‘M3GAN’, ‘Jurassic World’, ‘Dune’ & more: 21 of the best sci-fi movies you can stream right now

In this magical age of entertainment on demand, there’s nary a moment when you can’t dial up a movie that scratches pretty close to satisfying your science fiction itch. But if you’re the type who falls deep down the movie-menu rabbit hole of endless, time-consuming scrolling, sometimes it’s nice to have a shorter, sweeter, super-convenient slate to pick from.

That leaves us with the list below, which serves as a curated selection of the best science fiction film titles available to stream right this second, taken from across the ever-widening myriad of on-demand platforms. From Peacock to Prime Video to Paramount+ and every other digital point beyond, you can’t help but pick a winner from our laser-brained list of sci-fi greats ... and you won’t have to waste half an hour poking around in the nether reaches of your chosen streamer’s never-ending movie menu, just scroll down!

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M3GAN

She’s tiny, she’s sassy, and she’s learning to think way beyond the bounds of her pair-bonded A.I. programming: Yep, when M3GAN decides it’s time to throw hands, there’s nothing you can really do but run. Allison Williams (Aunt Gemma) and Violet McGraw (Cady) vie for human control over Gemma’s next-level tech creation in what’s easily the most entertaining sci-fi horror hit of early 2023, as M3GAN dances, prances, and inevitably pounces on anyone who even looks at Cady the wrong way…including her own flesh and blood. New for streaming is the slightly-racier unrated edition of M3GAN at Peacock, with the original theatrical version also just a click away. — M3GAN and M3GAN Unrated are both streaming at Peacock.

Pitch Black / The Chronicles of Riddick / Riddick

Sometimes you just wanna kick it old school on an alien planet with a lucky dude who’s entering his antihero redemption-arc phase. That’s just what Vin Diesel delivers in 2000’s Pitch Black, the film that launched The Chronicles of Riddick franchise and, in hindsight, served up more imaginative sci-fi ideas than the memory-haze of the film’s two-decade legacy might suggest. Best of all, the entire trio of Riddick movies is ready to stream at Peacock, even as Diesel and director/writer David Twohy dive back into the series as development gets underway for Riddick: Furya, the hugely anticipated upcoming fourth movie. — Pitch Black, The Chronicles of Riddick, and Riddick all are streaming at Peacock.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

Still fresh following its recent theatrical run, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever joins the Marvel streaming lineup at Disney+ with a sobering (but still action-packed) sequel that honors the memory of Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman while evolving a franchise bereft of its beloved King T’Challa. Director Ryan Coogler co-wrote the film’s story with Joe Robert Cole, crafting in the process an elegant next step for Shuri (Letitia Wright) and the rest of Wakanda’s surviving heroes, all while achieving the seemingly-impossible task of addressing a real-life tragedy in a way that honors both Boseman the actor, and the on-screen story legacy he launched with the first film in 2017. You’ll laugh, you’ll cheer, and you’ll almost definitely shed a tear or two — but there’s no denying Wakanda Forever rates as the emotional high-water mark of the MCU’s Phase 4. — Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is streaming at Disney+.

Elysium

Neill Blomkamp’s second directing turn after District 9, Elysium mixes heady social commentary with sci-fi action as it follows Matt Damon’s ex-criminal Max on a desperate mission to tap a lifesaving treatment — available only on luxury space colony Elysium — for a fatal dose of radiation he’d accidentally received back on a ravaged Earth. The dystopian contrasts between Earth’s down-and-out denizens and their Elysian counterparts is intentionally stark. Access to the artificially-designed world is tightly controlled by a security boss played by Jodie Foster, separating the have-nots from health and medicines that could otherwise transform their lives. Blomkamp famously wasn’t happy with Elysium’s story after the film released, but watching with fresh eyes, the split-society messaging still comes across intact, helped along by distinctive world-building and plenty of explosive sci-fi effects. — Elysium is streaming at Peacock.

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Jurassic World

Bridging the original Steven Spielberg Jurassic trilogy with the dino havoc of the present day, the first film in the Jurassic World trio that ended last summer with Jurassic World Dominion sets the stage for fresh mayhem with a cast led by Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard. Unfolding 22 years after Spielberg’s original Jurassic Park, things on Isla Nublar feel deceptively tranquil as the humans finally seem to have pulled off John Hammond’s harebrained early vision of establishing a working dinosaur theme park ... until, that is, life finds a way to spectacularly tear up their plans with giant reptilian claws. Jurassic World isn’t the only dino fun on the bird app right now: The full original movie trilogy, including Jurassic Park, The Lost World, and Jurassic Park III are all ready to rumble this month at Peacock. — Jurassic World is streaming on Peacock.

