The vast worlds and complex technology of the sci-fi genre allow it to feature some of the most visually stunning movies ever, and even when narrowing the scope down to just the 2020s, it is hard to pick the best of the best. However, some sci-fi movies stand out above others, with them featuring some of the most memorable visuals of the decade.

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The 2020s have been home to all kinds of incredible sci-fi movies, and this list can’t be a comprehensive collection of every visually stunning film that has been released this decade. Movies like Everything Everywhere All at Once, Nope, Avatar: Fire & Ash, Titane, Mars Express, and more are still beautiful, even if they didn’t make the cut here. With those honorable mentions out of the way, here are the five most visually stunning sci-fi movies of the decade.

5) Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

2024’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga may not have been a commercial hit, but it was a massive success when it comes to its cinematography. Cinematographer Simon Duggan and director George Miller took the style of the previous Mad Max movies to the extreme here, with the close-ups, wild camera movements, and saturated colors bringing this film’s much larger vision of the Wasteland to life. Furiosa is the best-looking Mad Max movie, and it’s a shame that more people didn’t see it.

4) Avatar: The Way of Water

James Cameron’s Avatar franchise is known for its visuals, and the second film, 2022’s Avatar: The Way of Water, is the series’s peak. Cinematographer Russell Carpenter worked alongside Cameron to bring the world of Pandora to life once again, and after 13 years, the visuals improved more than we could have ever imagined. The oceans and skies of Pandora are gorgeous, and it’ll be hard for the later Avatar films to top this one.

3) Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

The medium of animation allows creatives to stretch the bounds of what is visually possible more than live-action ever could, and 2023’s Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is one of the best examples of this. Directors Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, and Justin K. Thompson took a mish-mash of animation styles and made them all work together perfectly here. Every frame of this film is a painting, with the beautiful colors and stylized character designs creating a visual feast throughout.

Across the Spider-Verse is a real step up from its predecessor, as it takes Miles out of his home world and shows all kinds of different universes. Each of these other Spider-verses comes with its own animation style, and they all look incredible.

2) The Substance

2024’s The Substance is one of the best horror movies of the decade, and it is also one of the best sci-fi movies of all time. The weirdly stylized world of Elisabeth Sparkle comes from cinematographer Benjaming Kračun and director Coralie Fargeat, and they do a masterful job of keeping the audience uncomfortable throughout the film’s two and a half hour runtime. The extreme close-ups fill the audience with disgust, allowing for the various crunches, squishes, and snaps of the sound design to really shine.

The Substance‘s sets and cinematography create a film that truly captures a dream-like quality that so many movies have failed to find. However, it quickly escalates into a nightmare, with the white hallways and colorful costumes becoming nothing more than canvases for blood. The Substance is probably the least-known film on this list, so if you haven’t seen it, definitely watch it.

1) Dune: Part Two

2024’s Dune: Part Two is the second Dune film of the decade, but it is a major step up from its predecessor, taking its visuals to a whole other level. Cinematographer Greg Fraser and director Denis Villeneuve worked together to beautifully adapt the second half of Frank Herbert’s novel, with the film featuring striking visuals that perfectly capture all the beauty and the horrors of Arrakis.

The black and white world of Giedi Prime is obviously one of the most well-known visuals in the film, but it is far from the extent of Dune: Part Two‘s visual mastery. The scale of the ships, sandworms, and armies is credited to the cinematography, showing how grand the world of Arrakis is. Dune is a world that lives in wide shots, and it is hard to point to another film from the 2020s that better captures a science fiction world on camera than this one.

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