Sci-fi is a beloved and thrilling genre for a reason. With exciting plots, thought-provoking themes, and sometimes reality bending concepts, sci-fi stories capture the imagination like nothing else, especially when it comes to movies. Making it even better, some sci-fi movies are not only great the first time you watch them, but get better every time you rewatch, making the experience one that is almost endlessly rewarding and fun. In some cases, a film is so much better each time you rewatch it, you actually learn something new that you might have missed the first time around.
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While there are a lot of sci-fi films that could go on this list (and really, any sci-fi film is worth watching more than once) there are some films that are just perfect for multiple viewings. Here are 10 sci-fi movies that get better every time you rewatch them — no matter how many times that is.
10) Primer
Time travel is a particularly interesting subgenre of sci-fi, but it’s also one that can be a little complicated. Every time travel movie has its own convention and structure around the concept which can make the overall narrative a little complex and Primer is no exception. The extremely low budget (a mere $7000) independent film released in 2004, Primer follows two engineers, Aaron and Abe, who have a little side hustle doing tech projects out of Aaron’s garage. During one of their projects, they accidentally discover time travel, specifically with the creation of a very unique sort of time travel machine. As they refine what they’ve discovered, the consequences are disturbing.
Even with just one watch, Primer is a fascinating film and maybe one of the most raw takes on time travel in sci-fi. The film also has surprisingly high production values despite its tiny budget. However, given the density of the story and its complexity (it is at times extremely convoluted), Primer benefits wildly from multiple viewings — and gets a little more frightening each time. There’s a reason it’s become a cult classic and is considered one of the best movies about time travel ever made.
9) Everything Everywhere All At Once
Let’s be real for a moment: Everything Everywhere All At Once gets better every time you rewatch it just because it’s a great movie to begin with but rewatching it because it’s a sci-fi film has benefits, too. The film deals in the concept of the multiverse which, like time travel, can be a complex and at time hard to follow concept making multiple viewings not only rewarding but sometimes necessary.
The film stars Michelle Yeoh as Evelyn Quan Wang, an immigrant who discovers that she has to connect with parallel universe versions of herself to prevent a powerful being from destroying the multiverse. Watching the movie the first time around, you get the film’s heartfelt emotional core nestled in all its fun chaos but watching it subsequent times allows you to pick up all kinds of new details and little jokes. And, again, it’s just a fantastic movie that you absolutely should watch over and over again.
8) Gattaca
You’re not going to miss anything if you only watch Gattaca once. The 1997 Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman starring thriller is pretty direct in its subject matter and story of a society driven by eugenics where children are conceived and selected for having the right DNA and hereditary traits and those born outside of the program are deemed expendable and less than and an “in-valid” man’s (Hawke) struggle to realize his dreams.
However, what makes Gattaca better every time you watch it is that you start to understand the themes of discrimination in the film go far deeper than just the sci-fi elements presented in the story. There are also larger messages about controlled societies that become even more resonant upon each watch making Gattaca not only a better movie each time you watch it but something of a true masterpiece.
7) The Terminator
While The Terminator isn’t exactly a time travel movie, it does contain time travel elements and they certainly benefit from a rewatch but even beyond that, rewatching this absolutely iconic sci-fi action film is never a bad idea. The film stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as a cybernetic assassin (the Terminator) who is sent back in time from the then-future 2029 (the film was released in 1984) to take out Sarah Connor because her not-yet-conceived son would someday save mankind from extinction from the evil AI Skynet and obviously, evil AI doesn’t want that.
Do you actually need to rewatch The Terminator? No, but the time loop makes more sense upon rewatch and the more you watch it, the more details you notice. You also appreciate just how good it is over 40 years later the more times you watch it, which is not something that can be said for every sci-fi film. The action in particular really holds up.
