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The 30 best space movies

Head to infinity and beyond with the greatest intergalactic odysseys of all time

Photograph: Time Out

We know what you’re thinking: what’s the difference between science fiction and a ‘space movie’? Simply put, while most films that take place in outer space may be sci-fi, not all sci-fi movies involve space.  But maybe the more pertinent question is, why make the distinction at all? 

In our estimation, it’s because the concept of the universe beyond the relative speck we call home has fascinated filmmakers since the dawn of cinema. It’s not hard to understand why. After all, who among us hasn’t gazed up at the stars at wonder at least once or twice? For artists in particular, though, the infinite vastness of space is essentially a blank canvas on which to ponder all sorts of big ideas: whether it’s mankind’s place in the void, the human desire for exploration, or the simple fear of the ultimate unknown. 

And so, that is why we believe the ‘space movie’ deserves to be considered its own genre. Here are our picks for the 30 best movies that travel to infinity… and in many cases, beyond.  

Recommended:

👽 The 100 best science fiction movies of all-time 😬 The 100 best thriller films of all-time 💣 The 101 best action movies ever made 🦄 The 50 best fantasy movies of all-time  

Been there, done that? Think again, my friend.

The best space movies

1.  2001: a space odyssey (1968).

• Science fiction

Director: Stanley Kubrick 

Cast: Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood

Many argue that this film is cinema’s GOAT – us, among them – and its enduring status is partly down to ideas around artificial intelligence and technology that have only become more prescient with every passing year. But few sci-fi films have embraced the look, feel and experience of space travel with this level of baked-in, world-building cool. Kubrick had three production designers on the case and got big brands like IBM, Dupont and Nikon to imagine what their products might look like in an interstellar future. Major props, too, to Douglas Trumbull’s eye candy stargate sequence, which helped ensure that late-‘60s stoners were the first audiences to take it all to their hearts.

2.  The Martian (2015)

• Action and adventure

Director: RIdley Scott

Cast: Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Chiwetel Ejiofor

After dividing audiences with Prometheus , Ridley Scott’s return to space was a heel-turn from his previous horrors. Thanks in huge part to a script by The Cabin in the Woods writer Drew Goddard and an endearing performance by Matt Damon as a marooned astronaut, The Martian is a bracing survivalist yarn with a reliable charm. In fact, Damon’s affability scored it an unlikely Best Comedy nod at the Golden Globes. And those laughs are vital in a film detailing a scientist slowly starving himself on a distant planet as his friends risk their lives to rocket through space to save him. 

3.  WALL-E (2008)

Director: Andrew Stanton

Cast: (voices) Jeff Garlin, Fred Willard, Ben Burtt

Only half of Pixar’s environmentalist parable-slash-intertechnological love story actually takes place in space, and most of those scenes are set aboard the galaxial Noah’s Ark keeping mankind alive after destroying the planet. But its moment among the stars is an absolute stunner. After breaking out of the spaceship’s airlock, the titular sentient trash compactor – aided by a fire extinguisher – and his Alexa-esque paramour twirl, spin and criss-cross each other in a zero-gravity Astaire-Rogers ballet that jerks tears and raises goosebumps in equal measure.    

4.  Star Wars (1977)

Director : George Lucas

Cast : Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford, Alec Guinness

Has any film more perfectly channelled our fascination with space? It’s easy to forget how truly mesmerising A New Hope is when it ditches its fantastical planets and takes to the sky. It’s not just the dogfights of the climax, either. Much of the film plays out as an intergalactic road trip at warp speed, but it also slows down for a quick game of chess as stars drift past the window. By the end, you find yourself looking skyward, imagining the possibilities – not unlike Luke Skywalker himself, as he stares out beyond Tatooine’s twin suns and dreams of his destiny.

5.  The Right Stuff (1983)

Director: Philip Kaufman Cast: Sam Shepherd, Ed Harris, Dennis Quaid, Scott Glenn

Philip Kaufman’s boy’s own adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s nonfiction classic is every bit as stirring as Top Gun , though the tale of the US Mercury’s astronauts seldom gets its due. It also begs the question: how is it that movie astronauts are so often depicted as introverted nerds when we’ve seen Sam Shepard’s wildchild Chuck Yaeger breaking the sound barrier and the other Mercury astronauts strutting like the rock stars of their day? Truly, our understanding of space – and the cocksure punks who sought to tame it – remains woefully out of touch.

6.  A Trip to the Moon (1902)

Director: Georges Méliès

Cast: ​ ​Georges Méliès

All sci-fi movies – hell, pretty much all of modern effects-led cinema in general – begins here. But we don’t include Georges Méliès’s groundbreaker out of historical obligation. Well over a century later, the film displays an imagination in both storytelling and effects that wows even today, especially when you consider that not even the aeroplane existed yet. Surely, when the first astronauts made it to that big rock in the sky, they half-expected to find harpoon-wielding insectoids there to greet them.  

7.  Outland (1981)

Director : Peter Hyams

Cast : Sean Connery, Peter Boyle, Clarke Peters 

Essentially High Noon in space – but with 100 percent more splattered heads, thanks to the wonders of explosive decompression – this Sean Connery-starring space western unfolds above and below one of Jupiter’s moons, where a mining operation becomes the nucleus of a drug-fuelled mystery full of violence and depravity. The film shares a lot of DNA with Alien  thanks to its advanced effects and claustrophobic sets; only here, it’s humans doing the eviscerating... and a lot of it. 

8.  Galaxy Quest (1999)

Director: Dean Parisot

Cast: Tim Allen, Alan Rickman, Sigourney Weaver

A comedy is often only as strong as its reverence toward what it’s lampooning. A love of Star Trek ’s Gene Roddenberry shines through in every moment of this corker about the cast of a  Trek knockoff enlisted to save the denizens of a faraway planet. The plot is essentially a sci-fi version of  Three Amigos! , but the game cast – particularly Alan Rickman and a young Sam Rockwell – sell every uproarious gag, while the effects work updates the ‘60s camp while keeping the cartoonish charm front and centre. 

9.  Moon (2009)

Director: Duncan Jones

Cast: Sam Rockwell

While much of Duncan Jones’s ( Source Code ) meditative sci-fi takes place on the lunar surface, Moon  spends plenty of time with Sam Rockwell’s spaceman gazing at the stars and to the distant Earth like a blue-collar Major Tom. Rockwell has never been better in this small-scale tale of space madness (or is it?) about a helium farmer on a three-year lunar stint, accompanied only by his own personal HAL. Jones’s quiet gem embraces the all-engulfing nature of space, crafting something of a desert-island movie in the cold black void. 

10.  Event Horizon (1997)

Director: Paul WS Anderson

Cast: Sam Neill, Laurence Fishburne, Kathleen Quinlan

If Alien is effectively Halloween with Michael Myers replaced by a vengeful alien mother, this interstellar nightmare is basically The Shining if Jack Torrance was forced to wile away the winter aboard a massive spacecraft. That’s not a unique comparison, but Paul WS Anderson’s tale of a crew of astronauts going mad beyond the stars – and possibly opening a black hole to Hell – evokes a similar sense of overwhelming dread… only with a sci-fi twist. Featuring a handful of truly freaky images, critics dismissed the film as highfalutin schlock, but the ensuing years have bestowed well-deserved cult status upon it, both for its frightening concept and impressively transgressive visuals.

11.  Treasure Planet (2002)

• Family and kids

Director: Ron Clements & John Musker

Cast: (voices) Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Emma Thompson, Martin Short

Disney dared to do something different with its sci-fi take on Robert Louis Stevenson’s pirate classic ‘Treasure Island’. Audiences didn’t respond to its hybrid of hand-drawn and CG animation, or storytelling that ditched princesses in favour of something a little more space-age and weird, but Treasure Planet is full of gorgeous celestial flair. The juxtaposition between old-school tall ships and cutting-edge interstellar animation remains dreamlike in its beauty. Plus, it beats the hell out of Mars Needs Moms . 

12.  Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan (1982)

Director: Nicholas Meyer

Cast: William Shatner, Ricardo Montalbán, Leonard Nimoy

The eye-popping space battles and serene galactic imagery. The mind-controlling space eels. The introduction of the Kobayashi Maru test. The tear-soaked space funeral. The goddamn mind-controlling space eels . The Wrath of Khan stands tall above all the USS Enterprise’ s cinematic adventures for many reasons, but chief among them is its deference to space itself – the franchise’s spiritual home. The reboot might have more advanced ships and shinier effects, but this was the moment Trek matched Star Wars in terms of pure awe in the abyss. 

13.  Starship Troopers (1997)

Director: Paul Verhoeven

Cast: Casper Van Dien, Denise Richards, Jake Busey

For millennia, humankind has gazed to the heavens and wondered what life exists beyond the stars. Paul Verhoeven has an answer, and it’s a horde of vengeful, snot-spewing insectoids. The Total Recall director’s return to space is a feature-length satire of fascist propaganda films that also plays like a stunning action spectacle, goopy horror romp and white-knuckle actioner. Verhoeven spends considerable time above the battlefield as a fleet of space cruisers discovers rather quickly that their ships are no match for bug bogeys and the unforgiving vacuum of space in graphic detail. 

14.  Interstellar (2014)

Director : Christopher Nolan

Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Jessica Chastain, Anne Hathaway

There’s a lot going on both above and below the ground in Christopher Nolan’s heady but divisive space odyssey, but this is a film that’s done its homework. And once Matthew McConaughey’s astronaut-farmer takes to the skies, all the film’s whiteboard-scribbling science lessons pay off with the most dazzling – and scientifically backed – renderings of space travel since 2001: A Space Odyssey . Say what you will about the film’s father-daughter narrative (Muuuuuurph!!!!), but even the most ardent detractor will be floored by Interstellar ’s cosmic imagery.

15.  Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

Director: James Gunn

Cast: Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista

The MCU’s first proper trip to the cosmos takes its cues from Star Wars and The Ice Pirates in equal measure. But it also carves a unique impression into cinematic space lore thanks to its fantastic worlds and gleeful depiction of space travel. The sequel arguably nails the sensation of gravity-defying antics better, capping things off with a space funeral that trounces The Wrath of Khan . But director James Gunn’s original is the kind of film that knows damn well that a scene of eye-popping space psychedelics all but demands to be scored to Bowie’s ‘Moonage Daydream’ (of course), then delivers in kind.

16.  Alien (1979)

Director: Ridley Scott

Cast: Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, Ian Holm

No other film captures the contradiction of space being at once infinitely vast and frighteningly claustrophobic than Ridley Scott’s sci-fi horror masterpiece. It’s an oddly small picture, given its influence and iconic special effects, but the movie’s true genius is in how it maximises its small budget, turning a spaceship into a haunted house and the infinite void of the universe into a deep, dark wood. And the big, bad wolf has never been this terrifying. 

17.  Apollo 11 (2019)

• Documentaries

Director : Todd Douglas Miller

Strap yourself to the side of the thundering Apollo 11 rocket as it careers into, and beyond, the Earth’s atmosphere in a spectacular doc that makes great use of hitherto unseen Nasa footage. The mission, of course, successfully plonked two Americans on to the Moon’s surface and then unplonked them again, thereby winning that bit of the space race with the Soviet Union, but there’s nothing triumphalist in director Todd Douglas Miller’s thrilling recreation – just a lot of quiet professionalism, teamwork and fearless men in helmets. When it gets into space and the 70mm footage does its thing, it makes you wish you’d actually followed up on that childhood ambition to become an astronaut.

18.  Gravity (2013)

Director: Alfonso Cuarón

Cast: Sandra Bullock, George Clooney

Some were disappointed when Alfonso Cuarón followed up 2006’s Children of Men – a masterpiece of dystopian world-building with big ideas about hope, faith and the future of humanity – with the simple story of an astronaut marooned in space. Of course, there’s nothing all that simple about poor Sandra Bullock’s situation. With her craft destroyed by orbiting debris and her partner (George Clooney) having floated off into the void, home appears both tantalisingly close and unimaginably far away. The movie is a technical marvel, but even on the small screen, it’s breathlessly tense – not since Alien has the infinite expanse of the universe felt so claustrophobic.

19.  First Man (2018)

Director: Damien Chazelle

Cast : Ryan Gosling, Claire Foy, Kyle Chandler A true-life astronaut drama that soars for the heavens but finds its deepest emotions at the kitchen table, this reimagining of what Neil Armstrong was contending with at the time of the Apollo 11 mission will have you ugly crying before anyone can so much as bob across that lunar surface. Ryan Gosling reunites with his La La Land director, Damien Chazelle, to humanise the now almost mythical Armstrong in his grief for his young daughter, with a just-holding-it-together Claire Foy as the moonwalker’s wife. For the majority of its runtime, First Man is earthbound. But when it finally touches down on the moon, it’s cinematic magic: a moment of wonderment, solitude and an overwhelming sense that you’re right there too.

20.  Ad Astra (2019)

Director : James Gray

Cast : Brad Pitt, Ruth Negga, Tommy Lee Jones Directed with a lust for adventure by The Lost City of Z ’s, James Gray,  Ad Astra (‘to the stars’) follows Brad Pitt’s spaceman across the galaxy to track down his ornery dad (Tommy Lee Jones), who may or may not be trying to wipe out humanity from a space station near Neptune (spoiler: he is). The journey sits somewhere between the old Star Trek movies in its stargazy philosophising and the rebooted ones in some of zero-g action sequences that suck the air from your lungs. There’s also an awesome space-buggy chase across the moon and a bit with psychotic space baboons. We are here for them both.   

21.  Forbidden Planet (1956)

Director : Fred M Wilcox

Cast : Leslie Nielsen, Walter Pidgeon, Anne Francis It’s Shakespeare in space – this iconic sci-fi is an intergalactic take on The Tempest – as a group of galactic travellers led by a straight-shooting Leslie Nielsen fall into the lap of megalomaniac boffin (Walter Pidgeon) on the remote planet of Altair 4. Cutting-edge effects presented in widescreen CinemaScope – the flying saucer remains cool AF – make this a true landmark not just in space flicks, but sci-fi genre as a whole. Don’t take our word for it: Gene Roddenberry cites it as a major influence on Star Trek .

22.  Silent Running (1972)

Director: Douglas Trumbull

Cast : Bruce Dern, Cliff Potts A direct inspiration for WALL-E and about as eco-conscious as science-fiction can get, this enduring classic shows that 2001: A Space Odyssey SFX maestro Trumbull could tell his own stories too. And this one follows a single astronaut (Bruce Dern) and his three adorbs robot pals, Louie, Huey and Dewey, as they drift through space, doing a spot of gardening and trying to stay sane in the face of mankind’s extinction. Heavy themes, sure, but treated with loads of heart and a philosophical spirit that echoes especially loudly in an era of climate crisis. 

23.  Solaris (1972)

Director : Andrei Tarkovsky

Cast : Donatas Banionis, Natalya Bondarchuk

Since remade by Steven Soderbergh, the original Tarkovsky Solaris is definitely the place to start when it comes to enigmatic, brainy affairs set in the far reaches of the universe. A cosmonaut (Lithuanian actor Donatas Banionis) is haunted by his dead wife as his spaceship orbits a mysterious planet. But is the planet creating embodiments of the ghosts haunting the poor man’s subsconscious, a bit like when Ray Stantz accidentally summons the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man in Ghostbusters ? With its eerie visuals, it makes for a dreamlike journey to the far reaches of the human psyche.

24.  First Men in the Moon (1964)

Director : Nathan Juran

Cast : Edward Judd, Martha Hyer, Lionel Jeffries This monster-filled space adventure came out five years before man actually set foot on the moon and you can only hope Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong weren’t watching, because the moon landing itself is a trainwreck. The ‘in’ part of the title is key: this is a Journey to the Centre of the Earth -style caper that has a crew of heroically under-prepared Brits discovering all sorts of things that don’t want to be discovered beneath the lunar crust. You will learn nothing at all about space but the giant stop-motion critters, animated by the great Ray Harryhausen, are a lot of fun.

25.  For All Mankind (1989)

Director : Al Reinert Six moon landings are ticked off in Al Reinert’s iconic doc, all accompanied by Brian Eno’s cosmic score (if space had sound, it’d definitely sound like Brian Eno). It makes the perfect non-fiction double bill with the more recent Apollo 11 – a window into the experience of being on the moon and looking back at earth. ‘A spiritual presence was there,’ says one NASA astronaut of those lunar vibes. ‘We were not alone.’ Haunting and hard to shake, this is proof that sometimes real life can be as spectacular as science fiction.

26.  Sunshine (2007)

Director: Danny Boyle

Cast: Cillian Murphy, Rose Byrne, Michelle Yeoh Director Danny Boyle positions his mindtrip space flick as a midway point between 2001: A Space Oydssey and Alien – a fusion of thrills and thinky bits that culminates in a third act that gets close to melting down as it draws close to the sun. You could probably throw Armageddon into that mix – a self-sacrificing crew of astronauts heads into space to save humanity from annihilation – although it’s a lot more believable (Boyle put his cast through astronaut training) and a lot less tub-thumping. The vast planetary vistas glimpsed from the decks of the Icarus II make a suitably awe-inspiring backdrop from its stellar cast (Cillian Murphy, Rose Byrne, Chris Evans et al) to come apart at the seams.

27.  Apollo 13 (1995)

Director: Ron Howard

Cast: Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, Bill Paxton, Gary Sinese

So much more than its famous ‘Houston, we have a problem’ catchphrase, Apollo 13 harkens back to the glory days of white-knuckle, PG-rated entertainment. An ensemble tribute to the power of group problem-solving, it has Howard fully embracing a ‘70s aesthetic and the storytelling of the era to craft a timeless middlebrow crowd-pleaser with an almost surgical focus on the imperiled mission at hand. 

28.  Contact (1997)

Director: Robert Zemeckis 

Cast: Jodie Foster, Matthew McConaughey, John Hurt

We’d have loved to include Denis Villeneuve’s magical, melancholy Arrival  on this list but it takes place entirely within Earth’s atmosphere. Instead, try this big, ambitious drama from Back to the Future ’s Robert Zemeckis based on a book by sci-fi seer Carl Sagan. Contact ’s heart is in a similar place, and like Arrival ’s protagonist played by Amy Adams, it is female-led, steers clear of macho ideas of hostile aliens and cocks an ear to new voices from far beyond our solar system. Zemeckis, who loves to push visual boundaries, images space travel as a dizzying acid trip full of wormholes, whirlpools and mind-bending geometries. It’s one of those rare movies that should come with motion sickness tablets.

29.  Dark Star (1974)

Director : John Carpenter

Cast : Dan O'Bannon, Dre Pahich, Brain Narelle

There’s no film version of The Muppet’ s ‘Pigs in Space’ sketch, but John Carpenter’s debut, set during the 22nd century, delivers the next best thing: A hippie movie hopped up on its own counter-cultural sense of the absurd (there’s a talking bomb) and a pisstake-y irreverence. It’s the perfect antidote to bombastic science-fictions that get lost in their own self-importance – a lo-fi whoopie cushion that invites you aboard its titular spacecraft to hang out with four fargone astronauts and indulge in a little space surfing.

30.  High Life (2018)

Director : Claire Denis

Cast : Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, André Benjamin Myriad mysteries abound in this deliriously bonkers space oddity from French auteur Claire Denis ( White Material ) that co-stars Robert Pattinson and Juliette Binoche as an interstellar inmate and his scientist jailer. The human body and its function gets a rare exploration in this context – space flicks rarely spend this much time over their characters’ sexual needs in zero gravity ( 2001: A Space Odyssey does not have a Fuckbox) – and its themes of reproduction, incarceration and experimentation play out in a space with its own realities. Go with it, in other words, and be rewarded with a space journey unlike any other.

The 100 best sci-fi movies

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Interstellar And 10 Other Great Space Travel Movies To Come Out In The Past 10 Years

There have been some great space travel movies throughout the history of cinema, with everything from the 1902 french silent film Le Voyage Dans la Lun ( A Trip to the Moon ) to Stanley Kubrick 's 1969 masterful 2001: A Space Odyssey coming to mind. As the years have gone by there seems to be more and more narratives centered around the idea of space travel with beautifully shot blockbuster masterpieces like the 2014 Christopher Nolan epic Interstellar , and low-budget sci-fi horror thrillers like the 2013 found footage hit Eurpoa Report , and more.

