The 14 Most Scientifically Accurate Sci-Fi Movies

Ann Casano
Updated September 24, 2021 1.1M views

There are two main types of science fiction films. There are the films like Star Wars, which are rooted in fantasy and folklore, and don’t care about getting the scientific details correct. Then, there are the films on this list, the filmmakers of which pay great attention to scientific detail, and aim to get as much of the science correct as humanly possible. Here are the most accurate sci-fi movies ever made.

Many of these movies take place in the future. If filmmakers want to make accurate sci-fi movies about space, like in Interstellar or Moon, they have to think about the likelihood of future technology. Interstellar is on this list not because anyone thinks that we will be able to travel through a wormhole in the near future in order to reach a distant habitable planet in order to save the human race. That’s the fiction part of science fiction. It's on this list because the film’s Gargantua black hole is considered the most realistic depiction of a black hole ever seen in the movies.

It is incredible to think about just how accurate some of the predictions are in these movies. From space exploration in film to accurate movie spaceships, writers and directors worked tirelessly to not just entertain us but to wow all the astrophysicists in the audience as well. Let us know what impresses you the most about accurate sci-fi films in the comments section below.

  • Sam Rockwell gives the performance of his career in what is essentially a one-man show in Duncan Jones's stripped-down, low-budget directorial debut Moon (2009). Rockwell plays astronaut Sam Bell, who is on a solitary three-year lunar mission mining for Helium-3. His only companion is the HAL-esque ship robot GERTY, which is voiced by Kevin Spacey. All seems well and good until Bell finds what seems to be a duplicate version of himself aboard the ship. Don't worry, no spoilers here, but Moon does take some interesting twists and turns.

    The main scientific question regarding the movie Moon is whether the actual Moon contains mineable Helium-3. According to many scientists, there is a possibility that the Moon does, in fact, contain many useful materials. Helium-3 is very rare on Earth.

    The idea that in the future we will be able to harvest a clean form of energy from the Moon is a possibility that scientists have explored for years. While the Earth is protected by a magnetic field, the Moon has been hit with large quantities of Helium-3. Scientists think there is a possibility that Helium-3 can one day provide a safer nuclear energy since it's not radioactive. 

  • Planet of the Apes
    Photo: 20th Century Fox

    The original 1968 sci-fi classic is about an astronaut who crash lands on a far away planet where the apes are the ones in charge and the humans are enslaved. In case you haven't seen Planet of the Apes, it also features one of the best twist endings in movie history. Renowned astrophysicist and cinephile Neil deGrasse Tyson is a big fan of the way the movie is a reflection of the actual ranking order of society.

    He said of the Academy Award-nominated film:

    Saw this again recently and it held up over all these years in many important details. Had not appreciated when I first saw it. The hierarchy of apes that ran the planet, chimps were the academics, baboons were the soldiers, orangutans were the diplomats. An action-adventure movie that was an insightful mirror to our lives and our civilization.

  • The Martian
    Photo: 20th Centurty Fox

    Astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon) gets stranded alone on Mars following a massive storm. In order to survive, Watney has to figure out how to contact NASA and grow food on a planet with soil that does not contain the same nutrient-rich material found on Earth. Thankfully, Watney is also a botanist. He knows how to "science the sh*t" out of what he has and build a farm using soil fertilized with human waste and water made by removing hydrogen from rocket fuel.

    Many scientists thought Ridley Scott's 2015 movie was one of the most realistic sci-fi films ever made. It was perceived by many spectators to be so accurate that they actually thought it was based on a true story. Much of the agriculture science is correct and most scientists think that the movie's imagery of Mars is spot on.

    Perhaps the hardest part of the movie was getting NASA right. Astronaut Clayton Anderson talked about how The Martian nailed its depiction of NASA:

    Rather for me, the highlight was the film’s refreshing and inspiring depiction of NASA. I’m not talking about physical depictions mind you (the Vertical Assembly Building does not reside at the Johnson Space Center) but instead the film’s sense of an ever-present drive on the part of NASA employees to pull together to win the day, even in the midst of seemingly insurmountable odds. Just as I witnessed so often throughout my own 30-year NASA career, a team of ordinary, caring people with little regard to their personal needs put in just a little bit extra, to do something extraordinary.