Teen Wolf: The Movie

No one’s going to accuse Paramount+ of completely reinventing the howl with Teen Wolf: The Movie, but that’s fine: The new original streaming flick rallies the pack with a gleefully genre-conforming romp that continues the fun horror themes of the MTV Teen Wolf series from which it springs. Scott McCall (Tyler Posey) graduates to a full-length feature film with a story that sets him as protector of his California town using the lupine powers he knows best, surrounded by familiar Teen Wolf TV faces (and a coven’s worth of supernatural intrigue) for a standalone story that bites down for a satisfying, slightly more-mature coda to the character threads that’ve long suffused its small-screen predecessor. — Teen Wolf: The Movie is streaming at Paramount+.

A.I. Artificial Intelligence

Dedicated to Stanley Kubrick in the wake of his 1999 passing (and after years of Kubrick’s own effort to make the film), Steven Spielberg’s A.I. Artificial Intelligence tells the near-future story of pint-sized smart android David (a young Haley Joel Osment), a surrogate member of a small and grieving family. For years, Kubrick had delayed full development on A.I. (based on a short 1960s story from sci-fi writer Brian Aldiss), eventually passing it on to Spielberg in 1995 with the hope that recent advances in CGI wizardry (Spielberg’s milestone Jurassic Park effects had pushed the technology forward in 1993) had finally evolved to a sufficiently persuasive point. Dinos are one thing; android expressiveness is another, though. Still, some of the facial effects seem a bit jarring for a present-day audience used to faithful Disney+ computer-generated portrayals of Luke Skywalker. But with great onscreen turns from Osment, Jude Law, Brendan Gleeson, William Hurt, and Frances O'Connor and Sam Robards as David’s “parents,” A.I. still tells a Spielberg sci-fi story that’s hard to resist. — A.I. Artificial Intelligence is streaming at Prime Video.

Upgrade

A near-future story of human-and-A.I. symbiosis, Upgrade blends Venom’s two beings in-one-body concept with The Six Million Dollar Man’s idea of leveling up a disabled patient — and then things really get interesting. Made on a shoestring $3 million budget from Saw co-creator Leigh Whannell, it’s a dark dystopian thriller that sets tech-averse tinkerer Grey Trace (Logan Marshall-Green) on a path of revenge after his wife is murdered and Grey himself is rendered a quadriplegic. An enigmatic tech-billionaire friend offers him more than merely a full recovery with a bleeding-edge AI chip called “STEM,” which not only gets Grey out of his wheelchair but endows him with near-omniscient situational awareness (and near-superhuman reflexes). It turns out, though, that computers can have minds of their own ... which ends up posing a huge problem for Grey when STEM stages an all-out hacking bid for full control of his body. — Upgrade is streaming at Peacock.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

You can’t have a science fiction movie list without at least one Star War (or, for that matter, a Star Trek — which we’ll warp to farther down). All the mainline Star Wars movies are available ‘round the clock on Disney+, but our pick here is Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, a standalone entry in the Lucasfilm galaxy that feels like a timely complement to the recently-concluded (and spectacular) first season in the Diego Luna-starring Andor series (also on Disney+). Desperate Star Wars struggles never feel more real than they do here, with Cassian Andor (Luna) and Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) wending toward a shared fate that puts a tragic human face to every seemingly-anonymous personal sacrifice that the Rebellion ever demanded of its fighters. Rogue One is a Star Wars one-shot film done right, hitting loads of lore marks (including Darth Vader!) that won’t leave longtime fans feeling bereft of the traits that make the overall franchise such a powerful Force in the sci-fi movie-verse. — Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is streaming on Disney+.