Between 2010 and 2019, audiences around the world were treated to some of the greatest offerings in the history of the genre, so many that you might have forgotten one or two. To remind you of some, I've put together a list of 11 great space travels movies to come out in the past 10 years for you to explore. Buckle up and don't forget your dramamine because this is going to be a wild ride…

Interstellar (2014)

Audiences are still debating the divisive ending of Christopher Nolan 's 2014 space/time travel/father and daughter drama, but despite the confusing final act of the nearly three-hour blockbuster, Interstellar remains one of the most inventive and enjoyable movies to come out in the past 10 years, no matter the genre. Not only does it feature one of the best Matthew McConaughey performances and a great score from Hans Zimmer , much of the film wasn't shot on a green screen and offers some pretty revolutionary ideas concerning space travel, relativity, and most of all, humanity's quest to find answers to all of life's questions. Add in some impressive shots of black holes, warm holes, and holes left in the hearts of several of the characters, and you have yourself an adventure worth revisiting six years later. At the very least just go back and watch the insanely beautiful trailer .

Ad Astra (2019)

There were great space travel movies scattered throughout the 2010s like galaxies in the vast universe, and one of the brightest of those was James Gray's melancholic story of a broken man hunting his long-lost father in the depths of space: Ad Astra . Starring Brad Pitt as Roy McBride , the film does an amazing job of turning what seems like an everyday job for its central character into a great odyssey from which we don't know if he'll return. And if he does return, how will the journey affect him? By the time Tommy Lee Jones' Clifford McBride is seen in the flesh, his son has experienced much more than he ever thought he would, and he still has more lessons to learn before it concludes.

First Man (2018)

Damien Chazelle 's retelling of the Apollo 11 mission to the moon could have taken a very conventional route similar to something like Apollo 13 , but thankfully his 2018 film First Man was anything but conventional . Instead of beaming with patriotism like so many have done before him, the director of La La Land and Whiplash showed a side of Neil Armstrong (Ryan Gosling) that few had ever seen before. By including the death of Armstrong's young daughter in the early goings of the film, the director was able to add depth, emotion, and a different kind of pride to a movie that thumbed its nose at the normal space travel feature. It also avoided all of those over-the-top shots of rockets shooting off into space and instead focused on the Gosling's astronaut and what he was feeling at the time of the launch.

The Martian (2015)

Ridley Scott 's epic story of the power of engineering and the human spirit might not be a comedy , but that doesn't mean The Martian isn't an amazing movie deserving of all the credit it has received since its 2015 release. Everything from Matt Damon's performance as stranded astronaut Mark Watney to Jessica Chastain's Melissa Lewis and the rest of Watney's crew and scientists back on Earth who come up with amazing ways of risking life, resources, and tons and tons of cash to get him home is enough to earn it a spot on this list, but that's not all. It has been five years since it first hit theaters, but its shots of space, the martian surface, and labs and facilities on our planet only add to the grand scale of this surprisingly refreshing space travel film.

Gravity (2013)

Unlike the first four movies on this list, Alfonso Cuarón's 2013 space thriller Gravity doesn't so much as deal with astronauts traveling to a far-off destination as much as it focuses on the journey home. Clocking in at 91 minutes ( each as action-packed or tense as the last ), the perilous journey of Ryan Stone ( Sandra Bullock ) surviving the destruction of her ride back home and the death of her entire crew, is something that really stands the test of time. It's only made better with George Clooney 's Matt Kowalksi, who helps guide Stone along the way as she finds different methods of getting back to the safety of Earth. The film took home seven Oscars at the 86th Academy Awards , including best director , and it deserved each and every one of them .

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Lucy In The Sky (2019)

Loosely based on the real-life story of former astronaut Lisa Nowak , the 2019 space drama Lucy in the Sky follows Lucy Cola ( Natalie Portman ), an astronaut so impacted by her first trip to space that she no longer feels a connection with her husband or family back home. What follows is a woman's obsession with getting back to space, no matter what it takes or will cost her. As the movie goes on, Lucy becomes obsessed with two of her fellow astronauts and that's where things take a turn. It failed to gain any traction at the box office and was panned by critics when it was initially released, but it still offers an in-depth look at the psyche of someone deeply affected by space travel.

Life (2017)

In addition to all the grand and critically acclaimed space travel movies releases in the 2010s, there was also a great deal of horror and hard sci-fi thrillers to come out. One of the beset examples of that is the terrifying alien flick Life which boasted an incredible cast that included Ryan Reynolds , Jake Gyllenhaal , and Rebecca Ferguson as members of a crew aboard the International Space Station who receive a soil sample from the Martian surface that is believed to contain life. Once the sample is brought aboard the ship, the madness begins to unfold, slowly at first, before reaching a fever pitch as an alien life form takes out the scientists one by one as they try to prevent it from getting to Earth .

High Life (2018)

Robert Pattinson is preparing for the release of one of his biggest features yet in Tenet , and still filming what could prove to be a career-defining role in 2021's The Batman , but the former Twilight star isn't a newcomer when it comes to sci-fi thrillers and moody space movies. For example, take a look at Claire Denis' 2018 sci-fi drama High Life in which Pattinson plays Monte, one of several prisoners with death sentences sent to the depths of space to find a black hole where they are to extract a new form of energy. In addition to dealing with dark matter surrounding the infinite abyss that is the black hole, the film also deals with the birth of children through artificial insemination, finding one's place in the universe, and coming to terms with one's past.

The Wandering Earth (2019)

You might remember The Wandering Earth not because you saw the 2019 Chinese sci-fi epic but because of the headlines inspired by the fact that it brought in $700 million at the box office, with less than $6 million of that coming domestically. Despite not too many people seeing it during its brief run in the United States, The Wandering Earth reached a new audience on Netflix, where people got to see the ridiculousness of the movie's plot. Set in 2061, the story centers around a civilization on Earth who feels its more viable to simply move Earth to another star when the Sun turns into a red giant. This unconventional approach to the genre is pretty revolutionary and offers a breath of fresh air (unlike for the inhabitants of the planet in transit) to the premise of a space travel feature.

Europa Report (2013)

Found footage films were all the rage in the early years of the 2010s and it was only a matter of time before something like Europa Report hit theaters and streaming services around the world. This 2013 sci-fi horror film splices together footage from the fictional Europa One mission as it sets off to Jupiter's moon of the same name after it's discovered to potentially harbor life. Even after the crew loses contact with Earth, they push forward with their mission as they see how far they are willing to go in order to learn if life does exist outside the comfort of our home planet.

Hidden Figures (2016)

And then there is the 2016 biographical drama Hidden Figures , which technically doesn't deal with the main characters going and traveling through space, but its portrayal of the female mathematicians who were instrumental in helping American astronauts leave Earth's surface in the early 1960s. Based on a true story, the Academy Award-nominated picture takes an extensive look at the ups and downs of the African American women who fought racial injustices at NASA while the space agency was fighting the Soviets in the heat of the Space Race. And plus, the performances from Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, and Janelle Monáe make Hidden Figures worth it alone.

This isn't even beginning to scratch the surface of all the great space travel movies that came out between 2010 and 2019, so let me know your favorites that might have slipped through the cracks.

Philip grew up in Louisiana (not New Orleans) before moving to St. Louis after graduating from Louisiana State University-Shreveport. When he's not writing about movies or television, Philip can be found being chased by his three kids, telling his dogs to stop barking at the mailman, or chatting about professional wrestling to his wife. Writing gigs with school newspapers, multiple daily newspapers, and other varied job experiences led him to this point where he actually gets to write about movies, shows, wrestling, and documentaries (which is a huge win in his eyes). If the stars properly align, he will talk about For Love Of The Game being the best baseball movie of all time.

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The Best Space Movies of the 21st Century (So Far)

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It’s impossible to say when, exactly, mankind first dreamed of traveling into outer space, but ever since we got the idea in our heads we never let it go. We’ve been telling stories about alien worlds for longer than anyone has been alive, and we’ve been making movies about flying to the moon since practically the dawn of cinema.

As visual effects expanded and space travel itself became a reality, movies have become more and more obsessed with sci-fi stories about star treks, star wars, and just about anything star-related. In the 21st century, those films are often big, giant blockbusters but visual effects technology has also reached the point where small, independent comedies and dramas can also realistically take place on space ships, space stations, and other planets.

When it came time to curate a list of the best space movies of the century (so far), we knew that we had to limit ourselves somewhere. What’s the point of a “Top 20” list if most of the entries are sequels or prequels to Star Trek and Star Wars ? How many Guardians of the Galaxy films do we really need to write about before you get the general idea that they’re good?

So, to free up space (all puns intended) for underrated and underappreciated films, we’re limiting ourselves to one film per franchise and spreading the love in our list of the best space movies of the 21st century, so far! Put on your helmets, strap in, and get ready to venture into the farthest reaches of the galaxy in pursuit of action, adventure… and ennui.

RELATED: The Best Sci-Fi Movies of the 21st Century So Far

Titan A.E. (2000)

The last feature film, so far, from animation icon Don Bluth , co-directed by Gary Goldman , the ambitious Titan A.E. sought to build a massive Star Wars -esque universe in the world of feature animation. Audiences balked, but the results are exciting, with sparkling dialogue and unexpected turns courtesy of writers Ben Edlund ( The Tick ), John August ( Go ) and Joss Whedon ( Buffy the Vampire Slayer ).

Matt Damon and Drew Barrymore lend their voice talents to an imaginative outer space adventure, set in a future where humans have been displaced throughout the galaxy and no longer have a homeworld. When our heroes discover the key to locating a second Earth, it’s up to them to save their species. Clever and unusual, Titan A.E. warrants rediscovery.

Solaris (2002)

Steven Soderbergh ’s remake of Andrei Tarkovsky ’s Solaris might not stand up to the sprawling original, but for a condensed version of a trippy, thoughtful sci-fi narrative, it’s impressively complete. George Clooney stars as a grieving psychologist sent to investigate a faraway space station, in which the crew members all refuse to come home. When he gets there he finds all but two of the crew are dead, but the space station isn’t empty… it’s filled with the dead loved ones they left behind.

Using the furthest reaches of space to examine figurative and literal concepts of the infinite has been the ambition of many great science fiction stories, and Soderbergh’s Solaris is an excellent example. Clooney abandons his superstar halo and gives one of his most humane performances, and Soderbergh’s insistence on keeping this high-concept sci-fi story grounded in character is noble, and affecting.

Treasure Planet (2002)

It’s bizarre to imagine that Treasure Planet , one of Disney animation’s last great 2D masterpieces, was such a monumental flop on its original release. Perhaps people still had/have trouble accepting animation as an action-packed thrill ride. Perhaps “steampunk” was still too esoteric back in 2002 to be understood by the mainstream. But whatever the reason, audiences missed out.

Treasure Planet is a futuristic adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson ’s classic novel, about a boy who finds a treasure map, only to bond with and later make an enemy of a bloodthirsty pirate. The relationship between Jim ( Joseph Gordon-Levitt ) and the cyborg John Silver ( Brian Murray ) is as rich and complicated as any in the Disney canon, and the animation is jaw-droppingly stunning. Directors Ron Clements and John Musker ( Moana ) reimagine space flight as romantically soaring on solar sails, and successfully ignite the sense of awe and wonder than many sci-fi tales are missing.

Zathura: A Space Adventure (2005)

Jon Favreau ’s first foray into pop filmmaking, and the film that got him the gig directing Iron Man , is this wonderfully creative adaptation of Chris Van Allsburg’s Zathura . Ostensibly a companion piece to Jumanji , the story once again revolves around bored children playing a board game that unexpectedly flings into larger-than-life adventure. Except this time, it literally shoots their suburban house into the farthest reaches of space.

Zathura is full of offbeat sci-fi imagery, and Favreau wisely pulls his VFX way back, and lets much of the film appear handmade. The alien monsters are impressively scary creations, the sets believably practical. It doesn’t send the protagonist careening into a virtual reality world, it brings a very real world of spacemen and space aliens into their house, where the unknown is just as tangible as anything else in their living room. It’s a breathlessly creative motion picture.

Sunshine (2007)

The sun is dying, and the only way to reignite it is to send a team into space and hurl a nuclear bomb into it. In the hands of a mainstream Hollywood filmmaker, Sunshine would probably have been dumb as hell, but director Danny Boyle ( Slumdog Millionaire ) and writer Alex Garland ( Ex Machina ) aren’t nearly that boring. They fill Sunshine with big ideas, rich characters and a sense of existential menace that beautifully amplifies this story of outer space survivalism.

And what a cast: Chris Evans , Cillian Murphy , Michelle Yeoh , Rose Byrne , Benedict Wong , the list goes on, and they’re all trapped in a powder keg together, waiting to go off. It’s a piercing sci-fi adventure, and although some might argue that the film’s third act goes off the rails, maybe - just maybe - it’s what the movie was really about all along.

WALL-E (2008)

In the distant future mankind has abandoned the planet Earth, leaving behind only trash compactor robots to clean up their mess and make the environment inhabitable again. It may not have worked. There’s only one robot left, his name is WALL-E , and all he really cares about is that he’s very, very alone.

Until one day, another robot lands on Earth, and all that changes. Directed by Andrew Stanton , WALL-E successfully spans the whole galaxy, taking an unlikely hero on a seemingly impossible adventure, and throwing a vital chaos element into a drudging society that has all but given up on improving its circumstances. It’s cynically apocalyptic but argues, successfully, that hope eventually wins out. Inventively presented, adorably designed, with a great sense of humor and a visceral sense of awe, WALL-E doesn’t feel like just another a major studio product. It was an instant classic right out of the gate.

Star Trek (2009)

The Star Trek universe got even bigger with J.J. Abrams ’ impressive 2009 reboot, which smartly created an alternate reality, preserving all the precious continuity from the original shows and movies while striking out in an all-new direction. A perfectly cast crew - featuring Chris Pine , Zoe Saldana , Zachary Quinto , Simon Pegg , John Cho and Anton Yelchin - find themselves thrust into a life-or-death mission with a vengeful Romulan travel into the past to take his revenge on the planet Vulcan.

Die-hard Trekkies may quibble about the film’s approach to production design (and sure enough, Abrams’ signature lens flares are everywhere ), but this first rebooted outing successfully marries spot-on character work with an exciting storyline, and manages to tell that rare prequel story in which literally nothing is preordained. Anything can happen, and although not everyone likes where the series went from here, 2009's Star Trek quickly cemented itself as one of the best films in a beloved franchise.

Moon (2009)

The debut feature from Duncan Jones is a quirky, lonely sci-fi story about Sam (Sam Rockwell), a miner who’s running a space station on the moon all by himself, with only an artificially intelligent smiley face to keep him company. The ennui is overpowering and vaguely funny, until he makes a shocking discovery that puts everything about his mission into question.

Jones demonstrates a canny sense of tone in his directorial debut, crafting a tale that’s vaguely absurdist but frustratingly plausible. But the glue holding Moon together is Rockwell’s astounding performance as a man whose routine gets thrown into utterly unexpected disarray and is forced to confront the tragedy of his own existence in a nearly unthinkable way.

Pandorum (2009)

Christian Alvari ’s Pandorum is one of the most criminally underseen and underappreciated sci-fi thrillers of the century (so far). The film stars Dennis Quaid and Ben Foster as astronauts who wake up in the middle of hypersleep, in a cavernous spaceship that needs fixing. The sudden removal from hibernation leaves them without memories and possibly suffering from serious psychosis, and when they run across man-eating creatures on the ship it seems like their situation can’t get any worse. (Spoiler alert: it can.)

Pandorum mines the isolation and infinite void of space for an almost Lovecraftian atmosphere, kind of like Event Horizon if the filmmakers weren’t trying to impress you with how cool the ship looks, and instead focused all their energy on freaking you out. The surprising storyline keeps the suspense shifting throughout the film, and the ending is a real stunner.

Gravity (2013)

It’s hard to make deeply personal films on a gigantic budget, but that’s just what Gravity is. Sandra Bullock stars Ryan Stone, as a rookie astronaut who gets sent soaring into space when a debris field obliterates her ship and her co-pilot, played by George Clooney . Breathtakingly realized by director Alfonso Cuaron (who won an Oscar for this), much of the film appears to take place in long takes that emphasize just how completely screwed our hero is. Maybe more than any other movie character in history.

With no villains to face and already suffering from an overwhelming sense of despair, it falls to Stone to try to save herself for the sake of saving herself, because life is worth it no matter how desperate the situation seems. Cuaron’s masterful, handsomely realized VFX masterpiece gradually reveals itself to be not just a thrill ride but an exhilaration intervention, a call to everyone in the audience to keep striving against the desire to give up and let life end. It’s one of the ultimate examples of cinematic inspiration, and it’s teeth-shatteringly exciting to boot.

Space Station 76 (2014)

It’s hard to imagine why, exactly, people thought all of our problems might be solved by going into space. In Jack Plotnick ’s deliciously droll Space Station 76 , we’ve brought all our suburban plights with us, and transformed a fantastical sci-fi environment into a depressing non-stop social call with friends we don’t like, and spouses who are all sleeping together behind each other’s back.

The dry humor of Space Station 76 stems from the wonderfully unhappy characters, played by the likes of Patrick Wilson , Liv Tyler , Matt Bomer and Jerry O’Connell , and the way that all our scientific progress has done absolutely nothing to save them from their own pathetic choices. It’s a classic 1970s character-drama that just happens to look like an offshoot of 2001: A Space Odyssey , and the clash between tones is always hilarious.

Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

The Marvel Cinematic Universe was always a little kooky, but it took a turn towards the monumentally bizarre with Guardians of the Galaxy . A ragtag group of bounty hunters and thieves band together to steal an all-powerful space rock, and along the way they get in all kinds of action-packed adventures. But that’s just the window-dressing. The plot isn’t what’s great about James Gunn ’s film, it’s the off-the-wall characters, like a raccoon with a mean sense of humor, a tree who only knows one sentence, and a human who tries to act like Han Solo without realizing he’s the dude Ice Pirates at best.

Gunn presents it with all the visual wonder of a Star Wars movie, but with all the acerbic wit of a low-budget indie comedy. And in a medium practically defined by the majesty of a John Williams soundtrack, Guardians of the Galaxy reimagines an outer space defined by Bowie tunes, and songs about piña coladas. But the music isn’t just for fun, it’s the most important character of all, messages from a mother who can’t be there to support her son but who helps tell his story anyway. Guardians of the Galaxy tugs at your heartstrings, when it’s not making you chortle.

High Moon (2014)

Nobody said the best space movies of the 21st century had to debut in theaters. The failed pilot for an ambitious TV series, High Moon , debuted on SyFy Channel as a standalone movie, and it’s a bizarre oddity, as inspired by half-forgotten 1960s sci-fi westerns like Moon Zero Two as it is by its source novel, The Lotus Caves , by John Christopher .

Half a century into the future, the moon has been colonized by corporations and governments all over the world, and the old rivalries are alive and, sadly, well. When a flower is discovered on the lunar surface it leads to a massive cover-up and mind-blowing revelations. High Moon doesn’t get to resolve every thread but the world it establishes is gorgeous and hyper-stylized, just the kind of sci-fi kitsch you’d expect from producer Bryan Fuller , who also gave you Hannibal and Pushing Daisies .

Interstellar (2014)

Cinematic wunderkind Christopher Nolan is an intellectual filmmaker, whose films tend to rely on big ideas more than interpersonal emotional drama. So although the big emotional beats often fall flat in his ambitious space epic Interstellar they are rescued by the film’s astounding realization of space flight, conflicting timelines, black holes, and bizarre robots.

The future of mankind is looking grim and traveling into outer space is the only viable option for humanity. But only a few planets within range have the capacity to sustain life, and it’s up scientists and astronauts played by Matthew McConaughey , Anne Hathaway , David Oyelowo and Wes Bentley to travel to the stars and back in time to save the species, while Jessica Chastain and Michael Caine struggle to solve the mathematical problems of our survival back on Earth. The suspense is dense, the imagery absolutely incredible. The intellect is undeniably palpable. Ironically, it’s the film’s heart that’s academic.

Jupiter Ascending (2015)

Absolutely bonkers but absolutely on purpose, The Wachowski ’s directed a gleefully subversive would-be blockbuster with Jupiter Ascending . The film stars Mila Kunis as a housemaid who discovers that, due to a quirk of genetics, she’s just inherited the planet Earth. But the Earth is so valuable that her fellow royals will stop at nothing to get it, whether that means destroying her or, worse, marrying her.

Jupiter Ascending smartly transforms the old-fashioned princess fantasy of discovering you were born special, inherited great wealth and power, and then undermines it at every turn. By achieving greatness, Jupiter enters into a complex and disturbing world of capitalistic excess and fascistic control, and only with the aid of her loyal dogman with flying sneakers, played by a bemused Channing Tatum , will she be able to save herself from becoming a cog in the machine. Fantastical imagery and a wonderfully camp performance from Eddie Redmayne make Jupiter Ascending one of the most underrated sci-fi films of the last two decades.

