It’s time to get tactical, as we’re taking a look at the more bombastic side of sci-fi this time with our rundown of the ten best sci-fi action movies of all time (according to us, opinions may vary, etc, etc).
Sci-fi is the perfect setting for some bombastic action, as it allows filmmakers to lean into the impossible, crafting scenarios and set-pieces that wouldn’t be possible in a movie set in the modern day. You can’t just CGI in some aliens getting blown up and call it a day, though — it’s all about the stakes, the tension, and the execution.
10. Starship Troopers
Release date: November 7, 1997 | Cast: Casper Van Dien, Denise Richards, Dina Meyer, Neil Patrick Harris | Director: Paul Verhoeven | Rotten Tomatoes: 72% critics / 70% audience
An interstellar war with a race of giant bugs that want to wipe out humanity? Oh, you better believe we want to know more. Starship Troopers sees the soldiers of the United Citizen Federation head to distant planets to destroy the gnarly-looking and incredibly vicious Arachnids and an even more upsetting Brain Bug (that I still can’t get out of my head).
A controversial release in 1997, in part due to its violence, it’s now considered a cult classic, popularized for its satirical view on militarism. And it was director Verhoeven who led the charge, famously behind other sci-fi classics of the 80s/90s, like RoboCop and Total Recall (which we’ll get into later on). No stranger to action, Verhoeven brought to life the book of the same name with a barrage of bug-blasting escapades in the 23rd century.
The result was a bombastic action movie with a dark sense of humour. It’s packed with glorious one-liners, enormous battles, and — of course — Verhoeven’s signature piece: a gratuitous shower scene to pump up the nudity. Hey, the man knows what he likes. The CGI and special effects hold up to this day, and even three decades on, nothing has really captured the awe-inspiring sense of scale that Starship Troopers managed.
9. Avatar
Release date: December 18, 2009 | Cast: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang | Director: James Cameron | Rotten Tomatoes: 81% critics / 82% audience
Maybe a controversial choice here, but the numbers don’t lie. Avatar is famously the highest-grossing film ever, and the sequel, Avatar: The Way of Water, joins it in the top three. With Avatar: Fire and Ash on the way and looking to repeat that success, it’s clear that people love James Cameron’s blue sci-fi extravaganza.
With award-winning effects powered by ground-breaking 3D technology, the action scenes across the world of Pandora are epic. Whether it’s Jake Sully and co flying in on their Ikran across vibrant landscapes, or the explosive N’avi versus Machine battles — where our lanky blue humanoids face off against the military descending on their sacred land — Avatar is always a feast for the eyes.
It’s not just a pretty face, though; Avatar puts in the groundwork to make you care about its characters and stakes through excellent world-building and masterful pacing that you’d expect from a director of James Cameron’s caliber, so by the time the bullets start flying, you’re truly invested in the outcome.
8. Akira
Release date: July 16, 1988 | Cast: Mitsuo Iwata, Nozomu Sasaki, Mami Koyama, Taro Ishida | Director: Katsuhiro Otomo | Rotten Tomatoes: 91% critics / 90% audience
A little more leftfield for sci-fi action is the animated cult hit Akira. Biker gang leader Shōtarō Kaneda finds himself trying to help his childhood friend Tetsuo, who gets twisted up in a secret government project and acquires some… unusual abilities.
The only animated movie on our list, it depicts a 2019 Neo-Tokyo, wildly dreamt up from the 1988 release date. History has proven this future wrong (for now), but that doesn’t make it any less compelling. There’s rival gang violence, anti-government protests, and dangerous resistance movements that Kaneda finds himself embroiled in.
The vibrant animations, thanks in part to the neon lights of a futuristic Tokyo, are the perfect backdrop to the fight scenes, and the energetic motorbike chases are the stuff of legends. Akira had a huge impact on the world’s view of anime and still brings relevance and inspiration over 30 years on.
7. The Fifth Element
Release date: May 7, 1997 | Cast: Bruce Willis, Milla Jovovich, Gary Oldman, Chris Tucker | Director: Luc Besson | Rotten Tomatoes: 71% critics / 87% audience
Bruce Willis fronts this bizarre and brilliant epic from director Luc Besson (yes, the guy who did Léon: The Professional). Willis plays Korben Dallas, a soldier-turned-cab driver who finds himself an integral part of a world-saving mission when the superhuman Leeloo (Milla Jovovich) drops from the heavens into his cab.
The Fifth Element has such a fantastic sense of style, with gorgeous sci-fi vistas, wacky rubber-faced aliens, and an iconic scenery-chewing bad guy in Gary Oldman’s Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg. And who can forget Chris Tucker’s “hot, hot, HOT” performance as Ruby Rhod. And then on top of all of that, we’ve got the top-notch action scenes that you’d expect from a ’90s Bruce Willis flick.
It’s over-the-top and kooky sci-fi, but if you’re into that — and we most certainly are — you’ll have a thoroughly enjoyable watch from start to finish. They really did make this one… perfect.
6. Inception
Release date: July 16, 2010 | Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Marion Cotillard, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tom Hardy | Director: Christopher Nolan | Rotten Tomatoes: 87% critics / 91% audience
In the midst of the Dark Knight trilogy, director Christopher Nolan also took on a mind-bending endeavour that had viewers questioning their grounding in reality. Inception sees Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) form a team to infiltrate a CEO’s mind via dream-sharing technology, only for Cobb’s own complicated history to threaten the team’s survival.
It’s on a slower burn than the other movies on our list, but there’s plenty of mind-bending, physics-defying action throughout Inception; most notably the hotel fight, which sees multiple layers of the dream world converging together as people are “kicked” back into reality. It’s a wonderful crescendo of visual effects, action, and stakes, and the iconic, ambiguous ending is just the cherry on top of this Nolan classic.
