Sci-Fi Movies People Pretend To Understand

What's So Confusing:Considered one of cinema's greatest science fiction works, many thought it ranked among the best.films by Stanley Kubrickhis career was incomparable,2001: A Space OdysseyThe film refuses to answer questions or offer easy understanding. It starts millions of years ago with a black monolith that magically teaches prehistoric humanoids tool use. The movie then leaps to the future, showing scientists matching wits with a crazy super-computer. A long 'stargate' segment follows, showing only discordant music and bright patterns, plus an embryonic spacefaring baby.

What Actually Happens:After a black monolith appears in a moon crater, it sends a signal to Jupiter. Months later, scientists, led by Dr. David Bowman (Keir Dullea) and Dr. Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood), travel to the planet. An AI computer named HAL 9000 helps their ship, but it breaks down, killing everyone except Bowman. Bowman enters a vortex of light, color, and strange images, ending up in a fancy future bedroom where he ages fast. He touches a black monolith in the room, becoming a giant fetus inside a glowing orb orbiting Earth. That is the story.

If that explanation feels weak, Kubrick detailed the ending more in anunreleased 1980 documentary:

The idea suggested [Bowman] is taken by god-like beings, pure energy and intelligence without shape or form. They place him in what feels like a human zoo to study him; his life passes in that room. He loses his sense of time. Things just happen as they do in the film. [...] After they finish with him, like in many myths, he turns into a super being and returns to Earth, transformed into a superman. We only guess what happens next.

What's So Confusing: Darren Aronofsky's sci-fi metaphor explores human mortality acceptance. It is a painful, somber story handling heavy themes in a very complex way. The film uses symbolism and historical references.The FountainThe Fountain features a non-linear story. It jumps between three different tales set at vastly different times. Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz play the same actors, who might not be the same characters across all three timelines.

What Actually Happens: The FountainThe film shows three stories about Tom and Isabel's love. Isabel's story features Tomás Verde, a Spanish conquistador leading an expedition through Mayan jungles seeking the Tree of Life. Another story shows a scientist obsessed with a South American tree with life-extending powers, trying to cure his wife Izzy's brain cancer. He plants a seed at her grave after she dies. A third story places a space traveler in a spherical spaceship with a tree at its core, flying toward an exploding star, hoping to reunite with his wife in the supernova. The film explores fear of death and how people try to avoid it before accepting it.

What's So Confusing: The story jumps through six time periods. Twelve main actors play different characters—often different races and genders—in each time period. Tom Hanks plays a scheming English con artist in 1849, then a rugged mountain-dweller in a post-apocalyptic 2321 Hawaii. During a segment in Neo Seoul, Korea, 2144, actors played Korean characters, causing controversy. The super-advanced future looks like a distant caveman era. Linking the storylines or characters is hard.

What Actually Happens: Cloud Atlas shows interconnected stories.Ultimately, Cloud Atlas presents these interwoven narratives.Cloud Atlas is a tale showing how one person's actions spread through time, affecting future generations in ways we cannot predict. Each of the six stories is a separate scene with its own message. Characters or events in one story connect to the next. Adam Ewing's journals from the 1840s meet a young composer in the 1930s. The composer's lover becomes an atomic physicist who tells a reporter about a crime in the 1970s. That reporter writes a book that an older publisher reads in 2012.

The publisher's life story becomes a film. This film shows her escaping an evil nursing home. The film turns her into a fabricated clone servant in dark, future Neo Seoul, Korea, in the 2140s. That fabricant rebels. The fascist government ends her, but they record her story first. After humanity falls, her recording survives. Post-apocalyptic tribespeople worship her as a god.

What's So Confusing:Time travel makes stories more complicated. Shane Carruth's movies are the most complex.Primer.This low-budget sci-fi drama confuses viewers on purpose. Time travel itself is confusing. Different versions of the main characters exist simultaneously. They try to interact with past and present alternate timeline selves. The film creates a chaotic spiral of contradictions and disasters.

What Actually Happens:Two friends, Abe (David Sullivan) and Aaron (Carruth), invent a time machine by accident. The machine is a simple box. It travels short distances back in time, but only to when it was first turned on. The pair use it for stock market money. They become reckless. Abe stops because it is too dangerous. He uses a backup machine to travel back days, telling Aaron not to use it. The plan fails. They fight. They reconcile briefly. They use time travel to save Abe's girlfriend from a shot. Then they part ways.

Aaron travels to Europe to use the machine for his own gain. Abe stays home, trying to sabotage past-Aaron and Abe's attempts to use the machine.

What's So Confusing: Christopher Nolan's space thriller fills itself with big ideas, math, scientific theories, unseen advanced civilizations, quasi-time travel, extra characters, and non-linear storytelling. The project feels like Nolan tried to make something more grounded.2001: A Space OdysseyChristopher Nolan confuses people more than he did with Inception.Inception.

What Actually Happens:The near future faces total collapse. Former NASA pilot Joseph Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) lives with his daughter, Murphy (Mackenzie Foy). A dust storm leaves strange patterns on Murphy's floor. Murphy calls them a ghost. Joseph sees the patterns as a message. Decoding it reveals a secret NASA control center. Joseph goes on a mission to check a wormhole. This wormhole might let humanity find plants and escape extinction. He leaves his family for the world's sake. Things go wrong.