The Martian (2015)

“In the face of overwhelming odds, I'm left with only one option… I'm gonna have to science the @#$% out of this.” That’s Mark Watney for you. Ridley Scott ’s wonderfully hopeful sci-fi epic The Martian stars Matt Damon as an astronaut marooned on Mars, applying logic and good humor to every impossible problem that arises, and somehow transforming radically complicated scientific ideas into clear, exciting problem-solving strategies.

The Martian , not unlike Gravity , is about perseverance in the face of astounding odds. But unlike Gravity it’s a film about unerring positivity and the confidence that sheer, unbridled logic has the power to overcome any problem. The surface of Mars may be unable to support life but it’s home to one of the most wonderfully vibrant and inspiring characters in sci-fi movie history.

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017)

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is, with no hyperbole, the most visually stunning science fiction film so far this decade. It’s a fabulously gorgeous spectacle, set in a future where alien societies have merged their space stations together into one incredible mega colony, and where political intrigue attracts dashing intergalactic heroes Valerian ( Dane Dehaan ) and Laureline ( Cara Delevingne ).

Along the way, they force their heads into deadly psychic squids, race for their lives from enemies chasing them in a parallel dimension, and plow through multiple worlds on foot. There’s no shortage of eye-popping wonders in Valerian , and although Dane Dehaan is almost indisputably miscast as a charming ladies man, the rest of the movie is so charmingly bizarre that it compensates. We don’t go to other worlds to see the same old aliens and action sequences over and over again, and Valerian has more daring and wonder than any of the modern Star Wars movies (which is pretty ironic, since it was based on a comic that inspired Star Wars in the first place).

Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)

That’s no sleight to Star Wars , of course. The motion picture series that made sci-fi action stories mainstream has been going strong throughout the last two decades, to the extent that picking only one film to represent the franchise was very difficult. But in the end, the narrative innovation and stunning locales won out: Star Wars: The Last Jedi expands on the Star Wars universe in every conceivable way, breaking out of old conventions and visualizing strange new worlds filled with strange creatures and incredible new developments.

It’s actually strange just how different The Last Jedi feels, since on paper Rian Johnson ’s film rigidly follows the original formula. The cast splits up, with the novice Jedi getting trained by the master Jedi who fled from the fight years ago, and the pair with romantic chemistry traveling to a society where moral compromise has led to dangerous dealings with the Empire. There’s even a big twist that sends the whole saga into a new, unexpected direction. But The Last Jedi doesn’t feel as beholden to the past as every other Star Wars film since the prequels began, and that sense of extempore - that anything can and will happen - makes it more faithful to the original, unpredictable spirit of George Lucas ’s first, classic film than practically any of the other follow-ups.

First Man (2018)

Oscar-winning director Damien Chazelle seems obsessed with the idea of exceptionalism, as all the characters in his movies push themselves beyond reason to accomplish incredible deeds. Unlike the protagonists of Whiplash and La La Land , Neil Armstrong’s pursuits aren’t artistic, they’re scientific and exploratory. But his incredible journey to become the first human being to step foot on the moon has just as much intense focus and vision.

First Man refreshingly portrays the space program not as a heroic endeavor that changed the course of history, but as the accomplishment of people who put themselves at unbelievable risk. Most of the space flights are shown from inside the cockpit, reminding us that as cool as space travel looks from the outside, from the inside you’re just stuck in a rattling canister with only a thin sheet of metal between you and certain death. The change of perspective is exhilarating, and the impeccable sound design puts you right in the middle of the shuttle, holding on for dear life.

High Life (2019)

What kind of sci-fi epic would the director of the disturbing dramas White Material and Trouble Every Day direct? It’s as unexpected as you’d expect. Robert Pattinson stars as a convict shot into space with other felons, never to return, on a mission towards a black hole. Along the way, a scientist played by Juliette Binoche performs acts of mad science in an attempt to impregnate the crew and create life in outer space.

Bitterly desperate and yet, in the scenes with Robert Pattinson caring for a baby in outer space, all by his lonesome, utterly beautiful, Claire Denis ’ High Life imagines a future of space travel led not by our best and brightest, but by the people Earth can most afford to lose, who are forced to justify their existence to a computer every single day just to keep the life support on. That path leads to madness, usually, but possibly a form of enlightenment we cannot understand.

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Intergalactic Adventures: Top 25 Space Movies of all time

• Interstellar (2014) – Directed by Christopher Nolan, the film explores the concept of interstellar travel and the possibility of finding a habitable planet outside our solar system. The movie stars Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, and Jessica Chastain. You can stream it on HBO Max.
• Gravity (2013) – The movie follows two astronauts (played by Sandra Bullock and George Clooney) who are stranded in space after their shuttle is destroyed by debris. The film explores the dangers and challenges of space travel. It’s available to stream on Hulu.
• First Man (2018) – The movie is based on the life of astronaut Neil Armstrong and his journey to become the first man to walk on the moon. The film explores the personal sacrifices and dangers that came with being an astronaut during the Space Race. It stars Ryan Gosling and is available to stream on HBO Max.
• The Martian (2015) – The movie follows an astronaut (played by Matt Damon) who is stranded on Mars and must use his scientific knowledge to survive and find a way back to Earth. The movie is available on Hulu.
• Ad Astra (2019) – The movie follows an astronaut (played by Brad Pitt) who travels to the edge of the solar system to uncover the truth about his missing father and a threat to Earth. The film explores the psychological toll of long-term space travel and the search for extraterrestrial life. It’s available to stream on Hulu.
• Wall-E (2008) – The movie is an animated science fiction film set in a dystopian future where Earth has become uninhabitable. The film follows the journey of a waste-collecting robot, Wall-E, and explores themes of environmentalism and the impact of technology on society. It’s available to stream on Disney+.
• Gravity’s Engines (2021) – This documentary explores the science behind black holes and the ways in which they have shaped the universe. It’s available to stream on PBS.
• Passengers (2016) – The movie is a science-fiction romance that follows two passengers on a spaceship who wake up from hibernation 90 years too early. The film explores the themes of isolation, love, and the ethics of technology. It stars Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt and is available to stream on Netflix.
• Hidden Figures (2016) – The movie is based on the true story of a team of African-American women mathematicians who worked at NASA during the Space Race in the 1960s. The film explores the theme of racial and gender inequality in the workplace and the impact of their contributions to the field of science. It’s available to stream on Disney+.
• Apollo 13 (1995) – The movie is based on the true story of the Apollo 13 mission, which suffered a catastrophic failure in space. The film follows the efforts of NASA and the astronauts to safely return to Earth. It stars Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, and Bill Paxton and is available to stream on Hulu.
• Moon (2009) – The movie follows a solitary astronaut (played by Sam Rockwell) who is stationed on the moon and begins to unravel the mystery of his own identity. The film explores themes of isolation, humanity, and the ethics of corporate space exploration. It’s available to stream on Netflix.
• Space Cowboys (2000) – The movie follows a group of retired NASA astronauts who are called back into service to repair a failing satellite. The film explores the theme of ageing and the impact of technology on human relationships. It stars Clint Eastwood, Tommy Lee Jones, Donald Sutherland, and James Garner and is available to stream on HBO Max.
• Sunshine (2007) – The movie follows a team of astronauts on a mission to reignite the dying sun in order to save humanity. The film explores the themes of sacrifice and the limits of human endurance. It stars Cillian Murphy, Chris Evans, and Rose Byrne and is available to stream on Hulu.
• Europa Report (2013) – The movie is a found footage-style science fiction film that follows a group of astronauts on a mission to explore Jupiter’s moon, Europa. The film explores the theme of the search for extraterrestrial life and the dangers of deep space travel. It’s available to stream on Amazon Prime Video.
• Space Sweepers (2021) – This South Korean movie is set in the year 2092 and follows a crew of space junk collectors who discover a humanoid robot that could change their fortunes forever. It explores themes of redemption, family, and the ethics of technology. It’s available to stream on Netflix.
• Stowaway (2021) – The movie follows a crew of astronauts on a mission to Mars who discover an unintended stowaway (played by Shamier Anderson) on board their spacecraft, and must make difficult decisions in order to ensure their survival. It explores themes of sacrifice, morality, and the consequences of human error. It’s available to stream on Netflix.
• High Life (2018) – The movie follows a group of criminals who are sent on a mission to a black hole in order to harness its energy, but begin to experience strange and disturbing phenomena. It explores themes of power, desire, and the fragility of the human psyche. It stars Robert Pattinson and is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video.
• The Space Between Us (2017) – The movie follows the first human born on Mars (played by Asa Butterfield) who travels to Earth for the first time and embarks on a journey of self-discovery and love. It explores themes of identity, belonging, and human connection. It’s available to stream on Hulu.
• Life (2017) – The movie follows a team of astronauts aboard the International Space Station who discover a rapidly-evolving life form that threatens their mission and their lives. It explores themes of survival, human curiosity, and the dangers of exploration. It stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Ryan Reynolds and is available to stream on Netflix.
• Hidden Figures (2016) – The movie is based on the true story of a team of African-American female mathematicians who played a crucial role in NASA’s early space program. It explores themes of discrimination, perseverance, and the power of intellect. It stars Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, and Janelle Monáe and is available to stream on Hulu.
• Red Planet (2000) – The movie follows a team of astronauts on a mission to Mars who encounter unexpected challenges and danger. The film explores the theme of the search for extraterrestrial life and the challenges of space exploration. It stars Val Kilmer and Carrie-Anne Moss and is available to stream on HBO Max.
• Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) – The movie is the first installment in the Star Trek film franchise and follows the crew of the USS Enterprise as they encounter a powerful entity threatening Earth. The film explores themes of exploration, the human condition, and the impact of technology on society. It’s available to stream on Hulu.
• Contact (1997) – The movie follows a scientist (played by Jodie Foster) who receives a message from extraterrestrial life and sets out on a mission to make contact with them. The film explores the theme of the search for extraterrestrial life and the impact of scientific discovery on society. It’s available to stream on HBO Max.
• 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) – The movie is a science fiction classic directed by Stanley Kubrick. The film explores the themes of human evolution and artificial intelligence through a journey to Jupiter. It’s available to stream on Amazon Prime Video.
• The Right Stuff (1983) – The movie is based on the true story of the first American astronauts and their journey to space during the Cold War. The film explores the themes of courage, determination, and the human spirit. It stars Sam Shepard, Ed Harris, and Scott Glenn and is available to stream on Disney+.

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Introduction

A visionary epic that takes viewers from the barren dust bowl of a dying Earth to the furthest reaches of the universe, “Interstellar” is a rare film that combines speculative theory with a degree of scientific accuracy. Using realistic space flight technology to enhance the drama, Christopher Nolan’s deep-think adventure is closer to the spirit of “From the Earth to the Moon” than to pulp fantasy like “Star Wars.” As it prepares to launch on November 7, here are 10 space travel movies that exist within the realm of possibility.

“Countdown” (1968)

Robert Altman directed this cold war thriller about two American astronauts racing to beat the Soviets to the moon, but was fired by Warner Brothers as the film neared completion for refusing to re-shoot the overlapping dialog that would become his stylistic trademark. Adding a sense of authenticity to the project, the National Aeronautic Space Administration granted the production unprecedented access to its facilities like Cape Canaveral.

“2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968)

Beginning at the dawn of man and ending in a cosmic netherworld, Stanley Kubrick’s colossal head-trip stands as one of cinema’s most painstakingly accurate depictions of spaceflight. Many of the film’s fictional technologies have proven eerily prescient in light of scientific advancements made since it first premiered. Obsessed with details, Kubrick enlisted technical consultants from over 50 aerospace organizations to achieve the level of reality he insisted on.

“Marooned” (1969)

Preparing to return to Earth after spending several months in an orbiting lab, three astronauts discover their rockets won’t fire, stranding them in space. Released less than four months after the Apollo 11 moon landing, the highly realistic “Marooned” won an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects. Working closely with Columbia Pictures, NASA provided the studio with authentic replicas of actual equipment, including an early mockup of the Skylab prototype.

“The Right Stuff” (1983)

Based on Tom Wolfe’s bestseller, this American epic about the formation of the original Mercury 7 astronaut program is filled with heart, humor and humanity. Beginning with Chuck Yeager breaking the sound barrier in an experimental airplane, and culminating in Gordon Cooper’s historic solo flight on Mercury-Atlas 9, “The Right Stuff” blends dazzling effects and miniature model work with archival footage to achieve a near-seamless reality.

“Apollo 13” (1995)

It was the understatement of the century: “Houston, we have a problem.” Ron Howard’s docudrama about the ill-fated Apollo mission to the moon brilliantly recreated the claustrophobic tension of three astronauts unable to return to Earth when their capsule suffers internal damage. To achieve the effect of weightlessness, the cast and crew logged almost 600 flights in NASA’s KC-135 airplane (nicknamed the “Vomit Comet”), which is used for space training simulation.

“Space Cowboys” (2000)

Clint Eastwood’s adventure about a team of long-retired Air Force test pilots tasked with repairing a vintage Soviet satellite might sound like “Grumpy Old Men” in orbit, but with major sequences shot at the Kennedy Space Center and a Mission Control set built with blueprints provided by NASA its verisimilitude is remarkable. An audience of real astronauts who attended an early screening was notably impressed with the film’s authenticity and attention to detail.

“Moon” (2009)

A lone astronaut working at a lunar station makes a disturbing discovery with only days left on his three-year mission. A thoughtful look at the psychological effects of space life, “Moon” was screened for NASA scientists at Space Center Houston. While discussing the film’s bunker-like base design, director Duncan Jones was startled to learn that an audience member was currently working on a substance called “mooncrete” which would allow for just such a structure to exist.

“Love” (2011)

A thematic cousin to “Moon,” William Eubank’s beautifully shot, micro-budget tale of a solitary astronaut stranded in orbit aboard an international space station took four years to complete and was filmed on sets built in the director’s parents’ backyard. A haunting examination of the fragility of mankind’s existence, “Love” is a sincere and uniquely challenging film that recalls the boldly experimental science fiction movies of the ‘70s.

“Europa Report” (2013)

When a secret ocean is discovered beneath the surface of one of Jupiter’s moons, a private space exploration company assembles an international crew of astronauts to investigate the possibility of extraterrestrial life in our galaxy. With its clinical, documentary-like approach, this modestly-budgeted thriller is considered by many to be among the finest examples of the “hard science fiction” genre, a category that emphasizes technological credibility.

“Gravity” (2013)

Combining cutting-edge 3D cinematography, an adherence to the laws of physics and a powerhouse physical performance by Sandra Bullock, “Gravity” galvanized audiences with its meticulous recreation of a space disaster. The film’s terrifying chain-reaction sequence, in which a swarm of debris collides with an orbiting shuttle, is based on a scenario known as the Kessler Syndrome, first proposed by NASA scientist Donald Kessler in 1978.

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Christopher Nolan’s  "Interstellar ," about astronauts traveling to the other end of the galaxy to find a new home to replace humanity’s despoiled home-world, is frantically busy and earsplittingly loud. It uses booming music to jack up the excitement level of scenes that might not otherwise excite. It features characters shoveling exposition at each other for almost three hours, and a few of those characters have no character to speak of: they’re mouthpieces for techno-babble and philosophical debate. And for all of the director’s activism on behalf of shooting on film, the tactile beauty of the movie’s 35mm and 65mm textures isn’t matched by a sense of composition. The camera rarely tells the story in Nolan’s movies. More often it illustrates the screenplay, and there are points in this one where I felt as if I was watching the most expensive NBC pilot ever made.

And yet "Interstellar" is still an impressive, at times astonishing movie that overwhelmed me to the point where my usual objections to Nolan's work melted away. I’ve packed the first paragraph of this review with those objections (they could apply to any Nolan picture post "Batman Begins"; he is who he is) so that people know that he’s still doing the things that Nolan always does. Whether you find those things endearing or irritating will depend on your affinity for Nolan's style. 

In any case, t here’s something pure and powerful about this movie. I can’t recall a science fiction film hard-sold to a director’s fans as multiplex-“awesome” in which so many major characters wept openly in close-up, voices breaking, tears streaming down  their  cheeks. Matthew McConaughey ’s widowed astronaut Cooper and his colleague Amelia Brand ( Anne Hathaway ) pour on the waterworks in multiple scenes, with justification: like everyone on the crew of the Endurance , the starship sent to a black hole near Jupiter that will slingshot the heroes towards colonize-able worlds, they’re separated from everything that defines them: their loved ones, their personal histories, their culture, the planet itself. Other characters—including Amelia's father, an astrophysicist played by Michael Caine , and a space explorer (played by an  un-billed  guest actor) who’s holed up on a forbidding arctic world—express a vulnerability to loneliness and doubt that’s quite raw for this director. The film’s central family (headed by Cooper, grounded after the  dismantling  of NASA) lives on a  corn  farm, for goodness’ sake, like the gentle Iowans in " Field of Dreams " (a film whose daddy-issues-laden story syncs up nicely with the narrative of  " Interstellar"). Granted, they're growing the crop to feed the human race, which is whiling away its twilight hours on a planet so ecologically devastated that at first you mistake it for the American Dust Bowl circa 1930 or so; but there's still something amusingly cheeky about the notion of corn as sustenance, especially in a survival story in which the future of humanity is at stake. ( Ellen Burstyn plays one of many witnesses in a documentary first glimpsed in the movie's opening scene—and which, in classic Nolan style, is a setup for at least two twists.)

The state-of-the-art sci-fi landscapes are deployed in service of Hallmark card homilies about how people should live, and what’s really important. ("We love people who have died—what's the social utility in that?" "Accident is the first step in evolution.") After a certain point it sinks in, or should sink in, that Nolan and his co-screenwriter, brother Jonathan Nolan , aren’t trying to one-up the spectacular rationalism of “2001." The movie's science fiction trappings are just a wrapping for a spiritual/emotional dream about basic human desires (for home, for family, for continuity of bloodline and culture), as well as for a horror film of sorts—one that treats the star voyagers’ and their earthbound loved ones’ separation as spectacular metaphors for what happens when the people we value are taken from us by death, illness, or unbridgeable distance. (“Pray you never learn just how good it can be to see another face,” another astronaut says, after years alone in an interstellar wilderness.) 

While "Interstellar" never entirely commits to the idea of a non-rational, uncanny world, it nevertheless has a mystical strain, one that's unusually pronounced for a director whose storytelling has the right-brained sensibility of an engineer, logician, or accountant. There's a ghost in this film, writing out messages to the living in dust. Characters strain to interpret distant radio messages as if they were ancient texts written in a dead language, and stare through red-rimmed eyes at video messages sent years ago, by people on the other side of the cosmos. "Interstellar" features a family haunted by the memory of a dead mother and then an absent father; a woman haunted by the memory of a missing father, and another woman who's separated from her own dad (and mentor), and driven to reunite with a lover separated from her by so many millions of miles that he might as well be dead. 

With the possible exception of the last act of " Memento"  and the pit sequence in "The Dark Knight Rises"—a knife-twisting hour that was all about suffering and transcendence—I can’t think of a Nolan film that ladles on  misery and  valorizes  gut feeling (faith)  the way this one does; not from start to finish, anyway.  T he  most stirring sequences are less about driving the plot forward than contemplating what the characters' actions mean to them, and to us. The  best of these is the lift-off sequence, which starts with a countdown heard over images of Cooper leaving his family. It continues in space, with Caine reading passages from Dylan Thomas's villanelle "Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night": "Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light." (If it wasn't already obvious, this sequence certifies Nolan as the most death-and-control obsessed major American filmmaker, along with Wes Anderson .)

The film's widescreen panoramas feature harsh interplanetary landscapes, shot in cruel Earth locales; some of the largest and most detailed starship miniatures ever built, and space sequences presented in scientifically accurate silence, a la "2001." But for all its high-tech glitz, "Interstellar" has a defiantly old-movie feeling. It's not afraid to switch, even lurch, between modes. At times, the movie's one-stop-shopping storytelling evokes the tough-tender spirit of a John Ford picture, or a Steven Spielberg film made in the spirit of a Ford picture: a movie that would rather try to be eight or nine things than just one. Bruising outer-space action sequences, with astronauts tumbling in zero gravity and striding across forbidding landscapes, give way to snappy comic patter (mostly between Cooper and the ship's robot, TARS, designed in Minecraft-style, pixel-ish boxes, and voiced by Bill Irwin ). There are long explanatory sequences, done with and without dry erase boards, dazzling vistas that are less spaces than mind-spaces, and tearful separations and reconciliations that might as well be played silent, in tinted black-and-white, and scored with a saloon piano. (Spielberg originated "Interstellar" in 2006, but dropped out to direct other projects.)

