20 Best Sci-fi Movies from the 2000s You Have to Watch (Again)
Due to the continued advancement of technology, the year 2000s was a fascinating decade for the Sci-Fi genre. The decade provided movies the possibility of taking greater risks and trying new things that were not quite plausible a period earlier. Revisit those years with the best movies Sci-Fi has to offer.
Sunshine (2007)
Disappeared without a trace, the space-ship Icarus I failed to kick-start the Earth’s dying sun. In another desperate attempt to revive the sun, Icarus II carries the last nuclear super-bomb on a mission to try once more.
The success of the mission now seems uncertain because of a navigational oversight. With significant damage to their ship, a return trip was no longer an option.
The crew plots a course for Mercury after picking up an emergency signal from the Icarus I thinking they could put their bomb to good use. The trip came at a high cost due to a surprise they found onboard the lost ship.
Serenity (2005)
Serenity continues from where Firefly (2002) left off. The alliance sends their top assassin to recover the Serenity’s most valuable cargo, River Tam. This puts the ship and the crew in grave danger.
Striving to stay one step ahead for over a year, the risks are high as the lives of everyone are on the line. The killer starts to pile up bodies and will stop at nothing to get River back.
The crew must wonder though, what makes River so important?
Star Trek (2009)
Lieutenant George Kirk evacuates the USS Kelvin, including his wife and newly born son, James Kirk, and crashes the ship against a Romulan vessel. Years later the most advanced ship ever constructed, the USS Enterprise, launches its maiden voyage. Among the novice crew on board is none other than James Kirk.
The ship’s route takes them on a course with a Romulan Captain from the Future named Nero. Nero is on a mission of vengeance and threatens the entire Federation.
Together with his rival Spock, James Kirk must set aside their differences to find a way to prevent Nero from destroying the Earth.
Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith (2005)
Three years into the Clone Wars, the capital of Coruscant is attacked by General Grievous’ fleet and has kidnapped Chancellor Palpatine. The Jedi council sends Master Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker to rescue the captured Chancellor.
With the Republic nearing victory and the end of the dreadful Clone Wars, the enemy unleashes its trump card. Darth Sidious executes Order 66 and wipes out all but a handful of Jedi in the galaxy. Experience the fall of the republic, the hatred between two brothers, and the birth of the Legendary Darth Vader.
V for Vendetta (2005)
The story sets its eyes on a mild-mannered young woman named Evey in a futuristic totalitarian Britain. Evey is saved by a masked man called ‘V’ from her life situation. V, charismatic and with a great passion for Justice, has his own personal score to settle with the government.
Evey learns the truth about V and what he went through and in turn, also discovers truths about herself and both become allies in his plot. V blows up two of London’s greatest landmarks and seizes control of the government. He also urges his fellow citizens to rise up.
On the 5th of November, freedom, and justice is brought back into a society that was plagued with cruelty and corruption.
The Matrix Reloaded (2003)
With only 72 hours until Zion falls to the machines, the people of Zion prepare their defenses. Neo, Trinity, & Morpheus return to the Matrix to fight against the forces of exploitation and repression.
As their mission continued, Neo realizes more of his extraordinary powers including being able to see the codes of everything around him. As more humans wake up, the machines focus their attention on Zion, the last human city.
Emboldened with faith, purpose, and reason, Neo must follow the path he has chosen to save humanity from their dark fate.
Equilibrium (2002)
After the Third World War, the world falls under the control of the Father and the Tetragrammaton. The new government outright bans any and all forms of feelings and emotions. The people are required to take a drug called Prozium, an emotion suppressant drug.
Sense offenders, the people who do not follow the laws, wage war against the government from the underground. An elite super-soldier Cleric John Preston is tasked to hunt down the Sense Offenders with his brutal police force.
One day, Preston starts to feel again as he missed his routine Prozium dose. He soon sympathizes with the sense offenders and begins to understand how magnificent emotions are.
Now untainted by the mind-altering drug, he seeks to destroy what he spent his whole life serving.
A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)
Set in a not-so-distant future where the ice caps have melted, and the world’s coastal cities are deep underwater. Humanity continues to advance to a point where hyper-realistic robots called Mechas were created to serve.
David, a mecha built by one of the mecha-producing companies, was a synthetic child with the first to have genuine emotions. David’s most notable emotion is his undying love for his “mother” Monica. He was a substitute for Monica’s real son who suffers an incurable disease and is in cryo-statis.
One day a cure is found for Monica’s real son, and he returns home. Life takes a turn for the mecha, David.
X-Men (2000)
Being born with special abilities, mutants experience a world filled with dread, discrimination, and prejudice. With their futures on the line, the more powerful mutants will soon need to pick a side.
The telepath Professor Charles Xavier seeks a peaceful coexistence between humans and mutants. His old friend, Magneto believes in the supremacy of the mutant race and prepares for war.
Rouge and Logan aka Wolverine, Professor Xavier’s newest students, are caught in the middle of the conflict. Can Xaviers X-men stop Magneto’s war before it happens?
Signs (2002)
Graham Hess is an emotionally broken priest who lost his wife in a terrible car accident. He moves to a secluded farm in Pennsylvania with his two little children and his younger brother.
Half a year into their stay a sense of dread envelops the family when strange crop circles appear in their field and all over the world. More unexplained phenomena take hold of the family. They’d start to have feelings of grief, denials, and paranoia.
What are these circles, are they real or is someone playing tricks, might it be a sign from above, or could it be the end of the world?
