The best sci-fi movies ply viewers with new, never-before-seen ideas and inventions, but also do an excellent job of exploring what these new technologies and concepts will mean for humanity (or human-like races, depending on what you’re watching). This diving into the philosophical is why so many love the genre, and why the very best of sci-fi often breaches into the mainstream, as audiences want something relatable to go alongside cool CGI and fun action sequences.
However, some of the most known sci-fi films aren’t the brainchildren of overly active imaginations but are based on true stories or ideas that we’re already collectively familiar with. If you’re a fan of science fiction that’s mixed in with a bit hit of realism, then check out our list of the 10 best sci-fi movies based on true stories!
10. Safety Not Guaranteed
Darius (Aubrey Plaza) is an intern at a local magazine who is sent to investigate a strange classified ad that has appeared in a newspaper, which requests a companion to go back in time with. She poses as someone interested in being this companion and becomes friends with the man who posted the ad, Kenneth (Mark Duplass), and begins “training” with him in the woods near his home, slowly developing feelings for him.
As the plot unfurls, the audience is left wondering: Is Kenneth insane, or has he actually figured out a way to go back? This underrated film has a lot of charm and despite the silly premise, is really relatable. The movie is based on a real classified ad that appeared in Backwoods Home Magazine in the ’90s, and became an internet sensation, inspiring podcasts, web pages, and even a Jay Leno joke.
9. Phoenix Forgotten
Phoenix Forgotten chronicles the tale of three teens who attempt to find the source of the 1997 UFO phenomenon that became known as the “Phoenix Lights”. The movie itself is a sci-fi horror and presented as a found footage film, and frankly isn’t the best, although the final scenes are pretty tense. The actual Phoenix Lights were spotted in the skies over Arizona and Nevada on March 13, 1997, and thousands of people gave matching descriptions of them. The unknown objects appeared from the Nevada border and traveled through Phoenix, all the way up to Tuscon. There were two separate events that both came under this label: a triangular formation of lights passing over the state, and some stationary lights that were spotted just over Phoenix. To this day, no explanation has been given.
8. District 9
When a group of aliens attempts to seek refuge from their dying planet on Earth, humanity does what humans do and imprisons them in an impoverished slum that becomes known as District 9. Years later, they’re set to be moved, but one of the men in charge of settling them in a new slum is exposed to a substance that begins morphing him into an alien, and soon he begins to see why they are so antagonistic towards humans.
District 9 is a pretty obvious allegory for South Africa’s apartheid past and the horrors of colonialism in general, with the aliens representing the majority black population who were subjugated by savage white forces. A critical and commercial hit, fans of the film have been crying out for a sequel for years, which is allegedly in the works.
7. The Martian
Based on a book of the same name, this film follows botanist and mechanical engineer Mark Watney (Matt Damon) as he gets stranded on the planet nearest to Earth, and his attempts to survive for long enough on the barren landscape to have a chance of survival.
Obviously, the events of The Martian are total fiction as we are yet to put a man on Mars, but the science in the film is based on many experiments run by NASA and other space agencies, including the famous plotline where Damon’s character uses the crew’s feces to fertilize plants. As per the Los Angeles Times, producers asked hundreds of questions of NASA scientists in an attempt to make sure the science depicted in the film was solid.
6. The Blob
This sci-fi horror classic (set for a much-anticipated remake) was Steve McQueen’s first major film role, and while it’s fair to say his career only went up from that point, it wasn’t exactly the highest bar to be beginning from. In The Blob, the eponymous creature lands on Earth and slowly begins absorbing living beings and getting larger, redder, and more angry, until it is several stories high. The heroes eventually defeat the alien by dropping it into the Arctic, but with the climate emergency that’s going on, who’s to say how long that safety will last?
The Blob was partly based on a report by two Philadelphia cops who allegedly saw an object fall from the sky, which turned out to be a strange goo that moved around. When one of the officers, who presumably had very little to live for, touched it, the mysterious substance disappeared. Spooky.
5. Her
As technology becomes more integrated into our lives, content like Black Mirror that dives into just what that means to us as a species has become more and more popular. Her, starring Joaquin Phoenix and Scarlett Johansson, follows a greeting card maker as he slowly falls in love with an AI that enters his life. The film is definitely a slow burner, but is beautifully rendered and does an excellent job of humanizing the characters, and the AI itself.
People falling in love with technology is nothing new, and in that sense, Her is based on a story as old as the first computer that was able to somewhat replicate human interaction, although nowadays there are even more striking real-life parallels to the film.
4. Alien Autopsy
This sci-fi comedy is kind of based on a true story — if you’re a believer, that is. It tells the story of two Brits who find a video of the infamous “alien autopsy” that allegedly took place in Roswell, New Mexico in the ’50s. However, after finding a buyer for the precious tape, they realize heat and humidity have ruined its integrity and try to film their own version to replace it. Not a bad watch, with plenty of decent laughs, this is a lighthearted take on a vital part of UFO lore.
3. Arrival
This is probably the biggest stretch of “based on a true story” in this article, but bear with us. The crticially acclaimed Arrival begins with aliens landing on Earth. A well-regarded linguist (Jennifer Lawrence) is tasked with learning how to communicate with them, and in the process, she begins to develop the ability to see into the future thanks to the way that the alien language is structured.
The film is based on a novella entitled Story of Your Life by award-winning author Ted Chiang, and he spent five years studying linguistics to write it. So, in that sense, the ideas depicted in the story are highly realistic, and based on existing linguistic practices around translation between languages.
2. Fire in the Sky
Not all sci-fi movies are horrors, but this film is definitely a scary watch. The film follows Travis Walton, a logger who is abducted by aliens and subject to days of horrible experiments. Meanwhile, on Earth, his colleagues who saw him being taken, struggle to get police to take their story seriously. When Walton is later discovered naked and alone at a gas station, the authorities try to claim he’s making the whole thing up. Walton wrote a book detailing everything that supposedly happened to him, and he and his fellow truckers have since passed polygraph tests when questioned about the veracity of the incident.
1. Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Spielberg’s sci-fi classic has long joined the pantheon of great alien films. Although the story itself is fiction, the director and others working on the film utilized countless case studies and recorded interviews from folks who said they’d had alien encounters to craft the plot. The movie follows Roy, an everyman who becomes obsessed with the idea that UFOs are visiting Earth, only to be proven correct when the aliens begin communicating with humanity.