5 Sci-Fi Movies That Are Perfect For Christmas Time

The Christmas season is not the time that most movie fans point to as the greatest for the sci-fi genre – and they wouldn’t be wrong. Science fiction often deals with terrifying unknowns or calamitous situations that require science and/or technology’s best efforts to solve. That’s not the sort of subject matter that a lot of movie fans want to deal with during the holidays, but it doesn’t mean there are no sci-fi movies that either embrace the spirit of the season or offer some great counterprogramming to all the cheer and joy going around.

Videos by ComicBook.com

Below you’ll find 5 sci-fi films that are perfect for Christmas time. Some of them may not be the kind of Christmas films you expect, but they all help to make you appreciate the holiday just a little bit more.

5) Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special

You could waste time on semantics about feature-length movies vs. short films, or Marvel’s signature “Special Presentation” imprint. However, you’re only depriving yourself if you won’t put the Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special a part in your Christmas movie roster.

James Gunn and his Guardians family united to make a hilarious and heartwarming side-quest story, about the Guardians trying to cheer up Peter Quill (Chris Pratt), a lonely Earth man, at Christmas time. How can you hate a project that lets the GotG cast just riff and joke with one another, while also creating such great meta-humor that acting icon Kevin Bacon even gets to have fun and chew scenery, playing himself. The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special is also the truest marriage of sci-fi and Christmas that you’re likely to find, with space aliens working hard (if not smart) to pull off a Christmas miracle.

You can stream it on Hulu-Disney+.

4) Alien

Look, there is a small demographic of movie fans who prefer dark, foreboding alternatives to the cheery Christmas movies that rule the airwaves during the holiday season. If we’re picking a sci-fi film that offers the complete opposite of everything that is Christmas, it has to be Alien (1979).

Ridley Scott’s bleak nightmare version of an “immaculate conception” story is forever burned into the heads of moviegoers. Nothing (and we do mean nothing) will make you appreciate the lights, the decorations, the spirit, and company that comes with Christmas like spending a claustrophobic evening stranded aboard the USCSS Nostromo with Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) and a xenomorph. Christmas counterprogramming at its finest.

You can stream it on Hulu-Disney+.

3) Iron Man 3

Shane Black (Lethal Weapon, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang) cannot pass up a chance to bring Christmas into his films, and his big Marvel movie was no different. Iron Man 3 is probably the most sci-fi-heavy film in the trilogy, featuring the most armored suits and rival bio-tech in the form of the Extremis process.

Basically, Iron Man 3 is the cheat code for both sci-fi and/or Marvel fans who want to watch something that has a traditional Christmas backdrop, but is still built to thrill genre lovers. If Die Hard can be considered a “Christmas movie,” then Iron Man 3 definitely can, too.

You can stream it on Hulu-Disney+.

2) Gremlins

Joe Dante’s 1984 black comedy creature-feature is, indeed, a Christmas movie. The entire catalyst for the story is a dad/inventor going to Chinatown, trying to search for a Christmas gift that will actually impress his teenage son. That “gift” comes in the form of a pet (a “mogwai”) named “Gizmo,” which not only can replicate itself, but also mutates into a fierce “gremlin” if fed after the hour of midnight. Of course, the “rules” get broken and the gremlins get loose. The fight to stop gremlin leader “Stripe” and his gang of monsters ends up being a massive set piece scattered across an entire small town, which is deep in the throes of Holiday Season celebration.

Gremlins isn’t just a Christmas movie with a horror twist: It is the movie that straddled the line between comedy, horror, and holiday spirit so well that it forced the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) to create a whole new “PG-13” rating. Honor its legacy.

You can stream it on Hulu-Disney+ and HBO Max.

1) Children of Men

Bet you didn’t see this one coming, but here we are.

Children of Men is set in the “future” (2027), where human infertility has pushed our species to the brink of extinction, sparking an authoritarian takeover of the UK to quell unrest. Theo Faron (Clive Owen) is a disillusioned activist-turned-bureaucrat, who is contacted by his estranged ex-wife, a rebel leader (Julianne Moore), to take on a do-or-die mission: help smuggle a young girl named Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey) out of government territory – a young woman who has pulled off the miracle of being the first pregnancy in decades. The mission quickly goes awry, and Theo and Kee are forced to go on the run, barely staying one step ahead of the fanatics, despots, and even revolutionaries who all view the potential new birth from very different angles.

If there is such a thing as a sci-fi flip on the story of the Virgin Mary and Joseph, then Children of Men is it. Director and co-writer Alfonso Cuarón was clearly evoking the Nativity Story when he made Children of Men, and the resonance of that story – the idea of one birth, one life, changing the world for the better – still rings just as true in a sci-fi context. The single-take action sequences and edge-of-your-seat thrills are just a bonus gift. Merry Christmas.

You can rent the movie through various digital services.