We took a trip through decades of the genre and came up with a list of the most important and best hard science fiction movies of all time. They are the essence and the foundations of the book of sci-fi rules that’s still being written as we, the audience, become much more self-aware of our relationship with technology, the future, and whatever those two will bring.
Great movie, but I’m not sure it’s considered “hard SF.” There’s no real basis to anchor much of the science in it.
I’d say the same thing about “Sunshine” and “Interstellar”.
Some movies I might consider including, in no particular order:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrival_(film)
If you’re trying to say that the fact that they invented a realistic language for the film makes it hard SF, I think that’s quite a stretch. What’s the basis for
spoiler
a language changing a human’s concept of time and allowing them to remember the future
?
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, though decades old & sounding like it’s from Star Trek, is the basis, from actual linguists. Highly implausible for humans & long outdated, but as the film’s linguist consultant quips, “for aliens, all bets are off.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity
fiction
I don’t think we’re connecting here. Hard science fiction is science fiction with an emphasis on scientific accuracy or plausibility. It’s sort of a subgenre, and this list is about movies in that subgenre. It doesn’t mean that there aren’t great SF movies outside of that subgenre, but this isn’t about those.
Although now I have to question the inclusion of Interstellar on this list, because it gets pretty far out there as well, especially at the end.