20 Best Science Fiction Movies Released Since 2000

James Mangold’s Logan is one of the quintessential superhero movies of the superhero age, which really flexes its sci-fi credentials and sets up a future of smaller, more considered and risk-taking films down this end of the genre.

Hugh Jackman returns for what was supposed to be the final time as James Howlett (otherwise known as Logan to his friends). His days of saving the day as Wolverine are long behind him, and he’s now driving a limo in the desert and doing his best to keep a dementia-stricken Professor X (Patrick Stewart) under wraps from the authorities. Despite being cut off from society and seemingly beyond any acts of charity, the needs of young mutant Laura (Dafne Keen) bring the Wolverine back into the fray for one last act of defiance.

Superheroes, by and large, are rooted in science fiction, but Logan takes this to new places, shaping a bleak dystopia that serves as a swan song to the original X-Men universe, with Jackman's finally-aging Wolverine as the lynchpin of the piece. Gone are the leather costumes, stealth jets and quips, replaced by Jackman and Stewart’s melancholic performances, which cut to the bone and lend a true and rarely seen gravitas to this take on the X-Men we grew up watching.