12 Sci-Fi Movies to Help You Escape Reality This Year

As a gross understatement, we’ll just say that 2020 was not our year—for anything. Like most industries, film took a superhuman hit. Closing movie theaters meant major studios would have to find ways to cut losses, which meant delays and expensive streaming options. (We love Christopher Nolan and we believe in his save-the-movies mission, but we’re not paying $20 to watch a film on our laptops.)

Sci-fi films felt especially vulnerable as they’re often one of two categories—massive investments for studios (and so requiring theatrical releases to make up for production costs) or small independent films (also requiring theatrical release to make any sort of profit). And then there were just a few misfires. Sci-fi films we thought might steal the summer (Tenet) and winter (The Midnight Sky) short-circuited.

But the genre wasn’t completely dormant. We got a welcomingly strange, technicolor treat with Color Out of Space, a wonderful surprise hit with Amazon’s The Vast of Night, and some great horror-sci fi with The Invisible Man.

And 2021 promises to deliver the big one, the film we’ve been hyping and anticipating for over a year: Dune. While, we have some qualms in classifying Dune as “sci-fi," it’s hard not to recognize Frank Herbert’s massive contribution to the genre. Warner Brothers says Dune will happen in October and we hope they’re not using some kind of Bene Gesserit mind trick on us.

Here’s Dune and every other sci-fi film to look forward to in 2021.

Memory loss. Romance. It's a concept similar to the best sci-fi love story of all time, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and features two equally outstanding actors. Worth a watch.

Chaos has been walking for over a year trying to find a release date. Hopefully, we'll finally get to see this Tom Holland dystopia world where there exists no women. Spoiler: Daisy Ridley is on the poster.

Come True looks to find sci-fi horror in the topic of sleep and dreams. Here's hoping it proves to be the sort of psychological thriller the concept calls for.

Jared Leto stars in this biochemical monster movie that could just be really dumb or really great and probably nothing in between.

We'll watch anything Edgar Wright touches. This round, The Baby Driver and Sean of the Dead director is doing time traveling horror. Put this one on your list, for sure.

The post apocalyptic/horror/thriller franchise directed by John Krasinski should be exciting also to sci-fi fans. Call it gritty, naturalistic sci-fi.

Ryan Reynald's discovers he's actually an NPC inside a video game. It has all the trappings of another meta Ryan Reynald's performance and—who are we kidding?—just take our money now.

Zone 414 looks to be the first feature-length film for director Andrew Baird and could prove to be 2021's sleeper sci-fi hit.

Infinite—where hallucinations turn out to be flashes of past lives—has the making of an Inception-like sci-fi psych thriller. The bar is set high, however.

With a time traveling, world-saving storyline reminiscent of Edge of Tomorrow, this film will hopefully give us a smart summer blockbuster.

Every space opera/epic since Frank Herbert's Dune is only a shadow. While the novel borrows more from fantasy and myth, it has come to be known as a sci-fi classic, influencing almost everything set on another world. Director Denis Villeneuve looks poised to finally enact a faithful adaptation.

There is probably no larger or more influential modern sci-fi film franchise than the Wachowski's The Matrix. How many years since that last last Matrix movie? Eighteen. Damn. Thankfully, the bar after Revolutions isn't too high.