We took a trip through decades of the genre and came up with a list of the most important and best hard science fiction movies of all time. They are the essence and the foundations of the book of sci-fi rules that’s still being written as we, the audience, become much more self-aware of our relationship with technology, the future, and whatever those two will bring.
Conspicuous in its absence: anything animated, like Ghost in the Shell (1995), which I’d argue is harder than quite a few things on this list.