McConaughey, a super-intense actor who wholeheartedly commits to every line and moment he's given, is the right leading man for this kind of film. Cooper proudly identifies himself as an engineer as well as an astronaut and farmer, but he has the soul of a goofball poet; when he stares at intergalactic vistas, he grins like a kid at an amusement park waiting to ride a new roller coaster. Cooper's farewell to his daughter Murph—who's played by McKenzie Foy as a young girl—is shot very close-in, and lit in warm, cradling tones; it has some of the tenderness of the porch swing scene in " To Kill a Mockingbird ." When Murph grows up into Jessica Chastain —a key member of Caine's NASA crew, and a surrogate for the daughter that the elder Brand "lost' to the Endurance 's mission—we keep thinking about that goodbye scene, and how its anguish drives everything that Murph and Cooper are trying to do, while also realizing that similar feelings drive the other characters—indeed, the rest of the species. (One suspects this is a deeply personal film for Nolan: it's about a man who feels he has been "called" to a particular job, and whose work requires him to spend long periods away from his family.)

The movie's storytelling masterstroke comes from adherence to principles of relativity: the astronauts perceive time differently depending on where Endurance is, which means that when they go down onto a prospective habitable world, a few minutes there equal weeks or months back on the ship. Meanwhile, on Earth, everyone is aging and losing hope. Under such circumstances, even tedious housekeeping-type exchanges become momentous: one has to think twice before arguing about what to do next, because while the argument is happening, people elsewhere are going grey, or suffering depression from being alone, or withering and dying. Here, more so than in any other Nolan film (and that's saying a lot), time is everything. "I'm an old physicist," Brand tells Cooper early in the film. "I'm afraid of time." Time is something we all fear. There's a ticking clock governing every aspect of existence, from the global to the familial. Every act by every character is an act of defiance, born of a wish to not go gently.

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

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Interstellar (2014)

Rated PG-13 for some intense perilous action and brief strong language

169 minutes

Matthew McConaughey as Cooper

Wes Bentley as Doyle

Anne Hathaway as Brand

Jessica Chastain as Murph

Michael Caine as Dr. Brand

John Lithgow as Donald

Topher Grace

Casey Affleck as Tom

Mackenzie Foy as Young Murph

Ellen Burstyn as Old Murph

Bill Irwin as TARS (voice)

Collette Wolfe as Ms. Kelly

David Oyelowo as Principal

William Devane as Old Tom

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Original Music Composer

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From Interstellar to Hidden Figures: 12 of the best space movies

Interstellar, Moon, Proxima, Alien, Hidden Figures... From science fiction to biographical drama, does your favourite movie about space make our list?

By Simon Ings

3 August 2021

Matthew McConaughey in Interstellar

Melinda Sue Gordon/©Paramount/c

There are so many great movies about space that it’s hard to choose between them all, but that won’t stop us. We’ve got some in our selection that will keep you on the edge of your seat while others will keep you hidden behind the sofa. Here are 12 of the best space movies.

Interstellar (2014)

Explorers arrive on a world covered in knee-high water. Distant “mountains” come sweeping towards them: a planet-spanning kilometres-high killer tide. They escape, only for an unhinged astronaut to maroon them, a little later, on a solid airborne cloud of exotic ice.

Often silly, sometimes truly visionary, Interstellar is the best rejoinder the 21st century has yet made to Stanley Kubrick’s seminal 2001: A Space Odyssey . Matthew McConaughey plays Joseph Cooper, a widowed NASA pilot who is called upon to journey into interstellar space to find an Earthlike “Planet B” for us to move to, now that the Earth’s food system is collapsing. Jessica Chastain plays his grown-up daughter, haunted by her father’s ghost.

Their performances carry real conviction, but it is the set pieces that matter. Gargantua, a spinning black hole that provides the film with its climax, is a visual effect calculated so accurately by physicist Kip Thorne and rendered so meticulously by London effects studio Double Negative, it ended up in a paper for the journal Classical and Quantum Gravity .

Years earlier, Thorne and film producer Lynda Obst had conceived of a movie exploring what, in an interview with Science magazine , Thorne called “the warped side of the universe – black holes, wormholes, higher dimensions, and so forth”. They’re the subject of Thorne’s very entertaining book The Science of Interstellar .

Nolan, meanwhile, has gone on to make movies of increasing complexity. Tenet is his latest, doing for time what Interstellar did for space.

Moon (2009)

Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) is preparing to leave the moon at the end of his three-year stint as sole supervisor of a helium-3 mine. (Robert Zubrin’s book Entering Space gave Duncan Jones the film’s industrial premise.) But Sam is also trapped in the carcass of a crashed lunar ore conveyor. And as Sam and Sam wrestle with their inexplicable meeting, they must solve an obvious and pressing puzzle: just how many more Sams might there be?

Offered a low-budget British sci-fi movie by a first-time director , Rockwell left things until the last minute, then grabbed at the chance of playing against himself. Once on board, his commitment was total: riffing and extemporising off memories of his own performance, he insisted on distinguishing the two Sams more by demeanour than by costume changes. The result is a compelling, emotionally charged thriller, spiked with an inventive mix of effects (from CGI to model work to simple, deft editing) that keeps the audience off-balance throughout the movie. Jones has yet to top his debut work, and Rockwell, for all his subsequent successes, will forever be remembered as the Moon guy(s).

Proxima (2019)

Shot in the European Space Agency’s training facilities in Germany, and in the complex outside Moscow that is home to the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center , Alice Winocour’s third feature Proxima never leaves the ground, and yet it remains an out-of-this-world experience.

Cinematographer Georges Lechaptois brilliantly captures these rarely glimpsed spaces in all their strangeness, banality and occasional dilapidation. One can’t help but think, watching this, that being an astronaut must be like being a professional athlete – one’s glamorous career being conducted, for the most part, in smelly changing rooms.

Plaudits also to Eva Green for her portrayal of Sarah Loreau, a single mother given a last-minute opportunity to join a mission to the International Space Station. Green conveys wonderfully Sarah’s conflicted state of both wanting to go to space but not wanting to be separated from her daughter. The solution is there but it’s going to be hard to forge, and Green’s performance is heart-rending.

Alien (1979)

Sigourney Weaver plays Ripley, member of a sensible and resourceful space-going cargo crew whose capabilities are going to prove of no use whatsoever as they confront a predatory, stowaway alien.

Critics loved Alien : they said it would change how we thought about science fiction. It also, for some of us who caught it at the right age, changed how we thought about biology.

We have been an apex predator for so long, we have forgotten the specialness of our privilege. Alien reminds us of what the natural world is really like. It locates us in the middle of things, not without resources but most definitely not at the top of a food chain. It reminds us that living processes are predatory – that life is about tearing living things apart to get at their raw material.

Alien in Alien

AA Film Archive / Alamy

The clumsily named “xenomorph” of the Alien movies has an infamous life cycle, loosely based on those of certain parasitic wasps, but with the added ingredient of plasticity. A hugged human brings forth a humanoid alien. A hugged dog produces a canine. (Where the aquatic aliens of Alien: Resurrection (1997) spring from is anyone’s guess.)

If you want to know what Darwin said, read On the Origin of Species . But if you want to know how it must have made its original readers feel – go watch Alien .

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

When Stanley Kubrick suggested a movie idea to British writer Arthur Clarke, Clarke responded enthusiastically. “The ‘really good’ science-fiction movie is a great many years overdue,” he wrote.

The question – which the two never really resolved – was which really good movie to make. A film about the triumph of science and technology? Or a film about the timeless yearnings of the human spirit?

While Kubrick, a student of human nature, director of searing and discomforting films like Paths of Glory and Lolita , mined Japanese sci-fi movies for special effects, Clarke, a communications satellite pioneer as well as a writer, worked up a script centred on what he later dubbed “the God concept”.

Encompassing everything from the dawn of man, the space race, artificial intelligence, space exploration and trans-dimensional travel, 2001 centres on the duel between David Bowman (Keir Dullea) and the inadvertently-designed-to-be-murderous HAL, a computer that is guiding his ship to Jupiter. We tend to assume Clarke provided the film’s gosh-wow factor and Kubrick provided the unease. Not so: his 1960 story, The Challenge of the Spaceship shows Clarke already painfully aware of the challenges faced by a “little, self-contained community floating in vacuum millions of miles from anywhere, kept alive in a bubble of plastic and metal” with “absolutely nothing” happening.

The boredom and incipient madness that haunt both Bowman and the ship’s poor, boxed-in AI are the film’s chief point: that we cannot live by reason alone. We need something more.

Hidden Figures (2016)

At NASA’s Langley Research Center in 1961, three Black female mathematicians, Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson), Dorothy Vaughn (Octavia Spencer) and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe) , contribute their considerable mathematical ability to the agency’s efforts to launch white men into space. The unit they work in is segregated by gender and race but the difficulties they face are ignored by many of their colleagues. Their boss, Al Harrison, (a composite fictional character played by Kevin Costner), feels otherwise and proceeds to desegregate NASA single-handedly, armed only with an acid tongue and a sledgehammer.

The film is loosely based on 2016 book of the same name by Margot Lee Shetterly, although it takes a less factual approach. For example, the film delays Johnson’s pioneering work by a good decade so that she can share feel-good moments with the other female cast members .

Whether that matters comes down to personal taste. It is no small thing that, thanks to this film, we now know Johnson, Vaughn and Jackson by name .

Apollo 13 (1995)

On 11 April 1970, a seventh crewed mission in the Apollo space programme launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It was due to land in the Fra Mauro crater, and help establish the early history of both the moon and Earth.

Two days into the journey, an oxygen tank in the spacecraft’s service module exploded, and their flight path was changed to loop them around the moon and bring them back to Earth on 17 April. Dizzy from carbon dioxide levels in the air, mounting at a rate they thought would kill them, soaking wet from all the condensation, cold because power was now severely limited, and with only plastic bags of their own urine for company they couldn’t jettison for fear this would alter their course, commander Jim Lovell, command module pilot Jack Swigert and Lunar Module pilot Fred Haise uttered hardly a word of complaint. Incredibly, they survived.

For his script, director Ron Howard has added one argument between Swigert (Kevin Bacon) and Haise (Bill Paxton) and otherwise changed barely a word of the official Apollo 13 transcript. Tom Hanks plays Lovell as a capable man dealing with a crisis. There are no epiphanies. Souls aren’t searched. For some, this might make for a slightly muted experience. But this painstakingly accurate film (the sets included bits of the Apollo 13 command module; even the actors’ pressure suits were airtight) remains peerless, utterly convincing in every shot and every gesture .

First Man (2018)

As if landing on the moon wasn’t enough, Neil Armstrong spent the rest of his life having to describe the experience to the world’s media. No wonder he became something of a recluse – which of course only served to generate even more media interest.

Armstrong, an aeronautical engineer and university professor, was a man who enjoyed his privacy. Cornered, what could he do but tell the same story again and again and again? Disappointed, their curiosity unslaked, people called him dull.

Two years after hurling a vocally challenged Ryan Gosling into his musical La La Land , Damien Chazelle cast him as Neil Armstrong, in a movie that promised to locate Armstrong’s beating heart and rich emotional life. As such, First Man is a triumph.

Gosling is the film actors’ film actor, capable of expressing deep emotion with astounding economy. Playing “buttoned up” hampers him hardly at all. And he is given plenty to work with. Josh Singer’s ingenious script gives Armstrong a profound and personal motivation for wanting to reach the moon that in no way interferes with the historical record, or trivialises its celebrated subject. As for the moon landing itself, it represents a milestone in cinematic technique. You’ll believe you were there, and you’ll wonder, deeply, why Armstrong, or anyone else for that matter, ever went.

The Right Stuff (1983)

Anchored by powerful performances by Sam Shepard as Chuck Yeager and Ed Harris as John Glenn, Kaufman’s 3-hour-13-minute epic loosely follows Tom Wolfe’s book of the same name: a heart-thumping yet critical account of the earliest US efforts to send humans into space.

What is needed for that is, of course, “the right stuff”: a combination of skill, bravery and a somewhat blood-curdling fearlessness in the face of death. They are qualities superbly embodied in Shepard’s performance as test-pilot Chuck Yeager, the first man to break the sound barrier (and, incidentally, a consultant on the film).

Leaving Earth also needed collaboration, organisation, even – heaven help us – publicity. Ed Harris is the squeaky-clean Glenn, destined to be the first American in space, whose “right stuff” has had its rough edges shaved off by endless classes, tests, magazine profiles and media events.

Historically, The Right Stuff isn’t especially accurate. In particular, Mercury astronauts Wally Schirra, Gordon Cooper and Alan Shepard were critical of the way the film short-changed their compatriot Gus Grissom, who died in the Apollo 1 fire.

Still, it is a thoughtful and intelligent movie, as well as a thrilling one, and it captures very well the moment space travel became a serious, and corporate, enterprise.

The Martian (2015)

Premised on a single, staggering inaccuracy (a Martian storm could never get up the energy to blow a spacecraft over) The Martian is an otherwise cleverly figured-out tale of how an astronaut (Mark Watney, played by Matt Damon), left for dead on the surface of Mars, might survive for four years on a diet of potatoes grown in recycled faecal matter .

Based on a book (by Andy Weir) that itself began life as a series of blog posts, Scott’s film retains an endearing, cobbled-together quality, which neatly (and by the end, really quite movingly) reflects Watney’s scrabble for survival.

Boasting habitat, spacesuit, spacecraft and launch vehicle designs that all carried NASA’s stamp of approval, The Martian flits between Watney’s Martian base, the ship in which his crew mates are returning home, and the offices and control rooms on Earth where everybody is frantically trying to do the right thing, as their chances of saving Watney narrow to a point.

An unashamed advertisement for NASA’s plans for Mars, and a celebration of its crewed programme’s rebirth after the Challenger disaster in 1986, The Martian already feels slightly dated. But its invention and good humour are timeless.

Gravity (2013)

When a cloud of debris travelling faster than a speeding bullet collides with the space shuttle, mission specialist Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) and veteran astronaut Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) must make their way across gulfs of space on dwindling supplies of air and propellant in search of a vehicle that will take them home; soon the debris cloud will return on its inexorable orbit.

As likely to scare someone off a space career as inspire them to pursue one, Gravity is premised on the idea that low Earth orbit is so crowded with hardware and discarded junk that a collision could initiate a chain reaction known as the Kessler syndrome, and destroy every satellite.

For all that, Gravity is less a science fiction film than a survival film (think Open Water or Touching the Void , both from 2003), and is the last place you would go for a lesson in orbital mechanics. While not quite as egregiously silly as 2019’s Ad Astra (in which Brad Pitt literally leaps through Saturn’s ice rings, using a hatch-cover for an umbrella) Gravity is no 2001 , no Apollo 13 , no First Man .

But while accuracy is one thing; truth is quite another. With Gravity , director Cuarón triumphantly realised his ambition to make the first truly weightless-seeming film, conveying the environment and sensation of zero gravity more powerfully, immediately (and, yes, accurately) than any film-maker, before or since.

October Sky (1999)

NASA engineer Homer H. Hickam Jr.’s autobiography provided the seed for this drama about a teenager coming of age at the dawn of the space race. A 17-year-old Jake Gyllenhaal (he was still taking school classes during the filming) plays Homer, a high school student in Coalwood, West Virginia, when, in 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first human-made satellite.

Inspired by the Soviet achievement, and encouraged by his teacher (Laura Dern), Homer and his fellow “rocket boys” start building their own homemade missiles. Chris Cooper finds gold in the somewhat thankless role of Homer’s father, conscientiously pouring cold water on his son’s dreams: what’s wrong with working in the local coal mine, he’d like to know?

Director Joe Johnston is better known for his rather more gung-ho approaches to heroism and rocket flight. (1991’s Rocketeer is a cult classic; Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) needs no introduction here.)

October Sky is an altogether more contained achievement: the touching story of imagination awakened by the possibilities of rocketry, space travel, and a world beyond Earth.

What do you think of this list? Think there are better space movies out there that deserve a coveted spot? We have review lots of sci-fi films, books and TV shows  but we can’t watch them all so let us know your favourite on  Twitter  and  Facebook . If you enjoyed this you might also want to see what we think are the  best science documentaries ,  top popular science books  and even  video games set on Mars .

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10 best space movies on Netflix, Amazon Prime & more that will take you to a galaxy far, far away

By Sanjana Ray

The best space movies make for an immersive experience . It’s when you feel transported to a galaxy far, far away; a willing participant in an intergalactic travel mission. Digging space movies doesn’t make you a lightsaber -brandishing nerd; on the contrary, the genre is among the more popular among all sets of audiences. What gives? Well, as Douglas Adams wrote in The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy — "Space is big. Really big”. From a hunt for a new home for humankind in Interstellar to communicating with extraterrestrial beings in Arrival , here’s a list of the best space movies to watch on Netflix , Amazon Prime Video and more.

Christopher Nolan is, once again, the man of the moment. Oppenheimer witnessed a sweeping victory at the Oscars, with Nolan winning best film and director. Cillian Murphy, who starred as the lead of the biographical thriller and won best actor, had in an interview revealed that he’d wished he’d been a part of Interstellar . The 2014 movie follows the space travel mission of Matthew McConaughey’s Cooper, a pilot who is tasked with finding a new home for humankind. As he sets off for the unknown, leaving his family behind on Earth, he unknowingly embarks on a race against time; the infinite kind in space and the very real turn of the clock back at home.

Any astrophile worth their salt knows that the iconic Star Wars movie franchise sports a non-linear chronology. While the original trilogy focuses the spotlight on Luke Skywalker becoming a legendary Jedi and follows his fight against Palpatine's Galactic Empire alongside his sister, Princess Leia, the prequel displays the tragic backstory of their father, Anakin Skywalker, who, after being corrupted by Palpatine, turned into the evil Darth Vader.

When a group of gigantic spaceships lands across 12 locations around the world, Linguistics professor Louise Banks and her elite team of investigators have to race against time to figure out a way to communicate with the extraterrestrial visitors before the war.

By Saloni Dhruv

By Gaurav Sonavane

One of the best space movies of all time, Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey kickstarts with an imposing black structure found deep within the lunar surface, which is found to have a connection between the past and the future. As Dr. Dave Bowman and her team of astronauts embark on a mysterious space voyage, their ship's computer system, HAL, begins to glitch, leading to a terse showdown between humanity and artificial intelligence.

This 2019 film with a star cast of Akshay Kumar, Vidya Balan, Sonakshi Sinha, Taapsee Pannu, Kirti Kulhari, Sharman Joshi, and Nithya Menen is a loose retelling of India’s mission to Mars. The story follows a group of scientists at ISRO, who despite challenges in their personal and professional lives, dedicate all their time and energy to their collective dream: the Mars Orbiter Mission.

Gravity , starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, is a survival space drama. Matters take a drastic turn when a cloud of supercharged debris collides with a space shuttle carrying space mission specialist Ryan Stone and veteran astronaut Matt Kowalski. The story rolls out as a nail-biting play of events with the duo struggling to survive on the limited supply of oxygen and resources, as they struggle to find a vehicle that will take them back home.

The legendary space franchise follows the crew aboard the starship USS Enterprise, a special vessel built by the United Federation of Planets in the 23rd century to discover “strange new worlds” and seek out “new civilizations” as part of their mission. In the latest instalment (2009), the crew finds itself on a collision course with Nero, a Romulan commander on a vengeance mission against mankind. The only way to beat him is for rebellious young officer James T. Kirk and the unphased and logical Vulcan named Spock to move past their rivalry and defeat Nero together.

With a stellar cast of Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, Bill Paxton and Gary Sinese, Apollo 13 is based on a true story where an Apollo mission, scheduled to land in the Fra Mauro crater and help establish the early history of both the moon and Earth, runs out of oxygen and other resources within a few days of the launch. Despite the limited supplies, the group of astronauts, who are barely managing to breathe, end up surviving.

Starring R Madhavan as Nambi Narayanan, one of India’s aerospace engineers, the 2022 film chronicles all his struggles and accomplishments from his life, with a special focus on the accusations of treason he faced during his time at ISRO and how he faces his biggest challenge while working at ISRO; charges which were later found baseless. The movie also features a special scene with the real Nambi Narayanan and Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan.

Based partially on actual events, Hidden Figures starring Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, and Janelle Monáe throws light on the infinite contributions of three black women — Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jacksonthe — behind the historic launch of astronaut John Glenn into orbit, and the racial and misogynistic challenges they had to overcome along the way.

