12 Best Sci-Fi Movies on Prime Video Right Now (July 2026): ‘Project Hail Mary’ and More

Mild-mannered science teacher Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) has done something extraordinary – he’s in outer space! The only problem is that he doesn’t remember how or why he got there. Eventually, he recalls he signed up for the Project Hail Mary mission, a last-ditch endeavor to save Earth from certain doom. With his fellow human crew members dead, it’s up to Ryland to save humanity, but he has no clue how to do that. Could his salvation lie in an unexpected encounter with a strange, stone-like alien creature nicknamed Rocky (James Ortiz)? 

Released in March 2026, Project Hail Mary was a huge hit with critics and audiences. It’s easy to see why – it’s a thrilling survival story as well as a buddy comedy between Gosling’s human and Ortiz’s non-verbal alien. It’s also a rare example of a modern sci-fi blockbuster that isn’t focused on scenes of mass destruction. Instead, it offers hope and optimism for a bright future, and Gosling wearing some comfy-looking sweaters. 

Clark Kent (David Corenswet) has been Superman for a while, and most people like him – except Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult), of course. When the bald billionaire discovers a shocking secret from his longtime foe’s past, he uses it to turn the public against him – and to weaken him just enough for Lex to destroy him once and for all. But Supes has friends like Krypto and the Justice Gang to help him save the day, not to mention his lady love, ace reporter Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan).

While James Gunn’s Superman doesn’t reach the mythic heights of Richard Donner’s 1978 classic, it still has enough good qualities to recommend it. Corenswet is a worthy heir to Christopher Reeve, and he does the impossible – he makes the nearly century-old DC hero’s anachronistic earnestness both fun and sexy. The film is colorful and noisy, which distracts you just enough to realize there’s not much depth or originality to it, but you can’t complain too much when Gunn constantly throws one super-powered being at you to gawk at.

The ads for Ridley Scott’s hit sci-fi movie The Martian commanded the audience to “Bring him home,” but for Dr. Mark Watney (Matt Damon), that seems impossible. He’s an astronaut who is stuck on a makeshift facility on Mars with no one around to help him and few resources to eat, drink and breathe. Since the next expedition to the planet is in another four years, he’ll have to figure out how to survive on a planet that is hostile to all forms of life.

Based on the bestseller by Andy Weir, who also penned Project Hail Mary, The Martian is an engrossing sci-fi story that eschews sensationalism and tries to be as realistic as possible. There are no cute aliens or advanced technology here – instead, Scott and screenwriter Drew Goddard focus on the practical way Watney generates water (from leftover rocket fuel) and grows food (a mixture of feces and Martian soil) to survive. It’s surprisingly thrilling, but with Damon front and center for most of the picture, it’s also incredibly moving. If you ever wondered what living on Mars is actually like, The Martian gives you a pretty good idea and makes you grateful for what humans have on Earth.

Forget rumbling – are you ready to run? If yes, then lace up those running shoes and hitch a ride with Glen Powell as he leads Edgar Wright’s surprisingly decent adaptation of Stephen King’s The Running Man. In a dystopian future where the poor are really poor and the rich rule everything, working-class dude Ben Richards (Glen Powell) doesn’t want to start a revolution – he just wants to earn some extra cash to buy medicine for his ill daughter. That’s why he joins The Running Man, a deadly televised competition show with a $1 billion prize. But Ben doesn’t realize his participation starts a chain of events that threatens to topple the social order of the entire world. 

Even if you’ve never seen the cheesy 1987 original film with Arnold Schwarzenegger, The Running Man may seem familiar. It doesn’t really do or say anything we haven’t seen before in such dystopian sci-fi films like Mad Max, Blade Runner or Cherry 2000, but it’s still a solid picture with a gripping, ticking-clock narrative and an engaging lead performance by Powell. The ending is way too cheerful for a movie with such bleak source material, but that’s the film’s only real flaw.

When nerdy Egyptologist Daniel Jackson (James Spader) and military man Jack O’Neil (Kurt Russell) find an ancient artifact that could be a portal to another planet, they decide to test it to find out. Their instincts are right – they and a team of soldiers are sucked through a wormhole and land on the desert planet Abydos. It looks a lot like Dune’s Arrakis, and it’s ruled by a “god,” Ra (Jaye Davidson), who is really an alien disguised as an asexual human. Ra doesn’t like these visitors, and he’s determined to send them back to their home world dead or alive – preferably the former.

Stargate is a great example of stupid sci-fi that’s also hugely entertaining to watch. Ra’s origins are needlessly complicated, and his motivations don’t make much sense at all. Still, he sneers and glowers like all good villains, which makes you root for the movie’s charmingly mismatched heroes. Stargate was successful enough to spawn its own mini-franchise, with several long-running cable TV shows, video games and books. 

In the near future, oil is in short supply and the environment lies in ruins. Civilization, if you can call it that, barely exists, and law and order have been replaced by fear and chaos. On Australia’s desolate roads, there’s only one man you shouldn’t cross – Max Rockatansky (Mel Gibson), a highway cop with a big gun and a bad attitude. When a motorcycle gang exacts revenge on Max for one of their slain members, they quickly realize that was a mistake – one that can only be rectified with their lives.

