5 Forgotten 2000s Sci-Fi Movies That Still Hold Up Today

Science fiction in the 2000s was a curious beast indeed, because in an important way, we were already living in the future. When 1999 ended, the world entered a strange state of millennial angst, unsure as to what to do now that the world didn't end. Also, humanity began to rapidly adopt cellular telephones, which eventually gave way to smartphones. Streaming technology improved to the point where people could begin watching videos with ease in their homes (gone were the dial-up days of downloading the "Phantom Menace" preview), and movies became all the easier to access. 

Meanwhile, all the visions of the future that were glimpsed in sci-fi movies of the 1950s to the 1980s didn't really predict the internet, the rise of YouTube, or the birth of social media. Our actual reality seemingly outstripped our fiction. We weren't really sure where to look after that. Then, after the horrors of 9/11, a lot of our sci-fi stories (after a stop in terrorism stories) began to eventually skew toward fantasy. Light stories about action heroes suddenly became very popular; it's no wonder that the Marvel Cinematic Universe launched only seven years later. Also, to flee the horrors of the world, we fled into familiarity/nostalgia, so remakes/reboots suddenly became very popular. We needed a pop culture bedrock to hang on to in uncertain times. 

And during all this, some filmmakers continued to push the genre forward, often in unusual and unique ways. There were a lot of great and a lot of terrible sci-fi movies in the 2000s, all of them alternately memorable. The following films may not be super widely known, but each one of them is worth checking out. 

Larry Blamire's "The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra" is easily one of the funniest films of the 2000s. Made on a shoestring budget, and shot in the hills of California, Blamire's film openly lampooned the types of dumb B-movies that were made on a shoestring budget and shot in the hills of California. Blamire was clearly very fond of low-budget monster movies of the late 1950s and early 1960s like "Robot Monster" and "The Creeping Terror." 

The story involved a square scientist named Dr. Paul Armstrong (Blamire) and his pretty wife Betty (Fay Masterson), who have trekked into the wilderness to look for a meteor made of the rare element atmospherium. Also on the scene are a rival doctor (Brian Howe), a pair of aliens named Kro-Bar and Lattis (Andrew Parks and Susan McConnell), an animal woman named Animala (Jennifer Blaire), a mutant monster (Darrin Reed), and the Lost Skeleton itself, a psychic tyrant. 

The dialogue sends up the awkwardness of Ed Wood's cinema, featuring weird circular language, and straight-up humor. "Aliens? Us? Is this one of your Earth jokes?" Each line is a banger, a gag you want to yell at your friends at parties. This is a playground of silliness, and you will watch this movie with a huge goofy grin on your face. Blamire spoofed 1950s sci-fi with "Lost Skeleton," but he also managed to make the film look and sound authentic. The music came from a stock music library from decades earlier, and it captures the era perfectly. It's a great, great movie. 

In 2002, many critics dismissed Andrew Niccol's "Simone" as limp and unpointed, with some saying that the plot wasn't believable. In the era of A.I. "art," and the reports of Tilly Norwood, it's downright prescient. Al Pacino plays a filmmaker named Viktor Taransky who has grown tired of the Hollywood machine, and the difficult, bratty actors he always has to deal with. He is contacted by an old friend named Hank (Elias Koteas) who has created the first photorealistic animated human avatar that he calls Simulation One. When Hank dies, Viktor begins using his software to insert a virtual ingénue (Canadian model Rachel Roberts) into his movies. She's animated, but Viktor passes her off as a real person. 

Naturally, Simone is a hit right away, and the public demands more. Viktor loves the new attention his career is getting, but begins to resent that his "actress" is more popular than he ever was. Technically, she is him. Eventually, Viktor begins to hate Simone, and starts inserting her into more and more humiliating, terrible movies. Because Simone is a pretty, thin, blonde woman, the public continues to be impressed by her antics. And then what happens when Viktor is accused of having an affair with Simone? Or killing her? 

While the satire could have gone much deeper, the message of "Simone" is fantastic. We, the public, fall in love with images, and not people. And when we reach the point when authenticity can be faked, what are we even making art for anymore? These are very 2026 questions, asked in a film from 2002. 