Dune

The only drawback to watching Dune at home is not getting to see it on a screen that’s at least as big as a wall. The first installment in Denis Villeneuve’s epic sci-fi adaptation of Frank Herbert’s literary classic makes Arrakis look every bit as expansive as Herbert’s story always framed it, stretching the sands of House Atreides’ adopted desert planet to the limits of their Lawrence of Arabia-inspired horizons. Bring a serious state of mind to this one: Like most of Villeneuve’s best movies, Dune is all about slow-burn drama and high-stakes atmosphere, an approach that feels right at home in the hands of a killer cast featuring Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin, Stellan Skarsgård, Dave Bautista, Zendaya, Charlotte Rampling, Jason Momoa, and Javier Bardem. — Dune is streaming on HBO Max.

Nope

There’s nothing quite like Nope, Jordan Peele’s sky-scanning ode to big-screen scares and the wide-eyed Hollywood movie magic behind them. Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer head up an eclectic cast pinned down at an old-timey California tourist ranch, foregoing every escape impulse against extraterrestrial danger, and all just to catch an on-camera glimpse of the strange goings-on that seem stubbornly shrouded — for a time, anyway — in the looming clouds above. Nope mixes genres to terrific effect, making it far more than a mere science fiction movie, and Peele's gift for storytelling has that rare, uncanny way of drawing you out of reality and right into the midst of the action. Look no further if you like your sci-fi flicks served with a heaping slice of immersion (and horror). — Nope is streaming on Peacock.

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Annihilation

Alex Garland’s freaked-out sci-fi horror tale of alien-enabled plant life is a kaleidoscopically colorful fever dream chock full of grotesque terrors. In Annihilation, Natalie Portman plays an ex-military biologist with a serious case of lingering grief that finds the opposite of satisfying closure as she sets out across an infested floral landscape to uncover the mystery of how her husband really died. As you can guess, what she finds instead is ferally wild and out of this world. Part sci-fi conspiracy tale, part psychological horror mystery, and all atmospherically creepy from start to finish, Annihilation is the stuff of screaming technicolor nightmares ... especially if they involve botany that’s anything but benevolent. — Annihilation is streaming on Paramount+.

The Tomorrow War

Like Dune, The Tomorrow War was conceived as a big-budget sci-fi movie spectacle before the COVID-19 pandemic muddled the studio's original plans for a proper big-screen release. Debuting directly at Amazon, it delivered theatrical-scale thrills and big casting names (including star Chris Pratt) in an action-heavy tale about a present-day soldier drafted into time-leaping service to stave off a future alien threat. Family is front and center in a story that, like any good time travel movie, puts Pratt’s hero in touch with older versions of the people he knows and loves. Don’t let the (sort of) happy ending fool you into a sense of finality: The Tomorrow War lays down a rich layer of founding lore for a science fiction franchise that, owing to the first film’s success, is already looking toward a future sequel. — The Tomorrow War is streaming on Prime Video.

Interstellar

Framing a sweepingly ambitious cosmic tale of human survival against an intimate personal drama, Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar is a high point of “hard” science fiction, preoccupied with practical it-might-happen technological hurdles rather than straight-up space fantasy. Matthew McConaughey leads a stellar (we had to go there) cast as widowed ex-NASA ace Joseph Cooper, hauled back into action for an unprecedented voyage when his country — and his species — needs him once again. Along for the thrilling ride is an equally great ensemble featuring Ellen Burstyn, Michael Caine, Jessica Chastain, Matt Damon, and Anne Hathaway. — Interstellar is streaming at Hulu.

Ex Machina

Ex Machina marked the start of longtime scribe Alex Garland’s directing career, introducing fans to his penchant for next-level dystopia in a tightly-wound, intimately-cast story about how far one person will go to invest their deepest human emotions in a robot. Some of cinema’s most time-honored android tropes are there (like Domhnall Gleeson’s human protagonist wondering if perhaps he’s just a robot too). But Ex Machina has a different endgame in mind than your typical AI-propelled story about a lifelike synth in possession of seductive powers. With a cast that features Alicia Vikander as the seductive synth in question, alongside a never-better Oscar Isaac, Ex Machina is the kind of unsettling science fiction that tends to stay with you long after the credits have rolled. — Ex Machina is streaming on HBO Max.

