There’s nothing like a good sci-fi monster to terrorize audiences and haunt their dreams. The Xenomorphs from the Alien franchise are iconic, of course, but there are also the creatures from A Quiet Place, and the Predator, and the thing from The Thing. But not all sci-fi creatures are scary. Some of them are actually kind of cute. Some are even downright cuddly.

One of the delightful things about sci-fi creatures in movies is that being ugly doesn’t necessarily stop them from being adorable at the same time. Some creatures even start off seeming scary, only for it to be revealed that they’re actually harmless and sweet.

The thing that makes a cute creature work best onscreen is that it finds a way to be endearing to the audience. Often this comes from the creature helping the protagonists on their journey, but it can come in other forms, too. Some creatures, though alien or strange, are depicted in movies not unlike a pet dog, which instantly makes them relatable to most people. Sometimes, a creature is depicted almost like a helpless baby, which also sparks the audience’s inherent feelings of protectiveness.

Throughout movie history, there have been plenty of adorable sci-fi creatures. Here is a ranking of the cutest of all time.

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7

The Creepers

Mickey 17

When Mickey 17 was first advertised, it wasn’t even clear that it was going to be much of a creature feature. The focus, it seemed, was going to be on Robert Pattinson’s character Mickey, who agrees to be cloned over and over again as part of a scientific mission on a faraway planet. Every time he’s killed by some experiment, he is printed out again as a new version of himself. And while that is the central premise of the movie, what the trailers didn’t give away was that the plot would revolve around its heroes being aided by and coming to the aid of adorable worm-like creatures called Creepers.

The Creepers are natives of the planet Niflheim, watching as their world is conquered by careless, corrupt humans. Though they appear scary and creepy at first—which is why they’re given the name Creepers—Mickey eventually comes to realize that there has simply been a failure to communicate. That’s because these creatures are not anthropomorphic in any way. Though they range in size from as small as a puppy, to outright giant, they all look somewhat similar. Creepers are worm-like, but with a hard shell almost like an armadillo or a pill bug. Their mouths are a circle with teeth surrounding, and a long tongue that helps them sing to communicate. They’re a bit like a smaller, cuter version of the sandworms in Dune. And best of all, they end up forming an alliance with Pattinson to save the day.

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6

Gizmo the Gremlin

Gremlins and Gremlins 2: The New Batch

When it comes to cute creatures, perhaps the most deviously cute of all are the Gremlins, from Joe Dante’s 1984 classic and its 1990 sequel, Gremlind 2: The New Batch. The Gremlins in Gremlins are actually meant to be Mogwai, evil, mischievous spirits from Chinese folklore. Set during Christmas, the first movie involves young Billy Peltzer receiving the Gremlin Gizmo as a gift, but soon the population of Gremlins gets out of control, and they start causing all kinds of chaos around town.

The real trick of the film is that the Gremlins, despite being evil little imps, are also often extremely adorable. Most of them look like cute-ified lizards, and they make an impression thanks to their hilariously evil, mischievous personalities. Gizmo is the unique one, and also the only good Gremlin, of course. He is tiny like the rest of them, but rather than looking like a lizard, he’s furry like a teddy bear, and with two-tone brown and white coloring, and huge, bat-like ears. He’s so cute, in fact, that when Tiger Electronics debuted its hugely popular Furby toy in 1998, the influence of Gremlins on its design was obvious.

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5

Boo

Monsters, Inc.

Maybe the cutest movie monster of all time is not even a monster, though that might depend on a person’s point of view. Pixar’s Monsters, Inc. is set in a world completely populated by nightmare monsters, all going to work, traveling through magic doors to scare children in their beds at night. It’s important work. But things go haywire for monsters Mike and Sully when they accidentally let a very dangerous creature onto the Scare Floor at their factory: a human baby.

Forget cutest creature, Boo, as the two monsters call her, might be the cutest thing in all movie history. The little toddler wreaks all kinds of havoc at the factory, as Mike and Sully try to get her home. She is completely oblivious to most of what’s going on around her at any given time, leading to some of the best comedy high jinks ever in a Pixar movie. But more than just a comedy machine, Boo also becomes the emotional heart of the movie, forging a strong bond with both Sully and Mike, leading them to understand their important role in helping to raise children in this world.

