10 Sci-Fi Movies Critics Were Way Too Harsh On

Even though it's becoming increasingly difficult in today's day and age, the science fiction genre is renowned for presenting audiences with genuinely original ideas that make us think outside the box. Many have succeeded in doing so while most have failed, falling victim to uninspired conventions and poor scripts.

Knowing was a film that dared to be the former, but unfortunately it was treated like the latter. Released in 2009, it starred Nicolas Cage as a professor whose son comes into possession of a 50-year old numerical document capable of predicting future cataclysms and it ultimately results in a journey into the unknown that is dripping in suspense as he is forced to question everything he knows about this world (and others).

Roger Ebert aside, the critics didn't respond well - with many of them criticising the film's over-broodiness and supposedly absurd plot, while the ending was one of the more polarising in recent cinematic history.

It's a shame that critics couldn't have been more positive about a film as intellectual and thought-provoking as this one. Not only should "overserious" never be a legitimate criticism of a sci-fi film in 2009, we're talking about an actual thriller here. What did they want? One-liners?

The truth is that Knowing was an incredibly clever film that, although it did falter throughout, succeeded in its attempts to make us think outside the box, and it allowed Cage to deliver one of the finest performances of his career.