I’m a big fan of Sci Fi movies, and I’m a huge fan of great war movies. Sometimes, those two genres meet. It’s not always with spectacular results, if I’m honest, but I still end up looking forward to movies and shows that bring them together. I’m talking about movies like Dune and Starship Troopers, and TV shows like Battlestar Galactica and Silo. This is a list dedicated to movies like that. So grab your gear and let’s get into the action.
(SyFy)There are a lot of things that make Dune one of the best science fiction stories of all time. War is a major theme throughout the whole series and certainly something the recent movies have focused on. The politics of war and various armies across the universe feature heavily.
(Warner Bros.)Despite a stellar cast, including Hailee Steinfeld, Harrison Ford, and Viola Davis, and rich source material from the original novel to draw on, Ender’s Game was a critical and box office disappointment, some of which is because of some controversy surrounding the book’s author. However, if you’re like me and enjoy this kind of movie, about the young trainees in a futuristic army, you will certainly find things to like about the movie.
(Lionsgate)I’ll be the first to say that while many love Avatar, I am not among them. That said, it’s a movie that definitely belongs on this list. It’s about a military mission, though the critiques of the military are a little heavy-handed, and it’s one of the biggest box office draws of all time, so whether I like it or not, I’m including it.
(20th Century Studios)
This one is a little tricky, as I’m sure fans of Star Trek will be immediately noting in their heads. The United Federation of Planets, and by extension the crew of the USS Enterprise, are primarily a political organization with a mission to promote peace. That said, the ship has a military-like hierarchy, and the crew often finds themselves battling hostile elements in the galaxy. So there are heavy military overtones in every Star Trek series and movie.
(Paramount+)
Like some others on this list, Firefly is a bit of an edge case. While most of the crew of the spaceship Serenity are ex-military, the show itself doesn’t have many of the elements of a futuristic army, more a rag-tag crew of space explorers. It’s as much a space western in the style of Star Wars as anything else.
(Fox)You knew this one had to be here. Halo, based on the video game of the same name, ran for two seasons on Paramount+ and was a moderate success, though it never reached the same popularity as the game it was based on.
(Paramount+)Stargate SG-1, which was a show that was born on the heals of the movie Stargate. It ran for 10 seasons, first on Showtime and later on Syfy.
(SyFy)One of the most beloved sci-fi movies of all time, Aliens has some of the coolest military scenes featuring the crew of Marines on the mission with Ripley (Sigourney Weaver). One of the most iconic moments in the movie comes when the Marines all wake up from their long trip and Sgt. Apone says. “Another day in the core!”
(Twentieth Century Fox)
Are you doing your part? There may be no more obvious movie to include on this list than the cult favorite Starship Troopers. The recruiting video alone puts it near the top of the list of movies about the military in the future, to say nothing of the political overtones and satire of the rest of the movie.
(TriStar Pictures)
The Hunger Games didn’t start with a military of the future as a key component, but it certainly ends with two militaries, both the revolutionaries and the army from The Capitol, in the final two movies of the original franchise. It’s a great example of two different kinds of armies, as well.
(Lionsgate)
The classic sci-fi show Battlestar Galactica is one of the best examples of a futuristic military, even if it’s really just a small piece of what its space force used to be. Led by Admiral Adama (Edward James Olmos), the military members run the ship, and by default, the last of humankind, in partnership with civilian leadership.
(Syfy)I’m not the biggest fan of Kaiju movies, but I absolutely love Pacific Rim from director Guillermo del Toro. This is a bit of an edge case, because it’s not really set in the distant future (the 2013 movie was actually set in 2020), the presence of a great military leader like Marshal Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba) means it absolutely demands to be on this list. It’s not like we have technology like the Mechas in the movie anyway, so it feels very futuristic.
(Legendary/Warner Bros. Pictures)
Throughout the entire Terminator franchise, even when the movies aren’t about the coming war between humans and machines, there are heavy military overtones, to say nothing of when we do see the actual war in some of the latter movies. The fourth movie, Terminator Salvation, is especially militaristic.
(Tri-Star Pictures)When I first saw 2005’s Doom, based on the notorious video game from the ’90s, I couldn’t help but be reminded of Aliens in the way the futuristic Marines are portrayed as they travel to Mars to assist the UAC scientist after the attack. John “Reaper” Grimm and Sgt. Mahonin (Karl Urban and Dwyane Johnson, respectively) ooze the same kind of energy that Hicks and the other Marines in Aliens have.
(Universal Pictures)Edge of Tomorrow seems to either be revered or ignored by film fans, but include me in the former. It’s such a great sci-fi war movie. Led by Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt, the movie, though not set in the distant future, sees humanity’s military come together to fight off invading aliens.
(Warner Bros.)
Obviously I had to include Star Wars here. Not only do we get to see the military apparatus of the Empire (and its successor) in all ten of the movies thus far released, but we also see the hierarchy of the Rebel Alliance. The scene at the end of the first movie, when Chewie doesn’t get the medal that Han and Luke receive, but that he also deserves, is very much a military-looking ceremony as well.
And yeah, I will acknowledge that technically the movies are “a long time ago” and not in the future…but….c’mon.
(Lucasfilm Ltd.)
I’m a huge Kurt Russell fan, and while I loved Stargate when I first saw it, I did not expect it to spawn a franchise. Director and writer Roland Emmerich loves to make movies about futuristic armies, and Stargate is a perfect example of when he is at his best. It’s a little cheesy, sure, but that’s part of the charm of a good Emmerich popcorn flick.
(MGM)Set about 250 years in the future, Babylon 5 is one of those classic ’90s TV shows that feels like it’s adjacent to the Star Trek universe, but in this case, much more directly military-related. The titular space station is filled with both military personnel and civilians, but it was always the military plotlines that grabbed me the most.
(Warner Bros. Television)
2015’s Jupiter Ascending, from writers and directors Lana and Lilly Wachowski, is a wild movie. It’s kind of hard to explain, except to say that the protagonist, a soldier played by Channing Tatum, is part man and part…dog… is a great military character from the future.
(Warner Bros. / Village Roadshow)
Kurt Russell and director Paul W. S. Anderson teamed up for 1998’s Soldier, about a dystopian military project that turns orphans into killers for the military until things get really weird in the future. Yeah, it’s a wild movie, and it was written by David Peoples, who also wrote Blade Runner and considered Soldier to be in the same universe. Yikes.
(Warner Bros.)
Terra Nova is a show that got canceled way too soon. It was a big-budget show that looked fantastic and told a super interesting story about a dystopian future that led humanity to open up a portal to another Earth. The military in the show, led by Commander Nathaniel Taylor (Stephen Lang) wasn’t the focus, but played a huge role. It’s just too bad we didn’t get to see more, as the show was canceled after just 13 episodes.
(Fox)Roland Emmerich’s first big-budget Hollywood movie, Universal Soldier, has a ton of the DNA that the polarizing director would be known for throughout his career. It’s a pretty ridiculous, over-the-top movie about soldiers in the future, starring Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren as the primary soldiers.
(Tri Star Pictures)The simplest way to describe SeaQuest DSV is to say it’s Star Trek in a submarine. The cast was led by Jaws star Roy Scheider, and the show ran for three seasons in the mid-90s. It was a fun NBC show, and like Star Trek, it was exactly military, but the organization the sub crew represented was similar to the U.N. and acted in a very militaristic way. Though it took place in 2020, that was 25 years in the future when the show aired.
(NBC)
Fall in line and get to work, we’re going to the future
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