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4

E.T.

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial

Some creatures are naturally cute, and some creatures are literal babies. But Steven Spielberg gave himself an extra challenge with his 1982 classic E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Rather than making some kind of Disney-style cute alien for his story of a young boy and his emotional bond with a creature from out of this world, the director decided to make him as ugly as possible. He trusted that with some key design choices, and the endearing personality of the alien, the audience would fall in love with him.

And that’s exactly what ended up happening when the world was introduced to E.T., the ugly, slimy looking, ball of folded skin with a long neck and huge head. E.T. looks almost like a fetus that hasn’t been fully developed. Nothing about him should be appealing, right down to his long, wet fingers. But E.T. has a couple of things going for him. The first is how short and stout he is, causing him to waddle like a penguin as he moves around, which is simply charming and hilarious to watch. He’s also got absolutely massive eyes, a classic method of making a character cute. And then there’s his personality, which is something like that of an older toddler. He’s endlessly curious, bemused, and affectionate, helping him to form an unbelievable bond with everyone he meets. There’s a reason why, when he’s heading into his spaceship at the end, on his way back to the stars, everybody in the audience cries. He may be ugly, but he’s adorable and impossible not to love.

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3

Stich

Lilo & Stitch

Disney’s Lilo & Stitch owes a lot to E.T., but takes things in a very different direction. Set in Hawaii, the 2002 animated classic—and its recent live-action remake—tells the story of Lilo and her older sister Nani, who are orphaned after their parents are killed in a car crash. After wishing for a friend, Lilo discovers Stitch, a genetic experiment from outer space who has escaped his creators and crash-landed on Earth. Lilo adopts Stitch, thinking he is a very strange kind of dog, only to find herself caught up in an intergalactic battle.

Stitch is, simply, adorable. A zany-looking blue creature, Stitch has some of the qualities of Gizmo the Gremlin, with his small, round body, big eyes, and positively huge ears. And much like the Gremlins, Stitch also has an impish, mischievous quality. In fact, Disney leaned right into that aspect of his character’s personality, even in their marketing. The first trailer for the original Lilo & Stitch had the little alien crashing other classic Disney animated films. Over the years, Stitch has become one of the most beloved characters in the Disney canon, no doubt related to the fact that he’s so cute that he automatically makes for an excellent plushy toy.

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2

Dobby the House Elf

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Few creatures in classic movies have had such a complicated relationship with audiences than Dobby the House Elf from the Harry Potter series. First introduced in the second book in the novel series, the movies held true by welcoming the scrawny, whiny, big-eared little guy in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. The odd thing is, many at the time found the character quite annoying. Though Dobby had his fans, his whiny nature, and the way he kept messing things up for Harry made him a bit hard to take for some. Though his character gets a satisfying arc in the book and the film, casting off the chains of slavery, his CG appearance in the movie proved hard to connect with for many. This was so true, that Dobby was essentially left out of the rest of the films, until the end.

Over that time, though, affection for Dobby grew among the fan base. When Dobby was reintroduced in the penultimate film, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1, many opening weekend audiences cheered his arrival. Annoying as the character could sometimes be, his bond with Harry made him an affecting presence in the series, right until his beautiful, tragic end, which helped to re-frame him in fans’ eyes. Suddenly, he became an adorable character that everyone could love.

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1

The Minions

Despicable Me

It would be impossible to make a list of the cutest movie creatures without talking about the most successful modern example: the Minions. First introduced in the now-classic animated hit Despicable Me, the yellow, pill-shaped guys have become pop culture mainstays. They’ve appeared in every Despicable Me film, along with their own spin-off Minions series. It’s hard to explain what about the Minions makes them so cute and fun. Like other cute creatures, they have an impish quality, often causing mayhem wherever they go.

The Minions also look adorable, with their small, rounded shape and eyes magnified by their goggles. They’ve got short legs and almost seem to bounce about in order to get around. And then there’s the way they talk. Rather than speaking English, Minions speak Minionese, also known as Banana Language, an indecipherable but hilarious-sounding way of communicating among each other, which often throws in a real word or two to delightful effect. The three central Minions in the series are also simply great comedy stylists, very much like the Three Stooges, giving kids and adults alike some of the most fun and goofy slapstick since Hollywood’s golden era.