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003)
John Connor now lives off the grid after the events of Terminator 2. He thinks that this kind of life will save him from any more Terminators, unfortunately, he is mistaken. Skynet sends yet another Terminator back, T-X, and is far more powerful than the previous T-1000.
However, John isn’t without his allies as another terminator was sent back to protect him against T-X. Now with Skynet about to take control, John and his future wife Kate rush to put a stop to a nuclear war.
Together with an outdated CSM-101 can they stop judgment day or does a dark future await mankind?
I, Robot (2004)
A homicide detective and technophobe Del Spooner leads an investigation on what looks to be a suicide. The victim was Dr. Alfred Lanning who works at U.S. Robotics. Spooner is not convinced with the situation due to the case’s lack of motive.
Spooner now looks deeper into Lanning’s death and finds a robot named Sonny might be involved in the case. He soon finds out that the case isn’t quite only about Lanning’s death but about a looming threat to humanity.
The Butterfly Effect (2004)
Evan Treborn has been experiencing blackouts since he was a child. Remembering absolutely nothing, he would be in one place now and then in another the next minute. Now in college, he takes it upon himself to read from his old journals to find out what happens in between.
To his astonishment, he finds himself back to a certain point in his life. He then realizes then what the blackouts were. They were empty spaces of time, time which he had to fill during his later years.
Seeing this as an ability he can use to undo certain events he goes back and attempts to fix certain things. Instead of fixing things, he instead makes them worse. Will he find a way to save the girl he loved?
The Chronicles of Riddick (2004)
Convict Richard Bruno Riddick escaped from a desert planet with two other companions five years ago. His fellow escapees were a religious man named Abu “Imam” al-Walid and a young girl named Jack. Riddick spent his years on the run from bounty hunters and wandered across the galaxy.
The wanted man now finds himself in the middle of a major crusade between two enemy factions. Led by the undead Lord Marshal, the Necromongers aim to cleanse the galaxy of all humanity. This leads the Elemental ambassador Aereon to seek warriors called Furians to balance out the war.
Aereon believes that Riddick is a Furian warrior and the only one who can put a stop to Lord Marshal. She then proceeds to hire Riddick in the hopes that the rest of humanity doesn’t turn into Necromonger warriors.
The Island (2005)
The setting finds itself with a group of slaves in a dystopian future. Not all is lost as a lottery is held regularly with the winner being moved out of the facility and into paradise, The Island.
One of the workers in the facility named Lincoln Six Echo is deeply in love with worker Jordan Two Delta. Life in the facility was rather uneventful for him until Jordan Two Delta wins the lottery and is sent to the Island.
From then on Lincoln Two Echo begins to unravel the reality that is the facility and The Island.
Transformers (2007)
Teenage student Sam Witwicky gets the opportunity to buy his very first car. To his surprise, his car is actually the Autobot Bumblebee. Attacked by Barricade, a Decepticon and mortal enemy of the Autobots, Bumblebee defends Sam and his girlfriend Mikaela.
Searching for the Allspark, the Autobots finally arrive on earth led by Optimus Prime. Unfortunately, the Decepticons led by Megatron, are also after the Allspark. Tensions heat up as the enemy starts their attack on a United States Military installation.
Sector 7 takes in Sam and Mikaela in hopes they might help stop the Decepticons. To their dismay, they learned that the agency doesn’t only want to destroy the Decepticons but the Autobots as well. Sam and Mikaela now devise their own plan.
War of the Worlds (2005)
A contemporary retelling of the classic by H.G. Wells. Dockworker Ray Ferrier gets a chance at a rare weekend visit from his children. Divorced, disillusioned, and estranged from his teenage son, he’s a less-than-perfect father.
On the day of the visit, a bizarre and powerful lightning storm makes landfall. What comes next is what no one on Earth ever hoped for and expected. See how mankind battles for its very existence through the eyes of an American family.
The Matrix Revolutions (2003)
The world has fallen on even darker times in this third and final installment of the Matrix series. Neo is currently trapped between the real world and the Matrix. With war on the looming horizon, the people of Zion make preparations.
Finally, the machines bore their way through, and the battle of Zion ensues. All the while Neo’s companions strive to free him from the Merovingian. As the prophecy states, he will be the one to bring the war between humans and machines to an end.
Little did they know that there is an even bigger threat, one that’s out for both mankind and the machines.
District 9 (2009)
A gigantic starship nicknamed “The Prawns” carrying alien refugees appeared in South Africa over Johannesburg in 1982. After a span of 28 years, the human’s welcoming demeanor has all but faded.
District 9, as the refugee camp is now called, has deteriorated into a squalor-filled militarized ghetto. Multi National United, a munitions corporation, has been employed to remove the populace by force.
Leading the effort is the operative Wikus van der Merwe. During the operation, Wikus gets exposed to an unknown alien chemical that fuses human and Prawn DNA. Wikus must now rely on the help of his two new Prawn friends.
Avatar (2009)
Paraplegic Marine Jake Sully decides to go in his deceased brother’s stead on a mission to the faraway world of Pandora. The planet of Pandora is home to the native humanoids the “Na’vi”, a primitive but highly evolved race.
Pandora is a beautiful world, but the environment is poisonous to humans. Avatars, which are human/Na’vi hybrids are used to traverse the inhospitable environment through mind linking.
Corporate figurehead Parker Selfridge intends to drive off the natives. He contracts Jake Sully to infiltrate the natives in exchange for spinal surgery. As Jake gathers information about the natives, he meets and falls in love with a Na’vi woman named Neytiri.
Growing impatient, the humans launch their assault on the natives causing devastating casualties. Having already chosen a side, Jake Sully together with the Na’vi head into battle for the survival of their world.
