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10 Most Visually Stunning Sci-Fi Movies Of The 21st Century So Far
The first two decades of the 21st century have seen a plethora of science fiction movies that make use of the latest technology to deliver ever more impressive spectacles. It's almost impossible to tell where reality ends and the green screen begins in many cases. A visually stunning movie doesn't necessarily have the best special effects, however.
A film needs a unique viewpoint to be visually stunning, as well as a plot and characterization that burns certain scenes into the audience's minds long after the movie is over. The ten movies below were released between 2000 and 2019 and managed to get all of the moving parts right, making them standouts in a competitive field.
10 War For The Planet Of The Apes (2017)
Like its predecessors, the third entry in the Planet of the Apes trilogy is noted for its impressive visual effects and CGI animations. The intelligent apes were rendered in so much detail that the audience could see every fold, wrinkle, and individual strands of fur. Not only that, but their faces are imbued with an emotional depth that raises the question of whether CGI performance capture should be recognized as an acting skill. Against the backdrop of exploitation and abuse that Caesar's tribe endured, it isn't hard to root for the apes in their war with humans.
9 Gravity (2013)
A one-man (or one-woman) show may not sound interesting, but Gravity pulls it off with Sandra Bullock fighting to find a way back to earth after her space shuttle malfunctions. The sci-fi thriller uses the absence of other characters (save for a hallucinatory George Clooney) to convey the loneliness and desperation of Bullock's Dr. Ryan Stone as she comes to terms with her painful past while planning her escape. The views of Earth in the background are stunning enough to induce the overview effect in any audience member.
8 Interstellar (2014)
The first act of Interstellar is conspicuously mundane: endless fields and dusty farmhouses tell the tale of a dying Earth. However, once the film leaves its terrestrial beginnings it immediately awes the audience with its depictions of vast otherworldly phenomena. In a film where the protagonist's main struggle is against natural forces on dangerous frontiers rarely envisioned by anyone except expert astronomers, it was essential to make ideas like a world of frozen clouds and planet-sweeping tsunamis seem both real and menacing. Interstellar knocks it out of the park, using CGI to broaden our imagination of what future generations of explorers may witness with their own eyes.
7 Inception (2010)
Sci-fi in the 2010s had a promising start with Inception, which used spatial geometry and symbols to illustrate dreamscapes and clearly delineate layers of dreams - except when it doesn't. For all the importance of totems in figuring out whether someone is awake or dreaming, it's not clear whether the top at the end of the movie keeps spinning or falls.
The movie was also impressive on a technical scale. Enough time has passed that we now take special effects like folding Paris for granted, but at the time it was groundbreaking.
