Over the past few years, Science Fiction has grown immensely as a genre. It’s grown beyond space and has encapsulated any and all stories, so long as there is a science element and a fictional element to that science. Traversing the stars is still prevalent in films like Interstellar, Christopher Nolan’s love letter to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001. In Spike Jonze’s Her, Joaquin Phoenix’s Theodore Twombly falls for his virtual assistant, Samantha (can you blame the guy, she’s voiced by Scarlett Johansson!).
All kidding aside, more and more storytellers want to use science fiction to tell their stories. This means all kinds of characters will come out and be remembered as well as Gort, Ripley, Han, and more. Here are the 10 Best New Sci-Fi Characters Of The Decade, Ranked.
Rey (Star Wars)
BB-8 might be the new Star Wars trilogy’s mascot, but Rey is its star and its heart. Much like Luke, when we first meet her, she’s just a kid traversing her desert planet. She is eventually thrust into an intergalactic conflict and placed front and center when she has a unique connection to The Force.
She’s become an icon for girls, boys, and all movie fans. Thanks to the divisiveness of Star Wars fans, the importance and popularity of Rey will keep fans talking for years to come.
Jaylah (Star Trek Beyond)
Beyond the vastness of space with the Enterprise’ s most harrowing adventure begins. In Star Trek Beyond, Kirk and the crew of the USS Enterprise are decimated on Altamid by an alien swarm led by the mysterious Krall.
Helping the surviving crew members solve the mystery, rebuild their ship and regroup in Jaylah, a scavenger who is looking to escape Altamid and get rid of Krall. She is able to showcase her engineering skills and helps Scotty rebuild the long-missing USS Franklin, which she has been living in for years.
Rocket And Groot (Guardians Of The Galaxy)
While Rocket and Groot had been around in the comic books for decades, they’re also a pair of obscure characters. The pair is Marvel’s own version of Han Solo and Chewie, a couple of rogues with hearts of gold.
The duo became instant Pop-Culture icons and as the MCU grew, they had scene-stealing appearances in Infinity War, helping Thor create Stormbringer and in Endgame, watching Rocket banter with Captain Marvel.
Dom Cobb (Inception)
As a fugitive, Dom Cobb is given an opportunity to be able to come home and see his kids in Christopher Nolan’s trippy Inception. All he has to do is commit corporate espionage, teach a young upstart how to navigate a human brain, and take he and his team of dream weavers into that same human brain to plant an idea (inception) to break up a conglomerate that threatens his employer’s business interests.
Meanwhile, as Dom is trying what he deems impossible, shadows from his past are hunting down the team throughout all of their shared subconsciouses.
Imperator Furiosa (Mad Max: Fury Road)
It’s not every day that a long-dormant franchise gets a reboot, and it gets nominated for Best Picture! Mad Max Fury Road achieves that fete and in no small part has Charlize Theron’s Imperator Furiosa to thank for that.
The film might be rebooting Max, but she takes center stage as a badass woman who eventually realizes that she needs to change who and what she’s fighting for.
Alton Meyer (Midnight Special)
Midnight Special might be one of the best sci-fi movies you’ve never heard of. While it was a critical darling in 2016, it didn’t receive gobs of critical praise, and it isn’t a big flashy action blockbuster.
It’s actually a father-son road trip movie, featuring Alton Meyer, a young boy being hunted by the authorities and a cult for the powers that people believe he possesses. The boy speaks in tongues and seems to be able to project powerful beams of light in this homage to Spielberg’s movies of yesteryear.
Mark Watney (The Martian)
With the attention to detail taken in bringing The Martian adaption to the big screen, it almost feels like you’re watching a film “based on a true story.” But so far, NASA hasn’t gotten to Mars yet. But in this movie, a crew has to abandon one of their own due to a terrible Martian storm.
Astronaut Mark Watney is left behind and has to figure out real quick how to survive on the Red Planet long enough for someone to find him. As he puts it in the film, he has to “science the ‘ish out of this thing.”
Caesar (Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes)
Andy Serkis, via Motion Capture brought a whole new side to the ape, Caesar in Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes. If his performance didn’t generate the kind of emotion needed for fans to rally behind Caesar and he leads an Ape army to liberation against humanity, then the whole movie and new franchise don’t work at all.
Thankfully it did, erasing an abysmal Tim Burton remake attempt from memory and giving (no pun intended) rise to a successful franchise.
Ava (Ex Machina)
What does it mean to be a human being? What does being a human mean? Ava was programmed to question these two philosophical questions and a whole lot more in the film, Ex Machina.
Played by Alicia Vikander, it’s easy to see why Domhnall Gleeson became enamored with an obvious AI, who he has been afforded the opportunity to apply the Turing Test to. Ava is able to have complete conversations and back and forth banter with Gleeson’s Caleb and even make him question his own humanity throughout the film.
The Abbot Family (A Quiet Place)
In the near future, sightless alien monsters have come to Earth to hunt us down. Staying as quiet as possible is necessary for survival, otherwise the monsters will reign down on you and your loved ones faster than you could possibly imagine.
In the sleeper hit, A Quiet Place, we meet the Abbot family, presumably one of many families trying to survive in this bleak future. Most of the family survived in order for an unlikely sequel to debut in March 2020.