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The 14 Best Sci-Fi Movies on Peacock in December 2024: Deep Impact, Pacific Rim & More
Peacock has a collection of new and old titles, including some of our science fiction faves!
Stories are the way we talk about the things we’re not good at talking about: love, death, fear, hope... We build proxies for ourselves that are better-looking, braver, or cleverer than we are, and we put them in the situations we can only imagine in order to explore the world as it is or as we wish it could be. Science fiction, more than perhaps any other genre, extends this unique form of cultural meditation to our own possible future.
Through science fiction, we see the ways the world might one day be, and we can make mistakes on page or screen in the hope that we don’t make them when they really come knocking. Because we can only build what we can first imagine, we’d serve ourselves well by sampling the many different potential futures available in our fictions.
If you’re looking for inspiration, Peacock’s collection of science fiction movies and television series might be the perfect place to start. To be sure, not all sci-fi flicks present an ideal future, and they might serve you better as a warning than a blueprint, but either way you’re sure to have a blast along the way. There are scores of movies and hundreds of episodes of science fiction to choose from, these are but some of our favorites.
What are the best sci-fi movies now streaming on Peacock?
Deep Impact
The summer of 1998 was the summer of asteroid movies and, while Armageddon gets most of the love, we would argue that Deep Impact was the better and more accurate apocalypse.
When teenage amateur astronomer Leo Beiderman (Elijah Wood) discovers a new object in the sky, it is revealed to be a comet on a collision course with Earth. Authorities decide to keep this news from the public while they spin up a plan to do something about it. With a year on the countdown clock, they reveal a plan to alter its path with nuclear bombs.
Unfortunately, the blast doesn’t destroy the comet, but splits it into two pieces, both of which are still headed toward Earth. What follows is a race against time, both on Earth and in space to minimize the damage and save as many lives as possible.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a story of love in the age of technology. It stars Jim Carrey in a welcome dramatic turn as Joel, and Kate Winslet as Clementine, one of the original manic pixie dream girls. Supporting performances by Kirsten Dunst, Mark Ruffalo, and Elija Wood round out the cast in a story that wonders how relationships might change with emerging technologies.
Following a painful breakup, Clementine has a procedure which deletes her memories of Joel. Unable to deal with the pain, Joel decides to do the same. The procedure occurs at his home while he sleeps, and he relives the memories as they are deleted in a lucid dream state. But as they are deleted, and he relives pleasant memories, Joel regrets the choice and scrambles to find a way to save Clementine in his memory.
Life
Here in the real world, NASA’s Perseverance rover is tromping around Jezero Crater looking for signs of past Martian life. In the meantime, it’s collecting soil samples in the hope that they can be returned to Earth and studied in the future. The 2017 space-based science fiction film Life imagines what might happen if Martian samples ever make it here.
Aboard the International Space Station, a fictional astronaut crew (including Jake Gyllenhaal, Rebecca Ferguson, and Ryan Reynolds) recovers Martian soil samples containing evidence of Martian life. What begins as a curious Martian microbe rapidly grows and adapts, becoming an intelligent killer creature loose aboard the ship. Suddenly, the most exciting scientific discovery in the history of our species quickly devolves into an all-out fight for survival.
Pacific Rim
In 2013, the master of monsters himself, Guillermo del Toro, delivered a giant monster beat-’em-up of epic proportions. Pacific Rim, starring Idris Elba, Charlie Hunnam, Rinko Kikuchi, and Charlie Day begins in 2014 when an interdimensional portal opens at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.
When gigantic monsters called Kaiju start pouring out, humanity comes together to fight the interdimensional threat by building Jaegers, massive robots controlled by two mind-linked pilots. The story picks up more than a decade later, with the Kaiju war still in full swing, when humanity prepares to make a final mechanical stand for our world.
King Kong (2005)
Following the record-breaking success of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Peter Jackson returned to a project he’d been kicking around for years: a remake of King Kong. The movie hit theaters in 2005 and follows the story of down-on-his-luck filmmaker Carl Denham (Jack Black), struggling starlet Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts) and famed playwright Jack Driscoll (Adrian Brody).
The trio board a ship along with a dozen or so supporting crew on a trip officially headed for Singapore. Instead, Denham makes way for the legendary Skull Island where they capture a massive, oversized ape first on camera and then for real. Andy Serkis turns in a stellar performance as the titular King Kong, breathing life into what was only a rubber suit in decades past.
Jurassic Park/World (Collection)
Jurassic Park is perhaps the most rewatchable movie ever made. Based on the Michael Crichton novel of the same name, Jurassic Park takes viewers to the titular park alongside a small group of scientists and one unfortunate lawyer.
The park is a monument to humanity’s capacity for both wonder and hubris. Things start out beautifully. The look in the eyes of doctors Sattler (Laura Dern) and Grant (Sam Neill) is transcendent to the point that you’ll almost believe dinosaurs walk the earth once again. But it wouldn’t be a Crichton story if things didn’t go horribly wrong. The story continues in the Jurassic Park/Jurassic World collection.