6) Inception
Christopher Nolan’s first film after The Dark Knight Trilogy is one of his best, a twisty tale of a thief (Leonardo Di Caprio) who infiltrates the dreams of his targets and is given the opportunity to clear his criminal history and get his family back if he can successfully implant an idea in someone else’s subconscious — or “incept” them. Think of it as very personal sort of heist film.
There are a ton of reasons to rewatch Inception, but what makes it better each time is the details. The world building of the dreams DiCaprio’s Cobb enters only get more impressive each time you watch, but elements of the story come into better focus as well. And you might just find your opinion about the film’s ambiguous ending shifting from watch to watch so that’s interesting as well.
5) Children of Men
Released in 2006, Children of Men is set in a dystopian 2027 where, after two decades of human infertility, human civilization is on the edge of collapse and the United Kingdom has become a totalitarian police state and refugees are arrested before being imprisoned, deported, or executed. When a young refugee reveals to civil servant Theo (Clive Owen) that she’s pregnant, he attempts to help her escape to safety.
Children of Men is a good, if not a little bleak, movie but rewatching it reveals layers of rich environmental details every time. It helps bring the world the film is set in into clearer focus and makes the entire experience that much better.
4) Tenet
You might argue that Christopher Nolan’s Tenet requires a rewatch to attempt to understand it at all and you might even argue that Tenet only gets more confusing with each rewatch. Both of those arguments are valid. But the 2020 time travel film’s complicated plot about a former CIA officer in a secret organization tracing the origin of objects that are strangely traveling backward through time has so many different layers that you can’t possibly get the entire story with one watch. Or two. It’s a film that needs to be rewatched many times and is equally more interesting and more frustrating each time you do.
If you can manage to not overthink some of the mechanics of the story each time you watch, Tenet actually improves upon rewatch simply for how visually well-made it is. The design and effects of the film in particular are exceptional — especially the plane crash sequence — and they get better and better each time you see them.
3) Edge of Tomorrow
You can consider Edge of Tomorrow a different sort of time travel movie. The 2014, Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt starring sci-fi action film is set in a future where Europe is occupied by aliens called Mimics and a military public relations officer with no combat experience (Cruise) is forced to join a landing operation against them but ends up in a time loop trying to find a way to beat the aliens. Live, die, repeat as the movie’s tagline says.
With the movie’s plot centered around the time loops and everything that Cruise’s character learns during the loops, rewatching Edge of Tomorrow repeatedly is almost like being part of the movie. You get to experience the story over and over with knowledge of how things work and it lets you enjoy the action and details just a bit more. And since we still don’t have a sequel for the movie, rewatching is the best we can do right now (seriously though, we want that sequel.)
2) The Matrix
The Matrix might be one of the best and most iconic sci-fi films ever made, kicking off a wildly popular franchise with its story of a dystopian future in which humanity is, without its knowledge, trapped inside a simulated reality created by intelligent machines — the Matrix — and a hacker named Neo is recruited by the rebellion as one of humanity’s only hopes. The Matrix is a fantastic film that was met with widespread acclaim when it was released in 1999 and a good film is always worth rewatching.
However, The Matrix gets better and better each time you watch it on a couple of fronts. First, there’s the action in the film. The choreography is incredible and there are new details that you catch on subsequent viewings. There’s also fine details in the story that emerge only when you watch more than once.
1) Arrival
In Arrival, linguist Louise Banks (Amy Adams), is enlisted by the U.S. Army to figure out how to communicate with extraterrestrials who have come to Earth in order to prevent war. It’s a straightforward premise, but the story is far more complex and is, ultimately, less about the aliens, and more about humanity itself with a beautiful twist centering around the role of language that truly must be seen to be fully appreciated.
Because Arrival is told in a non-linear structure, while the film is perfect even in just one watch, rewatching it only makes it better. Once you’ve seen the story and get a grasp of how it’s structured, different moments in the film hold more meaning, making it a much richer emotional experience. Rewatching Arrival elevates this from simply an excellent sci-fi film to perhaps one of the best movies of all time in any genre.
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