Scarlett Johansson returned to blockbuster cinema over the summer with top billing in Gareth Edwards’ Jurassic World Rebirth, one of the most high-profile roles of her already hugely lucrative career. The Black Widow star has graced no shortage of mega-budget movies in her time, but never before with the weight of relaunching an entire franchise on her shoulders. Another thing she has done, time and time again, is show an ability to convince audiences of even the most far-fetched sci-fi ideas – from giant arachnids to dateable AI to a being from outer space who lures Scottish men into a pile of goo.
With Jurassic World now reborn (don’t mind those sniffy reviews, it’s a banger), use our guide below to discover Johansson’s ten best sci-fi movies and where they’re available for streaming from services like Disney+, Netflix, Prime Video and elsewhere. We have ranked them not by the quality of each movie, exactly—though that occasionally coincides—but by some combination of Johansson’s performance and her character’s significance, from the least to most notable.
10. The Prestige (2006)
Closer to Tenet and Inception than Oppenheimer, The Prestige is a wonderful movie, especially if you’re into Nolan’s trickier work. It’s also a tricky one to rank here. Some people, myself included on certain days, would say that The Prestige, a Victorian-era story of rival magicians, is Nolan’s most underappreciated movie. But then, even with all the David Bowie teleportation stuff, you wouldn’t exactly call it science fiction.
Either way, Johansson’s performance as Angier’s (played by Hugh Jackman) loyal assistant is charming—just be warned, Nolan hadn’t quite started to flesh out female characters by 2006, and, if anything, she is probably the fourth (or fifth—wink wink) lead. The movie itself is probably better than most films on this list, but in terms of Johansson’s sci-fi-specific roles, it’s hard to make a case for placing it higher.
9. Eight Legged Freaks (2002)
It’s hard to decide which of these two things is more 2000s-coded: That Eight Legged Freaks —a solid bit of early ‘00s exploitation that fans of movies like Mars Attacks will love—had to change its title from ‘Arac Attack’ (rumoured to be due to the uncomfortable post-9/11 similarities to ‘Iraq attack’) or the scene in which a bath-towel wearing Scarlett Johansson (16 at the time of filming) gets pinned to the wall by a giant spider and covered in sticky white goo.
But hey, you can’t spell exploitation cinema without ‘exploit,’ I guess? A fun and curious relic of early digital cinema, Eight Legged Freaks would be higher on this list had Johansson’s role (playing the daughter of David Arquette’s mine owner) not been so peripheral.
8. The Island (2005)
Was The Island the true birth of Bayhem? Regardless, if you’re a fan of Michael Bay at his most chaotic, you’ll probably have lots of fun with it. Pearl Harbour, and Bad Boys II had come and gone by the time DreamWorks approached Michael Bay to direct The Island, but it feels like a tipping point—a kind of gateway drug to the decade of Transformers movies that came next.
The movie is a chillingly feasible story about a shady corporation producing clones for organ harvesting—albeit one that might have worked better in the hands of a less excitable director. Either way, Johansson steals the show as Jordan Delta Two in what is essentially her first blockbuster—and I presume one of the reasons she was cast as Black Widow a few years later.
7. Ghost in the Shell (2017)
Rupert Sanders’s remake of Mamoru Oshii’s anime classic, Ghost in the Shell, was a victim of unlucky timing. Still, if you’re willing to give it a shot, it’s largely faithful to the original and has some of the same energy as Blade Runner 2049. Released in the stormy early days of Hollywood’s #MeToo reckonings, it became synonymous with whitewashing in the industry—so if that’s something you’re triggered by, maybe read a little more on this one before jumping in.
Conversely, most viewers in Japan (even Oshii himself) were largely unbothered by Scarlett Johansson’s decision to take the role. It’s unlucky it has that reputation, because Sander’s film has a neon-lit, neo-noirish quality that pairs perfectly with Johansson’s ethereal performance—even if she’s arguably rehashing one of her own great performances from a few years earlier. More on that one in a moment.
6. Isle of Dogs (2018) / Asteroid City (2023)
Given Johansson’s clear interest in working with auteur filmmakers, it’s a bit surprising it took Wes Anderson so long to find her a role. The Texan has made up for lost time by casting her in his last three features, the first two of which, Isle of Dogs and Asteroid City, each contain enough sci-fi elements for joint inclusion here. Naturally, if you’re a fan of Wes’s most decorative later movie, you want to check both out immediately.
