The geekiest movies of 2017, ranked
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30. Armed Response
It’s been a mixed year for geeky-movie fans — science fiction, superheroes, monsters and impressive futuristic technology abounded, but quality scripts? Uh, sometimes. Let’s take a look at 2017 in geeky film thus far…
Highly trained soldiers vs. rogue artificial intelligence? This movie sounds like a sci-fi dream. Unfortunately, the reviews tell a very different story.
Metacritic score: 13
29. Geostorm
Sometimes the more ridiculous a movie is, the more entertaining it can be. While Geostorm isn’t necessarily a good movie, it’s hard to hate a story about weather-controlling satellites creating natural disaster all over the planet.
Metacritic score: 21
28. Spark: A Space Tail
Sometimes geeky films happen to be animated — in the case of Spark, animated animals in space.
Metacritic score: 22
27. Underworld: Blood Wars
The latest film in the Underworld franchise keeps its vicious and violent edge. After surviving the era of the lovelorn vampire, Underworld: Blood Wars returns to what many of us nerds look for in their action horror films: Beasts and monsters, supernatural elements and a cinematic universe that continues to grow.
Metacritic score: 23
26. Flatliners
This remake of the 1990 thriller did not receive good reviews. Still, Flatliners‘ story of young doctors tinkering with death by stopping their own hearts, thus bridging life and the afterlife, is chilling.
Metacritic score: 27
25. Transformers: The Last Knight
Now that’s geeky: a nostalgic celebration of giant robots battling each other with the fate of the world hanging in the balance. The Last Knight, the fifth in the Transformers series, takes its the mythology one step further by working in Merlin and King Arthur, opening the franchise to a new subset of nerd culture.
Metacritic score: 28
24. The Space Between Us
Not every sci-fi movie is about saving the planet. The Space Between Us is, instead, a coming-of-age film about a human on Mars who falls in love with a girl on Earth. It’s a fairly by-the-numbers love story tinged with space travel, but it’s not often that a romantic drama wades into the sci-fi pool.
Metacritic score: 33
23. The Dark Tower
While this adaptation of the classic Stephen King series of sci-fi/fantasy novels was highly-anticipated, the end result was not what fans were hoping for. In the end, it turns out that squeezing a universe built over nine novels into a single movie isn’t easy.
Metacritic score: 34
22. Monster Trucks
Yep, really: Monsters unleashed from the deep take control of pickup trucks. While Monster Trucks wasn’t a box office smash or a hit with critics, audiences had nothing but good things to say about the geeky comedy aimed at children.
Metacritic score: 41
21. The Circle
Bad reviews from critics and audiences led this Emma Watson thriller to a disappointing debut. Whether it was Watson’s uneven U.S. accent or the comically evil tech company at the center of it all, The Circle was just bizarre.
Metacritic score: 43
20. Kingsman: The Golden Circle (tie)
This sequel to Kingsman: The Secret Service introduced futuristic new weapons and a maniacal villain with massive robot dogs to do her bidding. It may not have been as good as the original, but the ideas introduced are a lot of fun.
Metacritic score: 44
19. Saban's Power Rangers (tie)
Saban’s Power Rangers leaned heavily on the alien mythology that brought the Ranger powers to Earth. Between that mythology, the giant robot dinosaurs the Rangers control, and the kaiju monster they battle, Power Rangers is as geeky as it can possibly be.
It may not have been a critical smash, but the movie turned out so much better than any big-screen Rangers film before it.
Metacritic score: 44
18. Justice League
Seeing the world’s most popular superheroes finally uniting as a team is an epic moment for any geek. Justice League is the movie many nerds have been waiting their whole lives for. Hopefully, the mixed critical reception it received didn’t dampen spirits too much.
Metacritic score: 46
17. Resident Evil: The Final Chapter
There are countless movies and TV shows in this genre, but it’s rare to see a finale that doesn’t include the fall of all living things. It’s a fitting ending to the most popular video-game adaptation series yet.