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The 25 Best Space Movies, Ranked

Whether a story unfolds in our own galaxy or one far, far away, space makes a great setting for film. But which space movies are truly out of this world?

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Outer space is everywhere: Not only are we physically surrounded by it, but we’re inundated with images of it, both real and fictional. NASA’s long-lived Cassini mission is ending this week, just after its even longer-lived Voyager mission marked its 40th anniversary. SpaceX is about to launch the most powerful operational rocket in the world. Star Trek is returning to TV, The Martian author Andy Weir is returning to bookshelves, and Destiny 2 and a new Metroid release are bringing gamers back to the stars. Please join us at The Ringer as we celebrate and explore the cultural resonance and science of space all week long.

Space: It’s the final frontier, the place where no one can hear you scream, and a boundless backdrop that squashes any man’s ego. Or so we’ve been told by three of the best space movies ever, as determined by the semi-rigorous ranking process we’re presenting today.

Whether a story unfolds in the past, the present, or the future — in our own galaxy or one far, far away — space makes a great setting for film. For one thing, it’s always trying to kill characters, which raises the storytelling stakes. Its scale, and the speed required to traverse it, make space a natural special-effects showcase. And most importantly, the inhuman emptiness of space forces characters to confront their private fears and self-doubts even as it inspires existential and epistemological questions that fascinate us all. It’s no wonder that Hollywood never stops making space movies. (Brad Pitt, James Gray, and Insterstellar ’s cinematographer are at work on another epic right now.) Our appetite for them is as vast as the vacuum.

We’ve seen several space movies added to the index in 2017, from the great to the terrible ( and everything in between ), and we still have the annual Star Wars installment (and, uh, Geostorm ) to salivate over. But today’s exercise is an attempt to determine the best space movies of all time, with a list of nominees dating back decades.

To qualify for the list, it’s not sufficient for a film to be sci-fi ( Blade Runner doesn’t count). Nor are aliens alone enough (sorry, E.T. , Close Encounters , and Arrival ). The prerequisite is simple: To be eligible, a movie has to be at least partly set in space. Some of the movies below entirely take place in space, while in others, space makes more of a cameo. But if you’re wondering why a movie you love didn’t make our cut, an absence of actual space scenes might explain the snub.

To arrive at our ranking, we stuck to almost the same formula we followed in our ranking of Good Bad Movies earlier this year. First we canvassed our staff for favorite-space-movie nominees. After weeding out nonqualifiers (apologies to Alien Nation ) and supplementing the list with some worthy candidates that weren’t mentioned, we ran the resulting 55 films through the equation below:

Let’s take this one acronym at a time.

CR stands for Cultural Relevance and, in the words of Good Bad Movie maven Andrew Gruttadaro , “was determined by multiplying a movie’s number of Google News hits in the last year (with 1 point being awarded per 100 hits) by the number of years it’s been since that movie’s release.” We want to reward movies that never grow old, becoming artistic touchstones and constantly resurfacing in our cultural conversation. Of course, this metric favors movies that belong to ongoing series such as Star Wars , Star Trek , and Avatar  — which, judging by Google, James Cameron has at least been busy discussing, if not directing — but that’s OK, since sequels help draw attention (and devotion) to the originals.

RT stands for Rotten Tomatoes score. This time around, we aren’t targeting poorly reviewed movies, so the higher here, the better (although not all of our leaders are completely critic-approved).

PO stands for Public Opinion. Last week, we asked you — that is, those of you who follow The Ringer on Twitter and happened to see this tweet  — to select your 10 favorite films from our list of 55. More than 5,500 readers responded. After the crowdsourced picks came in, we tabulated the vote totals and ordered each movie from 1 to 55, with first place receiving 55 points, second place receiving 54 points, and so on.

With each of those three components in hand, we did the arithmetic to calculate each movie’s GSS, or Great Space Score. The higher the score, the higher the ranking.

Now that you know the methodology, you, like Lewis Pirenne in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation , might be thinking, “Space, man, have you no respect for science?” To which we, like Foundation ’s Anselm haut Rodric, say, “Science be damned!” ( Foundation has very lifelike dialogue.) No, not really — we like science. But movie greatness is more than a matter of math, so there’s room to disagree.

We hope you’ll join us on this top-25 journey; when you’ve touched down at the bottom of the page, you’ll find a link to the rankings for the full 55. We’re now T-minus one paragraph away from the rankings, so it’s time to stare at your screen and start saying that stuff is a go .

Remember to check back for more space-related content throughout the week. And don’t miss our interview elsewhere on the site Monday with Industrial Light & Magic effects legend John Knoll , who had a hand in the looks of a few of the films below.   —   Ben Lindbergh

Just Missed the Cut

Total Recall (1990)

Directed by Paul Verhoeven and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Total Recall is a perfectly weird space movie, a standout of ’90s science fiction. In it, Schwarzenegger frantically yelps “Two weeks!” while his old-lady disguise malfunctions when he’s trying to infiltrate the planet Mars. Later, he kills a henchman named Richter by dragging him in front of a moving elevator and bisecting his arms from the rest of his body; then he holds up both arms and says, “See you at the party, Richter!” I really, really love Total Recall .  —   Andrew Gruttadaro

Sunshine (2007)

Danny Boyle’s Sunshine , which recently turned 10, is the ultimate “except for the ending” film. Most of the movie perfectly captures the oppressive silence of space, channeling the serene-yet-sinister stateliness of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Andrei Tarkovsky. Boyle understands that aliens, enemy spacecraft, and crazed killers aren’t the only things that make space scary; the unforgiving environment, and the small-but-costly slip-ups that can occur under intense pressure, are terrifying enough. I just wish he could do over the third act, which transitions too abruptly and cryptically into shaky-cam slasher horror that almost — but not quite — spoils the exquisite setup. — Ben Lindbergh

The Fifth Element (1997)

The Fifth Element was released in 1997, and it would still be ahead of its time if it came out today. It’s a fantastical depiction of the future that never loses sight of the essential absurdity of human beings and the societies we create. The movie is a two-hour acid trip with Chris Tucker and Gary Oldman turning it up to 11 in supporting roles, yet it somehow manages to remain grounded with a strong leading performance from Bruce Willis and a love story between him and a supernatural being who was built in a lab from alien DNA. Luc Besson, the writer and director, caught lightning in a bottle with this one: It shouldn’t work, but it does.   —   Jonathan Tjarks

Hidden Figures (2016)

That we have the technology for space exploration in 2017 is incredible. That the same technology also existed in the 1960s, long before the internet, smartphones — hell, even calculators became commonplace? It’s frankly unbelievable. Hidden Figures puts that intelligence into perspective via the stories of three African American women whose brilliant number-crunching launched John Glenn into orbit. It’s a truly “untold” story, and one of the most compelling ever put to film.  —   Rubie Edmondson

Interstellar (2014)

Interstellar brought me on an emotional voyage unlike anything I’ve felt before. I saw it three times in IMAX over the first few weeks of its release because I may never again come so close to experiencing the sensation of traveling through space and time. Its booming sounds and striking images physically enthralled me. The way in which it fused both the fantastical and the familiar mentally captivated me. The plot holes don’t hamper the journey through wormholes and black holes , because no film will bring you closer. Interstellar is cinematic magic that brought me to a place that’s hard to reach as you get older: a place of childlike wonder.   —   Kevin O’Connor

25. Galaxy Quest (1999)

“How did I come to this?” an anguished, purple-head-pronged Alan Rickman asks early in Galaxy Quest , moments before a hungover and oblivious Tim Allen strides into the green room, an hour late to his own fan convention. Galaxy Quest is a thought experiment taken to its most chaotic, delightful, and even tentacly heart-warming extremes, a loving portrait of a galactic cargo cult that simultaneously makes fun of everything and takes all of it completely seriously. Sure, Allen has since outed himself as the worst kind of internet troll — but in Galaxy Quest , we can still enjoy him at his David Duchovny–esque best. The film is a perfect send-up of Star Trek fandom as well as a perfect sci-fi voyage in its own right. It is, just in general, perfect, and never —  never  — something to be skipped over in its deservedly infinite cable syndication loop.   —  Claire McNear

24. Gattaca (1997)

An original sci-fi movie with top-of-the-line movie stars and a cameo from Gore Vidal. Remember when that was possible? Gattaca is a story about the dangers of eugenics centered on three objectively genetically blessed white people, but once you get past that minor hurdle, Andrew Niccol’s 1997 feature is the best kind of thought experiment — pointed and human-scale in a way that encourages us to emotionally invest in its hypotheticals. In keeping with the theme of this list, though, Gattaca ’s vision of space is less futuristic than old school. It’s still the last frontier, an impossible dream for Ethan Hawke’s Vincent, a naturally conceived human being in a society where everyone’s been genetically engineered for perfection, and Uma Thurman’s Irene alike. And when Vincent finally gets there, it’s pure catharsis. Gattaca ’s a deeply American movie about how DNA shouldn’t be and isn’t destiny that shockingly flopped at the American box office, but at least we appreciate it now.   —  Alison Herman

23. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)

Sure, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story has its issues . There’s a blind character who offs Stormtroopers with a staff . There is classic Star Wars plot armor in the form of crucial information being available only via physical media. (The internet doesn’t exist, but intergalactic travel does?) There’s a creepy CGI reincarnation. And — spoiler alert — you can’t count on getting to know any of your new friends better in future installments.

But as a wise man once wrote on the internet, Rogue One is the best popcorn war movie since Saving Private Ryan . Taken that way — as a war movie set in space instead of as a meaningful installment of a larger mythology (which it still is, IMO) that is both still being formed and was largely set in stone long ago —  Rogue One is immensely entertaining. Yes, it’s dark, but so is life. Whether or not Rogue One should be counted as one of the best space movies of all time comes down to how you answer a simple question:

— Jack McCluskey

22. The Martian (2015)

The Martian begins as most tales of disaster do: with unexpected weather and very bad luck. One moment Mark Watney (Matt Damon) is just a botanist on Mars, studying dirt and wisecracking with his suspiciously good-looking crew members. The next, he is abandoned on a planet whose entire environment is antithetical to his existence. There are no alien invasions or flashbacks to his beautiful wife and children back home, just shots of Watney, who is forced to confront a set of circumstances that most likely end in death. What follows is an intricate study in triage, both for Watney — who switches from panicked, to despondent, to determined that he will “science the shit” out of his survival — and his dedicated saviors back home. (Shout out to Donald Glover as the token oblivious-yet-brilliant aerodynamicist.) The movie’s most thrilling moments don’t come in the form of explosions or fantastical space tomfoolery, but via the inventive victories cooked up by Watney and his very loyal support system. I never thought I would tear up witnessing a space botanist discover the first potato sprout in a farm that he fertilized with his own shit, but that’s The Martian ’s charm: It’s a movie about making due with a handful of supplies and your brain, a love letter to the power of intellect.   —  Alyssa Bereznak

21. Contact (1997)

Growing up Catholic, I think I liked Contact so much for the whole “science versus religion as told by Jodie Foster versus Matthew McConaughey” storyline. But really, just the whole scene where Foster is being hurled around the galaxy still makes me wish Contact : The Theme Park Ride existed, and also I am very glad 3-D was not a thing at the time the movie came out. Oh, and how about that whole mirror scene in the beginning?! How did they shoot that?! Just kidding, we all know now, but here’s a very fun Reddit thread about it . So many layers! —  Molly McHugh

20. Wall-E (2008)

Wall-E is the most experimental and audacious film Pixar has ever made. As far as animated movies for kids go, this one stands out for having the most socially responsible message since FernGully , its use of live action actors in quick-cut scenes, and essentially being a silent film for the entire first half. Wall-E poetically issues a stern warning about the consequences of society’s blatant disregard for the planet and our increased dependence on automation and technology while sending a ray of hope via the uncompromising spirit of life. Plus there’s an adorable robot love story and beautiful animation.   — Zach Mack

19. Space Jam (1996)

Rumors circulate every few years about a Space Jam sequel, but it’s never going to happen. Only once in this world will a superstar athlete who quit mid-career to be a mediocre athlete in another sport decide to participate in a 88-minute image-rehabilitation project that is also a full-length children’s movie about greedy aliens who want to enslave a beloved Warner Bros. property but also agree not to enslave said property if it can beat them in basketball. Also, Bill Murray is too busy for this shit now.

No, we have to enjoy Space Jam for the bizarre, embarrassing, perfect miracle that it is: a slapstick commercial for the NBA, Michael Jordan, Looney Tunes, and physically impossible dunks.   —  Kate Knibbs

18. Star Trek (2009)

I first watched Star Trek as a begrudging favor to a friend. She “liked science fiction” and I “decidedly did not,” but I figured there are worse things than staring at Chris Pine for two hours while he swaggers around causing mayhem as a young Captain Kirk (at least that’s how the film was advertised to me). This is where I admit that I had never seen an episode of the original series, nor did I have much of a concept for it beyond character names and the fact that it involved space. However, by the bar fight scene I was intrigued, and once the stoic Spock is forced to admit that he was emotionally compromised by the death of his mother, I was feeling a bit emotionally compromised myself.

This is a movie about happenings in space, sure (and there are definitely a lot of CGI renderings, strange species, and shots of the wiiide vaaaastness of spaaace to prove it). But it’s also a film about emotion and family and the things that link people (and Vulcans) to one another. It’s raw in some places and not-so-great in others, but as my introduction to the Star Trek universe, it was memorable. — Megan Schuster

17. I ndependence Day (1996)

Some space movies are about the majesty of space, the sublime wonder of the void, the mindblowing possibility of contact with a celestial other. Not Independence Day , which is essentially a film about how much aliens suck and America rules. Instead of glorifying worlds beyond ours, the ultimate summer popcorn flick turns alien life into a formidable but punchable villain, and the results are far more charming than they have any right to be. “WELCOME TO EARTH!” Will Smith bellows, an irresistible avatar for jingoism. Jeff Goldblum outsmarts his galactic foes using the power of 1990s computer technology in a plot point so stupid it can only be wonderful. Independence Day is a dumb, beautiful celebration of our dumb, beautiful world.   —  Kate Knibbs

16. Predator (1987)

If it wasn’t for the fact that the words “ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER” and “PREDATOR” flash across the screen within the first few seconds, there’d be no way to distinguish between this movie’s opening scene and that of any of the Star Wars films. Even the music is Star Wars -y.

And fine, the next hour and 47 minutes take place in a Central American jungle and specifically not in space, but the first minute and a half lays it all out for us: Whatever it is our big-bicepped heroes are dealing with, it’s not of this world. They’re not gonna be on a level playing field with this mysterious figure as it lurks about in an OG invisibility cloak . As we quickly find out, not even (most of) America’s biggest sexual tyrannosauruses can contend with an invisible alien trophy-hunter with thermal goggles and a shoulder-mounted missile-launcher. After indulging in a game of cat-and-mouse, the Predator takes out Blain (ex real-life Navy SEAL Jesse Ventura), and Mac (Bill Duke) sees his translucent outline run into the jungle. This sets in motion one of the most satisfying and gratuitous shows of firepower in movie history : For a full 86 seconds, these dudes just bite their lips and shoot from the hip — with the most ridiculous collection of guns a small team of vehicle-less commandos could carry.

Sure, they’ve got the old reliables — the MP5s , M16s, and an M60  — but these guys also humped an automatic grenade launcher into the bush, Billy (Sonny Landham) carries an M-16 with a shotgun attached to it , and, most impressively and improbably, Blain is carrying around a fucking gatling gun . But the week’s worth of ammo they burnt through is all for naught; they kill nothing, and from there, Dutch and his crew finally start to understand that they’re completely outmatched — and that they’re being hunted. Without spoiling too much of the fun, I’ll say that Dutch goes Apocalypse Now on Predator’s ass, relying on a few primitive methods of warfare. He’s so cunning that the Predator develops a grudging respect for his quarry, abandons all the high-tech alien weaponry that puts him at such an advantage, and decides instead that this beef should come down to a good old-fashioned fisticuffs. It’s great in every way. — Danny Kelly

15. Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)

Think back for a moment to the tremendous pressure The Force Awakens faced before its opening in 2015: a critical community burnt out on cynical IP plays; a massive fanbase already stung by one bungled addition to their beloved original trilogy; the possibility that even if this revival wasn’t an abomination, it’d be a pointless retread. You likely don’t remember that build-up because J.J. Abrams’s revamp arrived on the scene fully formed and ready to make a billion dollars: effortlessly diverse, cognizant of its heritage, and taking full advantage of the 21st century with some gorgeous (and frequently practical!) special effects. The Force Awakens works because it offers archetypes that feel both universal and of the moment: a villain literally related to Darth Vader (who nonetheless smacks of the beta masculinity that gave us Gamergate) and another orphan-turned-prophesized hero (who, when she wielded a lightsaber, still sent chills down my spine). Episode VII pulled off the near-impossible and sealed Star Wars’ reputation as the best-managed mega-franchise in the business. Shout out to you, Kathleen Kennedy, and take some notes, Marvel and DC. — Alison Herman

14. Planet of the Apes (1968)

The original Apes isn’t really a space movie compared to some on this list, but its protagonist is an astronaut, and it does start in space. It also makes the most of the several minutes it spends there. You’re more likely to remember “ You maniacs! ” or “ You damn dirty ape! ” or Charlton Heston’s maniacal, meme-able laugh than anything George Taylor says in the opening scene (while smoking, as astronauts do), but as an encapsulation of space’s appeal as a setting, one could do worse than this quote: “Seen from out here, everything seems different. Time bends. Space is boundless. It squashes a man’s ego. I feel lonely.”

Like most great space movies, Apes is imbued with wonder and mystery, and like most successful sci-fi, its depiction of a different time isolates and amplifies the flaws of our own. Almost half a century later, the film’s effects and costumes look all of their age, but the story still works as a cautionary tale and an allegory about racial conflict. After four direct sequels and two reboots (which has spawned two well-received sequels of its own), the end of Apes is nowhere in sight.

Planet of the Apes went into wide theatrical release a few days before 2001: A Space Odyssey , so it’s appropriate that it also precedes 2001 on our ranking.  —  Ben Lindbergh

13. Gravity (2013)

This will sound like an overstatement or an exaggeration, but, truly, it is not: Watching Gravity in the theater was a profoundly moving experience for me. I thought that every single part of it — Sandra Bullock’s forced-into-heroism heroism; George Clooney’s perfectly chiseled fearlessness; the terrifying soundtrack; the way that Alfonso Cuarón dangled the tiniest morsel of hope in front of everyone with the thinnest piece of thread — was exactly perfect. Gravity does what every movie about space should aspire to do, which is to make you feel entirely inadequate and unimportant (HOW CAN I POSSIBLY MATTER WHEN MEASURED UP AGAINST THE BIGNESS OF SPACE???) while also making you feel like maybe that empty feeling in your chest you can’t outrun is something more than just nothingness — it’s your literal connection to the universe, big and vast and beautiful and terrifying and perfect.  —  Shea Serrano

12. Spaceballs (1987)

Carl Sagan may or may not have uttered the phrase “billions and billions” during his pop-cosmology TV series a generation ago, but it is an accurate descriptor of how many jokes are contained within Mel Brooks’s sublime outer-space farce. Spaceballs , of course, is the defining parody of the self-serious Star Wars . Brooks calls up the major elements of George Lucas’s universe — the princess , the secret prince , the shaman , the sidekicks both furry and robotic , the villains , the white-helmeted soldiers  — and wrings all of them for laughs.

There is a committed band of cultists who trade one-liners back and forth in knowing shorthand. “I’m surrounded by assholes.” “Merchandising! Merchandising!” “Please, please, don’t make a fuss. I’m just plain Yogurt.” And, a personal favorite, “What’s the matter, Colonel Sandurz? Chicken? ” (Here is where I disclose that the actor who played the target of the chicken joke, the pro’s pro George Wyner, is a longtime friend of my wife’s family.)

Now that I’ve announced my bias, I’ll leave you with the film’s best scene, a bit of meta-comedy featuring Rick Moranis and Wyner in which they watch a VHS tape of Spaceballs and fast-forward to the moment in the film when the two characters are watching a VHS tape of Spaceballs . It’s a masterful bit of writing and acting whose intricate wordplay recalls Tom Stoppard and nimble delivery honors Abbott and Costello. And it all happens in space.

—Craig Gaines

11. Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

You can split the Marvel Cinematic Universe into two eras: Before Guardians and After Guardians . The 10th movie in the franchise, Guardians of the Galaxy , was the first Marvel movie to feel like it had a separate personality. Without the weight of the Avengers to bring him down, director James Gunn created a film that was surprising, compelling, and genuinely fun — and not in a cheap, look-at-that-big-explosion kind of way.