Push
Chris Evans’ most famous superhero role is undoubtedly that of Steve Rogers and Captain America in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but it’s far from his only one. Evans also played Johnny Storm, the Human Torch, in a duo of Fantastic Four films in 2005 and 2007.
Between those two roles, Evans portrayed a down-on-his-luck super in the 2009 film Push. For decades, humans have been emerging with seemingly superhuman psychic abilities. There are Movers, those who can move objects with their minds, and Watchers who can see the future before it occurs, as well as people who can use energy either as a weapon or to heal. Government entities identify and track these individuals, forcing them to undergo often fatal experiments to boost their abilities.
It’s a world in which those with special abilities are used, abused, and ultimately killed. And it’s up to Nick (Evans) and Cassie (Dakota Fanning) to set things right.
Knowing
If you throw a dart at Nicolas Cage’s filmography there’s no way of knowing if you’re going to get a heartwarming and serious film or one of the weirdest movie experiences of your life. One thing you can be sure of, though, is that you’re going to have a good time. Knowing falls somewhere in the middle of the Cage Camp Continuum and sees him playing a mathematician who discovers a sequence of numbers which accurately predicts major disasters.
After banging his head against this apocalyptic sudoku puzzle he realizes the numbers identify the date, planetary coordinates, and body count of every major disaster going back centuries. There are only a few dates left before the end of the sequence, and with it, the end of the world.
Aliens Abducted My Parents and Now I Feel Kind of Left Out
Teenagers Calvin (Jacob Buster) and Itsy (Emma Tremblay) are unlikely friends growing up in a small town. Itsy is new, having just moved with her family from the big city, while Calvin has lived there all his life and become something of a town pariah.
Ten years earlier, Calvin’s folks disappeared during the once-a-decade appearance of the fictional comet Jesper. Calvin becomes convinced that his mom and dad were snatched up by alien visitors and that he’ll be able to join them when the comet returns. His entire life becomes a preparation for the imminent reappearance of the comet.
What follows is a heartfelt sci-fi coming of age story from screenwriter Austin Osanai Everett and director Jake Van Wagoner that is both out of this world and totally grounded right here on Earth.
Donnie Darko
Richard Kelly’s 2001 cult classic, Donnie Darko, continues to demand rewatches and command late-night barguments two decades after release. Set in 1988, the titular Donnie Darko (Jake Gyllenhaal) is awoken by a mysterious voice. Following it, he encounters a creepy, humanoid rabbit named Frank who tells Donnie the world will end in 28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes, and 12 seconds.
Strange as that encounter was, it saved Donnie from certain death when an airplane engine crashed into his bedroom. From there, a bizarre series of events unfolds involving tangent universes, multiverse artifacts, time traveling ghosts, and the entangled fates of one boy and the entire universe.
Apollo 18
NASA’s Apollo program came to a close in 1972 with the successful return of Apollo 17. The program ended early, scrapping three planned crewed missions, Apollos 18 - 20. The history books will tell you that’s where things ended but director Gonzalo López-Gallego imagined an alternate history in the 2011 found footage film Apollo 18.
After Apollo officially ended, the 18th mission was reactivated as a Top Secret Department of Defense mission to deliver a classified payload to the Moon’s South Pole. The deadly events that follow go a long way to explaining why the footage was buried and the mission never spoken of. If you know the Moon landings happened but still want a little conspiracy, as a treat, this is the movie for you.
Turbo Kid
Turbo Kid isn’t, strictly speaking, a vision of the future, but we’ll let it slide because it’s INCREDIBLE. It takes place in an alternate reality 1997, in a world struggling for water. The tyrannical overlord Zeus (played perfectly by Michael Ironside) captures people from the Wasteland and crushes them to get their water. It’s a tough world to live in when you’re a kid who just wants to ride his bike and read comic books.
When The Kid meets Apple, a friendship model robot, the two of them embark on a coming-of-age story like none you’ve ever seen. It’s equal parts Napoleon Dynamite and Mad Max, with a disturbingly hilarious amount of blood splatter. It’s a post-apocalyptic fever dream as imagined by a Power Glove-wearing teenager from the ‘80s. It’s perfect.
Upside Down
Juan Diego Solanas’ 2012 film Upside Down, blurs the lines between science fiction and fantasy to tell a cosmic love story only possible in our imaginations. We enter the worlds of Upside Down through the eyes of Adam (Jim Sturgess). He’s an ordinary guy in extraordinary circumstances, a citizen of a binary planet system with an impossible gravitational relationship.
The two worlds, known only as Up and Down, share a gravitational field, allowing them to orbit in incredibly close proximity to one another. But that doesn’t mean that residents of the two worlds travel freely between them. On these worlds, matter adheres to a few seemingly inalienable rules. First and most important, all matter is only attracted to the gravity of its home world. Second, matter can be counterbalanced by “inverse” matter from the opposing world. Finally, contact with inverse matter is temporary and results in spontaneous combustion after a few hours.
Adam might have been satisfied to live out his life on one world, but when he meets Eden, a woman from Up, they set about rewriting both the laws of their society and the laws of physics.
Stream these great sci-fi movies and many more on Peacock!
