The Marvel Cinematic Universe may have expanded its own take on parallel universes and alternate realities. Still, there are plenty of other movies outside the billion-dollar franchise that explained the concept better, despite being limited to a single film.
Here are nine movies that portray alternate realities better than the MCU does, along with where to watch them.
Another Earth (2011)
Another Earth follows Rhoda (Brit Marling), who hits a family with her car after her celebratory night.
Rhoda ends up serving four years in prison for the crime, and in her four years spent in the cell, she makes a scientific discovery of another Earth that looks the same as ours. Rhoda takes the opportunity to redeem herself and offer a new life for the victims.
While Another Earth is not entirely about parallel universes, it does confirm their existence and how it could impact a person to react to it differently.
Purchase or Rent: Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV
Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)
Everything Everywhere All at Once became an instant prominent film about parallel universes and alternate realities. Apart from its cinematic performance and the coherent revelation about its existence, it also clashed with Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
The first film was released in April 2022, followed by the Doctor Strange sequel, where he fights Wanda as the Scarlet Witch and her attempt to open the Multiverse to find a reality where her twin sons existed.
The Multiverse of Madness couldn't have been more confusing than how Everything Everywhere did the trick in less time than the build-up of the MCU franchise.
Streaming Platforms: Amazon Prime Video
Sliding Doors (1998)
Sliding Doors explores alternate realities when the protagonist, Helen (Gwyneth Paltrow), is shown two parallel lives based on a single "sliding door" moment.
The day she got fired, she was offered two choices, depending on whether she would catch a London Underground train or not. In one timeline, she finds new love and a better life, while the other holds a grim future of staying miserable for life.
Streaming Platforms: Peacock, Amazon Prime Video, Netflix
The One (2001)
Similar to how Everything Everywhere All at Once dabbles in parallel universes and dimensions while having great choreography in martial arts scenes, The One tells a fresh take on how to seek his parallel selves to defeat all of them and ultimately become the only self with unlimited powers.
Streaming Platforms: Netflix
The Butterfly Effect (2004)
As the title implies, The Butterfly Effect showcases alternate realities, depending on how the protagonist, Evan Treborn, makes small changes to past events, particularly during his blackouts in his childhood, that drastically affect (more often, worsen) the present-day timelines.
Purchase or Rent: Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV
Donnie Darko (2001)
Through the concept of a "Tangent Universe", Donnie Darko follows the titular teenager, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, who often sleepwalks and sees an unstable yet temporary parallel world that creates an anomaly that disrupts their Primary Universe.
In this Tangent Universe, Donnie would always witness a giant, monstrous rabbit called Frank, who keeps telling him the world ends in 28 days.
Streaming Platforms: Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, Netflix
Coherence (2013)
A passing comet ends up creating multiple nearly identical realities that overlap and intersect with one another in Coherence.
What makes it even more dangerous is the fact that the intersection allows people to slip between them, leading to doppelgänger encounters, identity crises, and terrifying revelations of how different their alternate selves make their own decisions and view their own realities.
Streaming Platforms: Amazon Prime Video, Peacock
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse introduced a multiverse where various versions of Spider-People from different dimensions exist.
Thanks to Kingpin's super-collider, Miles Morales ends up teaming up with variants Gwen Stacy, Peter B. Parker, Spider-Ham, etc., to save their own worlds, only to realize the one heartbreaking canon event that Miles has to face before it's too late.
Spider-Man may be in the MCU, but this Spider-Verse entry is a Sony Animation original.
Streaming Platforms: Hulu
Sucker Punch (2011)
Sucker Punch follows Babydoll (played by Emily Browning), who uses alternate universes and realities as a coping mechanism to endure the trauma and abuse she has long experienced in her "real world."
While Sucker Punch is not as involved in the science-fiction genre compared to the rest of the movies on this list, it tells a different story relating to the emotional and psychological effects and escape of the main characters.
Streaming Platforms: HBO Max, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video
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