Whether you’re talking about the big screen or the small, 2021 was a pretty spectacular year for sci-fi and fantasy. Marvel came at us not only with great movies like Spider-Man: No Way Home, but five original TV series, some of which were even worth watching! And that’s just the start. After several delays, Denis Villeneuve debuted his visionary adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune. The Expanse went out strong and The Wheel of Time started strong. There were even hits that nobody saw coming: who could have expected that a random Netflix show called Squid Game would dominate our lives for a while there?
Now that the year is over, we thought we’d take a minute and remember some of the incredible sci-fi and fantasy TV and movies on offer this year, starting with…
WandaVision
Marvel Studios has owned movie theaters for years; the record-busting Avengers: Endgame was just the cherry on top of a very large, very profitable sundae. But what about TV? Could the studio that brought us Iron Man and Captain America dominate the streaming wars like it dominates the cinema?
Marvel intended to find out in 2021, starting with the release of WandaVision, a new limited series about Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany). The company could not have chosen a weirder opening salvo. WandaVision finds Wanda trapped in a sitcom-themed fever dream of her own making, hiding from her post-Snap grief in a black-and-white cinematic funhouse modeled after The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Brady Bunch, Malcolm in the Middle, and more. This show is by far the most experimental thing Marvel Studios has ever done, and it probably shouldn’t have worked…
…but it did. It worked really well, actually. People were hooked on the what-is-going-on of it all as the series pulled back layer after layer. Plus it was just fun; the sitcom angle allowed Marvel to get out of its comfort zone and experiment with different formats. And we can’t forget the musical segments. After the smash success of “Agatha All Along,” we might start seeing more songs pop up in Marvel projects — like Hawkeye, whose post credits scene was a full musical theater number called “Save the City” that guest starred Rent veteran Adam Pascal. Agatha was clearly a trendsetter.
The ending of WandaVision didn’t quite pay off the promising build-up, but this was still a delightfully trippy superhero journey. Even four more Disney+ series later, Marvel has yet to top it. — Dan
Dune
Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel Dune has taken its cinematic lumps over the years. David Lynch adapted the science fiction classic in 1984, but that movie came out a compromised, visually striking mess. The Syfy Channel hewed closer to Herbert’s text in a TV miniseries adaptation, but the budget was so small it was impossible to take seriously.
It was starting to look like Dune was unfilmable…and then came Denis Villeneuve. The guy behind Arrival and Blade Runner 2049 has exactly the right kind of slow burn sensibility to do justice to this most cerebral of sci-fi epics, and his movie comes close to being the definitive onscreen version. The sands of Arrakis look gobstoppinly gorgeous, the sandworms are massive and terrifying, and the long pregnant pauses are plentiful and meaningful. Dune is a story that takes itself very seriously, and after Villeneuve is done with it, you’ll take it seriously too.
The impressive cast helps. Timothée Chalamet, Oscar Isaac, Jason Momoa, Zendaya…the movie’s IMDb page reads like the guest list of the most exclusive party in Hollywood, and yet everyone is well-suited to their roles. The only real downside to the film is that it ends halfway through; Dune only adapts the first half of Herbert’s book, but now that it’s officially a success, Warner Bros. has confirmed that Dune: Part Two is on the way. — Dan
The Wheel of Time
Speaking of unfilmable stories, we were treated to another pretty big one in 2021: Amazon Prime Video’s highly anticipated adaptation of The Wheel of Time. Ever since Jeff Bezos decreed that he wanted to find “the next Game of Thrones,” Amazon Studios has been throwing truckloads of money at ambitious genre productions. This year we finally got to see the fruits of that labor with eight episodes of The Wheel of Time.
The result was pretty amazing. Sure, there were some sticking points, but considering the challenge of adapting the 15-book series penned by Robert Jordan (and finished after the author’s death by Brandon Sanderson), showrunner Rafe Judkins and his team did about as good a job as possibly could have been hoped for. In some ways, they even improved on the original story. Jordan’s series is notorious for dragging in places, but because the show has far less space to tell the tale, the team had to think hard about what they could cut without sacrificing the soul of the piece. Despite some hiccups, it was always obvious that the people behind The Wheel of Time really cared about the story.
That dedication brought us episodes like “The Flame of Tar Valon,” which depicted not only the fascinating political workings of the Aes Sedai (something we don’t get to see on the page until Books 2 and 3), but also the inner depths of characters like Moiraine and Siuan Sanche, which are never seen in this much detail in the books. The Trollocs and Fades and magical weaves all look incredible, there’s a rock solid cast, and the writing team is clearly thinking of the long game.
Considering that the books only get better from here, I think it’s officially safe to get really excited about the future of The Wheel of Time. — Daniel
Zack Snyder’s Justice League
Zack Snyder’s Justice League was one of the biggest surprises of 2021, in that we were all surprised it happened at all. Since the original Justice League movie came out in 2017, there had been rumors that an extended version of the movie existed, one that preserved the vision of original director Zack Snyder, who had to exit the project partway through production due to a family emergency.