Metacritic score: 49
16. Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
Like The Fifth Element — also written and directed by Luc Besson — Valerian is unadulterated sci-fi. Critics were split, but it’s hard to deny the stunning otherworldly universe it built, full of alien races and far-out technology.
Metacritic score: 51
15. Ghost in the Shell
The live-action story of a synthetic person powered by a human brain did not light the world on fire. Critics were disappointed it didn’t stick closer to the source material. That didn’t stop it from being a visually incredible world, though.
Metacritic score: 52
14. Life
Set almost entirely in a space station, this horror movie incredibly claustrophobic. Throw in a Martian organism that kills as it grows, and you’ve got a terrifying addition to the trapped-in-space genre.
Metacritic score: 54
13. Kong: Skull Island (tie)
The latest King Kong reboot revisits the mythology of the unnaturally gigantic ape, while also opening the story to a larger shared universe. By establishing Kong’s importance to Skull Island — he is its king, after all — the age-old story gets new life.
Metacritic score: 62
12. Sleight (tie)
An aspiring magician surgically implants an electromagnet into his arm to control metal for his illusions. He also uses those powers to become a street-level superhero when a local thug wrongs him. This is a movie flew under the radar for most, but it’s worth tracking down.
Metacritic score: 62
11. Alien: Covenant
The latest entry into Ridley Scott’s Alien franchise may be the scariest sci-fi we saw in 2017. The lead character is an android played by Michael Fassbender.
Metacritic score: 65
10. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (tie)
Guardians of the Galaxy is by far the geekiest piece of the Marvel Cinematic Universe puzzle, and Vol. 2 is no different.
Metacritic score: 67
9. The Girl with All the Gifts (tie)
An interesting spin on the zombie genre, the heroes in The Girl with All the Gifts are hybrid children who crave flesh but can think, reason and learn. In such a crowded undead landscape, it’s hard to find something new, and this is a movie that cracked the code.
Metacritic score: 67
8. Napping Princess
This sci-fi flavored anime follows a girl named Kokone as her technological dream world begins integrating itself into reality. With mostly positive reviews, Napping Princess could become a cult anime hit.
Metacritic score: 69
7. Colossal
Anne Hathaway doesn’t realize that, via some kind of magic, her actions in America are being replicated by a giant monster in Japan. Under that sci-fi cover, this was a heartbreaking story about a woman coming to terms with a personal crisis.
Metacritic score: 70
6: Spider-Man: Homecoming (tie)
Finally, a Spider-Man film that everyone seems happy with. The legendary comic book character has always been a mixed bag on the big screen, but the newest incarnation not only understands the character but also places him firmly in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Bonus points for all of the futuristic technology Spider-Man (Tom Holland) and Vulture (Michael Keaton) put to use in the movie.
Metacritic score: 73
5. Thor: Ragnarok (tie)
Thor: Ragnarok dismissed the serious tone of the previous Thor films, instead leaning on comedy, while keeping its nerdy roots. Ragnarok is filled with new alien species, exciting new planets and even dogfights between spaceships.
Metacritic score: 73
4. Wonder Woman
Wonder Woman delivered on everything fans of the iconic comic book series could ask for, from her origin story on Amazonian island Themyscira to the lasso of truth.
Metacritic score: 76
3. Logan
Hugh Jackman’s final turn as the classic comic-book character Wolverine is also arguably the best entry in the X-Men franchise, a movie that proves that the ravages of time even catch up to superheroes.
Metacritic score: 77
2. Blade Runner 2049
It may have taken 35 years, but there’s no denying the followup to 1982’s Blade Runner lived up to the hype. This epic sci-fi film revisits the visually-striking world of Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) through the artistic eye of director Denis Villeneuve.
Metacritic score: 81
1. War for the Planet of the Apes
It doesn’t get much more sci-fi than a war between humans and genetically-advanced apes in a dystopian future. The third entry in the Planet of the Apes rebooted franchise is the geekiest yet, playing out what is essentially a civil war between people and apes. Luckily, a fourth film is already in the works.
Metacritic score: 82