The two standout science-fiction films of 2025

Some ideas are so compelling and so intuitive that they can be recycled rather than taken apart for research. So, in 1950, Isaac Asimov compiled several puzzle stories into Agatha Christie's violent science fiction novel in space. I, Robot, and in 1968 the film by Stanley Kubrick 2001: A Space Odyssey set the bar high for films about (or at least containing) artificial intelligence. There, in terms of ideas, the history of robots in cinema begins to repeat itself in an endless cycle.

This year, Electric State spun a tall tale about a robot uprising, M3gun 2.0 showed that it is impossible to contain a good killer robot and Companion took the femmebot's point of view to give us a worthy Asimov pastiche with adult themes.

All three played with conventional notions of free will and wrung their hands over when to treat a machine like a person. I suspect Gerard Johnston M3gun 2.0 it was the most fun to work with because 2023 nanny robot with rubber bones returns from the dead (well, backup drive) to save the world from her killer big sister Am3lia. The script is a mess, but the jokes, genre references and jump scares are justification enough.

Drew Hancock Companionabout the clueless femmebot discovering his true nature, it looked like he wanted to strike a little deeper, only to lose his composure. Nine months after my reviewall I remember is the wonderful meat head cameo from Rupert Friend.

Anthony and Joe Russo Electric State received widespread acclaim, not least because the duo's make-it-as-you-go style was painfully at odds with the elegiac work of art on which their film was based. Fans of Simon Stålenhag's illustrated novel are gnashing their teeth; everyone else sat for 2 hours waiting for something to live up to the film's lavish visuals. Electric State was so superior in world-building and set design that you're surprised the creators didn't build a theme park instead—that would have been a more artistically sound use of its staggering $320 million budget.

Bong Joon Ho Mickey 17 promised something different: a scenario in which space traveler Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson) would be reduced to robotic slavery for the sake of being reprintable. And there was something here that the director believed Parasite, Okja And Snow piercing could sink his satirical fangs. Alas, the film never believed its audience, and choked on his own words.

Sci-fi movie directors have always been able to come up with exciting aliens: think Solaris, Arrival, Destruction, Under the Skin… So 2025's predilection for monsters and satanic possession is less a sign of exhaustion and more a sign that the horror genre has invaded to play in its cousin's backyard.

Director Scott Derrickson's Hellish Hollow Men take a long time to emerge from Gorgewhich weakened this intriguing part Cold War romance, part spy thriller, part Lovecraftian horror film. With Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy playing elite snipers from various world powers guarding a vast ravine in an unknown land, we're primed for a 40-plus minute prologue.

Hugo Keyser Occupant was far more successful as Abby (Ella Balinska) struggles through the remote wilds of Georgia, aided by a disembodied voice that, whether human assistant or alien possessor, embodies our hero's own guilt and grief.

We're in more solid genre territory with Ashdirector Los Angeles musician Flying Lotus is one of those rare experiments that truly represents a full-length music video, and all the more dazzling and dizzying for it. Ria (Eiza Gonzalez) wakes up with amnesia on a space station full of bodies. Bryon (Aaron Paul) comes to her aid, but is he what he seems? She? And why does the onboard AI warn about an unusual life form on the station? Again, familiar territory, but a welcome excursion.

It's no surprise that of this year's two standout projects, neither had a particularly huge budget. Taking the risk of attracting a huge audience may be a ploy by Stanley Kubrick and others. took him to the grave.

Serpil Altin's One day in the future: 2121 follows a family deciding whether to push away their elders to comply with the “laws of scarcity” of their ridiculously overzealous administration. Meanwhile Joshua Oppenheimer End This musical about a family deciding whether to execute an unexpected guest, a choice they may have faced many times before.

These two, with Occupantchallenge the idea that science fiction stories have to be original. Science fiction is fantasy; Fiction is about people, and even in familiar destinies, people are infinitely diverse.