space travel sci fi

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Ftl: the 10 best versions of space travel in sci-fi movies & shows, ranked.

Science-fiction films and television series often mess around with the concept of FTL space travel, and these ten franchises clearly did it best.

As avid viewers of science-fiction films and television series, the fictional practice of space travel fascinates us. Seeing how different sci-fi universes handle faster-than-light travel is endlessly entertaining.

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What is so great about this particular aspect of sci-fi is how different franchises will handle it. They'll call FTL travel by different names, use varying pieces of technology to utilize it, and be totally unique in how they make it appear. For today, we're going to go over the best sci-fi methods of FTL travel. Read on if you want to find out which movies and series handled it the best.

Gravity Drive/Artificial Black Hole - Event Horizon

Younger viewers might not recall the film  Event Horizon . It was a thrilling sci-fi romp that involved demonic horrors leaking onto a ship thanks to some FTL travel gone wrong. The ship is using an experimental gravity drive meant to reduce the time it takes to travel through space by creating an artificial black hole for portal purposes. Unfortunately for the crew of the ship, this little hole in space-time leads directly to hell. And we mean that quite literally. This mode of FTL travel gets bonus points for being directly involved in the film's plot complications.

Boom Tube/Mother Box - Justice League

Call it what you will, this device is just one of those insane FTL inventions made to masquerade as teleportation. A Boom Tube is used to create openings across space and time that people, vehicles, and armies can use to traverse great distances.

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And by great distances, we mean the space between universes. DC Comics struck gold with this idea because how else were the denizens of Apokolips and New Genesis supposed to terrorize Earth? Boom Tube technology featured heavily in the DC film  Justice League , and if the film gets a sequel, you can bet it will involve more Mother Boxes.

FTL Jumps - Battlestar Galactica

Though  Battlestar Galactica didn't have a snazzy name for their faster-than-light travel (they just called them "FTL jumps," really), this mode of transportation boosted itself up on this list thanks to the random chance it uses. For those of you who haven't seen the hit sci-fi show, just know that luck has more to do with "jumps" than coordinates. And for those of you who have seen the show, we will never listen to the song "All Along the Watchtower" in the same way ever again.

Shock - Dead Space

Granted,  Dead Space started as a video game, but it has an animated film, too, so we thought we'd include it here anyways. Plus, its FTL travel is delightfully named. In  Dead Space , space ships travel using ShockPoint drives. This means that when a ship is about to travel faster than the speed of light, crew members will frequently say, "We're about to shock out."

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That's a colloquial way of stating that the ship is about to enter ShockSpace, which functions as a sort of space that  isn't space. It's like a bubble in space and time. For the simple pleasure of saying "shock out," we had to include  Dead Space's method of FTL travel on this list.

Jumps - Guardians Of The Galaxy

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has its own method of FTL travel, but we wouldn't have included it if it hadn't been for the insane scene in  Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 . Yondu, Rocket, Kraglin, and Groot make 700 "jumps" through space-time in order to reach the rest of the team on Ego's planet in time. That many jumps takes a hilarious toll on their bodies, distorting them in funny, bubbly ways. It might be a spot of juvenile humor, but hey, if FTL travel can make you laugh, we count that as a win.

Slipspace - Halo

Like with  Dead Space ,  Halo is primarily a video game, but since it has some live-action features and specials within its franchise, we thought we'd sneak it on here anyway.  Halo's method of FTL travel is called Slipspace.

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Using Shaw-Fujikawa Drives (a fictional drive named after a fictional person in the  Halo universe), space ships will enter Slipspace at one point, and then exit it after having traveled vast distances. Random jumps into Slipspace can be made, but watch out. You could find yourself next to a Halo ring if you try it.

Black Holes - Interstellar

Black holes are terrifying things when you stop to think about it, but in Christopher Nolan's mind-bending film  Interstellar , human astronauts use them to travel faster than the speed of light. Though the movie's black-hole travel is not named anything fancy, it earned a high spot on this list thanks to its unconventional depiction in the film. Plus, the amount of thought that goes into comprehending the differences in time for those in the black hole and those left on Earth is gargantuan. In fact, it's an integral part of the film.

Lightspeed/Hyperspace - Star Wars

No one who thinks of FTL travel in film can help but remember the streaks of stars whizzing past the Millennium Falcon as it made the jump to hyperspace. It is perhaps the most iconic form of FTL travel, especially in terms of visuals. Plus, the colloquial term "lightspeed" just sounds perfect for describing the mode of transportation. No other film has made FTL travel sound so cool and catchy as  Star Wars . Instead of the gut-wrenching terror you would feel if you actually hurtled through space at the speed of light, all you feel is a thrill of excitement.

Warp - Star Trek

While it might attract the ire of  Star Wars fans everywhere,  Star Trek's warp speed had to be higher on the list at the very least because it was made years before the first  Star Wars film. Any Trekkie worth their salt knows the importance of the warp engine to travel on the final frontier. You can't go where no man's gone before traveling on impulse engines alone, right? If you want to have a truly interstellar voyage, you've got to go warp.

