10 Most Influential Sci-Fi Films Of All Time

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 93%

Manned trips to the moon caused a resurgence in the mainstream popularity of science fiction in the 1970s, and mankind's growing wonderment about our solar system was duplicated on screen. While the early part of the decade saw the theme of paranoia continued in films A Clockwork Orange, Silent Running, and THX 1138, it was another George Lucas property that would go on to define the decade.

Dubbed a "technical watershed" by film critic Roger Ebert, Star Wars took the mystical elements of 2001: A Space Odyssey and shifted them into light speed, kick-starting a new generation of special effects driven high-energy movies that combined elements of other genres. Alongside Steven Spielberg's Jaws, Star Wars was also instrumental in creating what we now know as the blockbuster movie.

The concept of a used future in which machinery and culture are already dated at the start of the movie was born out of Star Wars' aesthetics, inspiring some of the most prolific sci-fi filmmakers of the day in Ridley Scott and James Cameron, and would later inspire Peter Jackson's take on The Lord of the Rings as well as Christopher Nolan's Inception.