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Stories are the way we talk about the things we’re not good at talking about: love, death, fear, hope… We build proxies for ourselves that are better-looking, braver, or cleverer than we are, and we put them in the situations we can only imagine in order to explore the world as it is or as we wish it could be. Science fiction, more than perhaps any other genre, extends this unique form of cultural meditation to our own possible future.
Through science fiction, we see the ways the world might one day be, and we can make mistakes on page or screen in the hope that we don’t make them when they really come knocking. Because we can only build what we can first imagine, we’d serve ourselves well by sampling the many different potential futures available in our fictions.
If you’re looking for inspiration, Peacock’s collection of science fiction movies and television series might be the perfect place to start. To be sure, not all sci-fi flicks present an ideal future, and they might serve you better as a warning than a blueprint, but either way you’re sure to have a blast along the way. There are scores of movies and hundreds of episodes of science fiction to choose from, these are but some of our favorites.
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What are the best sci-fi movies now streaming on Peacock?
ANNIHILATION
Alex Garland’s 2018 sci-fi horror, Annihilation, adapts the first installment of author Jeff Vandermeer’s Southern Reach series. It follows the extraterrestrial misadventures of four women, all scientists and professional bad asses, sent into a bizarre alien landscape here on Earth.
Once inside the Shimmer (the onscreen name given to Vandermeer’s Area X), they lose connection to the outside world and, eventually, to their humanity. The world of Annihilation, the world of Area X, is one in which the very things that make you who you are become twisted, changing right in front of you.
In the real world, it’s humanity stepping into and altering the environments of other creatures, even twisting those creatures genetically to suit our needs and desires. Annihilation flips the script and puts humanity on the receiving end of advanced intelligent forces beyond our comprehension, to horrifying effect.
Watch it now on Peacock!
TERMINATOR 2
James Cameron’s 1991 Terminator sequel, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, picks up a few years after the first film. By now, the future human revolutionary John Connor has been born and is, perhaps, the only teenager on the planet who has earned his angst.
Having failed to kill Connor’s mother before his birth, the machines send a more advanced Terminator, a liquid-metal T-1000 capable of changing its appearance by changing its shape. In turn, the future human resistance sends back their own robot, a modified T-800, to level the battlefield.
It’s rare that a sequel outshines its predecessor, but the combination of a reprogrammed Terminator and the T-1000, equal parts cool and terrifying, makes T2 a favorite of the franchise.
Watch it now on Peacock!
TRANSFORMERS
In 2007, the world was given what no one even thought to ask for, a live action Transformers movie. Expectations weren’t necessarily high, but it turned out that the movie, like its namesake, was more than meets the eye.
Shia Labeouf stars as Sam Witwicky, a teenager who stumbles onto some alien technology, a secret family legacy, and an interstellar conflict happening right here on Earth. Witwicky and the rest of humanity become embroiled in a sprawling interplanetary civil war between the Autobots and Decepticons, two splintered factions of an advanced robotic alien race.
Director Michael Bay gets a lot of heat for sometimes favoring spectacle over cinema, but when you’re making a popcorn movie about giant robot fights, spectacle is exactly what you want.
Watch it now on Peacock!
THE FIFTH ELEMENT
Luc Besson’s famed 1997 science fiction epic takes viewers back to the early 20th Century before zooming ahead to the 23rd Century. There, Korben Dallas (Bruce Willis) gets sucked into an interspecies, interplanetary, intertemporal mission for the fate of the world.
Every few thousand years a great evil emerges, a living fireball in space, with the power to destroy entire worlds. There is only one weapon that can stop it, made of the four elemental forces and a secret fifth element. The fifth element, it turns out, is the technologically resurrected Leeloo (Milla Jovovich).
Together, Korben and Leeloo journey from the aerial city streets of Earth to a space-based cruise ship in a race against time to protect the entire world from total annihilation.
Watch it now on Peacock!
ALIENS ABDUCTED MY PARENTS AND NOW I FEEL KINDA LEFT OUT
Teenagers Calvin (Jacob Buster) and Itsy (Emma Tremblay) are unlikely friends growing up in a small town. Itsy is new, having just moved with her family from the big city, while Calvin has lived there all his life and become something of a town pariah.
Ten years earlier, Calvin’s folks disappeared during the once-a-decade appearance of the fictional comet Jesper. Calvin becomes convinced that his mom and dad were snatched up by alien visitors and that he’ll be able to join them when the comet returns. His entire life becomes a preparation for the imminent reappearance of the comet.
