Chris Pratt has nearly reached a level of annoyance since he began appearing in countless franchises, from animated voice roles in films like Super Mario Bros. to the MCU, Jurassic World, and more. However, after his days as a comedic goofball on Parks and Recreation, he exploded in 2014 with his arrival in the MCU in Guardians of the Galaxy, and he hasn’t slowed down since. Since that time, Pratt has appeared in more sci-fi movies than any other genre, which might be a surprise for fans who began following him as a comedy star, and many of these movies were massive box office success stories.
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From his MCU roles as Star-Lord and Jurassic World roles as Owen Grady to his leading roles in various other releases, here are Chris Pratt’s sci-fi movie roles, ranked. On a side note, the only movies included here are the films where Pratt was one of the main stars, so smaller appearances in films like Thor: Love and Thunder, Wanted, and Her did not make the list.
11) Passengers (2016)
Passengers was a big stumbling block for Chris Pratt, a movie that had an interesting setup but might be the most problematic movie of the actor’s career. Directed by Morten Tyldum, Pratt stars as Jim Preston, a mechanical engineer who wakes from hibernation 90 years too early aboard a colony ship carrying 5,000 sleeping passengers. Isolated and facing a lifetime alone, he wakes another passenger (Jennifer Lawrence as Aurora) without her consent, condemning her to the same fate without telling her the truth.
The movie was meant to be a cerebral sci-fi movie with space travel as the backdrop for a moral quandary. The film was a box office success, but its 30% critics’ score and 63% audience score speak volumes. Pratt delivers a fantastic performance, spending most of the time by himself, carrying the scenes well before Lawrence joins the story. What makes this the worst of Pratt’s sci-fi movies isn’t the acting, which is fantastic, but it is that the film frames Jim’s decision to wake Aurora as a romance, when it is, in reality, a morally corrupt horror story.
10) Jurassic World Dominion (2022)
Chris Pratt starred in three Jurassic World movies as one of the main leads, but the second and third ones fell off a lot in quality, although they were at least commercial successes. Jurassic World Dominion was the third movie in the rebooted franchise, and the one that ended the story for Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard, who played Owen and Claire in this part of the franchise. This film tried to sell itself on the return of Sam Neill, Laura Dern, and Jeff Goldblum, in their first time all together since the first movie in 1993.
That wasn’t enough to save the movie. It did break $1 billion, with people still willing to pay big money to see the CGI dinosaurs, if nothing else. However, its 28% critics’ score was the lowest of the franchise, and the audience score, while significantly higher, wasn’t enough for Universal to bring Pratt back for another go. The biggest problem is that the movie set all the dinosaurs loose all over the world, which limited the excitement of seeing people trapped in a small space with them, and while it was fun to see them running free, it just didn’t match up to any of the films in the franchise before this.
9) The Electric State (2025)
There was a lot of excitement for The Electric State when it came out on Netflix from fans of the illustrated Simon Stålenhag novel on which it was based. Millie Bobby Brown took the lead role as a young woman searching for her brother in an alternate-history America where drones have replaced human soldiers, and the population is addicted to virtual reality headsets. Pratt is a smuggler who agrees to help her search for her brother in a world where humans are waging war against the robots.
This was one of the most expensive movies Netflix ever made, at a reported $320 million, and directed by Anthony and Joe Russo (Avengers: Endgame). It might go down as one of the biggest disappointments for the streaming service, though. The Electric State had decent viewing numbers, but its 14% critics’ score and 67% audience rating proved that its shelf life would be short. The acting and cast were good, but the film tried to do too much and never committed fully to anything, resulting in a beautiful film that lacked a good story.
8) Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)
The second movie in the Jurassic World franchise was Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, and it brought back Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard, where they returned to Isla Nublar to rescue dinosaurs before a volcanic eruption destroys the island, only to discover the rescue operation is a front for a black market auction. This film did try to do something different, as it showed that corporations cared more about making money than protecting human lives, and there was even a dark moment with a cloned human girl.
This was another movie where the critics and audience disagreed, although the critics’ score was at least higher, sitting at 47%. However, the movie wasn’t as much about the dinosaurs, and the second half was more of a horror story in a mansion than a movie about the wonders of the dinosaurs coming back to life. J.A. Bayona at least made it all look good with his direction, but with Pratt’s Owen mostly reacting to things and not taking action on his own, it was one of his character’s lesser movies in the three. Its story was at least more focused and scary than the third movie, making it objectively better.
7) The Tomorrow War (2021)
In 2021, Chris Pratt tried to make his own franchise, and what resulted was at least a fun action movie. Directed by Chris McKay, Chris Pratt plays Dan Forester, a biology teacher and veteran drafted into a war 30 years in the future where soldiers travel back in time to conscript the present’s population to fight an alien invasion. The film was a huge one, made for a theatrical release, but sent to Prime Video streaming instead during the pandemic.
The film broke Prime Video records in its first month and topped Nielsen’s streaming charts, beating Disney+ releases including Black Widow. It had a critics’ score of 52%, but an audience score of 76%, which was becoming the normal level of separation for any Pratt movie. The premise is good, and this is an inventive and intriguing sci-fi movie for Pratt, but the third act collapsed and never paid off what was promised, instead teasing a sequel, which made the entire movie feel like a letdown.