Joseph realizes a civilization of advanced humans guides humanity, transcending time. He reaches back through time, sending the dust message. This means he was the ghost in his daughter's room. He sends Murphy data from Morse code. This helps her figure out how to defy gravity and build huge space stations. Humanity can then thrive. Love conquers all obstacles, even space and time.

Pi presents confusing ideas.The film follows a paranoid schizophrenic. This character is also an unreliable narrator. David Lynch-like, horrific imagery fills every frame. Paranoia infects the character. It makes it hard to tell what is real and what is hallucination. Math plays a big role. Kabbalah matters too. Characters search for a number. This number might show a math pattern in the universe's chaos.

Pi shows what actually happens.Max Cohen is a brilliant number theorist. He suffers paranoia, vivid hallucinations, and anxiety. Cohen believes everything in the universe has a mathematical pattern, no matter how random. He builds a supercomputer in his apartment. It spits out a 216-digit number. Cohen finds this number could unlock the pattern. A powerful company targets Cohen. They want the number to predict the stock market. A group of Khabbalists think the number links magically to God's name. In a desperate act, Cohen drills into his skull to erase the number from his memory.

Solaris seems confusing.Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky directed this. The film uses a novel by Stanislaw Lem.Solaris is listed.Solaris offers a deep, dense take on the sci-fi thriller. The film never explains the sentient planet Solaris or why the memory clones exist. Its 166-minute runtime lets everything unfold slowly. The film uses symbolism and recurring themes of human narcissism and egotism, offering much subtext with little actual text.Solaris appears in the list of Sci-Fi Movies People Pretend To Understand.The film makes it easy to get lost than to grasp the actual story.

What Actually Happens: The facts remain the same.Psychologist Kris Kelvin boards a space station orbiting the seemingly sentient ocean planet, Solaris, to study its powers. The station crew acts strangely; only two survive Kelvin's arrival (the others killed themselves). One night, Kelvin meets his dead wife, Hari. Solaris uses its power to create physical copies of crew members based on memories. Kelvin accepts Hari, happy to have her back. Then, Hari has an existential crisis and dies as Solaris stops making the clones. Kelvin is left alone and in pain again.

What's So Confusing: The film presents confusing elements.Like many time travel movies before and after, 12 Monkeys appears in the list of Sci-Fi Movies People Pretend To Understand.has a twisting, confusing story of cause and effect across decades. A criminal travels back to stop the 12 Monkeys from releasing a planet-dooming virus. However, this action also seems to doom the planet. The narrative and audience questions persist after the credits roll.

What Actually Happens: The facts remain the same.The story loops but remains simple at its core. A virus wiped out much of humanity in 1996, forcing people underground. In 2035, James Cole, a convict haunted by a memory of being fired at in an airport, travels back to find a virus cure. Cole finds the virus came from the 12 Monkeys. Cole and a psychiatrist who believes his time travel story try to stop the 12 Monkeys, but they discover they are not the culprits. They are ecoterrorists whose plan is to release all zoo animals.

A scientist, working in the lab where the virus began, is the true villain. Cole tries to stop him at an airport, but police take him down, right in front of young Cole. This means the memory Cole carries is actually him seeing his own death. The virus escapes despite Cole's actions, and history seems set to repeat. Then, the real villain boards the plane, sitting next to a scientist from Cole's future who claims she is "in insurance." This suggests she came back to finish Cole's job if he failed, or she is actually in the insurance business now.doesspread, or she is not from the future; she is actually in the insurance business at this time.

What's So Confusing: The sci-fi-horror-thriller uses a non-linear story and hints that are hard to catch. Nothing about "the Shimmer" gets fully explained—its start or what it makes—leaving viewers confused. This creates an exciting thrill ride that leaves people puzzled.

What Actually Happens: A biology professor and former soldier named Lena (Natalie Portman) leads researchers into a mysterious, quarantined area of the United States. A shimmering energy dome of unknown origin surrounds this area after a meteor strike. Inside "the Shimmer," the group finds giant, mutated alligators, bears, and other animals. These creatures seem to have evolved by taking DNA from other organisms.A biology professor and former soldier named Lena (Natalie Portman) leads researchers into a mysterious, quarantined area of the United States. A shimmering energy dome of unknown origin surrounds this area after a meteor strike. Inside "the Shimmer," the group encounters giant mutated alligators, bears, and other fauna that seem to have evolved by incorporating other organisms' DNA.

Lena's husband was on a prior mission; he returned changed and is in a coma. Lena seeks to find out what happened to the first group and what is wrong with her husband. During the mission, she finds a video of her husband killing himself on his mission and an exact copy taking his spot. Lena meets a doppelganger of herself that copies her actions and thoughts. Lena burns the clone and escapes the Shimmer. After reuniting with her doppelganger husband, it seems Lena herself is either a doppelganger or changed by the Shimmer.