  • Interstellar
    Photo: Paramount Pictures

    Interstellar (2014) takes place in the not-too-distant future, where climate conditions have created a dire scarcity of food. The human race is facing inevitable extinction unless a group of explorers can travel through a wormhole and find a planet that is fit for human survival. Director Christopher Nolan worked alongside Kip Thorne, an astrophysicist, to make sure that the science in the movie was as precise as possible. That's not to say that every single plot point was 100% accurate, especially because a lot of what takes place in the film is considered "Speculative-Albeit-Imaginable Science."

    Nolan and Thorne worked alongside the film's visual effects studio Double Negative to create the film's depiction of a black hole called Gargantua. It is considered the most realistic look at a black hole ever seen in the movies. In fact, it's been reported that the film's black hole led to an actual scientific discovery.

    Thorne did later publish a report stating that Gargantua could have been depicted even more realistically and that it didn't lead to a scientific revelation. However, we do have to remember that it is a Hollywood movie. No one is (hopefully) going to use the film as a blueprint to travel through an actual black hole.

  • Woman in the Moon
    Photo: UFA

    In Fritz Lang's 1929 German silent film, a scientist blasts off to the moon in search of gold. Woman in the Moon is often cited as the first science fiction film. It is also the first time the blast-off countdown from 10 to 1 is used on celluloid. It's the same countdown that NASA would eventually use for all their launches. 

    It would be 40 years before the human race would actually get to the moon, which makes Lang's film even more impressive. Film scholars and military officials have lauded the film for its amazing accuracy. The scientists that served as advisers to the movie understood the basics of rocket travel and gravity. Lang consulted with German rocket expert Hermann Oberth to construct the film's rocket, which impressively gets the escape velocity that is needed to free itself from the Earth's orbit correct. When the rocket does finally land on the moon, its crew correctly experiences zero gravity.

  • Destination Moon
    Photo: Eagle-Lion Classics Inc.

    Destination Moon (1950) is often cited as the first science fiction film made in the United States that depicts space travel in a realistic fashion. The story centers on a group of men who come together to ensure that the US will be the first country in the world to put a man on the moon. Producer George Pal was set on not just making a fantasy film about space but a "documentary of the near future."

    Pal hired experts in science to consult on the film. Although not every single detail in the film is accurate, it is considered quite an achievement, especially considering that man would not actually walk on the moon for almost another twenty years. The film goes about explaining the basic principles of how a rocket is launched and the concept of gravity in layman's terms that the audience will understand.

    During production, the movie created quite a stir, as the idea of being able to land on the moon seemed to become a real possibility. The film also wound up having a great importance in the space race, as competition about which country would be the first to land on the moon was heating up around the world. A major narrative element in the movie questioned the ramifications on what would happen if one of America's cold war adversaries reached the moon first. 

  • Apollo 13
    Photo: Universal Pictures

    Ron Howard's 1995 movie is based on the true story of the 13th Apollo mission to the moon. The narrative centers on the ill-fated 1970 flight of three astronauts who experience life-threatening complications after an oxygen tank explodes onboard the spacecraft. Howard and the actors wanted to not only get the historical facts as accurate as possible but also the science of space travel.

    All the zero-gravity scenes are not only scientifically accurate, but they are also real. Howard convinced NASA to let the production film in its reduced-gravity aircraft called the Vomit Comet. Ken Mattingly (the man played by Gary Sinise in the film who was bumped from the mission because he had the measles) admits that there are a few differences between the film and what really happened.

    For example, in the film, it does seem like the crew and NASA are just making up possible miracle scenarios to get the astronauts home. Mattingly notes that in actuality, NASA had already worked out several possible faulty scenarios and the procedures on how to try and fix them. However, Mattingly concedes that Hollywood movies work off of creating drama, and it's obviously a much more interesting story if the conflict onboard the Apollo appears totally chaotic.