What follows is a heartfelt sci-fi coming of age story from screenwriter Austin Osanai Everett and director Jake Van Wagoner that is both out of this world and totally grounded right here on Earth.
Watch it now on Peacock!
DONNIE DARKO
Richard Kelly’s 2001 cult classic, Donnie Darko, continues to demand rewatches and command late-night barguments two decades after release. Set in 1988, the titular Donnie Darko (Jake Gyllenhaal) is awoken by a mysterious voice. Following it, he encounters a creepy, humanoid rabbit named Frank who tells Donnie the world will end in 28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes, and 12 seconds.
Strange as that encounter was, it saved Donnie from certain death when an airplane engine crashed into his bedroom. From there, a bizarre series of events unfolds involving tangent universes, multiverse artifacts, time traveling ghosts, and the entangled fates of one boy and the entire universe.
Watch it now on Peacock!
APOLLO 18
NASA’s Apollo program came to a close in 1972 with the successful return of Apollo 17. The program ended early, scrapping three planned crewed missions, Apollos 18 – 20. The history books will tell you that’s where things ended but director Gonzalo López-Gallego imagined an alternate history in the 2011 found footage film Apollo 18.
After Apollo officially ended, the 18th mission was reactivated as a Top Secret Department of Defense mission to deliver a classified payload to the Moon’s South Pole. The deadly events that follow go a long way to explaining why the footage was buried and the mission never spoken of. If you know the Moon landings happened but still want a little conspiracy, as a treat, this is the movie for you.
Watch it now on Peacock!
TURBO KID
Turbo Kid isn’t, strictly speaking, a vision of the future, but we’ll let it slide because it’s INCREDIBLE. It takes place in an alternate reality 1997, in a world struggling for water. The tyrannical overlord Zeus (played perfectly by Michael Ironside) captures people from the Wasteland and crushes them to get their water. It’s a tough world to live in when you’re a kid who just wants to ride his bike and read comic books.
When The Kid meets Apple, a friendship model robot, the two of them embark on a coming-of-age story like none you’ve ever seen. It’s equal parts Napoleon Dynamite and Mad Max, with a disturbingly hilarious amount of blood splatter. It’s a post-apocalyptic fever dream as imagined by a Power Glove-wearing teenager from the ‘80s. It’s perfect.
Watch it now on Peacock!
EUROPA REPORT
Europa is one of Jupiter’s four largest moons (the so-called Galilean moons) and it’s covered in a global sheet of ice. Beneath that ice, thanks to the tidal forces between Europa, Jupiter, and its dozens of other moons, is a world-spanning ocean of liquid water. Research suggests activity at the surface transports oxygen and salts into the water, and seafloor vents could provide a source of nutrients and heat. With a bit of luck, life could spring up there and thrive in a lightless ocean world.
Europa Report imagines the sort of mission we dream of, sending brave explorers to an alien world to see it for themselves. Sadly, things don’t go to plan. That’s clear from the jump, because the story is narrated not by any of the crewmembers, but by the CEO of Europa Ventures, Dr. Samantha Unger. A crewed mission is sent to the icy moon, looking for life. In space, you should be careful what you wish for.
Upon landing, they drill through the ice and release a probe. One crew member sees a blue light in the distance but is dismissed as being sleep deprived. All doubt evaporates when the underwater probe sees a similar light just moments before being destroyed. There’s life on Europa, alright, and it isn’t happy.
Watch it now on Peacock!
DANTE’S PEAK
The fictional residents of Dante’s Peak get a violent reminder of nature’s awesome power in the disaster flick of the same name, written by Leslie Bohem and directed by Roger Donaldson. Pierce Brosnan trades in his tuxedo and MI6-issued gadgets for cargo shorts and a seismometer as Harry Dalton, a volcanologist for the U.S. Geological Survey. He’s studying a seemingly dormant volcano bordering the titular town and he suspects it might not be as dormant as it seems.
Despite his warnings, and the cooked bodies of two bathers boiled alive in a hot spring, officials decide there is no risk of eruption, pack up their instruments, and prepare to leave town. That’s when the lid literally blows off this whole thing, the lava starts flowing, and the real action begins.
Watch it now on Peacock!
