There are multiple ways for a science fiction movie to be legendary, from its having groundbreaking visual effects to its having deeply intricate and atmospheric world-building. One aspect of sci-fi filmmaking that’s often awfully underappreciated, however, is character writing. A solid screenplay is necessary for any sci-fi movie to be truly great, and characters who are profoundly interesting are pretty much vital for any sci-fi screenplay to be solid.
We aren’t talking about characters who are just cool, or memorable, or even just emotionally compelling. We’re talking about characters who are deeply interesting, the kinds with backstories so fascinating and personalities so complex that you never stop wanting to learn more about them. From modern masterpieces like District 9 to foundational classics like Aliens, several of the best sci-fi films of all time also happen to contain fascinating characters.
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‘District 9’ (2009)
Image via Sony Pictures Releasing
Peter Jackson of <em>The Lord of the Rings </em>fame was planning to produce a movie adaptation of the Halo video game series directed by Neill Blomkamp, who had never directed a feature film before. That project never came together, so the pair instead decided to use props and items originally made for the Halo movie to make District 9, almost inarguably the greatest and most noteworthy sci-fi film ever to have come out of the African continent.
This South African masterpiece is one of the best R-rated sci-fi movies since 2000, with character writing that serves a rejection of traditional genre tropes of heroism and morality. This is a sci-fi story that relies not on tried-and-true archetypes, but on fundamentally flawed and deeply nuanced characters who perfectly embody the narrative’s thematic critiques of apartheid, institutionalized racism, and xenophobia.
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‘Gattaca’ (1997)
Image via Sony Pictures Releasing
Yet another exceptional sci-fi feature film directorial debut, Andrew Niccol‘s Gattaca has gone down in history as one of the best hard sci-fi movies of all time. The film draws on concerns on the potential dark consequences of reproductive technologies that facilitate eugenics, concerns that have tragically allowed the film to age like fine wine as one of the most ahead-of-their-time sci-fi masterpieces of the 1990s.
But where it may have been easy for Niccol to write Gattaca‘s characters simply as victims of a dystopian society, all of these characters instead offer powerful and insightful reflections on how a society where eugenics are the norm might view humanity’s inherent worth. By realizing that the most fascinating aspect of this kind of dystopia would be not the genetic technology itself, but people’s relation to it, Niccol crafted some of the most interesting characters of any dystopian sci-fi movie in history.
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‘Dune: Part Two’ (2024)
Image via Warner Bros. Pictures
Frank Herbert‘s Dune may well be the greatest and most important sci-fi novel of the 20th century, which makes it all the more admirable that Denis Villeneuve‘s film duology adaptation turned out as well as it did. Indeed, exceptional though 2021’s Dune may be, it’s 2024’s Dune: Part Two that’s among the best movies set in space released since 2020, if not perhaps even the best sci-fi epic of the 21st century.
At its core, Dune is not a traditional Hero’s Journey story, but rather a cautionary tale against the dangers of charismatic leaders and of religious fanaticism. It’s a thematic core that pretty much demands great character writing, and Villeneuve and co-writer Jon Spaihts deliver. Paul is an absolutely fascinating anti-hero protagonist, Feyd-Rautha is a masterfully-written foil to him, and side characters like Chani and the Lady Jessica are just as riveting to watch.
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‘Blade Runner 2049’ (2017)