The Adam Project

The Adam Project spins a time-traveling tale whose dystopian sci-fi setting ends up being the perfect backdrop for a family that finds itself in more than one kind of crisis. Ryan Reynolds plays a pilot from the future who learns a ton about the impact that missed connections can have on a person’s life, navigating a story that shifts between his adult dilemma and the moments from his younger days that led to his need to fly back to the past in the first place. Reynolds’ funny gift for wit goes a long way to lighten the heavy mood (especially when he’s cracking wise with his younger self), and there’s tons of heart radiating from an A-list cast that also includes Jennifer Garner, Katherine Keener, Mark Ruffalo, and Zoe Saldaña. — The Adam Project is streaming on Netflix.

The Vast of Night

There’s a smattering of Super 8, a little bit of Close Encounters, and whole lot of wide-eyed Steven Spielberg-style excitement in The Vast of Night, an Amazon original that follows an eminently likable cast of high schoolers to the very edge of an alien discovery. Set in a rural 1950s New Mexico town buzzy with all the optimism that post-war tech inspired in decades past, The Vast of Night teams a confidently in-his-lane high school DJ (played by Jake Horowitz) and a switchboard-operating intrepid female friend (Sierra McCormick) who squad up for a self-guided sleuthing excursion to find the source of a mysterious radio signal. More than most sci-fi films, The Vast of Night nails the voyeuristic feel of being along for the exhilarating teenage ride as the kids head out into the darkness to learn just how out-there and strange the truth really might be. — The Vast of Night is streaming on Prime Video.

TRON: Legacy

Helmed by Top Gun: Maverick director Jospeh Kosinski, Tron: Legacy is such a well-realized visual feast that you don’t even need the audio track to just sit back and gawk at its linear, mind-of-a-computer setting. That’d be a shame, of course, because Disney’s 2010 sequel to the original 1982 Tron features a completely bespoke soundtrack from digital auteurs Daft Punk that matches its dark-edged science fiction trappings better than any other genre movie we can name. The story lives up to the Legacy designation, too, returning Jeff Bridges to his original Tron role in a tale that puts father and son on a years-in-the-making collision course with family destiny. — Tron: Legacy is streaming on Disney+.

Monsters

Monsters is the film that showed what director Gareth Edwards could do with a shoestring sci-fi budget years before Disney handed him the pricey keys to the Death Star in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Laced with a familiar sense of desperation as a man and woman try to outrace an uncontained alien infestation across the U.S.-Mexico border, Monsters lives up to its name with effectively terrifying tentacled freaks who hide a weakness that, once discovered, lands with the same satisfying feel that animates the climax of fellow us-against-aliens flicks like M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs. Balancing horror with more sci-fi sights than most indie-scaled movies can claim, Monsters throws a ton of fresh twists into the milieu of same-y survival stories that pair unlikely adventurers on a shared trek through the worst of an impending apocalypse. — Monsters is streaming on Hulu.

Star Trek Beyond

The new-look crew of the Enterprise found its firmest footing yet in 2016’s Star Trek Beyond, a film that smartly plucked Starfleet’s finest out of the heavens and set them down on solid alien terra firma for a thrilling face-to-face fight against a slithery alien species. Idris Elba did the reptilian honors as the snaky homeworld’s dictator, augmenting a stacked Star Trek cast that seemed to signal a bright franchise future for Enterprise mainstays Chris Pine (Cpt. Kirk), Zachary Quinto (Spock), Zoe Saldaña (Uhura), Karl Urban (Leonard McCoy), co-writer Simon Pegg (Montgomery Scott), and the late Anton Yelchin (Chekov) in one of his final big-screen roles. This is your go-to movie when it’s time to convince that reluctant Star Trek watcher in your life (and don’t we all know at least one?) who grouses that the franchise should be less talk and more action. — Star Trek Beyond is streaming on Paramount+.

The Terminator

This one’s a no-brainer: James Cameron’s first foray into humanity’s Skynet-orchestrated downfall is must-see viewing (or re-viewing) anytime it pops up on the small screen. Linda Hamilton brings an entire army’s worth of grit and determination to a prophetically apocalyptic story of averting robot-dominated doom by tweaking the technologically-advancing timeline, all while staying one survivalist step ahead of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s murderously relentless cyborg assassin. The Terminator is a veritable origin story not only for its own franchise, but for an entire strain of sleekly dystopian sci-fi movies that’ve followed from its 1984 release. With literally killer performances from Hamilton and Ah-nold, plus a heart-racing Cameron story that never gets old, it's one of the easiest movie history lessons you’ll ever sit down to. — The Terminator is streaming at HBO Max.

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