DREDD
In 1995, director Danny Cannon lifted the character of Judge Dredd from its namesake comic strip and onto the silver screen; it didn’t do well. In 2012 the character got the onscreen adaptation he deserved from director Pete Travis and screenwriter Alex Garland (Ex Machina) in the simply titled Dredd.
In a near-future dystopia, Judges like Dredd are given full authority over enforcement of the law, including judgment, sentencing, and execution. Dredd (Karl Urban) is sent to a 200-story apartment building ruled by Ma-Ma (Lena Headey), a drug lord controlling the flow of a designer time-distorting drug. Once inside, Ma-Ma locks the place down behind nuclear blast doors and puts a price on Dredd’s head. Things only get worse from there.
Watch it now on Peacock!
JAWS
In 1975, Steven Spielberg put his vision of summertime horror on film in the original summer blockbuster, Jaws. The movie — an adaptation of the Peter Benchley novel of the same name, published a year earlier — follows the residents of Amity Island, a small New England beach town haunted by a killer shark.
When the shark attacks a second time, at a crowded beach and in broad daylight, the town’s chief of police, Martin Brody (Roy Schieder), joins forces with oceanographer Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) and Quint (Robert Shaw), a grizzled boat captain with a justifiable grudge against sharks.
What follows is 124 minutes of cinematic perfection, jam packed with more quotable lines, memorable scenes, and horrifying shots than you could fit in a great white’s mouth.
Watch it now on Peacock!
MEN IN BLACK
If you didn’t know any better, Men in Black begins like so many other police dramas from the late ‘90s. NYPD officer James Edwards (Will Smith) encounters a criminal with an uncanny ability for escape who turns out to be an extraterrestrial. He’s given a brief glimpse into the world as it really is, and he’s given a choice: to stay and see how strange things really are or forget it all and return to his ordinary life. It’s no real choice at all. James is swept into the secret world of the Men in Black, a covert organization tasked with protecting humanity from the universe’s many alien entities, many of whom are living among us.
After erasing his identity and all of his name except for the first letter, J learns that the Earth has been established as a neutral zone for alien refugees and there’s a sort of tenuous peace between us and the rest of the cosmos. That is until a bug-like alien body-snatches a backwoods farmer named Edgar (Vincent D’Onofrio) in an attempt to locate a hidden galaxy and spark interstellar war. To prevent the galaxy from falling into the bugs’ pedipalps, the Arquillians — an advanced alien race — are willing to destroy the Earth. Only J and his partner K (Tommy Lee Jones) can save us.
Once you’re finished saving the world for the first time, you can follow the continued adventures of the MIB in Men in Black II and Men in Black 3.
Watch it now on Peacock!
MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000
You never know what a new day might bring. If you’re very unlucky you might be kidnapped by a group of mad scientists, shuttled aboard an interstellar spacecraft, and forced to watch bad movies until your connection with reality shatters. If you find yourself in that situation, it helps to have a few friends.
When Joel Robinson found himself in this exact unlikely but hilarious situation, and without any friends, he built some from scratch using pieces of the ship. Those friends are known as Tom Servo, Crow T. Robot, and GPC. And they, along with the human test subject (first Joel, then a smattering of other folks over time), watch bad movies and crack wise to make them a little less painful. The great thing about Mystery Science Theater 3000, is it isn’t just one bad movie, but so many. So many, that eventually they start to look pretty good.
Watch it now on Peacock!
UPSIDE DOWN
Juan Diego Solanas’ 2012 film Upside Down, blurs the lines between science fiction and fantasy to tell a cosmic love story only possible in our imaginations. We enter the worlds of Upside Down through the eyes of Adam (Jim Sturgess). He’s an ordinary guy in extraordinary circumstances, a citizen of a binary planet system with an impossible gravitational relationship.
The two worlds, known only as Up and Down, share a gravitational field, allowing them to orbit in incredibly close proximity to one another. But that doesn’t mean that residents of the two worlds travel freely between them. On these worlds, matter adheres to a few seemingly inalienable rules. First and most important, all matter is only attracted to the gravity of its home world. Second, matter can be counterbalanced by “inverse” matter from the opposing world. Finally, contact with inverse matter is temporary and results in spontaneous combustion after a few hours.
Adam might have been satisfied to live out his life on one world, but when he meets Eden, a woman from Up, they set about rewriting both the laws of their society and the laws of physics.
Watch it now on Peacock!
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