But there are always rumors about stuff. The shock here was that they were true, or if they weren’t, Warner Bros. made them true after fans mounted a concerted effort for them to #ReleaseTheSnyderCut. The studio gave Snyder additional money and resources to clean up unused footage from his original cut of the movie, and even reassembled the cast for some new stuff. The result was a four-hour, multi-part opus released to HBO Max.
Is the movie good? Honestly, that’s kind of beside the point, but for what it’s worth, it’s an interesting watch. Zack Snyder’s Justice League is drenched in the director’s signature blend of over-the-top brutality and earnest sincerity, with all the slow-mo, desaturated color and indulgent post-credits scenes that you could hope for. This is not the work of a movie written by committee; it has a singular vision behind it, and could only have happened after HBO Max gave Warner Bros. somewhere to release it.
Does that mean we’ll get more creator-driven genre movies to watch in the future? Fingers crossed. — Dan
The Expanse
This year also saw the beginning of the sixth and final season for The Expanse. The science fiction epic has had a crazy run, with its first three seasons airing on the Syfy Channel before it was cancelled and then subsequently saved by Amazon Prime Video, where it lived for three more seasons. We’re a little more than half way through the final season of the show as of this writing, and it’s been a near-perfect spring to the finish.
Based on the book series by James S.A. Corey (a pen name for authors Ty Franck and Daniel Abraham), The Expanse explores a near future where humanity has colonized the solar system and a dangerous alien technology called the protomolecule pushes civilization to take an enormous leap forward. Of course, humans being humans, we’ve brought all our prejudices and issues with us into space, as the people of Earth, Mars, and the asteroid belt all vie for power and dignity. The final season focuses on a solar system-wide war, and it is heavy, moving, and exhilarating by turns.
In terms of tone, The Expanse might be one of the closest shows we’ve gotten to Game of Thrones. It’s done a fantastic job of giving viewers big-picture quandaries as well as getting us invested in small found families. The effects this year have been exceptional, with arguably some of the best space combat ever put to the small or big screen. Even better, since the writers of the books are active members of the show’s writers room, The Expanse is one of those rare series that has managed to make large changes to its source material while staying true to the heart of the story.
There’s a lingering question of whether we’ll ever see more of the show — there are three more books to adapt — but for now, the ending of The Expanse feels like a momentous occasion. — Daniel
Invincible
Invincible was one of a couple of new 2021 shows that quickly found devoted audiences despite not having a ton of hype behind them ahead of time. I hadn’t heard of The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman’s long-running superhero comic series, but I like Marvel and DC stuff as much as the next guy, so I checked it out and was glad I did.
Tonally, Invincible walks a fine line. It’s the story of Mark Grayson, a more-or-less ordinary teenager who just happens to be the son of Omni-Man, the world’s foremost superhero. We see him discover his own powers and delight in the possibilities they open up for him. At the same time, it becomes clear that Omni-Man (a perfectly cast J.K. Simmons) is hiding something; the first episode ends with him…well, you can watch for yourself, but it’s a brutal shock.
The impressive thing about Invincible is that it manages to oscillate between the sweet innocence of a PG-rated Marvel movie and the iconoclastic excess of The Boys, another Amazon superhero series, without ever giving us whiplash. Invincible is at once an earnest celebration of optimistic superhero stories and a caustic subversion of those same stories, which is a tricky balance to strike. The voice cast is top notch, the animation a treat for the eye and the source material abundant, so this show could keep on trucking for a long time. And unlike on The Walking Dead, if the lead cast member leaves the series, they can just replace the voice actor with few being the wiser…
Shadow and Bone
One of the breakout successes of early 2021 was Netflix’s Shadow and Bone, based on the Grishaverse novels by Leigh Bardugo. Shadow and Bone is a bit more accessible than some of the dense fantasy stories out there, which paid off when the show posted solid streaming numbers and got renewed for season 2. With its Old Russia-inspired worldbuilding, great effects, and compelling character crossovers, Shadow and Bone has firmly staked its flag in the fantasy field.
The story follows Alina Starkov (Jessie Mei Li), the prophesied Sun Summoner who is destined to destroy a miles-long trench of darkness and monsters called the Shadow Fold that splits her country in half. Grisha are magic users who do everything from Avatar: The Last Airbender style elemental magic to making magical gadgets. Alina’s particular power is that she can create light, which is a skill that was believed to be a myth. She’s soon swept up in court politics by the enigmatic General Kirigan (Ben Barnes), who we learn has a pretty devious agenda of his own.