6) Mercy (2026)
In 2026, Chris Pratt took on a very different sci-fi movie with director Timur Bekmambetov, who Pratt previously worked with on Wanted. In this film, Pratt stars as Detective Chris Raven, an LAPD detective in 2029 Los Angeles who is strapped to a chair and given 90 minutes to convince an AI judge named Maddox that he did not murder his wife. The twist is that he advocated for this justice system where the AI determined guilt or innocence and then delivered the punishment, and now he is faced with it for a crime he didn’t commit.
The movie was a box office failure, despite a lower $60 million budget. However, unlike most of Chris Pratt’s sci-fi movies, this was more of a low-key thriller, although it did have some great set pieces when Pratt began to figure out that this was all a trap by whoever had framed him. What is interesting is that Pratt spends most of the movie strapped to a chair in a single setting, while he only listens to the action happening. It is a more thoughtful movie, but its commercial failure hurts its standing.
5) Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023)
The third and final movie in the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise was the last for James Gunn in the MCU as well. In this film, Chris Pratt returns as Peter Quill/Star-Lord, and the film focuses on Rocket Raccoon’s traumatic origin story, with the team’s mission to save their teammate from the High Evolutionary. What resulted was a film with a lot of the same action and humor as the first two movies, but with an even deeper meditation on trauma, found family, and finding yourself.
As with the other Guardians of the Galaxy movies, this was a huge success, and it also had a great critics’ score of 82% and a high audience score of 94%. The movie was praised for its touching story and the team’s last hurrah working together, but it remains the weakest of the three movies, although that is not a bad thing since the first two movies are among the MCU’s best. Star-Lord is easily the least important part of this story, though, which is one thing that holds it down when looking at Chris Pratt’s sci-fi movies.
4) Jurassic World (2015)
The first Jurassic World movie was the best for critics and the box office, and it was a surprising return for the franchise. Directed by Colin Trevorrow, Chris Pratt plays Owen Grady, a Navy veteran and velociraptor behaviorist at the fully operational Jurassic World theme park, in his first appearance in the franchise. This movie did something that the original trilogy only teased, and that is opening an actual theme park for people to visit, and then setting the dinosaurs loose on these paying customers.
With a $150 million budget, Jurassic World made $1.672 billion at the box office, the third highest-grossing movie of all time when it was released, and it guaranteed the new franchise would keep rolling along. Pratt’s performance as Owen was one of the biggest reasons for the film’s success, as he proved he was a crossover star after the MCU showed what he could do. The film does rely a lot on the dinosaurs, but as the second half of Fallen Kingdom showed, that is not a bad thing. Also, having the dinosaurs in a theme park was much more exciting than when Dominion set them loose in the world.
3) Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017)
The second Guardians of the Galaxy movie was Chris Pratt’s finest moment. While the first movie was about the team coming together and the third had little to do with Pratt, this second movie was all about Peter Quill discovering who he is, coming to terms with his mother’s death from the first movie, and coming into his own as a hero and a leader. In this movie, Peter meets his real father, an actual living planet named Ego, who in the movie can also take the form of a human (Kurt Russell).
It had Peter learn why his mother contracted cancer and revealed that he himself was not fully human. He then agreed to give it all up to save his friends and shun his father. It also presented the franchise’s best arc, which was Peter’s relationship with Yondu (Michael Rooker), which delivered one of the MCU’s most heartbreaking moments. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is a much more emotionally mature sequel than the first movie, but it is a bit less cohesive.
2) Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
While Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 offered a more mature story and some incredibly emotional moments, the first movie remains better overall. In 2014, James Gunn brought an obscure Marvel superhero team to the big screen, a team so obscure that the lineup in the movie didn’t even exist in comics before 2008. However, Gunn used the audience’s unfamiliarity with the team to craft one of the MCU movies that has the biggest fun factor in the entire franchise.
From the sarcastic humor to the unmatched chemistry between this team of mismatched heroes to the masterful music needle-drops, Guardians of the Galaxy did everything perfectly. The film made $773.3 million, Marvel’s highest-grossing non-Avengers film to that point. Rotten Tomatoes critics awarded it a 91%, with the audience at 92%. This was the first movie that cast Pratt as a legitimate action hero, and he delivered on every level. When it comes to movies where Pratt was in a lead role, nothing was better. However, it didn’t hit the top spot here.
1) Avengers: Infinity War (2018) / Avengers: Endgame (2019)
While Chris Pratt was not one of the lead characters in Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, he was still important enough to include in his best sci-fi movies list. That is because these two movies were an ensemble affair, and the Guardians of the Galaxy were there to team with the Avengers, Spider-Man, Black Panther, and more to fight Thanos and his invading Black Order. In the first movie, Star-Lord joined in on the fight until Thanos snapped, and Peter Quill was one of the heroes to die.
He returned in the next movie when the Avengers reversed the Snap, and he was part of the massive final battle to save Earth, along with every other hero on the planet. Avengers: Infinity War grossed $2.052 billion worldwide, and Avengers: Endgame surpassed it to become the highest-grossing film of all time until Avatar’s 2021 release moved it back into the top spot. The only problem here is that fans started to hate Star-Lord because he kept the heroes from beating Thanos when they had a chance because of his rash decision-making. That doesn’t discount the movies. Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame are the best sci-fi movies Chris Pratt has ever appeared in.
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