5. Total Recall
Release date: June 1, 1990 | Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sharon Stone, Michael Ironside | Director: Paul Verhoeven | Rotten Tomatoes: 81% critics, 79% audience
Another of Verhoeven’s sci-fi successes and one of my favourite sci-fi movies of all time, Total Recall (the original, not the remake) is a slice of sci-fi action gold. It uses an excellent blend of practical effects and CGI to deliver a movie that feels of its time, sure, but also pulpy and real in a way that movies seem to have forgotten.
Arnold Schwarzenegger is Douglas Quaid, an ordinary man who signs up for a virtual vacation via an implanted memory of an adventure on Mars. Things quickly unravel when it turns out that Quaid has already been to Mars, and he quickly ends up embroiled in a manhunt that sends him back to the red planet.
Schwarzenegger delivers his trademark late 80s action and some truly iconic one-liners as Quaid uncovers a corporate conspiracy and battles against an array of villains, including his fake wife. Even 35 years on, it’s an effortlessly enjoyable sci-fi action flick that others have topped. As Schwarzenegger himself put it: “Get your ass to Mars”.
4. Edge of Tomorrow
Release date: June 6, 2014 | Cast: Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt, Bill Paxton, Brendan Gleeson | Director: Doug Liman | Rotten Tomatoes: 91% critics / 90% audience
As the face of the Mission Impossible series, Tom Cruise is no stranger to the action genre, but he’s also a dab hand at sci-fi with hits like Minority Report and, our favorite, Edge of Tomorrow.
As Major William Cage, Cruise plays an army public relations officer who finds himself up on the frontlines of war for humanity’s survival against a vicious race of invading aliens known as ‘Mimics’. Cage dies only to discover that he’s now stuck in a time loop that throws him back to before the battle starts.
Fortunately, he doesn’t have to do all this alone, and he’s joined by legendary warrior Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt), who was previously stuck in the same time loop. It’s basically the sci-fi action version of Groundhog Day, and the time loop allows for Cruise’s character to grow even as the world around him repeats. Each loop, Cage learns a little bit more and gets a little bit closer to his goal. All he has to do is live, die, repeat.
3. Terminator 2: Judgment Day
Release date: July 3, 1991 | Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Robert Patrick | Director: James Cameron | Rotten Tomatoes: 91% critics / 95% audience
Oh, you can already hear that theme music, can’t you? Dundun Dun Dundun! Terminator 2: Judgment Day is arguably the best sci-fi sequel of all time (we’ll get to the other contender to that throne in a second). Set about 10 years after the original, Terminator 2: Judgment Day sees the return of Arnie as a T-800, but this time around, he’s a reformed Terminator set on a mission to protect John Connor.
Unsurprisingly, that mission leads to a plethora of bombastic action scenes as they battle against the shape-shifting T-1000 (Robert Patrick). Terminator 2 has it all, with choreographed punch-ups and intense shootouts proving that Schwarzenegger really was the king of 80s action movies. And who could forget that chase scene down the canal?
Beyond all that, though, Terminator 2: Judgment Day understands when to slow things down. It’s paced to perfection, with the final face-off between the two Terminators becoming a game of cat and mouse that echoes the ending of the original (albeit a lot hotter). It gets a slowly descending thumbs up from us.
Related: Terminator movies ranked
2. The Matrix
Release date: March 31, 1999 | Cast: Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, Laurence Fishburne, Hugo Weaving | Director: Lily & Lana Wachowski | Rotten Tomatoes: 83% critics / 85% audience
We may not know kung-fu, but we do know that The Matrix is one of the best sci-fi movies of all time. The story follows Neo (Keanu Reeves), a hacker who discovers that the world is not as it seems, leading him down the rabbit hole and into the Matrix.
What follows is one of the slickest, most stylish, and most late 90s-coded action movies of all time. It’s a masterful blend of impeccable, choreographed martial arts, slow-motion bullet time gunfights, and physics-defying stunts. Joined by Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) and Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), the trio battles against the sinister machine forces, led by Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving), as they battle for survival and try to figure out if Neo is The One.
The visual effects, acting, choreography, and story are all just… perfect, and with the unique directorial style of the Wachowski sisters thrown into the mix, we ended up with one of the greatest action movies of all time.
1. Aliens
Release date: July 18, 1986 | Cast: Sigourney Weaver, Michael Biehn, Carrie Henn, Paul Reiser | Director: James Cameron | Rotten Tomatoes: 94% critics / 94% audience
It had to be. Much like Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Aliens is the other contender to the best sequel ever throne, and another rare sequel that is arguably better than the original (though that one’s hotly debated).
Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) returns decades after surviving the deadly incident on the Nostromo, trying to lead a normal life and forget about her extraterrestrial encounter. But, when a colony on LV-426 — the planet Ripley first found the xenomorph on — goes dark, she gets roped into joining a crack team of marines to mount a rescue mission.
That spicy little “s” on the end of the title tells you everything you need to know about this sci-fi action masterpiece. It’s not one alien this time; it’s a whole nest of them, complete with a hulking great queen. The marines’ macho facade quickly fades as they’re turned into an alien all-you-can-eat buffet cart, slowly being picked off despite their “state of the badass art” firepower.
The action is more claustrophobic than most entries on this list. It’s less grand battles and more frantically firing pulse rifles down dark corridors, the muzzle flashes illuminating the increasingly terrified faces, the iconic pulse rifle sound mixing in the air with the screeches of dying xenomorphs. Add the epic soundtrack to that cacophony, and you get — in our humble opinion — the best sci-fi action movie of all time.
We could say more, but they ain’t paying us by the hour, so saddle up and go watch Aliens. You won’t regret it.
