Science fiction is a genre with a history as long as movies themselves. That means that, while plenty of great original ideas are still being produced in the genre every year, there are also plenty of sci-fi remakes that take old stories and update them.
While some sci-fi remakes are better left unmentioned (Total Recall, anyone?), plenty of sci-fi remakes justify their existence. We’ve pulled together a list of 10 of the best sci-fi remakes ever, some of which come from beloved franchises. These movies manage to take the core idea of the movie they’re based on and do something genuinely innovative with it. Without further ado, here they are.
The second Planet of the Apes trilogy proved that this is one of the most interesting sci-fi franchises in the history of Hollywood. Unfortunately, Rise of the Planet of the Apes is the worst movie of this new trilogy, but its retelling of the story of Caesar, the ape who led an ape uprising, is moving nonetheless.
The movie’s failures have much more to do with its human cast and the machinations that lead to the apes gaining intelligence. Andy Serkis is, as ever, incredible as Caesar, and the biggest miracle of the movie is that you wind up caring for Caesar more than any of the people he hangs around with.
You can watch Rise of the Planet of the Apes on Max.
A smart reinterpretation of a core sci-fi text, The Invisible Man tells the story of a woman who is stalked by her wealthy scientist ex, who uses technology to make himself invisible.
The movie features a harrowing central performance from Elisabeth Moss, and it works in part because it spends much of its time showing us the way everyone in this woman’s life starts to believe that she’s losing it. The Invisible Man has a fairly off-the-wall premise, but you can’t knock the movie’s hugely impressive execution.
You can watch The Invisible Man on Amazon Prime Video.
Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds remake has a mixed legacy, but there are things about it that only he could have pulled off. The movie, which follows a father and his two children as they discover that the Earth is being attacked by aliens, has one of the most riveting opening acts of any movie ever made.
And, while there are pieces of the story that don’t work, the movie’s overall effect and the way it resonates with the 9/11 attacks make it the kind of movie you simply have to see once.
You can watch War of the Worlds on Paramount+.
Steven Soderbergh’s ultimate blank check movie coming off of Ocean’s Eleven and an Oscar win, Solaris is a remake of Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1972 film of the same name. This movie tells the story of a psychologist sent to evaluate the strange behavior of a space crew orbiting a distant planet.
Once he arrives on the ship, he begins to experience the same phenomena as the rest of the crew and slowly spirals into madness as he works through unresolved traumas from his own past. It might be George Clooney’s finest performance.
You can rent Solaris on Amazon Prime Video.
Peter Jackson’s decision to remake King Kong right after the success of Lord of the Rings might have seemed like a folly, but the final product speaks for itself. Jackson’s Kong is epic in scale and scope and uses modern CGI to make one of the most famous apes in all of cinema feel more approachable than ever.
While not every decision in this sweeping epic works, enough of them do to help the movie feel like the kind of old-fashioned blockbuster we weren’t getting enough of even 20 years ago.
You can watch King Kong on Netflix.
Adapted from Chris Marker’s La Jetee, one of the definitive works of science fiction, 12 Monkeys adds a little more meat to the bones of that short story. The film follows a man imprisoned in the 2030s who is tasked with traveling back in time to the 1990s to learn more about a plague about to devastate all of humanity.
As he moves through the 1990s, he comes to appreciate his own role in the plague and how a defining memory from his own childhood may hold the key to everything.
You can rent 12 Monkeys on Amazon Prime Video.
David Lynch’s Dune adaptation was a famous debacle, and Denis Villeneuve’s is, by comparison, something of a miracle. Both parts of the adaptation are excellent, following Timothée Chalamet’s Paul Atreides as he transforms from a young lord into the leader of an insurgent movement.
Chalamet and Rebecca Ferguson are excellent throughout both parts, but what shines brightest here is Villeneuve’s attention to detail and his patience. The world of Dune is complicated, but Villeneuve and his team find a way to make it intelligible and genuinely interesting.
Amazing both for its practical effects and for just how gross it’s willing to get, The Fly tells the story of a scientist who inadvertently merges his DNA with that of a fly and slowly transforms into something unrecognizable.
Combining sci-fi with a love story, the movie features a remarkable central performance from Jeff Goldblum and some of the most effective body horror of David Cronenberg’s long career with the genre. The Fly is terrifying, but part of its brilliance is that all of the terror comes from inside its central character.
You can rent The Fly on Amazon Prime Video.
Serving as an obvious metaphor for communism, Invasion of the Body Snatchers tells the story of a group of friends who discover that everyone is being replaced by pod people. As they race to escape their own replacement, they begin to realize that the alien race that’s invaded them only wants dull conformity.
The movie’s ending, in which we learn the fate of one of its central characters in a chilling fashion, remains one of the best and scariest final scenes in the history of science fiction.
You can watch Invasion of the Body Snatchers on Tubi.
One of the greatest movies ever made, this remake of a 1951 Howard Hawks movie tells the story of a group of researchers at a secluded arctic base who encounter an alien life form that can kill and then take the shape of any of them.
As their paranoia ramps up, they slowly begin to suspect one another and have to figure out a way to root out the alien in their midst. The movie’s effects are legendary, but director John Carpenter’s total mastery of the tension is even more impressive.
You can rent The Thing on Amazon Prime Video.
Some of the best shots in Grok Imagine’s AI-made Odyssey don’t contain actors. Ancient landscapes stretch into the distance. Close-ups of grimy hands suggest people who have touched something rougher than a keyboard. For a few seconds, the illusion holds.
https://twitter.com/imagine/status/2113712964419063911
YouTube videos could soon look better without eating quite so much data, right? Thankfully, the platform plans to introduce a new video format called AV2 on its web player in early 2027, promising more efficient streaming and potentially fewer playback hiccups on slower internet connections. The big headline is a roughly 30% improvement in compression efficiency over AV1, YouTube's existing video format. That doesn't guarantee every video will use 30% less data, but it could make streaming a little easier on both internet connections and data allowances.
What is AV2, and why should viewers care?
YouTube is changing how its Home page works, giving viewers more control over what shows up there and making some of the app’s most-used sections easier to reach. Custom Feeds are now replacing the existing topic chips for eligible users, while YouTube is also testing a redesigned top bar on mobile that moves Subscriptions closer to the Home feed.
YouTube first started experimenting with Custom Feeds earlier this year, letting you type out what you wanted to watch and turning that request into its own stream of recommendations. Now, the feature is starting to look less like a side experiment and more like something YouTube actually wants people to use as part of their everyday Home page.