10 of the Most Overrated Science Fiction Movies

For a movie that was advertised as a story about discovering aliens, Ad Astra is significantly lacking any extraterrestrial activity. Maybe that could be forgiven, but the science veers towards outlandish at times, and the plot moves at a glacial pace towards an unsatisfying end. 

Maybe it’s the eternal father-son struggle that won critics over—but we wish there had been more science, more aliens, and a lot less emotional angst.

There are people who are going to tell us we just didn’t understand this movie. And maybe they’re right. But even people who generally love the film admit that the middle sags quite a bit. 

Space Odyssey is genre-bending and groundbreaking, but it’s also a journey into a strange, psychedelic plot that doesn’t make sense or come together in a tangible storyline.

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What starts as a very cool concept quickly gets lost in a confusing jumble of space-time continuum threads. 

Even though Intersellar is based on actual physics, the execution takes complicated concepts and slaps a surface explanation on them, which makes them difficult to grasp in relation to the plot. 

All of this could be overlooked for the pure vibes the movie gives, but the emotional character arcs fall flat, taking the whole movie with them.

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There is a lot to love about Blade Runner. In many respects, it's a classic. The gritty future is beautiful to look at, the visual effects are stunning to watch, and Harrison Ford does an impeccable job bringing a lackluster character to life. But the plot moves so painfully slow, it’s difficult to sit through. There’s also the problem of so many versions being released. Which one is the best? Depends on whom you ask. 

And that’s why we think for all it does right, the movie itself just doesn’t live up to the expectations critics set.

An angsty teen and a weird rabbit named Frank take you through a journey that feels more like a dream than a coherent plot. With a cult following and an ending that you have to seek out answers to understand, Donnie Darko may be considered a trippy masterpiece to many, but it leaves too many unanswered and unsettling questions to feel complete.

This may be a case of a movie not aging well. But given how it continues to garner high reviews, we decided to include it on this list. 

Mad Max renders the bleak, dystopian future spectacularly, but the same low-budget quality that creates these stunning effect also detract from the film. For all the adrenaline-fueled car chases, the pace is maddeningly slow. 

Combined with a disjointed plot full of weird scenes that go nowhere, strange over-the-top characters, and an extremely unsatisfying ending, the entire experience is interesting but not all that compelling.

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There is no questioning the high quality of the stunning visual effects in Gravity, but that’s about where the positives end. There is a decent amount of tension that being in space while facing life-or-death obstacles naturally creates, but that can’t carry an entire movie. 

And as Gravity ends, the plot starts to feel repetitive, and riddled with inaccuracies. It also overly relies on saccharine sentimentality to convey the themes and messaging in an impactful way.

The idea behind Her is intriguing, especially in our increasingly technological world. What could happen with smarter and smarter AI interfaces? And how could over-reliance on virtual reality impact who—or what—we interact with? But instead of giving us a unique exploration of these questions, we get a relationship that plays out like most typical dysfunctional love stories. 

Maybe that was the point. But the ending felt forced and predictable, which made the entire movie flatter and more lackluster than memorable.

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Being stalked by an abusive ex wearing an invisible suit should be absolutely terrifying to watch. And Elizabeth Moss does a fantastic job showing the psychological distress being gaslit on such an extreme level would cause. We feel her suffering as she becomes isolated and pushed to desperation. 

But rather than let the story build with natural tension and tightly held reveals, The Invisible Man bludgeons us over the head with a predictable plot where things are explained too easily, unveiled too soon, and happen in a rush. There are many horror remakes that breathe fresh life into the source material. Unfortunately, this isn’t one of them.

This dark comedy does a lot of things right. The visual effects create a vivid and jarring view of an overly bureaucratized dystopia, and it ends with a brilliant twist. But everything that is wonderful at the beginning of the film begins to wane until it simply becomes tedious mundanity the longer the movie plays. 

The attempt to infuse comedy into a dark theme misses the mark, coming across as more ludicrous than alarming. 

It does a reasonable job of creating memorable scenes filled with poignant messaging, but the erratic plot does little to tie these moments together in a meaningful way.

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