Science fiction film
A film that uses speculative science or technology, imagined worlds, or future societies to explore possibilities beyond established reality.
Science fiction: A genre that imagines worlds or events shaped by scientific, technological, or speculative possibilities. The broader literary and artistic genre from which science fiction films draw conventions.
Worldbuilding: The creation of a coherent setting with its own history, rules, cultures, and physical conditions. Worldbuilding makes unfamiliar futures feel internally consistent rather than arbitrary.
A Trip to the Moon: Georges Méliès’s 1902 silent film about a fantastical expedition to the Moon. Its theatrical fantasy imagery established an early model for cinematic space travel.
Fantasy film: A film whose imagined events commonly depend on magic, myth, or supernatural forces. Science fiction typically frames impossibilities through speculation about science or technology instead.
Cyberpunk: A science fiction movement depicting high technology alongside social disorder, corporate power, or urban decay. Film helped popularize cyberpunk’s visual language of dense, technologically saturated futures.
Utopian and dystopian fiction: Fiction depicting ideal societies or oppressive, deeply flawed ones. Imagined societies let films test political futures through dramatic worlds.
Special effects: Practical or digital techniques used to create images and events that cannot be filmed directly. Effects make speculative technologies, creatures, and environments visible.
Metropolis: Fritz Lang’s 1927 film depicting a stratified future city and a manufactured human double. Its monumental city and robot imagery became enduring science fiction film motifs.
Horror film: A film designed to provoke fear or dread through threatening events and imagery. Science fiction can use horror, but its defining premise need not be fear.
Technological utopianism: The belief that technological development can produce a substantially better society. Films dramatize both the appeal and the costs of technology-driven promises.