But where Shadow and Bone really secured its place in the hearts of viewers was in how it weaved together Alina’s story with that of the Crows, a group of thieves from the distant nation of Ketterdam. The Crows are from a different set of Leigh Bardugo’s books, yet the show managed to thread the two narratives together in a way that kept both longtime fans and new ones guessing. There’s plenty of room for the series to grow, but it had one of the most solid debuts of the year. — Daniel
Arcane
Usually, video game adaptations range from mediocre to cringe-worthily horrific. The annals of film history are littered with examples whose names shall not be uttered here…because in 2021, we finally saw a game adaptation that shattered that cycle. Arcane was one of Netflix’s surprise break-out hits of the year, and the show’s acclaim has been well-earned. It’s a story of a city divided by stark social stratification and sisters torn apart by conflicting ideologies, and it was utterly gripping from the first moment to its last.
Arcane‘s animation style is incredible; the show leans into its artistry to provide viewers with a fresh experience in a year full of quality shows. It’s refreshing to see a show like Arcane fully embrace animation while other series like Netflix’s own Cowboy Bebop, which adapts the classic animated show as a live-action story, fumbled. There were things it was able to pull off — like the multi-layered confrontation between former childhood friends Jinx and Ekko — which would simply never have worked as well in live-action.
It’s all even more impressive when you take into account that the game Arcane is based on, Riot Games’ League of Legends, has so few story elements that it’s entirely possible to play without being exposed to any of them. Those bits of worldbuilding are mainly restricted to character biographies and documents on the company’s website; the game itself is a relatively straight-forward (if nuanced) brawler that sees players vying for control of different arenas. Who could have guessed that a show born from this game could have grown into such a hit with both longtime fans and people who have no knowledge of League of Legends?
Arcane is one of those shows that had a lot to prove in order to justify its existence, and it totally pulled it off. — Daniel
Spider-Man: No Way Home
Terms like “must-see movie event of the year” get thrown around quite a lot, but rarely is it as justified as with Spider-Man: No Way Home. 2021 was packed with Marvel shows and movies, but the newest Spidey flick stood head and shoulders above the studio’s other offerings. Marvel has made it clear throughout this year that its next big story arc is going to involve the multiverse, and in No Way Home we got to see the idea of merging realities pay off in a huge way when villains and heroes from Spider-Man movies past collided.
It wasn’t just that Spider-Man: No Way Home was a great movie that made it feel so momentous. Director Sam Raimi’s 2002 Spider-Man movie was one of the films that kicked off the modern era of big screen superheroes. As the genre evolved, Spider-Man evolved along with it. We saw Tobey Maguire ham it up as the nerdiest, kindest version of Peter Parker yet (when he wasn’t emo jazz dancing), Andrew Garfield bring his sarcastic wit to the wallcrawler in a spectacularly designed spidey suit, and most recently, Tom Holland cement himself as the definitive teenage version of the superhero. Spider-Man: No Way Home felt like a celebration of everything that has come before, as well as a tremendous thank you to the viewers who supported the franchise for so long.
The fact that Marvel and Sony managed to tell a coherent story that involved characters from across every live-action Spider-Man film of the past 20 years is nothing short of awe-inspiring. I fully expected the movie to feel like a glorified cameo-fest. Instead, it ended up being a tale of karmic redemption for Spider-Man and Peter Parker on a grand scale that was unlike any other superhero movie that’s come before it. Spider-Man: No Way Home truly was the must-see movie of the year, and considering that we also saw Denis Villeneuve’s long-awaited Dune come out in 2021, that’s saying something.
But don’t just take my word for it. Spider-Man: No Way Home is also the first film to cross $1 billion at the box office since the pandemic began. Clearly, the fans have spoken. — Daniel
Squid Game
In the age of the mega-franchise, it’s rare for something brand new to break through, but that’s what happened with Squid Game, a South Korean import about a group of people so thoroughly ground down by an oppressive economic system that they willingly submit themselves to an abusive, humiliating series of games in the hope of winning a pile of cash, even though they know they’ll probably die before they can claim it.
The premise is a shock to the system, a bitingly bold satire that cuts right to the heart of a lot of very real modern anxieties. The whole thing is very carefully written by Hwang Dong-hyuk, who throws a lot of balls up in the air and doesn’t let any of them fall out of turn. And the splendid cast of unknowns (well, at least on this side of the pond) bring the characters to life with personality to spare. You will be invested in their fates by the end, particularly since the show proves early on that anyone can go at any moment. This is a game with real stakes.
The first season of Squid Game ends with a clear bit of set-up for more down the road. On the one hand, the first season is so clean and crisp that I want it to stay as it is, but on the other, I want to see what else Hwang Dong-hyuk has up his sleeve. But part of the thrill will be gone. Squid Game was the genre event of the year in large part because no one saw it coming. — Dan
And that’s it! The infallible list of the best and brightest sci-fi and fantasy movies and shows of 2021. Did your favorites make it on? Were they left off and you’re angry about it? Let us know in the comments below!
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