5. The Matrix (1999)
> IMDb user rating: 8.7/10 (1,759,161 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 85% (33,324,202 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer score: 88% (155 reviews)
> Directed by: Lana & Lilly Wachowski
“The Matrix” is a seminal work that combines a layered plot with groundbreaking action scenes. It was a cultural sensation that set the bar impossibly high for later action movies and is often considered one of the biggest influences in the genre. Computer programmer Thomas Anderson’s life is radically transformed when he finds out he is living in a simulation. Critic Steven D. Greydanus called it “the most influential action movie since ‘Star Wars.'”
4. The Terminator (1984)
> IMDb user rating: 8.0/10 (820,969 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 89% (776,923 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer score: 100% (65 reviews)
> Directed by: James Cameron
In a dystopian future, robots have grown cognizant and are out to destroy the human race. A particularly dangerous one (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger) is sent back in time to 1980s Los Angeles to kill Sarah Connor, the mother of a man who will one day lead the resistance against the robots. The humans also dispatch a soldier back to L.A. to protect Connor. The film jumps from one over-the-top action scene to the next and created a franchise that would become a cornerstone of action movies and pop culture.
3. WALL·E (2008)
> IMDb user rating: 8.4/10 (1,042,798 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 90% (598,663 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer score: 95% (260 reviews)
> Directed by: Andrew Stanton
One of the few wholesome movies about the end of the world follows the robot WALL·E as it attempts to clean up the ailing Earth. The human home world has been completely ravaged by consumerism, corporate greed, and environmental destruction, and humans have left to live in massive spaceships. Critic Derek Malcolm called it “one of the most imaginatively made and individual pieces of work that the audacious Pixar has developed.”
2. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
> IMDb user rating: 8.5/10 (1,033,964 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 94% (749,360 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer score: 93% (84 reviews)
> Directed by: James Cameron
Seven years after the original “Terminator” took Hollywood by storm, Arnold Schwarzenegger returned as a killer robot sent into the past. However, this time he is a different machine, reprogrammed to help the resistance and fight off the assassination attempts by a more advanced robot, capable of changing its appearance. The sequel takes the action to the next level, and critic Rick Groen called it “a pop epiphany, marking that commercially creative point where the power of Hollywood meets the purity of myth.”
1. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
> IMDb user rating: 8.4/10 (467,737 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 94% (209,644 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer score: 98% (92 reviews)
> Directed by: Stanley Kubrick
The highest-rated movie about the end of the world is Stanley Kubrick’s Cold War dark comedy that taps into the existential fear of mutually assured nuclear destruction. Events are set in motion when an unhinged renegade U.S. Air Force officer orders a nuclear strike on the Soviet Union, hoping to win the standoff in one fell swoop. The film follows the crew of B-52 bomber plane equipped with nuclear weapons and the U.S. government officials that are scrambling to stop nuclear Armageddon. Critic James Powell said “Kubrick has shown before that he is a director of rare gifts. Dr. Strangelove brings them into full realization.”
