Top 5 Best Science Fiction Movie Directors of All Time

Science fiction is the heart of storytelling and adventure.  When watching a good science fiction movie, we are transported into a different society, a different time, even a different universe.  If you can break the laws of physics and logic, and still have us believing what we are seeing, you have successfully inspired our imagination, touched our psyche in ways few other things could.

A director wears many hats: a leader, motivator, artist, manipulator.  Creating a film that touches our soul takes a special gift.  Here are the top five science fiction directors of all time.

5. David Cronenberg

Cronenberg made some of the most popular cult classics of the 80s, like Scanners Videodrome and The Fly.  He blurs the lines between technology and the organic by giving his props flesh-like tones.  A sort of pornography for effects, his films show heads exploding, people turning into creatures, and living, bleeding pods of technology.  His visions are conveyed through anti-heroes, often alienating mainstream audiences.  However his films are a must-watch for the visual cinephile.

4. James Cameron

James Cameron has produced the most successful science fiction films to date.  From Terminator to Aliens, to The Abyss, Cameron has hit it out of the ballpark consistently.  His storylines are simple, but his portrayal of violent spectacle is jaw dropping and addictive.  He has pioneered the female protagonist and developed filmmaking strategies that thousands of others have copied.

3. Steven Spielberg

Spielberg single-handedly invented the blockbuster movie.  His films have touched the souls of nearly every person on Earth.  No one conveys a sense of awe and wonderment like him.  From the soul-touching relationship between Elliott and E.T., to the social commentary of the aliens in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Spielberg knows how to take an audience through a journey of self-reflection and discovery.

2. Ridley Scott

Ridley Scott directed Blade Runner, the Harrison Ford epic filled with cyberpunk replicants of the future.  Hailed as the best science fiction film ever made, Blade Runner dissects themes of human identity and our capacity for empathy.  Scott’s other science fiction film Aliens touches upon similar notions.  The fact that Blade Runneris the uncontested representation of this genre makes Ridley Scott the second best science fiction director.

1. Stanley Kubrick

Dr. Strangelove or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, 2001: A Space Oddysey, A Clockwork Orangeall are science fiction masterpieces.  Each one explores technology’s impact on the collective human conscience, leaving us to question our morality and the effects of our motivations.

Watching a Kubrick film is like stepping into a new world because his attention to detail is immaculate. Think of Kubrick and you see the bright colors of the spaceship in 2001, the vibrant opening milkbar droog scene in Clockwork.  His mastery of film technique combined with his ability to inject social commentary makes Kubrick the best science fiction director of all time.

In essence, successful science fiction touches upon technology’s impact on human’s future, and warns of the potential dangers of our own progress.

Article by:

K.W.