The best sci-fi movie scores add their own unique and irresistible atmosphere to mind-bending films about space exploration, time travel, life on faraway planets, futuristic dystopias and other captivating explorations of alternate realities. Here are six outstanding scores which reflect how the popular imagination has been haunted by outer space and what distant worlds might be discovered there.
The best sci-fi movie scores of all time
1. Things to Come (1936)
Music by: Arthur Bliss
With a script by HG Wells, the father of much of today’s science fiction, this is in theory an intriguing landmark in British cinema history. In practice it is a frightfully stilted, mannered and – at least by today’s standard – slow moving drama, which takes its time to reach the technological wonders of the future, including the first manned flight around the moon.
The most vibrant feature of the film is in fact Arthur Bliss’s splendid score, its grimly triumphal ‘March’ being its most famous cue. Bliss himself made an excellent recording of the Things to Come suite with the London Symphony Orchestra (Heritage HTGCD220), and there is a modern recording of the complete score by Rumon Gamba conducting the BBC Philharmonic (Chandos CHAN 9896).
2. The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
Music by: Bernard Herrmann
Here, by contrast, is a film which has stood the test of time, not least due to its still eerie-sounding score by Bernard Herrmann (and helped by some fine acting, plus special effects which have not dated as badly as one might expect). Already established through scoring several Orson Welles pictures, including Citizen Kane, Herrmann was yet to form his legendary partnership with Hitchcock.
The Day the Earth Stood Still was his first Hollywood score after he had moved from New York, and he was clearly keen to make an impression. His unusual line of instruments included electric violin, cello and double bass; two theremins; two Hammond organs; an array of percussion; and 11 brass instruments (one French horn, three each of trumpets and trombones, and four tubas). The theremins in particular dominate the music’s soundworld, most memorably the scenes involving the alien spacecraft.
3. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Music by: Richard Strauss, Johann Strauss II, György Ligeti
Rather than an original score, 2001: A Space Odyssey famously - and brilliantly - conjures up its otherworldly atmospheres via a mix of iconic classical works such as Richard Strauss's tone poem Also sprach Zarathustra and Johann Strauss II's (no relation) waltz The Blue Danube. Alongside these works, the eerie compositions of György Ligeti create a sense of mystery and cosmic grandeur.
4. Solaris (1972)
Music by: Eduard Artemyev
This Soviet film, directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, is said to have been produced in response to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Unlike Kubrick, who famously ditched the commissioned score in favour of his eclectic temp track which successfully mixed Richard Strauss, Ligeti et al, Tarkovsky used a remarkable new score almost entirely (but for a Bach chorale prelude) composed by Eduard Artemyev.
Though subsequently more widely known and loved for his late-Romantic style scores for such international hits as Burnt by the Sun, Artemyev was in fact a relatively early pioneer of electronic music within the Soviet Union, and had composed music in the Experimental Studio of Electronic Music which opened in composer Alexander Scriabin’s former Moscow apartment in 1966. It is Artemyev’s strange and unearthly music, above all, which makes one believe the disconcerting ‘alien’ quality of the scientific research station Solaris.
5. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
Music by: John Williams
The five-note pentatonic theme with which the scientists of Earth communicate with the visiting UFO from space was, of course, created by Spielberg’s legendary ‘in-house’ composer John Williams. Simple as it sounds, it was just one of over three hundred possible permutations of a five-note theme that Williams composed, from which Spielberg selected the one which became for a long time a instantly recognisable motif, used in endless spoofs about extraterrestrial visitations. But just when we were on the point of being seduced with the idea of friendly aliens…
Best sci-fi movie scores: Star Wars and beyond
6. Star Wars (1977) / The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
Music by: John Williams
Possibly the most famous sci-fi scores of all time, John Williams’s music for the first two movies in the Star Wars franchise combine grand orchestral themes with heroic and emotional motifs. Pieces such as 'Binary Sunset' from Star Wars and of course the 'Imperial March (Darth Vader's Theme) from that film's 1980 sequel The Empire Strikes Back are nothing short of legendary.
The latter, in particular, is an object lesson in conjuring a sense of power, menace and inevitability in music. Dark and ominous, it's built around a strong, militaristic rhythm that evokes a sense of unstoppable force. The bold, heavy brass (especially trumpets and trombones) dominate the melody, creating a commanding presence, while that famously steady, marching rhythm emphasizes the unstoppable nature of Vader and the Empire at his command. Even the key signature is carefully selected: the use of G minor injects a sense of menace and doom.
