6 Sci-Fi Movies You Need To Watch, According To Christopher Nolan

Published Sep 6, 2026, 10:55 AM EDT Senior Music Editor at Screen Rant, Sarah's love of sound and story drive the beat. A globetrotting brand whisperer and award-winning journalist, she’s built cross-cultural narratives around the world—but music has always been her true north. She launched DJ Mag North America, successfully introducing the iconic UK brand to the U.S. market. Previously, she carved a space for EDM inside the pages of VIBE, blending electronic and hip-hop culture long before it was trendy. Sign in to your ScreenRant account Christopher Nolan has made some of the biggest science-fiction movies of the 21st century, but his fascination with the genre started long before Inception or Interstellar. As a young moviegoer, Nolan was captivated by filmmakers who could make impossible worlds feel tangible enough to step inside. His favorite science-fiction movies help explain why his own films place so much emphasis on scale and physical filmmaking. Nolan has spoken repeatedly about the impact of Stanley Kubrick and Ridley Scott, while other genre landmarks helped shape his ideas about what a blockbuster could accomplish. He tends to admire science fiction that establishes a convincing reality before asking audiences to accept something extraordinary. Drawn from movies Nolan has personally championed or identified among his favorites and influences, these six films range from silent-era dystopia to space exploration. They also offer a revealing look at the science-fiction classics that helped shape one of modern cinema's most ambitious directors. 2001: A Space Odyssey Release Date April 10, 1968 Runtime 149 minutes Director Stanley Kubrick Cast Keir Dullea Dr. David Bowman Gary Lockwood Dr. Frank Poole Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey may be the most important science-fiction movie in Christopher Nolan's cinematic education. Nolan has recalled his father taking him to see the film as a child, an experience that helped establish his belief in movies as something audiences should physically experience rather than simply watch. That influence is particularly apparent in Interstellar. Both films treat space as enormous and mysterious while resisting the temptation to explain every cosmic question they raise. Nolan has also championed the theatrical experience of Kubrick's film, helping introduce restored presentations of 2001 to another generation of moviegoers. Alien Release Date June 22, 1979 Runtime 117 Minutes Director Ridley Scott Writers Dan O'Bannon, Ronald Shusett Ridley Scott's Alien takes the enormous possibilities of space travel and compresses them into the corridors of the Nostromo. The crew members are workers rather than heroic explorers, and the ship feels worn long before the creature aboard it begins hunting them. Nolan has singled out Scott's ability to create worlds that immediately feel complete. That quality is crucial to Alien, which establishes the routines and physical reality of its future without stopping to explain every detail. The result is science fiction that feels lived-in, making the arrival of something impossible considerably more frightening. Blade Runner Release Date June 22, 1979 Runtime 117 Minutes Director Ridley Scott Writers Dan O'Bannon, Ronald Shusett If Alien introduced Nolan to Ridley Scott's talent for immersive worlds, Blade Runner appears to have made an even greater impression. Harrison Ford's Rick Deckard moves through a future Los Angeles crowded with technology and artificial humans, but Scott rarely pauses to explain how the world reached this point. Nolan has spoken about being obsessed with Blade Runner when he was young and credited Scott with helping him understand what a director actually contributes to a movie. That admiration is easy to recognize in Nolan's own preference for environments that feel physically constructed rather than generically futuristic. Blade Runner remains one of the clearest examples of worldbuilding through atmosphere rather than exposition. Metropolis Release Date 2015 - 2015-00-00 Network Travel Channel Directors Neil Ferguson Cast Corey Johnson Narrator (voice) Fritz Lang was imagining futuristic cities decades before modern visual effects made them relatively easy to create. Metropolis depicts a society divided between wealthy citizens living above ground and workers operating the machinery that keeps their city alive below. Nolan has identified Metropolis as one of the cornerstone films of science fiction, and its influence on the genre is almost impossible to measure. The enormous architecture and mechanical imagery established ideas filmmakers are still revisiting nearly a century later. For anyone interested in where the visual language of modern science-fiction blockbusters began, Lang's silent epic remains essential. Close Encounters Of The Third Kind Steven Spielberg approaches alien contact from a distinctly human perspective in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Richard Dreyfuss plays Roy Neary, an ordinary family man whose brief encounter with a UFO becomes an obsession he cannot explain or escape. Nolan specifically looked toward Spielberg's movie while developing Interstellar. What interested him was the way an enormous science-fiction idea could be experienced through a recognizable family life. Close Encounters never loses its sense of wonder, but the extraordinary events matter because of what they do to the people witnessing them. Star Wars TV Show(s) The Mandalorian, Andor, Obi-Wan Kenobi, The Book of Boba Fett, Ahsoka, The Acolyte, Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, Lando, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Star Wars Rebels, Star Wars: The Bad Batch, Star Wars: Resistance, Star Wars: Young Jedi Adventures, Star Wars: Visions Video Game(s) Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II - The Sith Lords, Star Wars Battlefront (2015), Star Wars: Battlefront 2 (2005), Star Wars: The Force Unleashed , Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor First Film Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope Cast Mark Hamill, James Earl Jones, David Prowse, Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford, Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, Ian McDiarmid, Ewan McGregor, Rosario Dawson, Lars Mikkelsen, Rupert Friend, Moses Ingram, Frank Oz, Pedro Pascal Created by George Lucas Movie(s) Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones, Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith, Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope, Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back, Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi, Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens, Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi, Star Wars: Episode IX- The Rise of Skywalker, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Solo: A Star Wars Story, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Star Wars: Dawn of the Jedi, Star Wars: New Jedi Order George Lucas changed blockbuster cinema with Star Wars, turning an old-fashioned adventure story into a fully realized galaxy of spaceships and strange worlds. Nolan was still a child when the movie arrived in 1977, and he has repeatedly identified that period of filmmaking as formative to his understanding of large-scale cinema. The connection to Nolan is less about plot than ambition. Star Wars demonstrated that an original genre movie could create an enormous world while remaining immediately accessible to a mass audience. Nolan would eventually pursue that same balance in a very different style, particularly with original blockbusters such as Inception and Interstellar. Birthdate July 30, 1970 Birthplace Westminster, London, England, UK