Does pop culture science fiction merely reflect humanity’s hopes and fears for the future, or can it act as an early warning signal designed to help us avoid the impending techno-apocalypse? It’s hard to imagine anyone ever handing over the nuclear codes to a super-intelligent machine after watching James Cameron’s Terminator films, while movies such as Ex Machina and Blade Runner – and TV shows such as Humans and Westworld – might just make us think twice about the ethics of developing artificial lifeforms merely to satisfy cruel sexual appetites.

If there is a cultural hive mind in place doing its best to help humanity avoid self-destruction in 2017, it appears to be rapidly shifting towards Defcon 1. For this year’s crop of movies is dominated by darkling, sombre and often downright sinister entries: stories in which humans find themselves threatened by otherworldly forces, whether extraterrestrial monstrosities or techno-doppelgangers who can do everything we can do, only better. There is fear everywhere – a sign of the times, perhaps. Even Pixar’s big movie of 2017 is about dead people.

There are cheerier entries, of course. Marvel looks likely to continue its box office reign with fantastical tales of interstellar talking rodents, Norse gods and a certain gravity-defying teenage crimefighter. Space opera will continue its comeback with a new Star Wars movie proper and Luc Besson’s first foray into the genre since The Fifth Element (1997). But, in general, the outlook for Hollywood in 2017 is distinctly gloomy. Without further ado, here are my top tips – and a few to avoid.

Dark visions of the future

Rupert Sanders’ Ghost in the Shell already feels terribly compromised: a whitewashed cast, a middling director best known for insipid fantasy misfire Snow White and the Huntsman and hints in the trailer that the unsettling visions of humanity’s impending fusion with machines, offered by Mamoru Oshii’s seminal 1995 anime, have been swapped out for a load of tired Hollywood tropes about hidden, forgotten identities. It arrives in March. For a more thoughtful examination of the perils of future technology, James Ponsoldt’s The Circle (based on Dave Eggers’ novel about a company that uses technology to oversee all aspects of human existence) might be worth a look the following month.

Ridley Scott’s Alien: Covenant will hope to rediscover the sense of infernal dread that cut through the original slasher-in-space like a knife, while tying up some of the loose ends that made predecessor Prometheus such an ultimately frustrating affair. What happened to Noomi Rapace’s Elizabeth Shaw? Why is Michael Fassbender’s devious David the android now living alone on his planet-wide bachelor pad of evil, and why do the race of Engineers so hate humanity that they keep cooking up new forms of acid-spewing creatures from the seventh layer of Hades to violate us in increasingly awful fashion? Get ready to scream into the cosmos in May.

Is the Planet of the Apes reboot really into its third movie? War for the Planet of the Apes will see Andy Serkis’s meticulously rendered mo-cap primate Caesar taking on Woody Harrelson’s Colonel for control of the post-apocalyptic Earth, and there’s surely no finer actor than the latter for essaying psychopathic intensity. Matt Reeves’ second stint in the director’s chair debuts in July.

It should come as no surprise that Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 looks set to be an even grimmer tale than Scott’s original 1982 dystopian masterpiece. The debut teaser does at least suggest that Harrison Ford’s Rick Deckard lived rather longer than his replicant brothers and sisters – a development that will need to be explained – but future Los Angeles’ jaded cityscapes remain clouded in an eternal dusk, and even the once glorious Tyrell pyramid appears to have been swallowed by the desert. New blade runner Ryan Gosling begins his mission to save a world that already looks pretty screwed in October.

It’s also worth mentioning a pair of thrillers set in space. God Particle, from newcomer Julius Onah, is the third instalment in the very-loosely-connected-indeed Cloverfield saga, following on from last year’s sinister 10 Cloverfield Lane. This time the aftermath of the monster attack on New York finds us in a space station floating above Earth, as an international crew of astronauts tries to work out why the planet beneath them appears to have suddenly vanished. The film debuts in October.

On a similar tip, Daniel Espinosa’s Life will see International Space Station astronauts Jake Gyllenhaal, Rebecca Ferguson and Ryan Reynolds grapple with the discovery of a mysterious sample taken from the surface of Mars that might hold the key to proving the existence of extraterrestrial life. That one arrives in March.

Galaxy-straddling space opera

The remarkable success of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story suggests audiences continue to be inspired by movies straddling the divide between science fiction and fantasy. Throw in the quick-fire inter-superhero badinage of Marvel’s Avengers films and you have James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy, which is due a second outing in May. The comedy highlight this time around is expected to be Vin Diesel’s Baby Groot, who has regressed to infancy after the events of the first film and now boasts a toddler-esque penchant for mischief.

Who knows if Star Wars’ resurgence inspired Besson to return to the genre that ushered in perhaps his greatest triumph more than two decades after The Fifth Element debuted in cinemas, in the supremely ambitious-looking Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. What is certain is that the French fantasy maestro is taking a galaxy-sized risk punting €180m (£153m, the biggest ever budget for a French film) on Cara Delevingne delivering a better performance than she did in the execrable Suicide Squad.

