10 Most Influential Sci-Fi Films Of All Time
7. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 94%
The most important sci-fi film of the 1960s and a seminal entry in the history of the genre, Stanley Kubrick's epic 2001: A Space Odyssey went on to influence countless films and filmmakers - Ridley Scott called it the best of the best, and Steven Spielberg named 2001 the Big Bang of science fiction.
The film, which follows the crew of Discovery One as they embark on a voyage to Jupiter after the discovery of a mysterious black monolith affecting human evolution, deals with a number of themes that would become the bread and butter of sci-fi as we know it today - extraterrestrial life and artificial intelligence in particular.
2001 was the first film to show us that space travel didn't have to be streamlined, changing the shape of the spaceship from a pointy rocket to the collection of corridors, compartments and modules we are accustomed to seeing in movies today. Perhaps its most significant contribution to the genre is the threat of malevolent computers, however.
Most of the ship's functions are controlled by onboard computer HAL 9000, a sentient operating system that turns against the crew when they accuse it of making an error. Evil computers inspired by HAL have appeared in countless films and TV shows, and HAL himself was named the 13th greatest movie villain by the AFI.