A lot of the lofty sci-fi movie classics aren’t very rewatchable, but some of the genre’s greatest entries – like Star Wars, Back to the Future, and Jurassic Park – hold up to countless repeat viewings. 2001: A Space Odyssey is a breathtaking piece of cinema pondering the biggest questions about humanity’s existence, and Blade Runner is a powerful futuristic noir about what constitutes a person. But they both move at such a slow pace, and deal with such heavy philosophical subject matter, that no one is champing at the bit to rewatch them on movie night.

From Solaris to Silent Running, most of the greatest science fiction movies ever made don’t warrant a ton of rewatches. But that’s not a hard-and-fast rule across the entire genre. There are some sci-fi movies that hold up to endless repeat viewings. Mad Max: Fury Road deals with contemplative themes like survival, redemption, and vengeance, but it’s essentially a feature-length car chase. Everything Everywhere All at Once swept the Academy Awards, so it might sound like a stuffy arthouse flick, but it has kung fu, a parody of Ratatouille, and a parallel universe where people have hot dog fingers.

10

Mad Max: Fury Road

George Miller had already made three rollicking, action-packed Mad Max movies before he returned to the wasteland and blew the original trilogy out of the water with Mad Max: Fury Road. Fury Road has a mercifully simplistic plot: badass Furiosa liberates the wives of post-apocalyptic tyrant Immortan Joe and goes on the lam with Joe’s forces hot on their tail. Max, now played by Tom Hardy, gets unwittingly swept along for the ride.

This plot gets set up nice and succinctly to get into the action as quickly as possible. Once Max, Furiosa, and Joe’s liberated wives are on the road and being pursued by Joe’s convoy, Fury Road becomes a feature-length car chase featuring some of the most impressive vehicular stunts ever put on film. There’s no limit to the number of viewings Fury Road can sustain.

9

Aliens

Ridley Scott’s original Alien movie is both one of the greatest science fiction movies and one of the greatest horror movies ever made, but it’s a slow burn. Scott takes his time to introduce the crew of the Nostromo and the threat of the xenomorph before the chestburster kicks off the haunted-house-in-space action. This makes for a powerful cinematic experience on the first viewing, but it also means that it takes a while to get going on a rewatch.

With the first sequel, Aliens, James Cameron went the other way and delivered one of the most explosive, action-packed movies ever made. The first half of Aliens gets Ellen Ripley down to the surface of a xenomorph-infested human colony with a band of space marines. The second half is an all-out action extravaganza pitting the marines against dozens of bloodthirsty aliens.

8

Everything Everywhere All At Once

The kind of movies that usually sweep the Academy Awards are slow, quiet, somber, and not particularly interested in being entertaining. But Everything Everywhere All at Once – which won seven Oscars, including Best Picture – is anything but. It is a touching, character-focused drama about a mother struggling to connect with her disillusioned daughter, but that beautiful mother-daughter story is wrapped up in an action-packed interdimensional epic in which the entire multiverse is at stake.

Everything Everywhere All at Once is an appropriate title for a movie that manages to be a fast-paced action movie, a visually stunning sci-fi movie, a zany slapstick comedy, and a sobering family drama all rolled into one. The Wang family’s story would be just as moving without all the hybrid-genre mayhem. But all the parallel universes and martial arts choreography make it an endlessly rewatchable movie.

7

Galaxy Quest

Galaxy Quest is such a spot-on parody of the Star Trek franchise that it’s often ranked as a better Star Trek movie than most of the official Star Trek movies. It has an ingeniously meta premise: the washed-up cast of an old sci-fi show is recruited for a real-life intergalactic battle by real-life aliens who mistook episodes of their series for historical records. Director Dean Parisot gets every possible laugh out of that brilliant premise.

With the satire of Galaxy Quest, Parisot managed to have the best of both worlds. He ruthlessly spoofs Star Trek and its fans, but it’s ultimately an affectionate love letter to Gene Roddenberry’s legacy and the power of the fandom he inspired. Like all the best comedies, Galaxy Quest is so funny and so quotable and so hilariously acted that it’s infinitely rewatchable.

