Science fiction is a cinematic genre, often imagining the future possibilities of science, technology, and society. Depending on the film, the genre can optimistically explores future technological wonders or warns society about the dangers of rogue robots or cyberpunk dystopias. Science fiction can be hard sci-fi, like Star Trek, or something more fanciful like Star Wars.
Any movie fan looking to dive into a high-tech world of distant planets and robots will want to explore streaming platforms such as Hulu to find something new and wonderful to watch. Hulu's sci-fi catalog features movies from a wide variety of directors, each portraying tomorrow's wonders with a variety of themes and settings that stretch the imagination.
10 I, Robot
Released back in 2004, I, Robot is one of many cautionary tales about what happens when advanced technology such as robots and artificial intelligence receive too much power. In 2030s Chicago, robots are everywhere, and when the next generation of robots arrives, society gets turned upside down.
Detective Del Spooner, played by famed actor Will Smith, has always been mistrustful of robots. He's proven right when the robots and their central AI go haywire and turn on their human masters by bending the three robot laws meant to keep them in line.
9 Prey
The Predator sci-fi franchise dates back to the 1980s, when a squad of tough guys faced off against an invisible, high-tech alien hunter who loved taking skulls as battle trophies. The franchise eventually went stale, but 2022's Prey breathed new life back into it.
Prey takes place in the early 1700s, where a Native woman named Naru fights for her life against a lone Predator who's looking for a real challenge. In many ways, Prey is a stripped-down sci-fi movie with horror and historical undertones, making it a real standout in a genre of shiny robots and exotic planets.
8 Voyagers
Voyagers is a sci-fi movie with a strong human element to it. The movie begins with a familiar sci-fi premise concerning overpopulation and drastic climate change. These factors spur a wave of space exploration and colonization, and by 2063, one such mission is launched with a crew of adolescents.
Ideally, these young space-faring heroes will reach a habitable exoplanet and get it ready for colonization, but it won't be so easy. The teens realize that they've had their personalities and emotions suppressed, leading them to turn on one another in a Lord of the Flies fashion.
7 Crimes Of The Future
Crimes of the Future is a gruesome but fascinating sci-fi movie starring Lord of the Rings actor Viggo Mortensen in the role of Saul Tenser, who's on the cutting edge of accelerated human evolution. In the future, human evolution is so rapid, people don't feel pain and don't get sick, but they enjoy getting operated on.
Saul and his wife Caprice are performance artists who use surgery as art, gladly cutting open bodies and removing extra organs found inside. The way some Crimes of the Future characters put it, surgery is the new form of sexual gratification, highlighting how strange this future world really is.
6 Blade Runner 2049
Blade Runner 2049 is the long-awaited sequel to the classic 1980s movie Blade Runner, and it even features the return of Harrison Ford as Rick Deckard. 30 years after Deckard's fateful duel with Roy Batty, Los Angeles is still a grimy, neon-soaked urban jungle, and there's a new generation of Nexus replicants on the prowl.
Ryan Gosling plays Agent K, a cutting-edge replicant who retires his fellow replicants, but K's world is about to be turned upside down. He stumbles upon an incredible secret that might bring the world down, and he'll have to team up with the elderly Deckard if he hopes to survive.
5 Another Earth
Another Earth has stunning visuals, and an interesting premise. A second planet Earth appears close to the original, to the point it looks like a large moon to the naked eye. However, Another Earth also has a strong human element, centered on the troubled heroine, Rhoda Williams.
Rhoda is driving intoxicated one night while admiring the second Earth and crashes into a car, injuring a man named John and killing the rest of his family. Years later, once out of prison, Rhoda hopes to get John to that other Earth on a spaceflight so he can be reunited with his family, who may be alive and well on that parallel world.
4 Prospect
The Mandalorian star Pedro Pascal features prominently in Prospect, an excellent sci-fi movie on Hulu where prospecting for precious gems is the main mission. A father/daughter duo arrive on an exotic alien moon covered in a forest, and they must find valuable gems no matter what.
There, they stumble upon the rival prospector Ezra and his silent companion, and they come into conflict. However, if they can learn to work together, they may find the "queen's lair," a rich prospecting site. The danger only ramps up from there, though, since the moon is home to mercenaries and more rival prospectors.
3 Settlers
Settlers is a dark, tense sci-fi movie on Hulu that takes place in a small, remote Mars colony inhabited by a single nuclear family. One tragic day, a group of armed bandits storm the settlement, and one bandit, Jerry, personally kills the settler family's father.
Jerry tries to replace that father, and after a month, the family mother Ilsa, tries and fails to kill him. Years later, the family daughter Remmy and Jerry come into serious conflict. On the desolate sands of Mars, there may be no escape, but Remmy will try her best.
2 Surrogates
Surrogates takes place in the near future, where people tend to live out their lives remotely with realistic, high-tech robot body doubles, or surrogates. Meanwhile, FBI agent Tom Greer gets takes on a case related to the death of Jared Canter, son of the inventor who created surrogates.
Tom Greer finds the one responsible for killing Jared, who wields a special weapon that can destroy surrogates. An intense battle ensues, Tom finds himself in an anti-surrogate zone ruled by the Prophet, who has his own plans in mind for the robot-ruled, surrogate future society.
1 Multiverse
The 2019 Multiverse movie can't quite compare to Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness or the surprise smash-hit Everything Everywhere All At Once. However, this Hulu feature may appeal to sci-fans who love movies about parallel worlds.
Multiverse stars four university students who take a huge gamble when they tinker with quantum physics, opening the door to parallel worlds and the multiverse as a whole. They may not be ready for what they see or what they do, but there's no taking it back now. By the end, their very sense of self and identity may be warped beyond recognition.