    One thing that the Oscar-winning film did get wrong just also happens to be the movie's tagline. After the oxygen tank explodes in the movie, astronaut Jim Lovell (Tom Hanks) reports to NASA, "Houston, we have a problem," when, in fact, the actual line was "Houston, we've had a problem here." Considering that the movie gets all the physics of space correct, it's probably okay that a couple words were changed.

  • Arrival
    Photo: Paramount Pictures

    Mysterious alien space crafts land at twelve different locations around the world. However, no one knows why they are there and if they mean to do harm or good. A linguist named Dr. Louise Banks (Amy Adams) is brought in to try and communicate with the aliens. Communication proves to be extremely difficult since the aliens speak by emitting a circular black cloud. After several sessions, however, Banks is able to interpret the black clouds and correctly assign English words to the images.

    According to astrophysicist Andy Howell, Arrival largely gets the science correct in the film. However, he points out that there is not a lot to compare the film with. We, of course, have never actually made contact with alien life.

    Howell further explains the fine line between entertainment and scientific accuracy:

    People think you have to choose between a movie being a blockbuster and getting the science right. But my point of view is that you can get the science right and still have an entertaining movie. And it often helps make a more entertaining movie. If you need to bend the rules to tell a better story, that’s fine. You get certain miracle exceptions for the conceit of the movie, but get the details right and be consistent.

  • Contact
    Photo: Warner Bros. Pictures

    If a filmmaker is going to go about adapting a work by Carl Sagan (an expert in extraterrestrial research), it better be as scientifically accurate as possible. In the 1997 film Contact, directed by Robert Zemeckis, Jodi Foster stars as an astronomer who finds evidence of intelligent alien life. Luckily, the director was up for the painstaking challenge of making Contact the kind of movie that even scientists could learn from.

    That's not to say that it's a perfect film from a science standpoint, but it gets a lot of the science correct. Almost the entire narrative is based on physics or estimated current theories. Both in the film and in real life, there is a program called SETI (The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) that does just what the names says and searches for intelligent life outside of the planet Earth.

    Many astronomers also think that if humans were able to communicate with alien life forms and achieve contact it would be just like in the movie, where Foster's character uses radio signals. This is because radio signals travel at the speed of light, and other planets are so far away.

    The language in the film is also accurate. In fact, it's so accurate that a lot of the terminology between characters is totally incomprehensible to the average person. So while astronomers may be knowingly nodding their head when the scientists in the film talk about "pi times hydrogen," the rest of us just need to trust that the characters are using actual mathematical equations. Don't worry, they really are.

  • 2001: A Space Odyssey
    Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

    Stanley Kubrick's Academy Award-winning epic is often cited as the most accurate science fiction film ever made. It tells the story of evolution when the Earth started millions of years ago with the placing of a monolith. The movie flashes millions of years later when another monolith is discovered on the Moon, which signals another step in evolution. The final part of the film takes place on a spaceship that contains a five-man crew, aided by the insidious computer HAL, as they embark on a mission to Jupiter, where the fight between man and machine signals yet another step in the evolution process.

    Director Stanley Kubrick was known as one of the most meticulous perfectionists in filmmaking. He wanted the science and look of the film to actually be ahead of what NASA was doing at the time. It's important to note that humans would not walk on the moon until 1969, one year after the film's release.

    Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson lauds the efforts that the crew put into the movie:

    I’d say it’s hard in that it’s well-researched and that it targets real science as much as it can. 2001 did that more than any movie had, at that point. They have the psychedelic journey and the encounter with this [alien] life, but any encounter with the ship and zero-G, that had foundations in real physics. You have to applaud all the efforts that went into that...

    Perhaps the first film to be all about the discovery of alien intelligence yet not show what it looks like, knowing that our imagination could surely do a better job than Hollywood. In any case, it was a visual orgy of space travel and space exploration that we remain far from achieving, even 13 years after the 33 years-in-the-future it portrayed.

  • Deep Impact
    Photo: Paramount Pictures

    It's discovered that a giant comet is on a collision course with Earth. In order to keep the human race alive, 800,000 Americans are selected to live in sustainable underground shelters. Unless a space mission figures out how to destroy the comet, everyone who is not living underground will perish.

    Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson calls the 1998 disaster film one of his top ten favorite science fiction movies ever made. What impresses deGrasse Tyson so much about the film is its attention to scientific detail and the movie's three-dimensional characters:

    There have been many asteroid/comet disaster films. But this one took the time to get most of the physics right, and made sure you cared about all the characters in the film so that their prospect of dying matters to the viewer. And Morgan Freeman’s portrayal of the president of the United States may be the best ever.

  • Gattaca
    Photo: Columbia Pictures

    In the dystopian future of the film Gattaca, most people are engineered in a test tube to ensure that they will be both intelligent and have excellent health. A doctor in the opening of the movie tells would-be parents about their child's genetic makeup, "You have specified hazel eyes, dark hair, and fair skin. I have taken the liberty of eradicating any potentially prejudicial conditions: premature baldness, myopia, alcoholism and addictive susceptibility, propensity for violence and obesity." Those who are not test-tube babies are called "in-valids" and these imperfect children grow up to be adults who take on the menial jobs in life.

    Not only is the science of Gattaca a distinct possibility in the future, it is already happening today. Scientists have been able to successfully modify animal gene sequences in order to make them stronger. We already have eggs fertilized outside a womb. We can also analyze the genes of an unborn baby for genetic diseases by sequencing their entire genome map.

    But what about building a designer baby? It's already possible for parents to pay a fertility institute to ensure the sex of their baby. Most doctors would only do this in the case of disease prevention. However, it's true that some parents just want to have a boy or a girl. While non-medical sex selection may be against the law in many countries, it is practiced in the United States despite its controversy.

    Jeffrey Steinberg, director of The Fertility Institutes, provides parents with the option of selecting the sex of their baby. He also suggested in 2009 that parents would soon be able to choose their babies skin, hair, and eye color. Despite the outrage of many who vehemently oppose designer babies, the technology is very close; it's now more of a matter of ethics. 

  • Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
    Photo: Focus Features

    In the Charlie Kaufman-penned Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), two characters are suffering from a horrific case of a broken heart. They each independently visit a company that is capable of wiping away all the memories of their entire relationship. In the movie, there are pratfalls to the procedure as memories are not so much a straight line and often blend together with other memories. Even still, scientists have wondered if it's possible to selectively erase traumatic events from a person's memory without damaging the brain.

    It could be a war-torn solder with a severe case of PTSD, or a spouse who just simply wants to forget that their partner cheated on them. We already know that people are subconsciously capable of blocking out a selective memory as the brain tries to protect a person from reliving a traumatic event. This natural process has left some neurologists believing this selective memory eraser could be achieved by either manufacturing medicine and/or with talk therapy.

    Additionally, an interesting study was done using animals in a lab. The results dictated that it could be possible for a person who experienced a traumatic event to erase just that memory. Let's say a person witnessed a brutal, heinous crime while going out for a walk one night. In turn, they want that particular memory removed from their brain. The study has led some scientists to believe that it's possible to erase that memory if a person revisits the scene of the crime and is then injected with some kind of biochemical blocker.

    Of course, science is a long way from that happening. However, according to some, including the US President's Bioethics Council, they are willing to at least consider that it's a possibility.

  • The Terminator
    Photo: Orion Pictures

    In James Cameron's original 1984 movie, a cyborg is sent from the future in order to assassinate a woman whose unborn son will ultimately lead the human race in a war against the machines. Since time travel doesn't really exist (and let's face it, probably never will despite the thousands of movies and books on the subject), scientists look at the concept from a logistics standpoint.

    Dave Goldberg, a physicist from Drexel University says of The Terminator:

    I've long said that (the actual device and the whole traveling nude thing aside) the original Terminator handles time travel better than any other movie I've ever seen. The entire thing is a completely self-consistent time loop, from John Conner's parentage and survivalist training, to the picture of Sarah Conner that finds its way to Kyle Reese. No grandfather paradoxes at all, but there are information paradoxes.