6

Predator

Predator has absolutely no reason to be as great as it is. The story grew out of a Hollywood inside joke that Rocky Balboa would run out of opponents on Earth and have to fight an alien. Its entire premise revolves around oiled-up, muscle-bound men going into the jungle and firing machine guns at an invisible alien. At the very best, Predator should be an affable B-movie. But somehow, John McTiernan turned it into a bona fide masterpiece.

By pitting Arnold Schwarzenegger against a deadly alien creature, McTiernan told the ultimate man-conquers-beast story. Predator deals with themes of masculinity, militarism, and just how outmatched humanity might be when alien life finally arrives. But it’s also a big, loud, bombastic ‘80s action movie with a burst of gunfire or a giant explosion every couple of minutes.

5

WALL-E

Much like Stanley Kubrick, when Pixar takes a stab at a genre, they end up making one of the all-time greats. The Incredibles is one of the best superhero movies, Up is one of the best adventure movies, and WALL-E is one of the best science fiction movies. With its dazzling futuristic imagery, deeply cinematic visual storytelling, and the heartwarming romance between WALL-E and fellow robot-with-a-heart-of-gold EVE, WALL-E holds up to endless rewatches.

The only thing that makes WALL-E wobble slightly on a rewatch is that its depiction of an uninhabitable, trash-filled Earth gets more and more depressingly accurate with every viewing. WALL-E was way ahead of its time in criticizing humanity’s callous treatment of the environment. Fortunately, the love story is beautiful enough to distract from the mirror being held up to climate change.

4

The Matrix

The Wachowskis made audiences across the world question their reality with their sci-fi action masterpiece The Matrix. The movie suggests that reality is just a computer program being run by the robotic overlords using human beings as batteries. There’s a lot of exposition to get out of the way in the first act of The Matrix – who Morpheus is, how the Matrix works, what the machines are doing in the real world, etc. – but once it gets all that stuff out of the way, it’s a non-stop thrill-ride.

The Matrix is full of beautifully directed action sequences like the lobby shootout, the helicopter crash, and the final foot chase. The story in between the action scenes is masterfully crafted, too. From his humble beginnings as Thomas Anderson to his triumphant climactic transformation into “The One,” Neo’s journey lands on every viewing.

3

Star Wars

George Lucas changed the face of the film industry forever with his game-changing space opera Star Wars. Ever since Star Wars had audiences lining up around the block to watch it a 10th time, Hollywood studios have been acquiring nerdy I.P. and following Joseph Campbell’s “hero’s journey” religiously in an attempt to replicate that success. Lucas transported audiences to a galaxy far, far away and pulled off the cinematic magic trick of pure escapism.

Although it was burdened with introducing its audience to a whole new fictional universe, Star Wars moves at an agreeably zippy pace. It opens with a massive space battle and remains that exciting for the rest of its runtime. From the Millennium Falcon shootout to the explosion of the Death Star, Star Wars is full of set-pieces that never get old.

2

Jurassic Park

Steven Spielberg combined the monster-movie thrills of Jaws with the thought-provoking sci-fi themes of Close Encounters for his big-screen adaptation of Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park. Jurassic Park deals with the same complex themes as Frankenstein – the hubris of man, the dangers of playing God, the uncontrollability of nature – but with a theme park full of live dinosaurs. Spielberg and his team used groundbreaking visual effects to bring dinosaurs back to life.

Jurassic Park is full of great action sequences with razor-sharp tension and timeless effects. From the T. rex’s escape to the raptors’ attack in the kitchen, Jurassic Park is jam-packed with set-pieces that never fail to thrill the audience, no matter how many times they’ve seen the movie. Even the exposition in Jurassic Park is rewatchable, thanks to a little animated character named Mr. DNA.

1

Back To The Future

Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale’s Back to the Future script should be studied in every screenwriting class, because it’s airtight. Not only does it tell an engaging story about a time-traveling teenager trying to get his parents together to ensure his own existence; it’s a masterclass in the plant-and-payoff technique. Every single scene progresses the plot; every single line in the first act sets something up that comes back later.

The pacing doesn’t dip for a second, all the gags in Zemeckis and Gale’s script get a laugh every time, and the catharsis of Marty McFly finally getting back to 1985 after all the hurdles he’s had to overcome always lands. Plus, Michael J. Fox’s endearing on-screen chemistry with Christopher Lloyd as Marty and Doc Brown is endlessly watchable. Back to the Future is basically a perfect movie.