Science fiction is built on big ideas, which require filmmakers to take big risks. While that has resulted in some truly incredible films, it also makes for some fascinating dumpster fires.
Every genre has its flops, but science fiction tends to fail in particularly spectacular ways. The genre asks audiences to believe in alien worlds, futuristic technology, space travel, and the occasional planet-destroying superweapon, and we’re usually pretty happy to go along with it so long as the story actually works. When it doesn’t, we head on over to sites like IMDb to voice our opinions.
The following films all attempted some flavor of science fiction, from superheroes to alien invasions to digital worlds inside smartphones. Unfortunately, they also earned some of the lowest audience scores the genre has ever seen.
Today, we’re looking at the ten worst sci-fi movies of all time according to IMDb users.
10. Inspector Gadget (1999)
IMDb Rating: 4.2/10
Inspector Gadget; image credit: Walt Disney Pictures
Anyone born before the 2000s surely remembers the incredibly catchy theme song for the Inspector Gadget cartoons. The show originally aired in the 1980s, but sometime in the late ‘90s, Disney was dipping their toes into making live-action adaptations of animated stories, and Inspector Gadget was surely one of the reasons they stopped until the 2010s.
As with its source material, the film is about a cyborg detective who catches criminals with his kooky arsenal of mechanical limbs and tools. Despite the talented cast, the movie was a major flop. It attempted to give the titular character an origin story, but many audiences felt that it wasn’t faithful to the spirit of the animated show. The campy, goofy effects didn’t really do the film any favors; rather than evoking the feel of the cartoon, they just felt cheesy.
9. Highlander II: The Quickening (1991)
IMDb Rating: 4.2/10
Highlander II: The Quickening; image credit: Summit Entertainment
The first Highlander film had a weird but compelling hook: immortal warriors secretly fighting across centuries until only one remains. It mixed fantasy, action, and a bit of sci‑fi flavor without overexplaining anything. For some reason, the creative team behind the sequel decided that the ambiguity was too complicated for audiences and threw in some extraterrestrial lore instead. In the film, the immortals are suddenly revealed to be aliens from another planet when the story jumps to a dystopian future where the Earth is covered by a massive shield protecting humanity from solar radiation.
The original’s gothic, dark-fantasy vibes were pretty much abandoned when the story took a hard left into full-blown sci-fi, and as a result, the world-building just ended up feeling messy. While the story tried to offer up a message about environmentalism, many critics just felt it was heavy-handed and unnecessary.
8. Super Mario Bros. (1993)
IMDb Rating: 4.2/10
Super Mario Bros.; image credit: Walt Disney Studios
Long before Hollywood started taking video game adaptations seriously, Super Mario Bros. had a go at the ambitious task of turning a colorful platforming game about plumbers and mushrooms into a gritty science‑fiction movie.
The film’s lore in the Mario universe involves a reality-splitting asteroid that created a parallel dimension where dinosaurs continued to rule the planet and evolve into humanoids. The dinosaur dimension eventually becomes a dystopian city ruled by a tyrant who wants to merge the worlds back together. So, instead of bright castles and cartoon enemies, Mario and Luigi end up navigating a grimy cyberpunk metropolis filled with reptilian citizens and strange technology.
Needless to say, the dramatic change in tone from the games wasn’t what fans wanted to see in a Mario movie. In addition, the story and writing just weren’t enough to keep people engaged, and the movie ended up being a flop.
7. Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987)
IMDb Rating: 3.8/10
Superman IV: The Quest for Peace; image credit: Warner Bros. Pictures
Superman stories, and really all superheroes, have always lived somewhere in the sci‑fi realm. While audiences are on board for a Boy Scout alien who gets his power from solar radiation, the fourth installment of Christopher Reeve’s tenure as the Man of Steel went a little too far.
In the film, Superman decides the world would be safer without nuclear arms, so he collects them from across the globe and launches them into the sun. Unfortunately, thanks to some Lex Luthor shenanigans, this results in the creation of a new supervillain called Nuclear Man. On paper, it sounds like something straight from the golden age of comics, but the effects were just too terrible to ignore, and the action sequences were boring.
Sadly, the movie performed so badly that there wasn’t another live-action Superman film until 2006.