In Isle of Dogs, she voices Nutmeg, an ex-show dog and potential love interest of Bryan Cranston’s Chief (and if you think voice roles don’t warrant inclusion, there is more where that came from). For Asteroid City, a Roswell-adjacent-‘50s-set UFO caper, Anderson put her fully on screen as Midge Campbell, a disillusioned actress who provides the emotional fulcrum of the movie. Or is it the play within the movie? Or the play within the teleplay within? Ah, work it out for yourself.
5. Jurassic World Rebirth (2025)
It might say more about the standing of Chris Pratt’s trilogy than anything else, but Jurassic World Rebirth already looks certain to go down as at least the fourth-best movie in the franchise. If you love all things Jurassic or are a fan of director Gareth Edwards’ Rogue One: A Star Wars Story or The Creator, be sure to give it a watch.
With Edwards’ stunning images, shot on 35mm by John Mathieson in a way that gives the film a lived-in texture, and Alexandre Desplat’s score, which pays beautiful homage to John Williams’ original, the movie just about achieves a sense of wonder that reminds you how these movies used to feel back in the Spielberg days.
None of which would work without such a charismatic group of actors: Mahershala Ali, Rupert Friend, and Jonathan Bailey all do fine work, as do the young actors, but it’s Johansson’s formidable A-list gravitas that makes the movie feel like a true event.
4. Avengers: Endgame (2019)
Avengers: Endgame was the most successful film of all time for a few weeks, so you probably don’t need convincing to see it. Just in case you do, however, we highly recommend it—for emotional stakes and a decade’s worth of payoff, it absolutely delivers.
A long-overdue Black Widow movie would be released a couple of years later, but Johansson’s Natasha Romanoff is so central to the emotional arc of Avengers: Endgame that it can feel a bit like her film at times. Whether she’s munching on a peanut butter sandwich, holding back tears, or sacrificing herself for the lives of half the known universe, she basically carries the first half of the movie. Some of those line readings—“I used to have nothing, and then I got this”—still hit every time.
It’s Johansson’s best performance as the character for whom she will always be remembered.
3. Lucy (2014)
If you enjoyed watching Bradley Cooper unlock some additional corners of his brain in Limitless, Johansson does it even more convincingly in Besson’s Lucy, a stylish revenge movie that has kind of gone down as The Fifth Element director’s last significant American project. It’s one of the least remembered of the actress’s big roles, but it’s well worth revisiting or, even better, seeing for the first time!
It’s wild that the top three films on this list were released within 12 months of each other. What, you have to wonder, was in the water?
2. Her (2013)
Her is a movie in which Johansson did all the talking (sort of), so if you liked her voice work in Isle of Dogs, or enjoy melancholy, sci-fi love stories like Arrival and About Time, get ready to curl up on the couch for this one.
Seen today, Spike Jonze’s futuristic love story is a little guilty of using the male gaze (the story was inspired by Jonze and Sofia Coppola’s divorce—and she’s played in the movie by Rooney Mara), but its ideas about how our relationship to technology would evolve have proven eerily prescient. In Her, Jonze’s lovesick stand-in (played by Joaquin Phoenix in famously high-waisted pants) finds comfort in the company of a new OS whom we basically only experience through audio. The director needed a voice you could imagine falling in love with, and he got it with Johansson, who delivers one of her best performances without ever appearing on screen.
1. Under the Skin (2013)
Under the Skin is an incomparable movie, but if you want some idea of its influence, just try looking at The Upside Down in Stranger Things or the Sunken Place in Get Out after watching it. If you’re a fan of director Jonathan Glazer, dark, thought-provoking sci-fi, or Johansson’s more challenging roles, it’s one you’ll return to again and again.
When reports began to surface that the actress had been spotted filming guerrilla-style scenes on the streets of Edinburgh in a black wig, nobody really knew what to expect. The anticipation around Glazer’s first movie in a decade could not have been higher, yet somehow he surpassed it. Even without its endlessly influential visuals and Mica Levi’s score (itself, a modern classic), Under the Skin would surely still have inspired countless university dissertations on the nature of performance and celebrity for the scenes in which Johansson politely seduced real people from the driving seat of a Ford Transit van.
Her scene with Adam Pearson (who impressed again recently in A Different Man) is perhaps the best of the movie’s many unforgettable sequences. For my money, it’s still the best she’s ever been.
