3. Pacific Rim

Few directors can fuse a knowledge of fantasy and science fiction and individual artistry as well as Guillermo del Toro, and that’s why, in spite of only having seen one or two images from the set ofPacific Rim, we’re excited enough about the film to put it near the top of our must-see movies list.

del Toro’s “beautiful poem to giant monsters”, Pacific Rim is all about humans clambering into massive robots to battle creatures from the ocean. While movies like Transformers and Battleshipdealt with vaguely similar destructive premises, we’re looking forward to seeing what a director as adept with special effects and framing can do – del Toro has previously said that he’s taken inspiration from the painter Francisco Goya, which certainly isn’t something you’d get from Michael Bay.

Idris Elba, Charlie Hunnam and, of course, Ron Perlman are among the movie’s ensemble cast, while the script’s been worked on by, among other writers, the UK’s own Neil Cross, whose TV work includes Spooks, Luther and Doctor Who.

Whether or not del Toro can bring extra layers of human complexity to the distinctly visual kaiju genre remains to be seen. But even if it does prove to be just a big, beautiful-looking B-movie, we’re confident that it’ll be among the best big, beautiful-looking B-movies of next year.

2. Elysium

Neill Blomkamp’s District 9 was a huge hit when it appeared three years ago, earning back around seven times its $30million budget. More importantly, District 9 fused intelligent storytelling and sci-fi action in a way that was impossible to resist, immediately putting the director and first-time actor Sharlto Copley on the map.

This time, Blomkamp’s been given a much greater budget ($120million), a starrier cast, including Matt Damon in the lead, Jodie Foster, Alice Braga, and William Fichtner. Like Fritz Lang’sMetropolis, Elysium introduces a future where the gulf between rich and poor is greater than ever; the wealthy are holed up in a posh space station up in the stratosphere, while the other 98 per cent scratch a miserable living on Earth.

From what we’ve read, Matt Damon plays a lead character almost as morally ambiguous as District 9’s prawn-hating Wikus van de Marwe – Damon stars as an ex-convict is drawn into a society-levelling mission due to self interest rather than a concern for the poor, though we can probably expect to see a redemptive arc to his character as the story unfolds.

As his earlier short films proved, Blomkamp has a remarkable ability to create extraordinary worlds on a miniscule budget. With $30million, he managed to depict a convincingly grungy ghetto of alien refugees in District 9. We can’t wait to see what he has in store for us with the expanded resources he’s been given for Elysium.

1. Gravity

As you will have noted by now, 2013’s schedule is positively awash with superhero movies, science fiction and fantasy. But if we had to choose just one such film as our most anticipated, it would have to be Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity.

Cuaron, of course, was the director of 2006‘s stunning Children Of Men. Gravity marks his return to the sci-fi genre, and his first movie in more than six years. On the strength of what we know about the director and this film, we’ve a feeling it’ll be worth the wait.

Sandra Bullock and George Clooney star as a pair of astronauts who, when their orbiting space station falls apart after a catastrophic incident, must fight for survival in debris-strewn space.

When the movie was still at the scripting stage, word got out that it was intended to unspool in a single, unbroken shot, with the camera moving in and around the action without an obvious edit. That same free-flowing concept appears to have found its way into the finished movie, with rumours of the opening scene comprising a single 17-minute shot, and the entire film containing only 150 or so shots in total.

All of this could be written off as so much gimmickry were it not for Cuaron’s track record of using cinematography to heighten drama. His work on The Prisoner Of Azkaban is widely regarded as one of the high points of the Harry Potter series, while the extraordinary unbroken action set-pieces in Children Of Men (including a breathtaking car chase and a sprint through a building under fire) are examples of a master filmmaker at work.