Chris Pratt is excellent as intergalactic cool-jerk Peter “Starlord” Quill — the perfect combination of invested heroism and detached sarcasm, a quality that’s welcome in a movie featuring a blue villain and planets called Morag and Xandar. (Pratt’s star power has been overstated since, but watching Guardians , you can at least understand why he broke out.) Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Vin Diesel, and Bradley Cooper round out the crew as Quill’s various extraterrestrial companions — Diesel literally plays a tree who can only say three words — and Guardians blossoms into an endlessly enjoyable origin story about a mismatched, ragtag group of heroes. The soundtrack’s pretty great, too. Nothing against Iron Man or Captain America , but Guardians of the Galaxy makes it hard to come back to Earth. — Andrew Gruttadaro

10. Avatar (2009)

It took all of five years for James Cameron’s story of Jake Sully and the Na’vi to become a punch line. Maybe less than that. How did this happen? How did the most successful non-sequel story in movie history become a landmark for jokes about febrile alien tails, Cameron’s notorious self-absorption, and Sam Worthington’s un-starriness? Cameron’s largesse made the movie a target, but its province is what made it forgettable —  Avatar was one of the great moviegoing events of the 21st century, a bombastic and painterly exertion of force. But it looked bad — cheap, even — on TVs. More so on computer and tablet screens. The digital imagery that Cameron employed to bring the blue-skinned Na’vi to life has also aged poorly in the intervening decade. But what is most lost about Avatar ’s initial, thunderous impact is not the film’s reach for a visceral grandeur or technological audacity — two of Cameron’s lifelong pursuits — but its intergalactic story of species at odds.

Avatar is a space movie in much the same way The Searchers is a Western. It captures a conflict between races, one militaristic and ceaseless in its quest for dominance, the other more spiritual but no less equipped for battle. And like The Searchers , John Ford’s complex, cockeyed summation of race and power in the American West, Avatar portrays its native people with a simplistic nobility and violent underbelly. Avatar is not quite the iconic vision of a world that has passed us by that The Searchers is. But it does show what could be in a fractured future — privatized military leading the way through the cosmos in search of valuable wares from vulnerable far-off lands. It’s not so much a parable as a straight warning. Careful what you go searching for in space — you just might find it.   —  Sean Fennessey

9. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)

At its best, Star Trek is less about the action than it is about problem-solving and Asking Big Questions — the reboot movies suck precisely because the franchise was handed over to the chuckleheads from Lost , who aggressively and resolutely do not understand this — and Wrath of Khan is all about aging, mortality, fatherhood, the limits of human agency, and not one but three different questions about scientific ethics. (Also, apropos of nothing, I always thought Merritt Butrick was really good as David Marcus.)

It’s one of the best examples of one of the best Star Trek movie traditions: Having the bad guy played by a big-name guest actor who swings from his (or her) heels. It’s also a high point for the Kirk–McCoy–Spock Freudian Trio, punctuated by Spock sacrificing his own life to save the ship — an act born on its face out of simple logic, but executed out of profound love and foreshadowed in Spock’s birthday gift of A Tale of Two Cities. It’s OK to cry. I won’t tell anyone.  —  Michael Baumann

8. Apollo 13 (1995)

Apollo 13 is the least existential space movie ever made, and that’s probably why it’s the most rewatchable one. It is a love letter to American ingenuity and a testament to the charms of Tom Hanks, Bill Paxton, and Kevin Bacon being trapped in a flying thimble together. It also features one of the great exhale crescendos in blockbuster history. It’s easy to tell a story where everything that can go wrong does go wrong, but this is a movie where everything goes right. The quiet moments are tender (Kathleen Quinlan’s Marilyn Lovell listening to the radio as her husband goes around the dark side of the moon); the funny moments are hilarious (“I think old Swigert gave me the clap. Been pissin’ in my relief tube.”); and the scary moments are terrifying (“Houston, we have a problem.”).

Most space movies are about things that are out of our control and beyond our comprehension — whether it’s ideas (like the search for the meaning of life) or technology (like jumping to hyperspace) — but not Apollo 13 . Every button gets pushed, every dial gets turned, guys have to ballet dance around headphone jacks, and air filters need to be built out of tube socks and duct tape. It’s a practical, human movie about a time when humans looked at something as impractical as landing on the moon and attacked the problem practically. Work the problem, people. — Chris Ryan

7. 2 001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Space is glorious and space is terrifying; it follows that a great space movie should induce in its viewer both wonder and horror. With all due respect to Jack Torrance, I truly believe that 2001: A Space Odyssey is Stanley Kubrick’s scariest movie. There’s such an elegance and simplicity to its dread. Studios have wasted the equivalent of small nations’ GDPs trying to craft intricately creepy CGI villains — and they will never surpass a bone-chillingly indifferent red dot named HAL. Alfonso Cuarón spent $100 million trying to get a single shot as existentially panic-inducing as that silent moment when Frank realizes his line has been cut and he’s going to spend the rest of his short life hurtling through space. Filmmakers have been trying to top this movie for almost 50 years now, and no one (not even Christopher Nolan) has succeeded. Sure, Hollywood’s monkey-suit technology has come a long way since 1968, and none of the human performances in 2001 are particularly memorable (I will mail you a dollar if you can name the lead actor in this film without Googling), but these feel like small flaws when taken against the monolithic greatness of this film. Imagine making a space movie a year before the goddamn moon landing and it still looking fresh five decades later. Even 16 years after its once-futuristic-sounding namesake, to watch 2001 is to open the pod bay doors… of your mind .   —  Lindsay Zoladz

6. Aliens (1986)

Of all the installments in the Alien film franchise, this one holds up the best. If Alien is a horror film in space, Aliens would be a war thriller, also in space. The film’s writer and director, James Cameron, does a masterful job expanding upon what little we previously knew about Ellen Ripley, the Weyland-Yutani Corp, and the terrifying and murderous xenomorphs to tell a tense story about survival, empowerment, and corporate greed. Also, the answer to the question posed early in the film — “So who’s laying these eggs?” — is one of the best big reveals in film. Period.   — Zach Mack

5. The Right Stuff (1983)

This is one of my favorite movies ever in any genre. It pulls off the fine balancing act of recognizing the absurdity of the early Cold War — it’s hard not to laugh at the hypermasculinity and jingoism of the Space Race — while also embracing it. Is it ridiculous to look at test pilots as the last cowboys, as Sam Shepard literally rides his horse to Pancho’s Happy Bottom Riding Club? Sure, but those guys were also really cool. This film lives in the moment before liftoff, buoyed by one of the greatest movie soundtracks ever and incredible performances from top to bottom: Shepard’s gunslinger Chuck Yeager, Levon Helm’s resourceful Jack Ridley, Fred Ward’s aggro Gus Grissom, Ed Harris’s manic boy scout John Glenn, Dennis Quaid’s class clown Gordo Cooper, and Pamela Reed as his wife Trudy, whose struggle to “maintain an even strain” breaks your heart more and more each time you watch it. But the performance that characterizes the movie best is Donald Moffat’s outrageous LBJ . It’s broad, it’s preposterous, it’s hyperbolic, but it’s also a major historical figure going berserk over issues of colossal geopolitical importance. This movie is beautiful, hilarious, sad, dramatic, and hysterical.   —  Michael Baumann

4. Star Wars: Episode VI — Return of the Jedi (1983)

An anonymous member of The Ringer ’s staff counts Return of the Jedi as their favorite Star Wars movie, an opinion so misguided that I’m withholding their name to protect their reputation. Jedi is worse in almost every way than the two films that came before it. It’s a true tonal bridge between the original trilogy and the prequels, one that rejects the riveting darkness of The Empire Strikes Back in favor of cuddly Ewoks, clumsy retconning, superweapon recycling, and a virtually consequence-free climax. The too-long Tatooine sequence, bogged down by “ Lapti Nek ” (or way worse, “ Jedi Rocks ”), feels like it belongs to a different movie than the three-pronged climax, and Boba Fett’s sarlacc encounter was so lame that the expanded universe had to undo his death.

Yet to paraphrase Luke, there is still good in Jedi , including Luke’s entrance at Jabba’s palace, the speeder-bike chase, and everything in the throne-room scenes, one of which features maybe my favorite minute-or-so snippet on any Star Wars soundtrack. The movie is still incredibly quotable, from “You’re gonna die here, you know” to “The Emperor is not as forgiving as I am.” Most of all, it’s just satisfying to spend more time with these characters, whose chemistry is intact even though Harrison Ford barely wanted to be back.

Jedi is clearly riding the coattails of its predecessors (and the Google-results inflation of its successors) to its elite placement on this list. But man, they’re amazing coattails.   —  Ben Lindbergh

3. Alien (1979)

It’s the silence in Alien that’s worse than anything. The way the music fades out as the alien egg cracks open, moments before the fleshy monstrosity latches onto Kane’s spacesuit. The bizarre tranquility of him resting in the medical ward while a human-incubated nightmare is strapped to his face in a mating ritual from hell. The suffocating stillness — punctuated only by the clinking of chains — just before the fully-grown alien makes its debut to devour Brett. Now 38 years old, Alien continues to horrify because of the quiet that orbits the loud, graphic moment at the heart of the film, when the titular beast erupts from Kane’s stomach. There’s dread of the unknown before the alien birth and fear that something more disturbing will happen afterward. The second shoe never drops, and Alien morphs into an action-thriller as Ripley scrambles to escape. But it’s those eerie, empty moments that make this one of the best space movies of all time. — Victor Luckerson

2. Star Wars: Episode V — The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

This is the best Star Wars movie. It gave us, in the span of a few minutes, both the “I love you.” / “I know.” exchange and “I am your father.” It gave us the most dramatic lightsaber battle of any of the seven movies — after Darth Vader and Obi-Wan just sort of poked at each other in a hallway for a couple minutes at the end of A New Hope , Vader chases an increasingly terrified Luke across Cloud City, pummeling him with pipes and boxes, literally beating the arrogance and optimism out of our hero. That sense of “Oh wow, this really isn’t going to be that easy, and that’s horrifying,” pervades the story, as Luke, Leia, and Han suffer an onslaught of defeats and unexpected obstacles to rival the string of lucky breaks they’d skated by on in the last movie. That makes a two-hour movie with five or six distinct acts fly by.   —  Michael Baumann

1. Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope (1977)

The one that started it all. George Lucas changed science fiction, and the movie industry in general, with the first Star Wars movie. Forty years later, Disney is making billions off the universe Lucas created. Lucas was a master synthesizer, liberally borrowing from sources as varied as Flash Gordon and Akira Kurosawa, but he owed his greatest debt to Joseph Campbell, the writer who popularized the idea of “the hero’s journey,” the archetypal story at the heart of mythological tales in every human society. The young man from humble beginnings receives a call to adventure then waffles on whether to leave home until he meets a mentor who sets him on his path, where he finds new allies who help him triumph over his ultimate fear. Once you set that story in space, it pretty much writes itself. Most of the movies inspired by A New Hope , including the prequels, copied the surface-level stuff — special effects, epic space battles, and witty banter from an attractive young cast — without understanding the underlying framework. Star Wars works because it speaks to a deep desire in the human heart; watching it without rooting for the main characters is like trying to keep your leg in place when someone taps your kneecap. The Star Wars universe continues to expand, but people will always watch and love this movie.  —  Jonathan Tjarks

Click here for the full ranking of 55 space movies.

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The Vourdalak Review: This French Feature Debut Bites Back At The Mundanity Of Modern Vampire Movies

The john wick franchise has already appointed one of its keanu reeves replacements, next monsterverse movie after godzilla x kong gets release date.

Christopher Nolan's  Interstellar   was a huge hit in the often niche and divisive genre of science-fiction space opera, delivering a satisfying and emotional adventure from a story that explores hugely complex theoretical ideas.

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The movie's many fans have been wondering ever since if there will one day be a sequel to the movie but, in the meantime, there are a number of great contemporary movies that have similarly high standards, as well as a number of classics that played a huge part in shaping its plot and overall feel, that can be enjoyed right now. Here are the best examples of space movies like  Interstellar .

Updated on December 5th, 2020 by Mark Birrell:  Considering that it's one of the most highly-rated sci-fi movies of all time amongst film fans, it's no wonder that interest in Christopher Nolan's hugely successful space opera just keeps growing and growing. As its fanbase continues to get bigger, so too must this list. Anyone looking for some of Nolan's greatest influences and contemporaries should make sure to check out all of these similar movies to Interstellar.

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

While it's true that you could say that Stanley Kubrick's  2001: A Space Odyssey  was a huge influence on essentially every science-fiction film that came out after it, it really is apt to relate it to  Interstellar .

Both movies tackle similar theoretical ideas but the visual similarities are plain to see throughout  Interstellar  and the operatic tone of  2001  can be felt in the bones of the story.

Solaris (2002)

Steven Soderbergh 's adaptation of Stanisław Lem's novel is substantially different from Andrei Tarkovsky's perhaps more famous version but still bursting with enveloping drama and huge philosophical questions.

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Things are much more ambiguous than with a straight man-on-a-mission type movie like  Interstellar  but that often assists with  Solaris ' haunting visual beauty.

Ad Astra (2019)

A very similar movie to  Interstellar  in terms of a direct and linear plot, James Gray's sci-fi thriller is one of the few recent science-fiction movies that are perhaps more intense than Christopher Nolan's impending apocalypse.

Brad Pitt plays the emotionally detached son of a famous missing astronaut who follows in his father's footsteps and becomes embroiled in a mysterious mission to discover what happened to him.

First Man (2018)

Emotional detachment was a running theme for high-pedigree space movies of  Interstellar 's time period with Damien Chazielle's biographical drama of Neil Armstrong's pioneering journey to the moon focussing much more on the famous astronaut's state of mind throughout the mission.

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By filtering the events of the Apollo 11 mission through Armstrong's coping–or lack thereof–with the tragic death of his young daughter,  First Man  is elevated beyond being a simple reenactment to being a powerful and striking drama that shared a commitment to practical effects and techniques with Interstellar  that makes both films feel more tangible.

Gravity (2013)

Following the theme of grief and emotional detachment out in the cold depths of space, Alfonso Cuarón's space survival movie  is the fastest-moving entry on this list but never forgets to add emotional weight to its tense action sequences.

A storm of debris flying around Earth's orbit becomes a big problem for Sandra Bullock 's stranded astronaut and that relatively-simple setup allows for just as many awe-inspiring audiovisual feats as a movie like  Interstellar .

The Right Stuff (1983)

On a slightly more hopeful note,  The Right Stuff  takes a more objective, but no less strikingly well-made, view of biographical aeronautical history for this adaptation of Tom Wolfe's book of the same name.

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A large chunk of Matthew McConaughey 's ace pilot character, Joseph "Coop" Cooper, is so clearly influenced by Sam Shepard's depiction of Charles "Chuck" Yeager and  The Right Stuff  is as essential to space movie history as a grand fantasy like  2001 .

Apollo 13 (1995)

Another slightly more down to earth take on the space movie,  Apollo 13  is just as thrilling and grandiose and as a movie like  Interstellar despite being confined by the reality of spaceflight in the early 1970s.

Chronicling the even-more-perilous-than-usual journey of NASA's seventh Lunar mission, Ron Howard's tense drama is, much like  The Right Stuff , a rich and engaging picture of a moment in time that's made up so many tiny and realistic details that it feels as huge as  Star Wars .

Sunshine (2007)

Danny Boyle's sci-fi thriller is much more fantastical and in the spirit of Jules Verne than the previous few entries on this list, and much more in line with  Interstellar 's more outlandish theoretical concepts.

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Sunshine  follows a crew of astronauts heading to drop a bomb into the Earth's dying sun in a final-hope type scenario but the pressure of the magnitude of their mission begins to affect the crew in different ways, creating unforeseeable problems with apocalyptic risks.

The Black Hole (1979)

Disney has a long history with bizarre and beloved sci-fi cult classics and one of their earliest–and still most influential–is this story of a lost spaceship found sitting on the edge of the titular region in spacetime. Its occupants a mad scientist and his unholy robotic creations.

The Black Hole can go toe to toe with all of  Interstellar 's strangest, darkest, and most horrific moments, with the unforgettably demonic robot "Maximillian" literally out-psycho-ing the actual psycho from the movie  Psycho , Anthony Perkins. But it also shares  Interstellar 's desire to view the wonders of science from a theoretical–sometimes even theological–standpoint and the vein of adventure running throughout it is very much in the spirit of  Star Wars  and Jules Verne also.

Mission to Mars (2000)

Speaking of surprisingly striking and scarring Disney sci-fi movies, this adaptation of the Disneyland attraction of the same name came from none other than master director Brian De Palma, famed for his dark and violent thrillers, and offers a very different take on the plot of the next movie on our list.

Following a daring rescue mission to the red planet, the movie shares a number of  Interstellar 's themes such as unfulfillment and first contact with alien life. Though its tonal inconsistency makes it a bumpy ride in spots, and its depiction of the first meeting between humanity and extraterrestrials drew more criticism than even  Interstellar 's, a number of  Mission to Mars ' visual effects not only hold up but are still stunning even today.

The Martian (2015)

Ridley Scott directs this adaptation of Andy Weir's best-selling novel of the same name and while using very similar designs to those seen in his far more morbid and horrific latter-day  Alien  movies, the director produces one of the most upbeat sci-fi survival movies ever made. Perhaps even  the  most.

The plot follows Matt Damon 's stranded botanist who's accidentally marooned on Mars when he's presumed dead and the character's infectious optimism in the face of certain demise is often inspiring.

Deep Impact (1998)

Though almost completely overshadowed at the time by Michael Bay's behemoth disaster movie  Armageddon , which has ostensibly the exact same plot and was released just under two months later, Mimi Leder's giant asteroid movie is by far the more genuinely emotional and shares a number of other distinct qualities with  Interstellar .

Themes of parental abandonment and hopelessness in the face of human extinction elevate the more melodramatic elements that were so prevalent in blockbuster movies of that time and make it a uniquely inspiring sci-fi experience.

Moon (2009)

A much more isolated and claustrophobic slice of sci-fi than the operatics of  Interstellar certainly, but no less thought-provoking, Duncan Jones' movie debut became an instant cult classic thanks to some smartly simple designs and a stunning lead performance from the always-compelling Sam Rockwell.

Moon  follows Rockwell's lonely lunar worker as they uncover a life-changing secret about the nature of their employment and its far-reaching existential implications. Equally chilling and funny, the movie is another essential modern entry into the genre for fans of  Interstellar 's vision of a convincingly-not-too-distant future.

2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984)

The belated sequel to the groundbreaking  2001: A Space Odyssey  is definitely not as well-regarded as Kubrick's movie but is by no means a maligned entry into the genre, nor is it famous for being hated by fans of the original despite being an almost polar opposite of the original in many ways.

While  2001  was completely devoid of big-name actors,  2010 assembled a practically all-star cast and this is hardly detrimental to the movie. Similarly,  The Year We Make Contact  is all about answers over ambiguity and retroactively solves many of  A Space Odyssey 's biggest mysteries. It may not ever really live up to the atmosphere of the first movie but director Peter Hyams' eye for detail in the designs is spellbinding and much of the tension of the original carries over and syncs up even better with  Interstellar 's big setpieces and intense debates.

Contact (1997)

Adapted from the novel of the same name by Carl Sagan–who, oddly enough, arguably caused  Interstellar 's creation by  introducing the authors of its original treatment through a blind date – Contact  really delves into its huge scientific questions in as thorough a fashion as it can whilst still not forgetting the fiction part of the equation.

Produced by one of  Interstellar 's key producers, and co-author of the original treatment, Lynda Obst, and starring Matthew McConaughey also, Robert Zemeckis' movie about a mysterious alien signal from space is one of the biggest stepping stones on the path that would ultimately lead to  Interstellar  and is a must-see for fans of sci-fi in general.

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• interstellar (2014)

10 Movies Where Humans Colonize Other Planets

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Space colonization refers to the permanent establishment of human civilization on other planets, moons, or celestial bodies. It is often sought as a solution to Earth becoming environmentally uninhabitable, over-population, or natural resource deficit, and it is a continuous area of research. In science-fiction movies , it serves as a theme that visualizes self-sustaining human survival on extraterrestrial territories and the technologies that would allow such a migration to space.

Movies about space colonization offer different perspectives on why and how a resettlement as grand as this could happen. From mainstream thrillers like Interstellar , to more classic gems such as Forbidden Planet , this list invites you to dwell on the obscurity and thrill of human survival. Here are 10 exemplary films that each illustrate the process, the potential challenges, and the possible consequences of space colonization in different ways.

