20 Best War Sci-fi Movies You Need to Watch
There are a lot of sci-fi subgenres, but in this article, we are bringing you the best military sci-fi movies of all time. Some of the movies on our list will be some of the biggest blockbusters, while orders will be some less know, amazing war sci-fi movies.
In any case, we hope you can find something interesting for your next watch, and that you will be pleased at the end with our list of the best war sci-fi movies.
Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
In the world of the future, Tom Cruise is Lieutenant William Cage who fights in a war against aliens. Suddenly, he finds himself trapped in time, in the last day of the battle where he dies. Going through the last day of his life every time, Cage becomes more and more skilled and ready to face death after a while.
Avatar (2009)
The alien world is shown through the eyes of Jake Sully, a wheelchair-bound ex-Marine. Regardless of his disability, Jake is a warrior and a fighter. He was recruited and sent to Pandora, a distant planet where corporations are mining a rare mineral to solve Earth’s energy crisis. Since Pandora’s atmosphere is poisonous, the Avatar Program was created to merge human consciousness into an avatar, a remote-controlled biological body that can survive Pandora’s deadly air.
Avatars are genetically engineered hybrids of human DNA and Na’vi DNA, native to Pandora. Reborn in his avatar, Jake can walk. His mission is to infiltrate the Na’vi who have become the main obstacle to extracting the precious ore. But things take a different turn when the beautiful Na’vik Neytiri saves Jake’s life.
Jake is accepted by her clan and he, going through many trials and adventures, slowly gets to know their way of life. As Jake and Neytiri’s relationship deepens, he comes to appreciate the Na’vi and eventually becomes a part of them. But soon he will be put to the greatest test and lead them into an epic battle in which the fate of the entire world will be decided.
Pacific Rim (2013)
The alien threat to the world has come from the depths of the Pacific, from a rift between two tectonic plates, from a portal between dimensions. To defend themselves from the monsters, the leaders of the great powers united and created their own monsters – the Jäger program was born, which after the initial successes will come to the brink of destruction, along with the whole world. However, a group of top pilots does not give up and has only one task – to cancel the apocalypse!
War for the Planet of the Apes (2017)
The year is 2028, two years have passed since Koba’s (Toby Kebbell) attack on the human survivors in San Francisco. Today, Caesar (Andy Serkis) and his tribe of intelligent apes must fight for their lives against the fugitive American military faction known as Alpha-Omega, led by the ruthless Colonel (Woody Harrelson). The Colonel’s military horde even employs other monkeys, derogatorily called donkeys.
Alpha-Omega mounts a failed attack on the ape guardhouse and four soldiers are captured, including one named The Preacher (Gabriel Chavarria) and the gorilla Red (Ty Olsson). But Caesar lets them go free, hoping to prove to the Colonel that monkeys are not savages, while Red escapes by wounding the gorilla Winter. Meanwhile, Caesar’s eldest son Blue Eyes and Lieutenant Rocket return from a long journey and claim to have found a place across the desert, ideal for apes to settle.
Winter claims that the apes should go immediately to the promised land, but Caesar wants them to prepare for the journey first. Because of this decision, Caesar will regret that night, because the Colonel leads a team that enters the monkey house and kills Blue Eyes and Caesar’s wife Cornelia.
The Tomorrow War (2021)
Namely, the army came from the year 2051 and returned 30 years into the past to inform people that aliens have arrived on Earth and will soon destroy humanity. The only hope is for the humans of 2021 to join them in 2051 to try to outnumber the alien species and save the world for future generations.
Ender’s Game (2013)
The film follows an exceptionally gifted boy, Ender. He will be selected for elite military training to save the world destroyed in the war against aliens. Namely, only the way children think and react can save humanity.
Spectral (2016)
A sci-fi/thriller story centered on a special-ops team that is dispatched to fight supernatural beings.
Soldier (1998)
Kurt Russell stars as elite, indoctrinated soldier Todd, who has been stripped of all feelings. He is a fighter who knows only one rule: kill or be killed. When he is defeated by a member of the future generation of fighters Caine, he is taken with the waste to a remote planet.
