Sci-Fi Movies to Skip

Studios spent millions on these sci-fimovies. The directors should've opened donut shops instead. Here's what to avoid.

Tron: Ares

2025

$170M on a franchise nobody was asking to return. Jared Leto. Again. Made $142M worldwide. Lost $133M. The Tron franchise has never been a box office draw and Disney keeps pretending it will be.

$200M

Elio

2025

$200M on Pixar's biggest bomb ever. Made $154M. PIXAR. The studio that made Toy Story, Up, Inside Out. Even they can't survive the content factory model. When you rush Pixar, you get Elio.

$180M

Thunderbolts*

2025

$180M on Marvel's version of Suicide Squad with characters nobody's attached to. The asterisk in the title is fitting — this whole phase of the MCU deserves an asterisk.

$118M

Mickey 17

2025

Bong Joon-ho made Parasite for $11M and won Best Picture. WB gave him $118M for Mickey 17 and it made $111M. More money doesn't always help — even for geniuses.

$180M

Captain America: Brave New World

2025

$180M and Marvel still can't recapture the magic. Phase 5 is where franchise fatigue became franchise death. The MCU keeps spending more and delivering less.

$80M

Madame Web

2024

$80M on a psychic Spider-Woman origin story that makes Morbius look competent. Sony is speedrunning bad decisions at this point.

$100M

Atlas

2024

$100M for J.Lo in a mech suit fighting AI. Netflix keeps writing blank checks for movies that feel generated by AI. Ironic.

$168M

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

2024

$168M on a prequel to Fury Road. The original was practical stunts and real desert. This one leaned on CGI and it shows. Lost $120M. Some stories don't need a prequel.

$115M

Borderlands

2024

$115M on a video game movie starring Cate Blanchett. Made $33M worldwide. THIRTY-THREE MILLION. The game has more personality in its loading screens.

$200M

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

2023

$200 MILLION on floating CGI heads in a green screen void. The script reads like it was written during a lunch break. Pure noise.

$166M

Rebel Moon

2023

Zack Snyder got $166M from Netflix and delivered a Star Wars knockoff with zero personality. Slow-mo doesn't replace story. It never did.

$195M

Transformers: Rise of the Beasts

2023

$195M on the 7th Transformers movie. Seven. They've made seven of these. At what point does the audience collectively agree that we've seen enough robots punch each other?

Watch These Instead

Instead of wasting time on the duds above, check out these sci-fi movies that actually deliver.

$250M

Superman

2025

James Gunn finally gave DC a real vision. $250M but it FEELS like it matters. David Corenswet IS Superman. $616M worldwide and climbing. This is what DC should have been doing for 10 years.

$200M

Jurassic World Rebirth

2025

Gareth Edwards (Rogue One, Godzilla) brought new life to a dead franchise. $870M worldwide. Proof that the right director matters more than the right IP. The dinosaurs are back and they earned it.

$78M

The Wild Robot

2024

$78M and DreamWorks made adults sob in theaters over a robot raising a goose. Beautiful animation, genuine emotion, proof that animated movies don't need $200M — they need heart.

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Why We Call Out Bad Sci-Fi Movies

Every year, studios release sci-fi movies with budgets in the hundreds of millions. The marketing machine tells you they're must-see events. Most of the time, they're not. They're recycled plots, CGI spectacles with zero heart, and sequels nobody asked for. Meanwhile, brilliant sci-fi films with a fraction of the budget go unnoticed. Signal exists to flip that equation. We call out the waste so you can find the gems. Your time is worth more than a $200M movie with a $2 script.