Delevingne plays Laureline, partner to Dane DeHaan’s time-and space-travelling super agent: in the long-running graphic novels, she emerges as the series’ real star. Fingers crossed the film succeeds by injecting some Gallic whimsy into the genre and doesn’t go the same way as that other well-intentioned but ultimately failed attempt to expand the template, the Wachowskis’ Jupiter Ascending. Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets debuts in July.

Finally, the big one: Rian Johnson’s still-untitled Star Wars: Episode VIII. Will we finally discover the truth about Rey’s mysterious past? Can Mark Hamill’s Luke Skywalker – this will be our first chance to see the galaxy’s last living Jedi knight in action since 1983 – still cut it with a lightsaber? And how will Disney go about giving Carrie Fisher’s Princess Leia a suitable – preferably non-CGI-assisted – send-off? We’ll find out in mid-December.

Superheroes

With comic book movies having shifted into grown-up territory, The Lego Batman Movie is probably the only superhero film suitable for small children out this year. Fortunately, Chris McKay’s film looks set to have the beating of most of its contemporaries, thanks largely to Will Arnett’s wonderfully tongue-in-cheek turn as the tiny, plastic, lobster thermidore-munching caped crusader. It’s a follow-up to 2014 smash hit The Lego Movie, and it’s out next month. What a pity Power Rangers, to be released in March, appears to have eschewed a similar meta-infused approach for a gloomy, furrow-browed adaptation of the brilliantly super-kitsch TV show.

There’s no X-Men movie out this year, but James Mangold’s Logan, featuring Hugh Jackman in his (supposedly) final turn as an older, weakened Wolverine, should fill the gap nicely. Quite how influenced the movie will be by Mark Millar’s classic graphic novel Old Man Logan remains to be seen. There are hints it may be closely influenced by more recent Marvel comics in which a female clone of Wolverine, X-23, takes over the adamantium-clawed mutant’s role. Logan arrives in March.

The new, Warner Bros-funded DC Expanded Universe has two episodes out in 2017. Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman arrives first, in March, and will hope to give the film series an Amazonian kick up the backside after the disastrous double whammy of Suicide Squad and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. The latter’s director, Zack Snyder, promises he’s learned from his mistakes and will give us a more sympathetic Batfleck in November’s Justice League. If neither film achieves critical traction, it’s hard to see how future efforts such as The Flash and Aquaman can be expected to drive all before them.

Rival studio Marvel is also doubling up this year. Spider-Man: Homecoming, out in July, will see Tom Holland’s callow wall-crawler earning his superhero stripes as Robert Downey Jr’s Iron Man looks on proudly in between dodgy cracks about the continuing attractiveness of Marisa Tomei’s evergreen Aunt May. Then in November we get the return of Chris Hemsworth’s Norse hunk Thor for a Planet Hulk-inspired road trip through the cosmos in the rumoured company of Mark Ruffalo’s not-so-jolly green giant and Tom Hiddleston’s Loki. There are also reports that Benedict Cumberbatch’s Doctor Strange could be along for the ride.

Best of the rest

Due in June, The Mummy is a strange beast. It looks like a typical Tom Cruise action movie of the past decade, as he is joined once again by an attractive younger female companion (this time Annabelle Wallis) who will no doubt get plenty of screen time and no small portion of the action. But it’s also intended to be the starting point for a Marvel-style “cinematic universe” built around Universal’s monster movies, with Russell Crowe as a Nick Fury-like Dr Henry Jekyll investigating the emergence of various strange creatures in the modern day. Quite whether The Invisible Man and Frankenstein’s Monster can team up without recalling awful memories of Abbott and Costello’s silly 1950s capers in the company of various past-their-best beasties remains to be seen.

We’ve seen every type of King Arthur tale from whimsical Disney animated musical (The Sword in the Stone) to doom-drenched, mud-caked mediaeval fantasy (Excalibur) on the big screen. Now Guy Ritchie brings us a version in which cheeky cockney tyke Arthur biffs his way through the entire cast of Game of Thrones in a suspiciously mega-populated version of dark ages Britain. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword arrives in May, and looks as if it might be fun.

Those longing to see Idris Elba in a genuinely beefy lead role only need wait until July, when the Hackney-born Englishman stars as gunslinger Roland Deschain in Nikolaj Arcel’s adaptation of/sequel to Stephen King’s venerable series of sprawling fantasy novels, The Dark Tower. This one’s been a long time coming, and a $60m budget suggests an element of compromise. But Arcel has a credible back catalogue (2012’s A Royal Affair won two Silver Bears at Berlin), even if he’s not quite got the industry stature of JJ Abrams or Ron Howard, both of whom had been attached to direct.

Pixar has two movies out in 2017. Cars 3 looks like exactly the kind of insipid sequel the pioneering studio promised it would never make, but studio chief John Lasseter is a renowned petrolhead and these films generate billions in merchandise profits. By contrast, Lee Unkrich’s Coco probably has the bravest, most daring setup for a kids’ movie since Up. It’s all about the Mexican Day of the Dead ceremony, and will see a 12-year-old boy set off on an adventure that culminates in a remarkable family reunion – no doubt involving gazillions of colourful skeletons and a trip to the fiery depths of Hades. I told you 2017 was going to be dark.