Peaceful residents find him and help him recover. Trained only for violence, Todd is at first wary and suspicious of everyone, but the hospitality of the members of the settlement where they brought him, Mace (Sean Pertwee) and Sandra (Connie Nielsen), finally begins to melt his coldness. Unfortunately, his luck doesn’t last long because when the ruthless Caine reappears, Todd must end the conflict once and for all.
Starship Troopers (1997)
In the near future, humanity is in a war for survival against a vicious race of giant insects that colonize the galaxy by spreading their spores. Insects have no houses, technology, weapons or clothes and the only thing they know is to attack, fight, kill and reproduce. Humanity, therefore, founded the Space Marines who fight against insects with machine guns, which are not particularly effective because it takes many bullets to destroy one insect, and their number is large because they multiply very quickly.
Johnny Rico (C. Van Dien) is in love with his schoolmate Carmen Ibanez (D. Richards), who wants to become a spaceship pilot after finishing high school. Jean Rasczak (M. Ironside), their biology professor, tries to arouse patriotic feelings in his students. Dizzy Flores (D. Meyer) is in love with Johnny, but he doesn’t notice her. Carl Jenkins (N. P. Harris), Johnny’s best friend, is a gifted scientist. After high school, despite his parents’ opposition, Johnny enlists in the space marines with Carmen and Carla. The three of them make a pact of eternal friendship. Carmen is a very skilled pilot and is progressing quickly.
Carl is inducted into the intelligence service, while Johnny undergoes very rigorous training. Dizzy also joined his unit at her own request. Johnny excelled in training and was promoted, but when a soldier was killed during a real ammunition exercise through his fault, Johnny was severely punished. Carmen ends the relationship with him, because she wants to fully devote herself to her career.
Zander Barcalow (P. Muldoon), whom she met at the prom and who has an undisguised crush on her, is with her on training in the spaceship. Disappointed by the events, Johnny decides to leave the Marines and return to his parents’ home. At the moment of his departure, insects attacked the Earth and war was declared, and since his parents and their entire town were killed in the attack, Johnny decides to stay and fight…
Independence Day (1996)
It was a perfectly normal summer day… until, without warning, a huge shadow darkened the Earth. An unusual atmospheric phenomenon, ominous and hypnotic, spread over our entire planet. The question of whether we are alone in the universe has finally been answered. And in just a few minutes, the lives of all beings are changed forever.
Here, aliens in countless spaceships arrive out of nowhere and gather over the world’s largest cities, creating global panic. And it’s justified, because the evil visitors level New York, Washington and Los Angeles with the death ray. A handful of brave Americans, including a “Clinton-like” president, a fighter pilot and a computer freak called David, try to devise a strategy against the invaders.
On the Fourth of July, their risky plan goes into effect and several fighter pilots (including the president) launch an attack on the spaceships. However, their success and the fate of the world depend on David trying to disarm the mothership.
With a budget of 71 million dollars and unprecedented special effects, “Independence Day” is a grandiose, high-tech homage to the disaster movies of the seventies and the war movies of the forties. Led again by the great Black actor (even though, not that great of a man, Will Smith).
Aliens (1986)
The capsule of the only surviving member of the crew of the cargo cruiser Nostromo, Ellen Ripley (Weaver), after a fatal encounter with an alien, floated in space for 57 long years. When she is finally rescued, Ripley is shocked that no one believes her story. Meanwhile, the planet where the crew of the Nostromo discovered the original alien breeding ground has become a new Earth colony.
Ripley, who has lost her pilot’s license, suffers from terrible nightmares in which she daily encounters the creature that killed the crew of her ship. As expected, she soon learns that all contact with the colony has been lost and that Weyland-Yutani, a powerful company, is sending a squad of marines to scout the situation.
Carter J. Burke (Reiser), one of the scientists working for the company, invites Ripley to join them. In exchange for her experience, he will restore her pilot’s license. Brave Ripley sees this as an opportunity to face her own fears and accepts the invitation.
Predator (1987)
The CIA sends a group of commandos led by Special Agent Dutch (A. Schwarzenegger) into the Central American jungle to rescue airmen captured by guerrillas. The mission goes according to plan, the commandos free the hostages, but while searching for the five missing, they find their skinned bodies, which was certainly not the work of the guerrillas. Namely, it seems that there is something in the jungle, some being invisible to the naked eye, which kills people by removing their entrails and massacring them.