It's interesting to consider the classical composers who fed into the Star Wars soundworld. The use of leitmotifs - short, instantly recognisable themes associated with a certain character or place - owes much to Richard Wagner, who pioneered the technique in the Ring Cycle, Tristan und Isolde and his other operas.
Other clear influences on John Williams and his soundworld include The Planets by Gustav Holst - the 'Mars' movement is a clear forebear for the 'Imperial March' - and Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, whose martial rhythms and tangy harmonies influenced the sounds of some of the film's action scenes.
- John Williams's family: The musical dynasty you knew nothing about
- All 12 Stravinsky ballets, ranked
7. Alien (1979)
Music by: Jerry Goldsmith
The soft screeches, eerie moanings and echoey knocks with which Alien opens sets the tone of disquiet and fear that became so much part of the film’s identity. Remarkably, that title sequence was created in some haste by Jerry Goldsmith when the director, Ridley Scott, objected to his original all-too-conventional neo-Romantic title sequence.
Other parts of Goldsmith’s score were also jettisoned in preference to temp tracks, which to his annoyance included music he had written for an entirely different film, and the music for the film’s final sequence is taken from Howard Hanson’s Symphony No. 2 (Romantic).
Yet it has to be said that the film became all the more effective for those changes, and – as Scott admitted – a good deal of the film’s success still came down to Goldsmith’s music. Not least, Goldsmith had the inspired idea to add to his large orchestra an ensemble of the antique wind instrument, the serpent, to evoke the alien’s menace.
Although much of its music was excised from the film, the instrument’s blood-curdling rasp can be heard in the final twist when the heroine discovers the alien creature aboard the shuttle in which she intended to escape from the mothership.
8. Blade Runner (1982)
Music by: Vangelis
The groundbreaking electronic score to 1982's cinematic magnum opus Blade Runner perfectly captures the film's dystopian, neon-lit universe. The use of synthesizers, in particular, creates an atmospheric, haunting, and dreamlike quality. The 'Love Theme' and end titles have remained particularly iconic.
Tracks like 'Blade Runner Blues' reflect the film’s neo-noir aesthetic, while 'Memories of Green' and 'Rachel’s Song' add a melancholic, romantic touch.
9. Tron: Legacy (2010)
Music by: Daft Punk
A unique fusion of orchestral grandeur and electronic beats, Daft Punk’s score for Tron: Legacy is a modern sci-fi masterpiece. Tracks like 'Recognizer' and 'The Grid' blend futuristic beats with cinematic grandeur. Dark and atmospheric, hypnotic and insistent the music to Tron: Legacy evokes the neon-lit cyber world of The Grid with pulsating rhythms and deep bass lines.
10. Under the Skin (2013)
Music by: Mica Levi
Finally, another fine example of an original film score which unapologetically uses modernist sounds and so creates a disconcerting and nerve wracking atmosphere. Mica Levi – also known by their stage name Micachu, in which guise they perform with their group Micachu and the Shapes – was trained at Guildhall School of Music and Drama. While a student, they had the experience of writing a work performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Levi subsequently became an artist-in-residence at the Southbank in 2010.
Levi was just 26 when they were approached by film director Jonathan Glazer to write their first film score for his film Under the Skin, starring Scarlett Johansson as an extraterrestrial who in human guise entices various men. Using a small ensemble of strings, flute and percussion combined with electronic music, Levi’s score creates its effect through a minimal number of musical themes embedded in a ‘beehive’ like sound, using scratchy string playing and microtonal tuning.
11. Interstellar (2014)
Music by: Hans Zimmer
One of the most innovative and emotive film scores in recent memory, Hans Zimmer's haunting, atmospheric music for Interstellar is a perfect fit for that movie’s exploration of space, time, love, and human survival with a deeply atmospheric and haunting sound.
The score owes much of its deep, resonant and sometimes otherworldly feel to its use of a massive church organ, which cleverly evokes both the vastness of space and the depth of human emotion. Elsewhere, Zimmer deploys minimalist patterns and subtle, repeating motifs, creating a sense of tension and propulsion that mirrors the cycles of time and space travel, and the vast stretches of the universe. Zimmer also uses a carefully balanced mix of electronic sounds and traditional orchestral elements, creating a score that feels both futuristic and grounded.
Listen to our playlist of the best sci-fi movie soundtracks on Apple Music.