6. Batman & Robin (1997)
IMDb Rating: 3.8/10
Batman & Robin; image credit: Warner Bros. Pictures
Superheroes are campy, there’s really no way around it. However, while some films lean into it while managing to keep things grounded, Batman & Robin leans a little too far.
The plot centers on a team-up between Mr. Freeze and Poison Ivy as they use their respective themed superpowers to threaten Gotham. Unfortunately, the film was just too goofy, featuring a ridiculous ice-skating fight scene and a number of gadgets that should have been left in Adam West’s era. Mr. Freeze in particular delivers a relentless avalanche of ice‑related puns that, while hilarious at times, ultimately became exhausting.
5. Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997)
IMDb Rating: 3.6/10
Mortal Kombat: Annihilation; image credit: Warner Bros. Entertainment
When an evil emperor from an alternate dimension abruptly invades Earth, forcing a ragtag group of martial artists to violently stop the realms from permanently merging, you’d think you could expect a fun couple of hours. Sadly, despite the success of the first movie two years prior, audiences were left with a cheap-looking, badly written, and terribly acted display instead.
The film bopped around characters, locations, and fights so quickly that we never had a chance to digest anything before the next character was being killed off. However, the movie is so bad that it kind of loops back into fun territory and has, over the years, amassed a cult following.
4. The Emoji Movie (2017)
IMDb Rating: 3.5/10
The Emoji Movie; image credit: Sony Pictures Animation
From a sci-fi angle, the idea of a world within our cell phones could have been interesting. Instead, The Emoji Movie used the concept to sell smartphone apps.
The plot drops us into a bustling metropolis inside a phone, following a “meh” emoji who suffers a glitch that lets him express multiple emotions. Desperate to conform to his programming, he embarks on a journey across various apps to find the source code necessary to alter his fundamental nature. The world-building is astonishingly lazy, with a digital landscape that makes zero logical sense. To top it all off, the jokes were boring and relied too heavily on pop culture.
3. Battlefield Earth (2000)
IMDb Rating: 2.5/10
Battlefield Earth; image credit: Warner Bros. Pictures
Few science fiction movies have gained as infamous a reputation as Battlefield Earth. In fact, the film was so bad that it won the Golden Raspberry for Worst Film of 2000.
Set a thousand years in the future, the film imagines Earth under the rule of a massive alien species that has enslaved humanity. Most humans now live as primitive survivors while their towering alien overlords strip the planet of resources.
Eventually, a small group of rebels learns to operate the aliens’ technology and launches a rebellion to reclaim Earth.
In theory, it sounds like a solid premise. Unfortunately, the execution was a mess. The excessive use of Dutch angles, the ugly, grimy-looking filter, the weird alien designs, and the bizarre performances all come together to make one of the worst movies of all time.
2. Dragonball Evolution (2009)
IMDb Rating: 2.5/10
Dragonball Evolution; image credit: Walt Disney Studios
Even under the best of circumstances, condensing nearly 1,000 episodes of an immensely popular anime into a single movie is a tall order. Much to the disappointment of fans, Dragonball Evolution didn’t even try to respect the source material.
The story follows a teenager named Goku who learns that he’s connected to powerful artifacts known as Dragon Balls. If gathered together, they can summon a cosmic dragon capable of granting wishes. A powerful enemy seeks the same artifacts, forcing Goku and a handful of allies into a race to stop him.
In the original source material, that premise leads to globe‑spanning adventures and massive battles between superpowered fighters. The movie skimmed over these parts, turning it into a boring, low-budget teen drama that barely resembled the original anime.
1. Disaster Movie (2008)
IMDb Rating: 1.9/10
Disaster Movie; image credit: Lionsgate
Disaster films usually rely on awe-inspiring scale, the terrifying power of the unknown, or the awesome, visual spectacle of society collapsing. This film didn’t seem to understand where the weight in those films came from (and subsequently the actual source material for a spoof film of the genre).
The story follows a group of friends trying to survive the end of the world after a series of catastrophes begin destroying civilization. Asteroids strike cities, strange cosmic events erupt, and the planet seems determined to wipe itself out. While there could have been some good parody content, it ended up as a chaotic barrage of terrible green screens and crude celebrity lookalikes wandering into the frame, only to get hit by falling debris.
There you have it, the top ten worst sci-fi movies. If you love to hate bad movies as much as we do, stick around for more audience rankings, deep dives into nerd culture, and all the movie and TV news you could want.
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Source: IMDb
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