10 Most Influential Sci-Fi Films Of All Time

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 98%

Fred M. Wilcox's sci-fi adaptation of William Shakespeare's The Tempest is credited with pioneering a number of aspects of the genre, being the first film to depict humans travelling faster than the speed of light and the first to make use of an interstellar setting far outside our own galaxy.

The story follows Commander John Adams (Leslie Nielsen), and the crew of the Starship C-57D as they travel into deep space in search of planet Altair IV, hoping to determine the fate of an expedition that set off for the planet 20 years previous.

It's a set up that has been repeated numerous times in sci-fi over the decades since, both in film and television - both Star Trek and Lost In Space featured a number of episodes that were clearly influenced by Forbidden Planet - and the space opera sub-genre as a whole owes a huge debt to this subversive classic.

Wilcox's film - which was entered into the National Film Registry in 2013 as a mark of its significance - was also the first to make use of an entirely electronic musical score, a sound that would become synonymous with sci-fi during the New Wave movement of the 1960s and '70s.