5 Best Sci-Fi Movies Ever Made, According To IMDb

If you're struggling for a movie recommendation, the best place to go besides BGR's many movie lists is IMDb. The site's top 250 are films selected by fans, with a wild variety of top-tier films to populate your queue. Every genre gets a shot at the title, but in regard to sci-fi movies, the five that are at the better end of the specially chosen are diamond-cut classics that you're likely to have seen at least once. From sequels to standalone entries (or what we'd at least wish would stand alone), they're all ones worth checking off your list. If not, well, let's plead our case for why that needs to be rectified.

The top five sci-fi movies have it all. There are unstoppable killing machines, heated family altercations that take a drastic turn, and reality-breaking battles between man and machine. Some of these films are absolute dreams and deserve all the praise they've received since they blessed the big screen, and will continue to do so for years to come.

We're not going to waste another second, though; instead, we're going to let the countdown commence, and to begin we're going to kick things off with a blockbuster filmmaker's greatest achievement that doesn't involve pony-tailed smurfs. This one is heavily armed and dangerous, and was headlined by a legendary Hollywood star in their prime. 

After James Cameron's nightmare came to life in 1984, the director dared to give us a second battle between man and machine, arguably delivering one of the greatest sequels ever made. Released in 1991, Cameron somehow took the formula he'd concocted for "The Terminator" and sat on it for seven years (an unthinkable wait by today's standards) to perfect it in "Terminator 2: Judgment Day". The trick was transforming Arnie's metallic murder machine into a force for good, leaving space for a villain even more terrifying than Arnold Schwarzenegger, courtesy of Robert Patrick's dead-eyed T-1000.

At number 28 in IMDb's top 250, what makes "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" worthy of such a high spot? Well, how long have you got? Once again expanding the time-traveling world introduced in "The Terminator," "Judgment Day" raises the stakes by making a young John Connor (Edward Furlong) the target while a mentally scarred Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton in a transformative role) is imprisoned and unable to protect him.

Thankfully, Arnie's T-800 busts her out and does everything he's programmed to do to keep John safe from Patrick's assassin, which was a CGI marvel. Phasing through doors and literally pretending to be a floor at one point, this groundbreaking liquid-metal boogeyman squares off against Arnie in a chase that runs on bullets, bikes, and big trucks. Even with the billions earned from his "Avatar" series, "T2" still feels like Cameron's greatest achievement.

There are three films from director Christopher Nolan that are ranked in IMDb's 250, and while it might only be at number 17, "Interstellar" is considered by many as his best work, and there's plenty in his space-traveling epic to back that up. Matthew McConaughey is daring astronaut Cooper, who's on a voyage to save our planet before time runs out.

Unfortunately, time is the very thing Nolan loves to play with most, making the jaw-dropping journey into the stars all the more intense. Then there's the added support from the likes of Jessica Chastain, Anne Hathaway, a young Timothée Chalamet, and Matt Damon, who's a surprise backstabbing astronaut who gets just what he deserves.

Even after all this time, "Interstellar" still raises hairs with its massive scope and set pieces that suck the air right out of you. With the clock ticking and the future of humanity being anything from 'alright, alright, alright,' Nolan's "Interstellar" does what some of the greats do by balancing the awe and tension in a perfect balance before it all falls into a black hole. Add Hans Zimmer's score flooding the whole movie, and it's clear Nolan has truly contributed to the genre with one of the greatest sci-fi films ever made.

Just like Hollywood tried desperately to replicate George Lucas' up-and-coming franchise back in the '70s and '80s, so too did a handful of daring directors try to ride off the coattails of the Wachowskis and what's arguably the most groundbreaking sci-fi action movie of the '90s. In "The Matrix," Keanu Reeves isn't a farmboy, but an office drone, who has his eyes opened by strangers in long coats that tell him the world he's living in is a charade, hiding a far more sinister secret that he'll struggle to comprehend.

Thankfully, with the help of Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) and Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss), Neo (Reeves) figures out that he doesn't always have to outrun Hugo Weaving's sinister Agent Smith and that spoons aren't all they appear to be. There was, of course, far more to "The Matrix" (which is 16 in the top 250) than slow-motion shootouts and gravity-defying dust-ups.

Neo's escape from the world of ones and zeros is a break from conformity. To fight for identity and defy the rule of law if necessary. It was also stupidly cool watching Reeves spaaring with Fishburne and making us reconsider if that really was the air we're breathing. The legacy of the movie might've dwindled thanks to the franchise's fumbles in the years that followed, but there's no question that when it comes to "The Matrix" franchise, chapter one rewrote cinema, and all it needed was a red pill to get the job done.

With nine films and a batch of shows now part of the "Star Wars" universe, there's perhaps more debate than ever as to just what is the strongest chapter from a galaxy far, far away. Well, at number 15 on IMDb's top 250, "The Empire Strikes Back" stands as the leader of the pack, and perhaps one of the greatest movie sequels of all time.

After Lucas handed over directing duties to Irvin Kershner, the tone of this eye-opening space opera significantly shifted from what fans were used to with "Star Wars." "Empire" ventured into far darker territory, and in doing so, set a blueprint which so many other franchises would follow in the decades to come.

There's still so much to enjoy from this 1980 game-changer. It's in the romance blooming between Han (Harrison Ford) and Leia (Carrie Fisher), Frank Oz making his word-jumbling debut as Jedi Master, Yoda, and Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), getting a bit too big for his Hoth snow boots in thinking he can take on Darth Vader alone. In doing so, it led to one of the greatest twists in sci-fi movie history, when Luke learns his family tree is bigger than he thought, and all it cost him was a hand to get the answers. This still stands as one of the core moments in "Star Wars" history that led to it exploding into the phenomenon it is today.

Some might believe that Christopher Nolan got the idea for his 2010 movie from sci-fi anime, "Paprika," but that hasn't stopped "Inception" from earning the highest spot for a sci-fi film in IMDb's Top 250 at 14. During his brief break from Bat-tastic adventures between "The Dark Knight" and "The Dark Knight Rises," Nolan gave the world the heady heist movie that ran with a level of originality (depending on what side of "Paprika" you stand on) that hadn't been seen since "The Matrix." At the same time, the cloak-and-dagger antics unfolding in the craniums of this dream team made it feel like a Bond movie, only on a quite literally cerebral level.

Once again, "Inception" gives the director the chance to play with the narrative of his story through time-twisting tactics that had already appeared in films like "The Prestige" and "Memento," and would do so again in "Tenet." The magic trick here, however, is creating a world where dreams can be invaded and ideas implanted if the right person is on the job.

Leonardo DiCaprio is just such a man, who, along with a team composed of talents like Tom Hardy, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Elliot Page, and Ken Watanabe, set out on a mission to break the brain of billionaire son Cillian Murphy. From there, hallways spin, buildings bend, and we come to realize that by this point, Nolan would never be afraid to dream a little bigger from here on out — and we're so glad he did.