Related: The Best Outer Space Movies of The 2000s, Ranked

10 Interstellar (2014)

Directed by Christopher Nolan and released in 2014, Interstellar is one of the most intense blockbuster science-fiction movies about space travel and exploration, and is known to be the most scientifically accurate . Following Earth’s decay into an uninhabitable and environmentally disastrous future, a group of astronauts set to find a new home for humanity by traveling through a wormhole near Saturn.

With striking performances from Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, and Jessica Chastain, Interstellar extends its area of exploration to themes of familial bonds, time, and desperation. Its blockbuster quality is justified in the movie’s striking visuals, mind-boggling storyline, and telling of the harsh reality of human survival.

9 Cosmic Sin (2021)

Edward Drake’s Cosmic Sin pictures space colonization on a wider scale, set in the distant future. Humans have been colonizing planets for centuries and have established civilizations across the galaxy. Alien encounters are a casual happening, and space travel is a norm. However, when an alien species start planning to take over the Earth, a group of scientists and military leaders (including Bruce Wills as the General) initiate a mission to stop the invasion.

Since its release, Cosmic Sin has been subjected to harsh reviews targeting its script, plot, and special effects, even including an award for Worst Performance by Bruce Willis in a 2021 Movie . Despite the critics’ overall reception, the movie still managed to capture an appreciative audience. It has the appeal of science-fiction B-movies for any genre fanatic willing to watch.

8 Tides (2021)

Tides (also known as The Colony ) is an English-speaking German science-fiction thriller written and directed by Tim Fehlbaum. In a post-apocalyptic setting where Earth has been declared environmentally uninhabitable, and a particular group of elites has resettled in a space colony, Tides follows three Kepler colony astronauts that return to Earth to see whether it has become habitable again.

Tides provides a more sociologically complex outlook by merging space colonization with issues such as classism and extreme nepotism. It is a film concerned with research, exploration, and survival ethics. It is a look-back on humans’ impact on Earth and a thought-provoking feature with outstanding visuals.

7 Forbidden Planet (1956)

Recognized as the trailblazer for multiple facets of science-fiction cinema, Forbidden Planet was directed by Fred M. Wilcox and written by Cyril Hume in the 1950s. The movie revolves around the planet Altair IV and a space exploration crew that intends to check up on a previous mission. Along with the scientist Dr. Morbius who lives on the planet with his daughter and a robot named Robby, the crew starts scrutinizing and uncovering the history of Altair lV.

Forbidden Planet showcases a unique approach to space colonization where ancient civilizations and natural threats work in unison. Being the pioneer for multiple science-fiction visual effects and genre tropes, Forbidden Planet is a staple of classic cinema with its innovative take on the human knowledge of technology and science.

6 Pandorum (2009)

Pandorum is a science-fiction horror movie directed by Christian Alvart, about the dangers and threats of space traveling for colonization. After overpopulation exhausts Earth's natural resources, a spaceship called the Elysium is launched to find and colonize Tanis, an Earth-like habitable planet. In Elysium, two crew members try to survive a violent, feral, and deadly mystery while also battling amnesia and a mental psychosis caused by prolonged and deep space travel.

Alvart’s Pandorum situates human isolation and endurance in grotesque horror. Its portrayal of space-related torment has stood out with its brutality and shock factors. Definitely not crafted for the easily disturbed, Pandorum is still a movie with a cult following, thanks to its original storyline and notable visual effects.

5 Passengers (2016)

Passengers is a Morten Tyldum-directed science-fiction film with sparks of romance. A spaceship that carries thousands of people to a new planet called Homestead ll, in hibernation pods, gets damaged by an asteroid. The pods are set to a 120-year-long hibernation. After the asteroid collision, the malfunctioning in the system causes Jim’s pod (played by Chris Pratt) to be awoken 90 years early. With the struggle of severe loneliness, Jim then awakens a beautiful companion, Jennifer Lawrence’s Aurora Lane.

Crafting a romance in the midst of a mentally challenging setting is tricky, and Passengers has received its fair share of criticism. Aside from the acting, the movie’s musical score and production design have also helped compensate for its controversial plot; both were nominated for the 89th Academy Awards .

Related: The Best Outer Space Movies of the 2010s, Ranked

4 The Martian (2015)

Based on the 2011 novel by Andy Weir, The Martian was adapted to a screenplay by Drew Goddard and directed by the infamous Ridley Scott. It is 2035, and Mark Watney (played by Matt Damon) is stranded on Mars after a severe dust storm damages the camp, and the crew is forced to leave the planet. This is the story of Watney’s deterministic survival and communication attempts.

The Martian ’ s telling of human resilience has allowed the film multiple high-class awards and great commercial success. The movie does not use space colonization as a forefront theme but incorporates it into Watney’s instincts and problem-solving skills. Watney himself even states this as he says, “They say once you grow crops somewhere, you have officially colonized it. So, technically, I colonized Mars”. He’s right.

3 Prospect (2018)

Referred to as a science-fiction indie film, Prospect was written and directed by Zeek Earl and Chris Caldwell. Starring Pedro Pascal, Sophie Thatcher, and Jay Duplass, the movie features a father-daughter duo who venture to an alien forest moon in hopes of mining gemstones. However, the mission is threatened as they come across other potentially dangerous prospectors with similar interests.

Based on a short film with the same name, released in 2014, Prospect works as a testament to human greed on an interplanetary level. With bold performances, a dense plot, and its own take on human morals, the movie has experienced mostly positive feedback and appreciation.

2 Red Planet (2000)

Being Antony Hoffman’s only feature-length film, Red Planet is a science-fiction action film that stars Val Kilmer, Carrie-Anne Moss, and Tom Sizemore as part of its impressive cast. The movie, set in 2025, centers around the colonization of Mars after Earth starts suffering from overpopulation and intense pollution. A space crew’s assessment of Mars as a potentially habitable environment results in unexpected technical difficulties.

Red Planet is a visualization of insecure technology and fatal human error. The sturdy premise is definitely promising; however, despite its elevated expectations, the film was faced with mixed reviews after its release. While praising the film's special effects, not many critics were fond of the story’s progression.

1 Elysium (2013)

Directed by Neill Blomkamp, Elysium is a dystopian science-fiction action movie about human segregation. In the year 2154, an artificial habitat called the Elysium fosters the elite while others are left to survive on a disease-infected, devastated Earth. Max, a former criminal played by Matt Damon, attempts a mission to use a curing medical device in Elysium while having to struggle with interruptions from Secretary Delacourt (played by Jodie Foster).

Themes such as social justice, inequality, and classist technology are embedded within the survival story of Elysium. This complexity within the story structure has deepened the impact of its action sequences and vivid special effects. Elysium ’s depiction of space colonization thus takes a more narrowed down but gripping route.

Humans’ passionate curiosity for outer space has led to a continuous circulation of science-fiction content, each representing the infinity and its beyond in unique settings. Somewhere along the line, these representations started to include a habit from the history books. As a matter of survival, greed, or scientific study, space colonization is now a staple for the screens.

• Movie Lists

All you need to know about Sky's new sci-fi drama Intergalactic

The new original series boasts an impressive cast.

Looking for a new show to add to your watch list? Then upcoming original series from Sky One, Intergalactic , could be the one for you.

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The brand new sci-fi drama boasts an impressive cast, gripping plot and plenty of out-of-this-world action to keep you on the edge of your sofa. The show, due out at the end of the month, consists of eight explosive episodes that pack quite the punch – get the full low-down on what to expect here…

WATCH: Sky release first look trailer at new sci-fi drama Intergalactic

What is Sky's Intergalactic about?

Intergalactic , set in the futuristic 'Commonworld', focuses on young space cop, Ash, who's just at the cusp of a glittering career when she's suddenly wrongly accused of committing treason. After being sent to an outer space prison, named The Hemlock, and meeting a gang of criminals, she soon discovers that there's more going on her life than previously thought.

After meeting her fellow inmates, they soon go on the run from the authorities and Ash is tasked with a secret mission to track a former spy by her mother Rebecca, the Head of Galactic Security and the leader of Commonworld government. But along the way, Ash starts to realise more about her family's dark secret and suddenly a quest for the hard truth becomes priority.

"A female prison gang show with an epic galactic setting, the further the escapees travel from home the closer they come to understanding who they truly are," the official synopsis reads. "And as they reluctantly learn to rely on one another, this disparate band of criminals will be fighting for their shared future in their ultimate bid for freedom."

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Eleanor Tomlinson, Sharon Duncan-Brewster and Diany Samba-Bandza in Intergalactic

Who stars in Sky's Intergalactic?

If the sound of the plot isn't enough to have you hooked already, the cast certainly will. Intergalactic introduces newcomer Savannah Steyn as lead Ash Harper a "tough, loyal and law abiding" cop, seeking the truth.

Also starring is Parminder Nagra as Ash's mother Rebecca, the Head of Galactic Security within the Commonworld. Fans will recognise Parminder from her notable roles in ER , Fortitude and Bend It Like Beckham.

Meanwhile, also joining the cast is Sex Education and Rogue One 's Sharon Duncan-Brewster as brilliantly fierce gang leader Tula Quick. And Poldark 's Eleanor Tomlinson , Diany Samba-Bandza and Imogen Daines make up the rest of the criminal crew escaping the Hemlock.

Keep an eye out for Line of Duty 's Craig Parkinson and Peaky Blinder s Natasha O'Keeffe as Dr Benedict Lee and Dr Emma Grieves, respectively, appearing in the cast, too.

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Savannah Steyn as leading character Ash Harper

What have the cast said about Sky's Intergalactic?

Ahead of the show's release, HELLO! caught up with the cast of the new sci-fi show at a Q&A, during the main cast such as Savannah Steyn, Sharon Duncan-Brewster and Diany Samba-Bandza spoke about how diversity in Intergalactic was an incredibly important aspect.

Sharon told HELLO! and other publications: "Myself and Diany auditioned together and then we met Savannah and were like 'This is really cool!' and there was a point when we were on set, myself Savannah and Diany and I just paused and I said 'Do you realise what's happened?' and we all looked at each other and just smiled.

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The new sci-fi series lands on Sky at the end of this month

"None of us had ever experienced that before. We really have come a long way and I hope this is a good sign of where change is going to go in the future."

Star of the show, Savannah, also opened up to press about her exciting new role: "When I read it for the first time, it's rare that I'll read it and be able to get through it as easily as I did with Intergalactic , it's just a lot of fun . I remember reading about Genevieve's hair, a girl whose dreads have powers, and I just thought 'This is going to be fun', so I was really excited."

When is Sky's Intergalactic out?

Fortunately, fans won't have to wait for long for the new episodes to drop. All eight episodes of Intergalactic will be released on Sky One on 30 April and NOW streaming service.

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Den of Geek

Sky One Sci-Fi Intergalactic: ‘It’s a Road Movie Through Space’

Den of Geek takes an intergalactic trip on board the Hemlock, the Alien-inspired prison ship at the heart of Sky One’s new sci-fi adventure series

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The time is February 2020. The place? Manchester’s Space Studios, on the extraordinary set of Intergalactic , Sky’s new sci-fi drama series. From an immersive set, cramped within the bowels of a prison ship, to concept art of stunning sci-fi landscapes, there’s nothing to remind us of a mundane present that will, only a month later, come to seem like something of a lost utopia.

Well, almost nothing. The screensaver on one of the ship’s computers bears the logo of Her Majesty’s Government. Is time travel involved, then? Nope. It’s a relic from previous work on Cobra , the Sky political drama about the collapse of British society in the aftermath of a disaster. Oddly fitting, really…

Mercifully, we come back to the future. First things first, though: this isn’t the galaxy as we know it. “We are set 150 years in the future,” explains producer Iona Vrolyk. “A meteorite has come from outer space that’s landed on Earth, bringing with it an element called New Aurum, which makes something that’s currently impossible possible: intergalactic travel. There has been an ecological collapse on Earth, and with the arrival of this new element and being able to go out into the galaxies, all of the nations on Earth came together to form one global authority called the Commonworld, which was set up to revive planet Earth. So humanity’s gone off to the other planets and galaxies and has colonised, but the overriding message of and reason behind that is to bring things back and to be able to rehabilitate Earth. But, in 150 years, there’s been some corruption within that global authority.”

As any fan of the genre will agree, science fiction stands or falls on the quality of its ideas. Lucky, then, that they’ve got showrunner Julie Gearey at the helm. The creator of Prisoners’ Wives is, as Vrolyk notes, the ideal choice for a series that follows a motley crew of female prisoners on a hijacked transport ship , fleeing from an authoritarian society as they forge new bonds and strive for freedom.“She’s a brilliant character writer, and she always innately puts women and women’s stories at the front of her shows.”

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That psychological depth and intensity is at the heart of Intergalactic . As Vrolyk puts it, new worlds are found through the characters as they make their way through stories built around “a very mythic structure” of escape and adventure. Producer Simon Maloney’s keen to highlight this hard-edged realism.“One of the things that Julie and Iona have put in that I really love is that if somebody gets shot in episode one, that scar stays with them the whole way through the show! The ship, the Hemlock , has degraded through the shoot itself, as it’s got gradual nicks and marks from camera people and being shot at, and that only adds to the patina of the show. Although it’s shot in this incredible world that’s been created, it’s got a real kind of humility and grittiness.”

There’s more than a hint of the Nostromo in the transport ship’s grungy corridors, and the comparison to the 1979 classic, Alien , doesn’t faze Vrolyk. “It’s an old reference, but why not? I mean, Ridley Scott ’s a genius…The original design of the Hemlock was a prison transporter ship. This is like a sweatbox for an intergalactic age. The thought behind it was, what’s going to be the most practical design for it? We didn’t want to design anything just because it would look cool. Humans will still be humans in 150 years. They’re still going to need tables, they’re not going to reinvent things they don’t need to reinvent. Also, in an age where there’s been ecological collapse on Earth, we made a decision with the design that humans were putting all of their efforts into going out into the galaxy and bringing things back. It was about being really practical. We were constantly asking questions like, “What’s its purpose? Why is it there?”

“I think a lot of science fiction can be quite shiny, quite metallic, with long corridors, and we consciously, from the beginning, said that we wanted this to feel more organic: to use shape, texture and colour an awful lot.”

Even the prisoners’ uniforms were visually significant, with Vrolyk and the art team asking themselves why inmates in US jails wear that distinctive orange. “It’s because of the visibility, so we went for a very striking turquoise and bright yellow prison uniform to try and make sure that we were bringing colour to the piece.”

Maloney highlights the contrast between the functional interiors and the incredible galaxy beyond, which evokes the sweeping vistas created by Ralph McQuarrie for the original Star Wars trilogy. “The landscape has gone big, shot in Valencia. The science park there looks completely unworldly, which has translated to give [the show’s] New London that feel. Then in episode three, there’s a sequence in some underground relief motorways that run underneath Madrid, an incredible structure. The different planets we visit in the course of the series feel like they have huge scale and colour and attention to detail, which is a really nice counterbalance to the functionality of the Hemlock .”

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“We’ve got an incredible production designer, a guy called Mark Geraghty, who’s been building worlds. Quite often, we go out and find a location, but you have to adapt it so much that in the end, it’s just better if Mark builds it! There’s an action sequence at the end of episode five – we looked and looked and looked for a location for a snowy planet.” They “snowed up” a house but ended up building a set for the action sequence itself. “It’s a constant battle between letting Mark go,” Maloney says with a laugh, “and things that we can find on location.”

As for the nuts and bolts of this brave new world, they haven’t tried to reinvent the wheel, as Vrolyk emphasises. “Guns still have bullets! Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock , who’s a BBC presenter and an eminent astrophysicist, has helped us with the research on the show. One of the things when Julie and I first sat down to do this was that yeah, we love watching sci-fi, but we’ve never actually worked on it.”

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Their scientific adviser has been a treasure and was thanked with a well-deserved cameo in some “archive” footage that features in the show. “She’s been amazing and phenomenally helpful in terms of coming up with science fiction at the heart of our show that, whilst it’s obviously fiction, [ensures] that, if this element existed, it’d be consistent with the rules of science. The way we travel intergalactically in our show is through something called the Alcubierre drive. That’s named after [theoretical physicist] Miguel Alcubierre who’s come up with the theory that, if one could generate negative mass, it could be possible without defying the laws of relativity to travel intergalactically.”

Ultimately, though, it’s all about the characters, and their journey’s become more relatable than ever. As they run for freedom in the face of overwhelming odds, we’ll be cheering them on. In our world or in theirs, it’s time for a fresh start. 

Intergalactic airs on Sky One and all eight episodes will be available to stream on NOW from Friday the 30th of April.

Gem Wheeler

Gem Wheeler is a freelance writer and pop-culture aficionado based in Yorkshire. She likes purple, medieval stuff, and the Dalton Bond films, though not necessarily in…

Award-winning author, Chicago-native Tomi Adeyemi dishes on newest book, movie deal

CHICAGO (WLS) -- A New York Times Best-Selling author is making Chicago Proud.

Nigerian American writer Tomi Adeyemi is known for her groundbreaking novels, Children of Blood and Bone and Children of Virtue and Vengeance. The Hugo and Nebula award-winning novelist grew up in Chicago and graduated from Harvard University with an honors degree in English Literature. After graduation, she studied West African mythology in Salvador, Brazil, which inspired her debut series.

On June 25, Adeyemi released the third and final book in her Orisha trilogy, Children of Anguish and Anarchy. On her book tour, she returned home to the Chicago area , and sat down with ABC7 to talk about the epic finale, and the movie deal to bring her books from paper to screen.

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Ozzy Osbourne Cancels Monster Movie Convention Appearance on Doctor’s Orders

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Ozzy Osbourne was forced to drop out of an appearance at a monster movie convention in Arizona next month on doctor’s orders. 

Osbourne’s wife/manager Sharon Osbourne broke the news in a video statement shared on social media earlier this week. She didn’t offer any specific reason for the cancellation, saying only that Osbourne was “unable to travel at this time.” 

Sean Clark, who owns the convention booking agency Convention All Stars, added: “Ozzy really, really wanted to attend Mad Monster Party in AZ next month but unfortunately his doctor said he has to sit this one out. Let’s all wish Ozzy the best and a speedy recovery.” 

The entire Osbourne family was set to appear at the Mad Monster Party, taking place July 12 through 14 in Phoenix. In her statement, Sharon said their son, Jack, would still be on-hand “flying the flag for the Osbournes.” And Clark added, “Jack will be bringing pre-signed items to be sold at the show for those wanting to get something signed by Ozzy or the family.” 

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Amidst his health battles, Osbourne has made several attempts to return to the stage, but all have fallen short. In an interview with Rolling Stone UK last year , the musician bluntly stated that he may never perform live again: “I’m not going to get up there and do a half-hearted Ozzy looking for sympathy. What’s the fucking point in that? I’m not going up there in a fucking wheelchair.”

Earlier this year, Osbourne was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist (he was inducted as a member of Black Sabbath back in 2006). Speaking with Rolling Stone after receiving the honor, Osbourne said he was “happy” he was “alive to see all this,” and said he planned to attend the induction ceremony in October. As to whether he’d make a speech, Osbourne quipped: “I’m not good at making speeches. I don’t like making speeches. I end up mumbling [ laughs ]. I’ll try. I can only try. Bob Dylan don’t like making speeches either.”

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‘a quiet place: day one’ director on cat casting and hollywood cliches.

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'A Quiet Place: Day One' stars Lupita Nyong'o and Joseph Quinn.

Coming off the back of his acclaimed feature directorial debut, filmmaker Michael Sarnoski wanted to be positive that his next step was the right one. As A Quiet Place: Day One lands in theaters, he is convinced he made the right call.

" Pig came out in July 2021, and it was a weird moment because it was mid-pandemic. I had finished it the year before, so I had made my first movie, but no one knew I had," the writer-director recalled. " Pig arrived, people really responded to it, and people were like, 'Oh, wow. Michael just made this movie. Let's have meetings with him.' You do the circuits and have meetings with studios and production companies, but I didn't want to rush into something."

"I wanted to be careful about what my next thing was and wanted to wait to find something that I loved. I also actively wanted to avoid doing some big studio thing because that is the cliche. You do a little indie movie, and then you get scooped up by a studio. That was when A Quiet Place: Day One came along."

It was December 2021 when John Krasinski, who directed A Quiet Place and A Quiet Place Part II and is a producer on A Quiet Place: Day One , reached out.

"On paper, it seemed like a crazy idea that I would make a prequel to a horror franchise with a big studio. Was that really what I wanted to do next? It was almost because of how John approached it, saying, 'I love to Pig , can you bring that touch to the Quiet Place universe,' that gave me the freedom to explore," Sarnoski explained. "I got excited about it."