Remember steampunk? There was an intense and short-lived trend in the mid-2000s toward a new kind of sci-fi aesthetic that posited what the genre might look like if it had become arrested in the Victorian era. Steampunk was marked by a lot of gears, a lot of brass, and a lot of sexy leather clothing. There were stories and TV shows and movies that adhered to the steampunk aesthetic, but it also became a lifestyle for cosplayers and con attendees. A friend once said that steampunk was for people who were too nerdy to be Goth, and while that's a little dismissive, it's certainly accurate. 

Katsuhiro Otomo, the director of "Akira" made what might be the best steampunk of them all with "Steamboy," a fantasy sci-fi epic set in a parallel version of 1860s England when steam-powered vehicles have changed the course of human history. The title character is James Ray Steam, the grandson and son of great inventors, and the plot surrounds the invention of a mysterious spherical machine that can essentially produce unlimited energy for steam-powered machines. James comes into possession of the machine, and is able to construct a flying device out of it. He'll need to, as bad guys are after it. 

The visuals of "Steamboy" are as elaborate and gorgeous as Otomo's previous films "Akira" and "Metropolis," but the film is possessed of a more accessible, pulp adventure tone. The film took a decade to make, and one can see every minute of effort on the screen. Thematically, "Steamboy" isn't very complex — it's more story-driven than Otomo's other movies — but visually, it's one of the most impressive sci-fi films of the decade. 

Hitoshi Matsumoto's "Big Man Japan" is one of the dumber sci-fi/kaiju films you might ever see, and that's saying something. But that distinction alone makes it worth your attention. Filmed in mockumentary style, "Big Man Japan" is about a boring, average Japanese citizen named Daisato (Matsumoto) who can become enormous when he gets electrically charged. He is the latest in a long line of monster hunters. In this universe, kaiju attacks are so common that they are regularly televised ... and ratings are flagging. "Big Man Japan" takes the world of kaiju fights, and turns it into something boring and workaday. Daisato doesn't get any respect. It certainly doesn't help that he looks ridiculous, with his giant, upended hairdo. He lives in an apartment by himself, as his wife has left him. He's kind of pathetic. 

"Big Man Japan" also addresses some of the dull practicalities of being a giant. It seems that Daisato needs to straddle a pair of giant underwear before growing, so that he's not an immodest giant. The plot climaxes when the Big Man cannot manage to defeat a giant monster from outside of Japan. 

"Big Man Japan" is funny in how bland it is. The monsters are weird and kooky, and the miniature sets are reminiscent of old Godzilla movies, but there is something slow and washed-out about the entire affair. It's a clever satire of kaiju films, yes, but it also mocks the salaciousness of reality TV. Even when a reality TV camera points itself at something as bizarre as a monster fight, it turns it into something kind of awkward and dull. It's not on our list of the best kaiju movies, but it ought to be.

When Alex Proyas' "Knowing" was released in 2009, many critics bristled at its earnest tone and weird plot twists. Those things, however, I would argue, are its greatest strengths. In the film, Nicolas Cage plays an MIT professor named John whose son opens a 50-year-old time capsule at his elementary school. Inside, John finds a pile of mysterious numbers, penned when the time capsule was buried. John finds that the numbers are dates, and that they correspond to giant disasters. Each one was predicted with pinpoint accuracy ... and there are still a few to come. 

The idea that natural disasters can be predicted throws John's entire worldview out of whack. He begins to accept that there is some sort of destiny to the world and that he needs to rethink the fundamental nature of the universe. John tries to prevent some disasters, but has no luck. Those things are 100% going to happen. John tries to find the girl who wrote the predictions and maybe learn more about how she knew what was going to happen. What he does find is that the predicted disaster at the bottom of the page will be the last one Earth ever experiences. And what does this have to do with biblical prophecies? 

"Knowing" as the title implies, is all John can do. This makes his knowledge feel futile. All he can do it know and witness. And Alex Proyas doesn't stop with disasters. He brings in some sci-fi/supernatural conceits that I will leave for the audience to discover. It's a big, big swing, but it works. And the ending is one of the broadest and craziest you will have seen on this list.