ways than one, leaving the crew to survive what may be the forces of Hell itself.
Originally a graphic 130 minutes, Event Horizon's troubled production history is as equally infamous as the film itself. While some have criticized Event Horizon for being more reliant on style rather than scares, it's continuing infamy and notable influence on future horror projects can't be understated. One can only hope that the last trace of Event Horizon's extended cut will finally come to fruition one day.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
Prior to writing Raiders of the Lost Ark with George Lucas, Philip Kaufman would direct Invasion of the Body Snatchers, his first major box office success. A remake of the titular 1956 film, this body-horror science fiction flick sees gelatinous creatures land on Earth and take the form of plant-like pods. A pair of scientists, played by Donald Sutherland and Brooke Adams, attempt to bring awareness to this illusive invasion as horrifying "pod people" begin to take over the human population.
With some interpreting the original as a commentary on McCarthyism, this updated allegory of the 1970s can be seen as a reflection of paranoia found within the United States at the time. Fans of They Live will also appreciate Body Snatchers' direct critique of consumerism; while it isn't as blatant as They Live, the humdrum lives that the "pod people" inherit don't necessarily change all that much.
Rebuild of Evangelion
The popular anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion may feel a bit intimidating to approach if you've never given it a shot before. Fortunately, for both long-time fans and newcomers alike, the Rebuild of Evangelion film series offers both a condensed version of the original series' run, in addition to brand-new twists and turns that take the story in a completely new direction. These films remain exclusively licensed to Prime Video, meaning you won't be able to stream them elsewhere.
Taking place over the course of four films, Rebuild of Evangelion takes place in a futuristic version of Tokyo, wherein high schooler Shinji Ikari tries his best to get by. But when Shinji's father recruits him into the government organization "Nerv," he'll find himself as the unwilling pilot of an "Evangelion" — a gigantic, bio-organic machine made to fight the various monsters that litter the Earth's surface.