What's So Confusing: Under the Skinis a rare sci-fi work that embraces surrealism and mood over plot. It shows aliens, but it makes viewers figure out who the characters really are, what they want, and why things happen. Pools of black goo, conveyor belts moving what look like human organs, and Scarlet Johansson peels off her skin to show a black alien creature underneath.

What Actually Happens: This film's actual events feel subjective and open to many readings. Break it down to its basics.Under the Skin appears in the list 'Sci-Fi Movies People Pretend To Understand'.A woman, possibly an alien, tries to grasp human behavior. She seduces men, pulling them toward a black void portal where they might be eaten. The film shows her becoming more emotional, unstable, and fragile. A logger in the Scottish Highlands rips skin from her, showing her true form: a jet-black, humanoid alien. After the woman sheds all human skin, the logger douses her in gasoline and burns her. That ends it.

What's So Confusing: This list includes 'What's So Confusing:'.Jean-Luc Godard directs this art house sci-fi film. It uses no special future sets or standard sci-fi props. The movie mixes film noir, French New Wave, retrofuturism, and Orwellian dystopias. This makes a story thoughtful, dense with ideas, and sometimes surreal, like a mix of The Maltese Falcon, 1984, Metropolis, and every black-and-white French drama from the 1960s.The Maltese Falcon, 1984, Metropolis, appear in this list.Also on this list are every other black-and-white French drama from the 1960s.

What Actually Happens: This list includes 'What Actually Happens:'.Secret agent Lemmy Caution enters the dystopian city of Alphaville. Alpha 60, a thinking computer, controls the population through mind control and brainwashing. Caution must destroy the computer and capture its creator, Professor von Braun. von Braun's daughter, Natacha, helps Caution. The computer erased human ideas of individuality, creativity, and love, but this causes its downfall. Caution destroys Alpha 60 with a riddle and frees Alphaville's people from control.

What's So Confusing: This list includes 'What's So Confusing:'.Christopher Nolan worked on the screenplay forInception is listed here.Christopher Nolan worked on the screenplay for Inception for over ten years. This shows in the movie's intensely complex and winding internal rules. Criminals infiltrate dreams, but dreams have many levels. Time moves much slower at each level. If you die in a dream, you go to a limbo where years pass in seconds. Waking up needs a 'kick' or fall to move your mind to a higher dream level. If this doesn't make sense, you are not alone.

What Actually Happens: This list includes 'What Actually Happens:'.Corporate espionage experts, capable of entering people's dreams to steal data with advanced tech, enter a billionaire's dreams to plant an idea. As they go deeper into his dreaming brain, the leader, Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), faces memories of a past love that endangers the mission and his teammates.

The team succeeds after mishaps. They walk away successful. Yet, the team—or Dom—might still be stuck in a dream, leaving the ending open to interpretation. Strip away the complex rules of dream-visiting and intricate world-building.Inception is listed in Sci-Fi Movies People Pretend To Understand.This is a heist thriller with clever complications.

Arrival appears on What's So Confusing.Films that play with time and event linearity confuse viewers. This Denis Villeneuve sci-fi drama uses those expectations as its main theme. Events the audience thinks happened in the past actually occur in the future. The movie focuses on language, language development, global politics, and how humans perceive time and space.

Arrival is listed in Sci-Fi Movies People Pretend To Understand.Twelve massive alien spacecraft land on Earth. Linguist Louise Banks (Amy Adams), whose daughter died from illness, joins the US military to make contact, hoping to decipher the aliens' language. Miscommunication between the craft and world governments creates high tension. Louise discovers the tentacled aliens offer humanity a gift: their own language.

The aliens' language alters people's time perception, letting them recall future events. Louise uses this power to see how to stop the Chinese general's attack on the craft. The aliens give humanity this gift. Louise does not have a little girl. She is 'remembering' the girl she will have with Ian (Jeremy Renner), and her death is certain.

Looper appears on What's So Confusing.Time travel really does make things more complicated, and this is especially true when it comes to Rian Johnson's tale of hitmen traveling through time and eventually executing themselves. The laws of time travel are thinly explained and the movie's premise is so confusing that there's a scene in which the hitman Joe (Bruce Willis) is talking with his younger self (played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and essentially tells him - and the audience - not to worry about the details. There's also a plot point about people with telekinesis, seemingly at random.

What Actually Happens:The year is 2044, and time travel has not yet been invented. However, in the future - circa the 2070s - time travel does exist, and is outlawed, so only criminal organizations use it. Specifically, they use it to send people back to the year 2044, where special hitmen known as Loopers are waiting to execute whoever is sent to their time with a bag over their heads.

In the future, a mob boss called the Rainmaker has taken control of the underworld, and ends up taking out the wife of Old Joe, a retired looper. Old Joe returns to the past in an effort to find the Rainmaker as a child - a young, telekinetic boy - and off him before he turns into the big bad boss of the future. Young Joe realizes that Old Joe's actions are what make the boy become evil, and Young Joe takes his own life, thus negating the existence of Old Joe and protecting the future from the Rainmaker. To be fair to anyone who's still confused, it might be because this movie just does not make a whole lot of sense, and seems to break its own time travel rules at several points.