Dutch, his special forces and the surviving hostage go in search of an unidentified being that could be from another planet. Their journey will turn into a nightmare when they start to die one by one,
Tomorrow, When the War Began (2010)
A group of Australian teenagers on vacation in the wilderness, carefree and enjoyment is interrupted by the onslaught of military planes. Since they do not have any information from the outside world, they begin to understand that war has suddenly broken out in their country. Their parents have disappeared from their homes and they are forced to start a fight against the attackers.
Mobile Suit Gundam I (1981)
A teenage boy must fight in an interplanetary war as the only available pilot to a revolutionary new giant battle robot.
Stargate (1994)
Daniel Jackson (James Spader) is a failed Egyptologist who claims that the Egyptian pyramids have a non-human origin. His theories are noticed by the US Air Force, who hire him to help them decipher the hieroglyphs from the stones found in Giza, now housed in a secret military complex. Jackson manages to open a miraculous device known as a Stargate that opens a portal to another dimension several light years away.
Under the leadership of Lieutenant Jack O’Neil (Kurt Russell), a selected group together with Jackson sets out to explore an unknown planet. They soon realize that a relatively primitive human colony is being ruled by someone or something posing as the Egyptian sun god Ra. The team is soon captured by a said ruler who comes into possession of their nuclear weaponry.
Battleship (2012)
The plot of the film, based on the strategy game Battleship, revolves around international naval forces that are suddenly drawn into a fierce battle with aliens, who decide to build a powerful energy source in our oceans. At the same time, it is interesting to note that the film will show both sides of the story, both human and extraterrestrial.
Dune (2021)
The story follows Paul Atreides of House Atreides, a brilliant and gifted young man born for great things, who must travel to the most dangerous planet in the universe to secure the future of his family and his people. He finds himself in the middle of a conflict over the exclusive supply of the most prized resource in existence, the galaxy’s most valuable element found only on Arrakis that can unlock humanity’s greatest potential, where only those who can overcome their fear will survive.
The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
Although the rebels against the Galactic Empire prevented the construction of the murderous Dark Star, the evil Emperor (voice of Clive Revill) with the help of Darth Vader (D. Prowse, voice of James Earl Jones) and his superior army managed to suppress the Republican forces.
They, led by Princess Leia (C. Fisher), found a new refuge on the snow- and ice-bound planet Hoth in order to prepare for a decisive showdown with the Empire as soon as possible. But Han Solo (H. Ford), although he is bound to Princess Leia by much more than loyalty, wants to leave the Republican ranks and plans to continue on his own path. He is prevented from doing so by the disappearance of Luke Skywalker, who, after escaping from the snow monster, is confronted by the ghost of Ben Obi-Wan Kenobi (A. Guinness).
Ben tells him to seek out the Jedi Yoda (voice of Frank Oz) on the planet Dagobah to guide him to the power of the Force for which he is destined. At the last moment, Han Solo saves the incapacitated Luke, but there is no time to recover, because Imperial troops land within reach of the rebel base and, despite armed resistance, conquer it in a short time. However, Princess Leia, Han Solo, the droid C-3PO (A. Daniels) and Chewbacca (P. Mayhew) manage to escape.
Overlord (2018)
On D-Day itself, a group of soldiers was sent to Nazi-occupied France to complete the last mission of the war. In the field, they discover a Nazi laboratory that performs grotesque and crazy experiments on local villagers. Military training didn’t prepare them for what was to come – saving the world from an even bigger threat – fighting a squad of genetically enhanced Super Soldiers!
The Matrix (1999)
A retired software professional leads a double life. He spends his nights in front of his computer where, under the pseudonym Neo, he becomes a hacker trying to discover something he himself is not sure exists. After he comes into contact with Morpheus, a legendary hacker whom the government claims is a terrorist, he is pursued by the police led by the dangerous agent Smith (H. Weaving).
Morpheus reveals to him that he is part of the matrix, which is an illusion of the world, that is, a virtual reality that computers have been using for centuries to control the enslaved human race. Morpheus is the leader of a small group of people who have learned the truth and are trying to start a war for liberation from the computers. A new hope awakens in them, because according to legend, the Chosen One is coming – the only one who will be able to stand up to the machines. Everything indicates that Neo could be the one.
