11 Best Sci-Fi Movies on Prime Video Right Now (August 2026): ‘Interstellar’ and More

The world is dying. After years of drought and ecological devastation, Earth is on its last legs, causing humans like ex-astronaut Joseph “Coop” Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) to look for an exit. He’s recruited to join a mission to find another habitable planet deep in space, but it’s unlikely he’ll ever see his kids, Murph (Mackenzie Foy) and Tom (Timothée Chalamet), again. Coop is determined to beat the odds and save humanity while also returning to his home planet to see his kids grow up.

Directed by Christopher Nolan, Interstellar is a brainy space adventure that isn’t quite 2001: A Space Odyssey but definitely isn’t Starship Troopers. Even though it’s largely set among the stars, the film strives to be a realistic possibility and places its characters in scenarios, like black holes and time warps, that could happen. But what makes Interstellar so impactful is its central narrative of a father doing anything he can to find his way home. Inception helmer Nolan isn’t known to be a touchy-feely guy, but Interstellar’s last scene is virtually guaranteed to make you cry.

This action classic never goes out of style. Peter Weller stars as Detroit police officer Alex Murphy, who becomes RoboCop after being killed by a criminal gang and revived with state-of-the-art android technology. RoboCop is brutally effective as an enforcer who cleans up the city’s streets, but he is still plagued by memories of his past life as Alex. He’ll have to push those aside when he uncovers a conspiracy within the tech company that created him. 

Directed by Paul Verhoeven, RoboCop is gratuitously violent —  expect to see bodies riddled with bullets and even one poor soul get doused with acid and run over by a car. But it’s also very funny, with a not-so-subtle satirical message about capitalism and gung-ho violence that is just as relevant in the Reagan ‘80s as it is now. Its depiction of a future Detroit is both dystopian and realistic, and RoboCop himself isn’t too far-fetched when there are self-thinking robots who can run races and serve our most basic needs. 

RoboCop (Peter Weller) is back, and he’s still cleaning up the crime-ridden streets of Detroit. This time around, a dangerous new drug called Nuke is making ordinary citizens into addicts, and RoboCop has to find and apprehend new crime kingpin Cain (Tom Noonan) to save the city. Meanwhile, the company that made RoboCop is developing a prototype, RoboCop 2, that doesn’t have the original’s pesky morality or free will. It’s a disaster in the making, and it might bring our hero’s sterling career to an abrupt end.

Is RoboCop 2 as brilliantly subversive as the original? No. But it is an entertaining action flick that takes the concept of android police enforcers as far as it can go. The film still has a streak of sardonic humor, and it takes some big swings, like having one of its villains be an innocent-looking teenage boy. It’s a bit campy and repetitive, but RoboCop 2 delivers the dystopian sci-fi goods.

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.

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.