Star Wars has been around since 1977 and fundamentally changed the sci-fi landscape, but a lot of people don’t realize how many science-fiction films have come before the tumultuous space opera. Admittedly, before Star Wars, science-fiction films were for more of a niche audience, or were more laughable than fascinating, and were not as well-produced and respected as they are today. Much of the genre was simply not taken seriously before George Lucas came around, and great genre films like The Blob and Godzilla did not receive as much love from the Academy Awards, being dismissed as B-movies by critics and cinephiles (until they received intellectual reappraisals over recent decades which explored their brilliance, with Godzilla now referred to as poetry).

Updated December 27th, 2022: Curious about the best classic sci-fi movies made before Star Wars? You’ll be pleased to know we’ve updated this article with new entries.

However, there have been a handful of science-fiction films that have stuck out among the crowd and remain beloved to this very day, even without the need for watered-down franchises to follow them. Here are the best science-fiction movies before Star Wars was released in theaters.

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10 Silent Running (1972)

     Universal Pictures

Douglas Turnbull, an innovative visual effects supervisor, who created scenes for 2001: A Space Odyssey, Blade Runner, and The Tree of Life, made his directorial debut with this compelling environmental sci-fi drama that rips your heart out. Set in the post-apocalyptic future, Silent Running tells the melancholic story of Freeman Lowell (Bruce Dern), a lone crew member of a spaceship maintaining a variety of plants for humans’ eventual return to Earth.

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When Lowell is ordered to destroy the last of the planet’s botany, he rebels and attempts to save the greenhouse with the help of three robots. At the heart of Silent Running, which influenced many subsequent sci-fi films, including Pixar’s WALL-E, are feelings of sadness and hope.

9 Alphaville (1965)

     Athos Films

Directed by perhaps the most important filmmaker of the French New Wave, Jean-Luc Godard, 1965’s Alphaville combines the genres of film noir and dystopian science fiction. The movie follows secret agent Lemmy Caution (Eddie Constantine), who arrives in the distant space city of Alphaville to free it from its evil ruler named Von Braun (Howard Vernon). Von Braun’s daughter (Anna Karina) helps Caution. It is a strange but beautiful sci-fi without special effects.

8 The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)

     20th Century Fox

No, this isn’t the off-beat, if visually stunning, Keanu Reeves movie. The original The Day the Earth Stood Still centers around a flying saucer that landed in Washington, D.C. The saucer harbored an alien named Klaatu and his robotic companion named Gort. Looking at it from a contemporary time period, the film is very dated and the robot costume for Gort is laughable, but beyond that, the film is noteworthy for its detailed exposition of the human race and how the ideologies of peace are often traded for war and avarice. The film was selected for preservation at the National Film Registry in 1995.

7 The War of the Worlds (1953)

     Paramount Pictures

Another original, alien-centric film remade in the 2000s (with Tom Cruise) was The War of the Worlds, the 1950s flying saucers classic based on the groundbreaking H.G. Wells masterpiece. The only difference is that the aliens don’t come in peace this time. The creatures from outer space land on Earth and, soon after, all hell breaks loose as the monsters go on a killing spree to take over the world. The aliens are foiled by the bacteria in the atmosphere foreign to them as they die off. Potent, riveting, and ambitious even for a B-flick, the film was a step forward in science-fiction and even won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects.

6 A Trip to the Moon (1902)

     Star Film Company

Admittedly, the film is only fifteen minutes long, but in that short amount of time, audiences were brought into a brand new world of imagination and innovation – science-fiction cinema. The short film sees a group of astronomers traveling to the moon where they find a slew of other lifeforms. Given that A Trip to the Moon was released in 1902, its inventiveness and visual effects are fantastic. Director Georges Melies planted an idea of exploration beyond that of the Earth’s exosphere long before space travel was even feasible, and changed the film industry forever in the process.

5 The Time Machine (1960)

     Loew's

Before Star Wars and, more appropriately, Back to the Future, were released, Rod Taylor starred in the classic movie The Time Machine. It explored the themes of time travel and progress for the sake of science. George Wells (an obvious nod to the author H.G. Wells in this other adaptation of his) is a genius inventor who convinces his science-minded friends that he has discovered the secret of time travel. After his friends rebuff his claims, Wells decides to travel into the future, seeing what progress mankind has made. The movie is nostalgic, clever and wonderfully acted by Taylor. It proves to be thought-provoking and stellar in its storytelling and structure.

4 Solaris (1972)

     Mosfilm

Directed by the Soviet master Andrei Tarkovsky, Solaris is often called the reply to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and one of the most disturbing science fiction films ever. The plot follows a psychologist Kelvin (Donatas Banionis), traveling to a troubled space station circling Solaris to discover what has caused the crew to go insane. Once there, Kelvin is forced to meet his wife, who has been dead for ten years. It is a dream-like celluloid poetry, which reminds what it means to be human.

3 Metropolis (1927)

     Parufamet

This 1927 epic was a brilliant metaphor for both industrialization and capitalism, and proved to be Fritz Lang’s magnum opus. If A Trip to the Moon was the beginning of science-fiction films, Metropolis was its first masterpiece, and began to shift sci-fi toward the mainstream. It has a sense of wonder, using technology as one of its themes throughout the runtime, and its awe and majesty have been inspirational to countless films since.

2 Planet of the Apes (1968)

Keep your bad reviews off this movie you damn, dirty critics! This gorilla-sized fable tells the tale of a small group of astronauts who land on a different planet that is inhabited and run by walking, talking primates. In all fairness, while it is somewhat ridiculous, it did actually spawn tons of merchandise and a franchise, but it was bastardized or cheapened with excessive and pointless sequels and reboots (though the recent Matt Reeves editions have been surprisingly excellent).

Planet of the Apes, despite its now-cheesy makeup and effects, has become a hallmark in movie history. It was a feat of provocative intellectualism which showed that sci-fi could be heavily conceptual and engage deep political and social issues, and has transcended its time period and subverted the genre with a twist ending that left jaws agape.

1 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

     Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Yet another 1968 classic, 2001: A Space Odyssey used technological progressivism in a way that has redefined every sci-fi trick in the book and has been remembered for generations after its release. The film explores deep philosophical issues of existentialism and the evolution of technology, humanity, and the universe; it may even hold the true secrets of the cosmos which have probably just flown over people’s heads.

It also sports HAL 9000, the calmest villain ever put on the big screen. The machine’s collected demeanor and sophisticated, condescending tone and voice are enough to anger anyone, and it makes it that much more satisfying to see his downfall. Nevertheless, the film is a testament to the intellectual and visual power of science-fiction, and paved the way for movies like Star Wars to be beloved by critics and audiences alike.