E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982).

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Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, both released in 1977 , were box-office hits that brought about a huge increase in science fiction films. As well, Star Wars helped to blur the distinction between the science fiction, fantasy, and superhero genres. In 1979, Star Trek: The Motion Picture brought the television series to the big screen for the first time. Ridley Scott's films, such as Alien and Blade Runner, presented the future as dark, dirty and chaotic, and depicted non-humans such as aliens and cyborgs as hostile and dangerous. In contrast, Steven Spielberg's E.T. The Extraterrestrial, one of the most successful films of the 1980s, presented aliens as benign and friendly.

The big budget adaptations of Frank Herbert's Dune and Arthur C. Clarke's sequel to 2001, 2010: The Year We Make Contact, were box office duds that dissuaded producers from investing in science fiction literary properties. The strongest contributors to the genre during the second half of the 1980s were James Cameron and Paul Verhoeven with The Terminator and RoboCop entries. In the 1980s, animation began being used for science fiction films, such as the Japanese anime film Akira (1988) and the French animated science fiction film Light Years (1988).