A Space Odyssey’ Named the Best Sci-Fi Movie & Now Streams for Free

Everyone’s a critic, art’s subjective, and everyone has their own personal favorites, so saying “the best of all time” is relative at best or even pointless. When Rotten Tomatoes applies that label to a film, though, it has a bit more weight, considering it’s an aggregate site that usually represents a wide range of critics’ opinions. In their list of the 150 Best Sci-Fi Movies of All Time, the absolute essentials, Rotten Tomatoes has placed 2001: A Space Odyssey at the very top. And it just so happens to be streaming for free as of New Year’s Day; watch it on Tubi here.

Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece marks a kind of evolution in the science-fiction genre, which is ironic considering the film is pretty much all about evolution. There’s before 2001, and there’s after 2001. That’s because of the level of intellectual complexity, sophistication, production design, ambition, and artistry, which was galaxies away from most of the usual schlocky sci-fi movies coming out of Hollywood. Suddenly, a genre that was always relegated to the B-movies had become award-winning art, and it holds up more than 55 years later.

2001: A Space Odyssey is a bit of a mind-bending head trip, but it all makes sense. In the film, an alien form of life (or perhaps something supernatural or godlike), represented by a black monolith, is guiding evolution on Earth, generally through the use of tools. We first see this with primates learning to use bones as weapons, leading to Homo sapiens. Then, in the future, a black monolith appears on the moon and seems to be sending a radio signal to Jupiter. When a group of astronauts is sent to investigate it, their ship’s computer, HAL-9000, has its own ulterior motive and attempts to kill the crew.

Other notable films that have recently arrived on Tubi include Godzilla: Kings of the Monsters, Independence Day, Prey (2022), Now You See Me and its sequel, Pale Rider, You’ve Got Mail, Dances With Wolves, Corpse Bride, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Despicable Me 3, Deepwater Horizon, Heartbreak Ridge, The Impossible, Get Shorty, Fargo, Melancholia, Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World, Kung Fu Hustle, Spawn, Bad Boys, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, and all the Twilight movies.

What Are the Other Essential Sci-Fi Movies?

2001: A Space Odyssey is a universally acclaimed film and certainly deserves its status as such; it’s a cinematic touchstone, and it’s hard to seriously argue against that, even if the movie might befuddle you or be boring to modern, action-oriented audiences. However, it is a safe pick (though not as safe as the second-highest sci-fi movie on Rotten Tomato’s list, Back to the Future). Blade Runner, Metropolis, and the original Star Wars round out the rest of the top five. The rest of the top 10 include The Matrix, Alien, Inception, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, and Mad Max: Fury Road.

Those movies certainly make MovieWeb’s list of the best sci-fi films, and 2001: A Space Odyssey is ranked second, so we almost agree with Rotten Tomatoes. Nonetheless, we believe that Stalker is the greatest sci-fi film of all time. The Andrei Tarkovsky masterpiece may not be as popular, but it’s a deeply profound philosophical film that brilliantly uses its sci-fi setting. Coincidentally, it’s also available to watch for free, this time on YouTube here.

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2001: A Space Odyssey is one of Stanley Kubrick’s most well-known films. A science-fiction epic, the film tells the story of the journey of Discovery One, a spacecraft operated by a group of scientists, astronauts, and a sentient computer, on a mission to Jupiter to investigate a mysterious monolith. Considered one of the greatest films ever made, Kubrick combines sparse dialogue with the heavy use of scoring and ambiguous imagery to create something that eschews conventional filmmaking. 

Release Date

April 3, 1968

Runtime

149 minutes

Cast

Keir Dullea
, Gary Lockwood
, William Sylvester
, Daniel Richter
, Leonard Rossiter
, Margaret Tyzack