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That's when he found the character of Sam, played by Oscar winner Lupita Nyong'o, who "had a unique lens through which to explore the end of the world."

"She's a dying hospice patient who decides to go on this on this journey and almost live again when the world is ending," Sarnoski said. "John and Paramount were willing to let me explore this unique angle and make it my own. It was extremely generous. John made a point of saying, 'This is a Michael Sarnoski Quiet Place movie. That's why I'm hiring you. We want you to bring your voice to this because we don't want all these moves to feel the same.' That was a really smart move."

A Quiet Place: Day One , which is only in theaters and unavailable to stream, follows Lupita Nyong'o's Sam, who finds herself trapped in New York City as an alien invasion unfolds. Before too long, Sam and her service cat, Frodo, come across English law student Eric, played by Joseph Quinn, and together, they set out on a journey for survival and pizza.

"What I liked about this was that it's more like a spin-off from the first two films than a prequel. It's pretty much totally different characters, and I liked that it could be its own self-contained movie," the filmmaker explained. "You don't need to have seen the other Quiet Place movies to see this movie and get it. You watch this as a standalone thing, which is harder with a sequel because you are expected to continue something. A prequel or spin-off can be its own pocket thing. When it comes to whether I'd rather make a prequel or a sequel, I think it would depend on the material and what that world is."

Lupita Nyong’o as Samira and Joseph Quinn as Eric in 'A Quiet Place: Day One.'

While Nyong'o and Quinn are the stars of A Quite Place: Day One , Frodo the cat is stealing scenes all over the place, remaining largely unphased by the end of the world as they know it. Finding the perfect feline co-star was an involved audition process.

"We probably looked at something like a dozen cats," he said. "We worked with this company called Birds and Animals UK, and Jo and Kim were our animal trainers. They brought in a bunch of different cats, let them walk around the office, and we'd play with them and coochy coo a little bit, see what their swagger was like and how they moved. Schnitzel very quickly became the cat that appealed to me. There was something about him that felt streetwise, and he was cute but not cutesy."

"Some of the cats were too cartoony, and you could see him in a cat food ad or something, so he was almost too adorable. You want to believe that this is a cat who had maybe grown up on the streets in New York, could have gotten into some cat fights, had a little gray in his hair, and had a way about him that felt self-confident and wise. Schnitzel became that hero cat, but it was an adorable casting process."

While this does count as a spoiler, which I usually avoid at all costs, for those already worried about Frodo’s fate, the cat survives.

Perhaps even more so than with A Quiet Place and A Quiet Place II , the influences of films such as Aliens and Jurassic Park are evident, although not intentional.

"We were aware of those presences," Sarnoski revealed. Aliens, certainly, because you're going from the smaller, more contained film to the larger, more action one. I definitely see the Jurassic Park comparisons. They weren't things that we consciously tried to achieve. We knew there were going to be elements of that. We were like, 'We can play with that a little bit,' but it wasn't an overly intentional thing."

"One of our biggest references that the cinematographer Pat Scola and I talked about a lot was Children of Men because that movie captures the feeling of massive stuff swirling in the world around the characters but being very focused on this boots on the ground, gritty experience. You're always bouncing a bunch of different ideas around."

While not short on appearances of the intergalactic predators, the filmmaker wanted to use shadows and silhouettes of the invaders to heighten the tension.

"We wanted to fulfill the promise of many creatures and the scope of what it would be like in this big city but I also didn't want it to be constantly in your face," he said. "Sometimes, the more you point a camera straight at the creatures, the less interesting they become. You want to keep that sense of mystery and lurking and that sense of if you make a sound, something will come out of the shadows and kill you."

"That's scarier and more engrossing than, 'Hey, there's the thing with big claws and teeth.' It keeps some of that mystery and lends itself to this Day One idea. Our characters are kind of discovering these creatures for the first time, piecing them out a little bit, and starting with shadows, then moving into close-ups, then getting into full body shots, then getting into herds, gradually building up to that felt exciting but also how the characters would be experiencing these gradual discoveries.

(Left to right) Joseph Quinn as Eric and writer-director Michael Sarnoski on the London set of 'A ... [+] Quiet Place: Day One.'

In A Quiet Place: Day One , the intergalactic predators have a cocky edge to them, a swagger, and an arrogance that wasn't as present in A Quiet Place or A Quiet Place Part II . That's something Sarnoski was keen to play with, and he found the urban environment to be the perfect place to do it.

"Part of it comes from the scale. We're in the city, there are many more of them, it's a louder and a bigger place, and you're playing with the verticality of these buildings," he explained. "I liked the idea that they were an infestation in this movie, whereas in the other movies, in theory, they've infested the world, but you're on the outskirts where there are a few stragglers, like scouts exploring the more rural territory. Some of that comes from that sort of swarming infestation, and some of it comes from the idea that they're so durable that they are almost a little clumsy, swaggering, and sloppy in how they moved."

"It's clear they have some way to navigate the physical world, using a little bit of echolocation, because they have to be able to run into stuff, but sometimes they bump into things. You want to feel like they have a sloppy ability to deal with the physical world around them, and that's all combined to create that sort of personality.

Although it is set in New York, A Quiet Place: Day One was filmed in London. Early in the film, it's made that what is happening there is being repeated worldwide. There was a time when Sarnoski did consider just setting the story where they were filming to make things easier.

"There were moments when we were out there, like, 'Couldn't we just have this take place in London?' However, I think that having to film it in London and create New York allowed us to craft a pretty specific version of New York that feels a little bit nowhere," the filmmaker admitted. "We were not trying to create a specific street corner; we're trying to create the vibe of Chinatown or the vibe of the Lower East Side. It wasn't like, 'Hey, our character is walking by the Empire State Building,' it was more a case of, 'We're immersed in the feeling of New York.' In some ways, having our hands tied allowed us to lean into something that felt more immersive and weren't trying to make too fine a point of where some things were."

"London is a beautiful city with a lot of really deep history and places that feel so lived in. We also tried to use many interiors and places in London that already exist and feel like they could be New York because they have presence. It was nice that we could draw from a lot of the beautiful history there."

Writer-director Michael Sarnoski attends the New York Premiere of 'A Quiet Place: Day One' at AMC ... [+] Lincoln Square on June 26, 2024, in New York, New York.

It's clearly signposted when Sam and Eric whisper details about their families, and he makes a very specific reference to his parents being in the county of Kent. Quinn, the actor playing the student, partially suggested that.

"I remember talking to him about what we wanted his backstory to be and what kind of place we wanted him to come from, which would feel a little bit like it would be a leap to come to New York City. He suggested Kent," Sarnoski remembered. "At one point, we were talking about maybe using Slough. There are all sorts of different ideas of where that could be. There was definitely a conversation with Joe about where his character Eric could come from."

As safety and pizza are the goals in A Quiet Place: Day One , where would Sarnoski head for his last meal should an invasion come from the skies?

"I do love food. One of my favorite foods is sushi, but I feel like that would be a hard one in the apocalypse," the Pig filmmaker mused. "There's a Korean fried chicken spot a few blocks away from me in New York that would definitely be a spot I would be willing to brave the end of the world for. In LA, it used to be Milk Jar Cookies. I loved their cookies and would have gone anywhere for those, but then they closed down, which was a real bummer."

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Taiwan warns against travel to China after execution threat

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Taiwan ’s government raised its travel warning for China on Thursday, telling its citizens not to go unless absolutely necessary, following a threat from Beijing last week to execute those deemed “diehard” Taiwan independence supporters.

Liang Wen-chieh, spokesperson for Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council, told reporters the raised travel warning also applied to the Chinese-run cities of Hong Kong and Macau.

China, which views democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory , has made no secret of its dislike of President Lai Ching-te , whom it views as a “separatist,” and staged two days of war games  after he took office last month.

Last week, announcing new legal guidelines, China threatened to execute Taiwan independence separatists in extreme cases, a further ramping up of tensions that drew condemnation from Lai and his government, as well as the United States.

Liang, making the announcement at a regular news conference in Taipei, said those guidelines represented a serious threat to the safety of Taiwanese visiting China, in addition to other measures China has been taking to strengthen its national security laws.

“If it is not necessary to go, then don’t,” he said, adding this did not amount to a ban on visiting and was about protecting Taiwan’s people and reminding them of the risk rather than being a “countermeasure.”

China’s Taiwan Affairs Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

On Wednesday, asked about concerns that the guidelines could cause fear for Taiwan’s people and not help improve relations, the office said they were only aimed at a very small number of independence “diehards’ evil words and actions.”

China has vowed to go after people it views as Taiwan separatists wherever they may be, though Chinese courts have no jurisdiction in Taiwan and it is not clear how China could seek to enforce any judgments outside its borders.

As to whether China could seek to extradite Taiwanese overseas who it accused of separatism, Liang said separatism was a political crime and in this particular case one specific to China, and that developed countries would not cooperate with such a request.

“We can’t rule out certain countries would cooperate,” he added, without naming any countries.

Lai has repeatedly offered talks with China but been rebuffed. He rejects Beijing’s sovereignty claims and says only Taiwan’s people can decide their future.

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It follows a crew of fierce female convicts who break free and go on the run. It follows a crew of fierce female convicts who break free and go on the run. It follows a crew of fierce female convicts who break free and go on the run.

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Welcome to the Whoniverse: The world of "Doctor Who," explained

New to the world of "Doctor Who"? We've got answers to frequently asked questions and essential listening to catch you up.

I was curious about Doctor Who for over a decade before I finally decided to dive in. Up until then, fandom felt daunting. It's challenging to know where to start a series built on more than 60 years of history, countless spin-offs and adaptations, and a massive amount of lore. Did I need to go back to the 1963 television premiere to understand the show? What's it about? And what the heck is a TARDIS? Yes, Doctor Who comes with a whole lot of history—but it’s well worth getting up to speed. I chose to start with the 2005 reboot of the series and worked my way into the Whoniverse from there, but no matter where you jump in, there's really no wrong place to begin. Read this explainer of the world of Doctor Who to give you a basic understanding of everything you need to know and then bravely venture into the galaxy—whether your first adventure is housed in the audiobooks, television series, movies, radio dramas, or beyond.

What is Doctor Who about?

Doctor Who is a long-running British science fiction series following the Doctor, an alien humanoid Time Lord who travels through space and time to fight evil, protect the innocent, and stop history from being catastrophically altered. The Doctor, who "regenerates" into a new body when seriously injured, has been played by many different actors across the history of the show. They travel the universe, usually with a human companion, in a spaceship called the TARDIS that appears as a blue British police box to outside observers. Doctor Who was designed as a show for the whole family that combines action, adventure, space travel, and comedy. It is typically made up of self-contained episodes that can be enjoyed out of context, set in different times and locations, spanning historical events on Earth to the distant future in other galaxies. Many seasons also contain serialized multi-episode story arcs. Frequently exciting, often adventurous, and always alive with humor and heart, Doctor Who is a television long-stay for good reason.

So, who is the Doctor? And what is a “companion”?

The Doctor is a Time Lord, a humanoid alien who can travel through time in a nonlinear fashion. Time Lords tend to live very long lives, often for centuries, and can regenerate into new bodies when they're seriously injured. They can, however, be killed, and so, we meet the Doctor after a massive war with the Dalek when they believe themself to be the only remaining Time Lord. With each regeneration, we meet a slightly different version of the Doctor with a varying balance of eccentricity, curiosity, irritability, and compassion, all of which fit into the larger arc of the Doctor's lifetime. They travel by TARDIS and use a Sonic Screwdriver, a futuristic multipurpose tool, to solve a wide variety of problems. The Doctor takes a special interest in Earth and humanity. That leads us to the role of the companion, which I must admit was also my biggest source of confusion when I first started Doctor Who . The Doctor's companions are usually (although not always) human, and often (although not always) young women. I quickly noticed a certain romantic tension between the Doctor and their companions, one that usually came with inner turmoil for the Doctor. Are companions meant to be love interests for the Doctor? Not really. In fact, in the 1963 to 1989 run of the series, writers prohibited romantic storylines between the Doctor and their companions, shooting instead for a more parental relationship. From a storytelling perspective, companions are a stand-in for the audience, characters who are as amazed and surprised as the folks watching at home. They also add a certain element of danger and risk, becoming someone the Doctor frequently has to save. So, what purpose does a companion serve for the Doctor? In most cases, they fall somewhere between "friend" and "assistant," providing color commentary and occasionally proving helpful in their own right, as they are teachers, scientists, journalists, and more. Mostly, the role of the companion is to entertain the Doctor and serve as a kind of moral compass, reminding the Doctor of humanity's complexity and why the universe is worth saving.

Where is the Doctor from?

The Doctor was born on the planet Gallifrey, the home of the Time Lords, 250 million light-years from Earth. The Time Wars, conflicts between the Time Lords and the Daleks, led to widespread violence on Gallifrey. We learn throughout the series that the Doctor stole a TARDIS to escape the war and believed at the time of his departure that Gallifrey was destroyed and all other Time Lords killed. The Doctor is typically presented as the last of his race, without a home planet, set adrift in space and time.

What is the TARDIS?

TARDIS is an acronym for "Time And Relative Dimension In Space." The TARDIS is a spaceship and time travel device used by the Doctor for their travels. While TARDISes typically have a means of disguise that makes them appear like nearby objects wherever they land, the Doctor's TARDIS is permanently stuck with an exterior that looks like a blue British police box. The TARDIS is famously "bigger on the inside," as it appears relatively small from the outside but has a vastly larger interior with a massive navigation console and multiple rooms. It travels by materializing and dematerializing into time vortexes.

What is a regeneration?

When suffering severe bodily harm, the Doctor can regenerate into a new, unharmed body with a different appearance and personality. This process was first invented for the show when William Hartnell, the original actor to play the Doctor, experienced health problems after three seasons and needed to step down. It's a helpful tool for casting, but regeneration is also effectively used as a narrative tool in the Doctor's journey. The Doctor has little to no control over when they regenerate, or their new appearance, and regeneration usually includes some physiological and psychological unsteadiness. (Oh, and fun fact—the portrayal of the regeneration process was originally modeled after a bad LSD trip!)

When did Doctor Who first premiere? What is the history of the show?

Doctor Who first premiered on the BBC on November 23, 1963. Notably, its debut was the day after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The broadcast was delayed by eighty seconds, and the first episode was played again a week later before the second episode aired for those who missed it due to the breaking international news. The series ran most consistently between 1963 and 1989, with seven different actors playing the role of the Doctor, before viewership declined following a change in writers, performers, and airtime. In 2005, Doctor Who was rebooted after a 16-year hiatus. This newer version of the series continues today with Ncuti Gatwa playing the 15th regeneration of the Doctor. Doctor Who is the longest-running sci-fi show on television and has the highest viewership numbers, with syndication across the globe. It has been adapted into films, spin-off series, books, stage plays, radio shows, video games, and more.

What actors have played the Doctor in Doctor Who ?

14 different actors have played the lead character of the Doctor across the series' long history. They include:

William Hartnell (1963-1966)

Patrick Troughton (1966-1969)

Jon Pertwee (1970-1974)

Tom Baker (1974-1981)

Peter Davison (1982-1984)

Colin Baker (1984-1986)

Sylvester McCoy (1987-1989)

Paul McGann (1996)

Christopher Eccleston (2005)

David Tennant (2005-2010, 2023)

Matt Smith (2010-2013)

Peter Capaldi (2014-2017)

Jodie Whittaker (2018-2022)

Ncuti Gatwa (2023-present)

Other actors have played different regenerations of the Doctor in various episodes and specials. Tom Baker played the Doctor for the longest stretch of the show, appearing in 172 episodes, and Paul McGann played the Doctor the least, appearing in only one 1996 TV movie and one special episode in 2013. Jodie Whittaker became the first woman to play the role of the Doctor in 2018, and Ncuti Gatwa became the first Black actor to play the Doctor in 2023.

Who are the Doctor’s most memorable villains?

The Doctor faces many unique villains across the series. Some of their most memorable foes return in different plots across the series.

The Daleks are the Doctor's greatest enemy, as they destroyed the Doctor's home planet and sought to eliminate all Time Lords. They are cyborg aliens housed in metal cone-shaped armor with a domed top featuring one mechanical eye, one plunger-esque arm, and one whisk-esque arm/weapon. The Dalek are violent, unfeeling, and genocidal, frequently focused on ending various alien races. The writers of the original 1960s series modeled the Daleks after the Nazi regime.

Cybermen are another frequent foe of the Doctor. Similarly to Daleks, Cybermen are cold, violent cyborgs. They are humans or humanoids that have been forcefully converted into cybermen in steel robotic bodies, retaining little of their natural body and personality. Cybermen travel through space to take hostages and convert them to their ranks.

The Master is a recurring villain character that has appeared in the series from 1971 through the present. Also a Time Lord, the Master was the Doctor's childhood friend, but as the Doctor chose to fight evil and protect the universe, the Master sought to control the universe. Like the Doctor, the Master is capable of regeneration and has been played by nine different actors over the course of the series. Their personal history—and the fact that they are two of the only living Time Lords—makes for a complicated relationship between the Doctor and the Master.

Weeping Angels are some of the most iconic villains across the Doctor Who series. Initially appearing as angelic stone statues, Weeping Angels are an alien species that move quickly and silently closer to their prey whenever they aren't being actively watched, even in the time it takes to blink. The closer they get, the more demonic their form becomes, with sharp teeth and pointy claws. Weeping Angels are frequently ranked among the scariest villains on Doctor Who , as well as across all TV series.

Who are the Doctor’s most memorable companions?

While there have been many iterations of the Doctor, there have been even more companions, with more than 60 different actors playing companion roles in the Doctor Who television series. Here are some of the most memorable companions:

Sarah Jane Smith (played by Elisabeth Sladen) is one of the most popular and prolific companions. She co-starred in 80 episodes, primarily with Doctors three and four from 1973 to 1976. She also appeared in multiple specials and the 2005 reboot of the show. Sarah Jane is an investigative journalist who meets the Doctor while working on a story about a secretive research facility.

Amy Pond (played by Karen Gillan) and Rory Williams (played by Arthur Darvill) are one of several couples to serve as companions, featured alongside the eleventh Doctor from 2010 to 2012. The Doctor crashes into Amy's front yard when she's only seven years old and returns again twelve years later. Rory, Amy's fiancé, expresses concerns that Amy is in love with the Doctor, but Rory is ultimately invited to travel aboard the TARDIS with them. Together, they have a child, who (no spoilers here!) also winds up being a fan-favorite character.

Donna Noble (played by Catherine Tate) brings some of the best comic relief to the series in her travels alongside the 10th and 14th Doctors, primarily from 2008 to 2010. First appearing as a bride who unexpectedly appears aboard the TARDIS, temp office worker Donna is initially angry to be interrupted, but quickly finds the Doctor's intergalactic travels far more interesting than her normal life.

Martha Jones (played by Freema Agyeman), a medical student and the series' first Black companion, is one of the more powerful and impactful characters to ride the TARDIS and save the universe. Martha is smart, capable, and craves adventure in her travels with the 10th Doctor from 2007 to 2008. She also appears in the spin-off series Torchwood .

New listens for Doctor Who fans

Looking for more ways to dive into the Whoniverse? Check out these fresh and forthcoming audiobooks.

If you think the Doctor has seen some things, imagine what the TARDIS has been through. In this action-packed, perspective-shifting audiobook, we'll hear the TARDIS's side of the story, from her escape from Gallifrey with the first Doctor through today's adventures with the 15th Doctor. It's narrated by Lizzie Hopley, who has been a writer, actor, and voice actor on various Doctor Who episodes and spin-offs.

This thrilling installment finds the Doctor and his companion Ruby in the middle of an ancient rivalry between the worlds Yewa and Bia. The beautiful Gardens of Kubuntu in Yewa may seem perfectly peaceful, but something sinister is lurking in the shadows, stoking a potential war. Can the Doctor and Ruby find answers in the planet's hidden history?

This collection combines four of the highest-stakes novelizations of Doctor Who episodes, including stories from the first, fourth, 10th, and 11th Doctors. Join the Doctor as they seek to save planets from total destruction before it's too late. With stories narrated by Maureen O'Brien, Peter Purves, John Leeson, and Nicholas Briggs, all acclaimed actors who have played roles on Doctor Who , it's a nostalgic audiobook into the Doctor's past adventures.

Susie Dumond is the author of Queerly Beloved and Looking for a Sign . She is a Senior Contributor at Book Riot and a bookseller at Loyalty Bookstore in Washington, D.C.

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