Who would’ve thought George Miller’s low-budget sci-fi action film would launch a multimedia franchise that’s still going strong in 2026? The Mad Max pictures are some of the genre’s standout movies, with 2015’s Fury Road often ranked as one of the best movies of the 21st century, but Mad Max is where it all started, and it possesses all the trademarks – the extreme camera angles, the gratuitous violence, the silent, swaggering protagonist –  that would make its many sequels and spinoffs into cult classics. 

Navy Weapons Officer Alex Hopper (Taylor Kitsch) is a slacker who relies heavily on his brother, commanding officer Stone (Alexander Skarsgård), to help him get by in life. But when alien invaders attack his navy warcraft off the coast of O’ahu, Alex will have to grow up fast to not only save his brother, but the entire world as well. The key to victory is understanding what these extra-terrestrials want and why they’re so obsessed with the island’s satellite.

File this one under “dumb fun,” and you won’t feel too guilty watching it. Battleship is bad in all the right ways. From its ludicrous premise to Rihanna’s, erm, “acting, this film is a mess, but it’s not a boring mess. Director Peter Berg can stage a pretty decent action sequence, and there are several spectacular ones involving all sorts of real and fantastical war machines. The story makes no sense at all, but that only adds to the entertainment value. The movie bombed at the box office, which unfortunately stalled Kitsch’s then-promising feature film career but spared everyone enduring Battleship 2.

Aquaman is back, and he’s wetter than ever. Set four years after the first film, Aquaman (Jason Momoa) is now married to Mera (Amber Heard), a new dad and King of Atlantis. He has to defend his kingdom from an old threat — Black Manta (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) has returned, and he wields a powerful new weapon that is rapidly warming the world. Aquaman has to find Manta fast, and the only person who can help him is his worst enemy — half-brother Orm (Patrick Wilson), who would like nothing more than to see him dead. Can these two siblings put aside their lethal rivalry to save Atlantis?

This sequel is a lot like the first one — extremely silly, intentionally funny and a breeze to watch. Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is pure comic-book hokum, and the fact that it doesn’t take itself seriously is an asset rather than a flaw. Momoa retains his righteous dude schtick that made the first one so enjoyable, while Wilson camps it up as a reformed villain who still takes some pleasure in being bad. This film marked the end of the creatively shaky DCEU as we know it, and Warner Bros.’ cinematic universe went out on a high note.

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is streaming on May 27.

Mercy may remind you of Minority Report, with some key differences. In this glimpse of the future, criminal judgments have been turned over to AI entities. Few were greater proponents of this system than Detective Chris Raven (Chris Pratt), at least until he finds himself on trial for murdering his wife, Nicole Raven (Annabelle Wallis).

Now, Chris has 90 minutes to convince the AI being known as Judge Maddox (Rebecca Ferguson) of his innocence, or else he’ll face immediate execution. It seems that Nicole was keeping some secrets before her death, but Chris may not have enough time to bring them to light.

Mercy is streaming on Prime Video.

It’s unfortunate that Transformers One didn’t do better at the box office, because this is one of the most accessible stories about giant talking robots that you’ll ever see. This animated film starts as a buddy comedy about two close friends, Orion Pax (Chris Hemsworth) and D-16 (Brian Tyree Henry).

In the future, Orion and D-16 are destined to become mortal enemies, Optimus Prime and Megatron. But in the present, they’ve accidentally discovered that their lives on Cybertron have been predicated on a lie from a traitor and alien invaders. That’s something they can’t keep to themselves, but their quest to save their world will tear them apart.

Transformers One is streaming on Prime Video.

Timecop is one of the best movies Jean-Claude Van Damme ever made, and its cheesy touches actually make it even more enjoyable. In the then-future year of 2004, Max Walker (Van Damme) is part of the Time Enforcement Commission, an elite law enforcement unit that goes after criminals who attempt to rewrite history for their benefit.

Max is also haunted by the death of his wife, Melissa Walker (Mia Sara), ten years earlier, and he resists the temptation to change his own past. But he may get a second chance to get things right when Senator Aaron McComb (Ron Silver) visits his past self in 1994 to undermine the TEC. McComb also targets TEC agents like Walker who get in his way.

Timecop is streaming on Prime Video.

For Donnie Darko (Jake Gyllenhaal), the end of the world is just 28 days away. The title character of this sci-fi thriller survives an unexplainable accident simply by not being home. Donnie also begins displaying symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia, including waking hallucinations of Frank the Rabbit (James Duval).

Frank is the one who’s been whispering secrets about the impending end in Donnie’s ear, even as the latter strikes up a romance with the new girl in town, Gretchen Ross (Jena Malone). Donnie may be a little crazy, but Frank isn’t just the product of his unhinged mind. There really is something coming to town that might doom everyone, and Donnie needs to understand and find it before time runs out.

Donnie Darko is streaming on Prime Video.