Sometimes, certain years in the history of film get tied to particular trends or genres. For example, 2022 can be seen as the year of maximalist movies, with titles like RRR, Everything Everywhere All At Once, Elvis, and Babylon. 2020 was a year when small-scale movies thrived, due to the COVID-19 pandemic delaying many big-budget movies. And 1982 ended up being a good one for the science-fiction genre, with releases like Tron, The Thing, E.T., Blade Runner, and Star Trek II.
Rivaling - or maybe even surpassing - the year 1982 when it comes to sci-fi, however, is the year 2009. For whatever reason, not only were plenty of sci-fi movies released during that year, but there were numerous great ones - so much so that two were even nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. The following are among the best sci-fi movies released in 2009, with all of them demonstrating what a strong year it was for the genre.
1 'District 9'
Blending sci-fi and action with a mockumentary format, District 9 is a unique and amazingly compelling sci-fi movie. It follows the conflict between humans and alien refugees who have become stranded beside Johannesburg after their spacecraft came to a halt over the city some 30 years before the film's main story begins.
The fact District 9 is so exciting and satisfying when it comes to its spectacle and action is even more impressive considering the movie's budget, which is less than what you'd expect for a sci-fi movie. It also serves as a thought-provoking allegory to both the Apartheid in South Africa and the way human refugees are treated in real life, succeeding as a film that gets both the heart racing and the mind thinking.
2 'Moon'
Moon is a compelling sci-fi movie about an astronaut dealing with the isolation of being in space with no one but an AI program for company, but it's arguably first and foremost a showcase for Sam Rockwell's acting talents. He's constantly on-screen and rarely has anyone else to work off of, making Moon an impressive one-man show of sorts.
It's not just a movie about space isolation, however, and once the main storyline emerges, it becomes a strange but compelling watch for the remainder of its runtime. It's a film that's both ambitious and small-scale, and deservedly has the reputation for being something of a modern cult classic that nevertheless deserves a little more love thrown its way.
3 'Avatar'
Some love it and some seem sick to death of it, but all should be able to agree that Avatar was a big deal on release. For all the talk about whether its cultural relevance equals its box office earning, it still can't be denied that it was a mammoth hit and yet another movie that demonstrates James Cameron's skill for making accessible and popular blockbusters.
It's the kind of simple, straightforward story that looks easy to execute on paper, but in practice proves harder to do, given no other filmmaker besides Cameron seems to churn out these sorts of movies so consistently. It's an immersive and exciting movie set on an alien moon, with effects and action sequences that still hold up beautifully over 13 years from its original release.
4 'Redline'
A criminally underrated adrenaline rush of a movie, Redline is one of the greatest Japanese movies of the 21st century so far. It's about an interplanetary car racing tournament where participants reach impossibly fast speeds, risking their lives on incredibly dangerous courses for the chance to be crowned the best racer in the universe.
The most impressive thing about Redline is how many hand-drawn images it required: apparently over 100,000. It's a testament to the power of non-CGI animation, though unfortunately, its lack of popularity may mean audiences will see even less hand-drawn animation as the years go on. At least those who are fans of that style will always have films like Redline to marvel at.
5 '9'
While 9 is animated and features somewhat cute character designs, it's certainly not a movie that's appropriate for all audiences. It takes place on a post-apocalyptic Earth where humans have long died out, and all that remains are small sock-puppet-like robots, and fearsome machines who seem determined to hunt them down no matter what.
The animation style and the world depicted all create a tense and unnerving atmosphere, and that's before taking into account how tense the story gets. It's a strange, risky, but thrillingly unique animated sci-fi movie, and it's also a nice twist of fate that 9 came out the same year as District 9... in 2009.
6 'Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance'
After a 2007 movie that more or less recapped the early episodes of the iconic anime Neon Genesis Evangelion, 2009's Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance shakes things up a little. It continues to recap the original series but starts to pivot a little, which then enabled the third and fourth movies in the Rebuild of Evangelion series to truly become their own thing.
Even if viewers are familiar with the story from Neon Genesis Evangelion, this new take on the classic series is worth watching for how spectacular the animation looks. There's an almost overwhelming amount of Evangelion content out there, but this one's among the best, and more than justifies its existence.
7 'Watchmen'
It may take place in an alternate version of the past, but Watchmen still feels like a sci-fi-themed superhero movie at its core. It follows an alternate reality that branched off to become a drastically different one where superhero vigilantes once thrived, but then found themselves outlawed by the government. Things only get worse when it becomes clear someone's hunting down these ex-vigilantes, and will stop at nothing until all are dead.
It presents a more technologically advanced version of the past, though it's one where those advancements seem to get used more for evil than good. As such, it's a dark, brooding, and often very violent superhero movie, but nevertheless a compelling one, and it does work very well as an alternate history science-fiction film, too.
8 'Splice'
There's no denying it: Splice is a deeply weird and unsettling sci-fi/horror movie. It has a small scope and very few actors in its cast, focusing on two young scientists who manage to create a new lifeform by splicing DNA from various animals together. Naturally, it behaves in unexpected ways and causes a great deal of drama, leading the film into horror territory for much of its second half.
Humanity messing with the natural order of things and their creations fighting back is a well-worn sci-fi premise at this point, but if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Splice takes the familiar premise and, for better or worse, does some very strange and unsettling things with it, making it one sci-fi/horror movie that, once seen, is difficult to forget... even if some viewers might want to.
9 'Knowing'
Disaster movies seem to misfire more often than they hit, but despite its reputation, Knowing is honestly one of the better ones out there. It's about a time capsule revealing a code that seems to have predicted numerous disasters - and ominously promises to predict numerous future disasters - and a teacher's reaction to this information that may well reveal when the world ends.
Though it stars the often wild and over-the-top Nicolas Cage, it's presented in a way that feels quite tense and gritty, and Cage himself gives a solid and mostly subdued performance. Things veer a little too far into the weird side of things in Knowing's uneven final act, but before then, it's a surprisingly engaging and well-made sci-fi/disaster movie that sci-fi fans owe it to themselves to check out.
10 'Star Trek'
J.J. Abrams' contributions to the Star Wars series may be divisive, but most can likely agree that his 2009 reboot of Star Trek was quite good. It centered on the origins of the characters viewers both hardcore and casual are familiar with, particularly focusing on how James Kirk and Spock initially clashed before becoming loyal friends to one another.
It rejuvenated the series in many ways, giving viewers a faster-paced version of Star Trek with little downtime and plenty of action. Some fans of the older TV iterations of Star Trek and the older TV shows may not have loved this approach, but at its core, it was still a well-made sci-fi movie that just happened to use familiar characters and iconography to make something that would appeal the most to viewers in 2009.