Infinite Improbability - The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy

The zaniest, unlikeliest, and, therefore, best mode of FTL travel has to go to  The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy's Infinite Improbability Drive. This strange device of propulsion was made to travel to  every single point in the universe before depositing the lucky ship it was housed in exactly where it wanted to go. This happens in the mere nothing of less than a second. Not much is known as to  how it does this, but, suffice it to say, improbabilities have a lot to do with it. And when it comes to ranking FTL travel in a science-fiction world, the acknowledgement of how improbable the whole venture is makes Infinite Improbability the coolest means of transportation.

NEXT: Top 10 Cutest Sci-Fi Creatures, Ranked

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The 18 Best Sci-Fi TV Shows Set In Space, Ranked

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Space is a scary place, as we’ve seen in countless movies and TV shows — but the thrills that come with these stories prove that while the dangers of venturing off this planet are many, there are still thrills a’plenty in the great unknown, and adventures beyond our potential comprehension.

Timed to the Season 3 premiere of Syfy’s “The Expanse” and the launch of the Netflix’s “Lost in Space” reboot, here’s a look back at all the great sci-fi television we’ve seen set in the cosmos, a rich tradition of storytelling that’s captured our imagination for decades. (For the record, while “Lost in Space” Season 1 was a bit too grounded on one planet for consideration here, it may make the cut in future seasons.)

Debating what counts as a “space show” is tricky, though one easy rule was that the show has to center around a spaceship or space station of some sort (sorry, stargates don’t count). Some of these selections below didn’t last all that long — several Season 1s weren’t followed by Season 2s — as television, much like space itself, can be an unforgiving environment. But that doesn’t mean they didn’t shine brightly when they had the chance.

18. “Defying Gravity”

In retrospect, it’s kind of hard to believe “Defying Gravity” was actually ever a real show made for broadcast television — one starring Ron Livingston, even! It’s not just that the ABC drama about a team of astronauts embarking on an epic tour of the solar system was tonally much closer to “Grey’s Anatomy” (romantic entanglements and all) than “The Right Stuff.”

But what did air was fascinating, as it gave real effort to ground the storytelling in ways that made the scenario seem legitimately plausible. Well, that is, until the glowy space rocks showed up, all part of a series of twists creator James Parriott explained after the show’s cancellation would have led to some of the most bonkers TV ever. “Defying Gravity” was one weird show, and we would have liked to see more of it.

17. “Final Space”

It’s still early days yet for the TBS animated series created by Olan Rogers and David Sacks, but so far the first season has proven itself to be far more than the comedy we might have expected based on early trailers, with some epic-scale space-set sequences. Plus, the stellar voice cast includes Fred Armisen, Tom Kenny, Tika Sumpter, Steven Yeun, Gina Torres, Keith David, David Tennant, and also… Mooncake.

Mooncake is the best — adorable and yet highly lethal. He adds a level of cute darkness to the adventures of Gary (voiced by Rogers), a one-time prisoner who gets drawn into an intergalactic conflict over Mooncake’s fate — even though Mooncake is more than capable of taking care of himself.

16. “Space: Above and Beyond”

Glen Morgan and James Wong left “The X-Files” in 1995 for this one-season adventure, which tracked a team of young fighter pilots who get enlisted in the war to save humanity from alien invaders. There were plenty of interesting sci-fi touches to the action, including the introduction of clone soldiers that brought up some deep questions about the nature of humanity. But more importantly, there were kick-ass space battles (especially given the level of technology available in 1995 for such things). More a war show than an exploration show, “Space: Above and Beyond” still showcased the thrill that comes with breaking out of our atmosphere.

15. “Virtuality”

“Virtuality” had a lot of early buzz associated with it in 2009, as it represented “ Battlestar Galactica ” creator Ronald D. Moore returning to sci-fi television for a pilot directed (brilliantly!) by Peter Berg. Plus, check out this stacked cast: Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (“Game of Thrones”), Kerry Bishé (“Halt and Catch Fire”), Joy Bryant (“Parenthood”), Jose Pablo Cantillo (“The Walking Dead”), Ritchie Coster (“Happy!”), James D’Arcy (“Cloud Atlas,” “Agent Carter”), Clea DuVall (“Veep”), Omar Metwally (“The Affair”) and Jimmi Simpson (“Westworld”). The premise was also an exciting one, albeit somewhat similar to “Defying Gravity” (which coincidentally came out the same year) — an ensemble cast heads out on a dangerous deep space mission, one that’s being documented live in part as a reality show being broadcast back to Earth.

However, “Virtuality” was less about weird glowy space rocks and more about two big ideas: Our home planet is currently besieged by environmental crises that threaten the end of mankind, making the crew’s mission all the more important. And also, the crew’s primary form of entertainment — a virtual reality system that lets them live out all manner of fantasies — is malfunctioning in a major way. There were a ton of big ideas here, but while the show never went anywhere beyond a one-time airing on Fox in the summer of 2009, you can still find the full-length pilot available for sale on DVD.

14. “Red Dwarf”

The rare space show that plays as a comedy, “Red Dwarf” has been a cult favorite for decades, initially premiering in the UK in 1988 and continuing to release new episodes even as recently as 2017. Iconic for both its longevity as well as its relatively bonkers plotting (which involved several major resets over the years, killing off every character at one point and then resurrecting them), the series quickly developed its own wackadoo world view, while also having a great deal of fun playing with sci-fi tropes with pure irreverence. Bopping around space with Lister and his pals might not be the safest of adventures, but they did seem to have a good time.

13. “Black Mirror: USS Callister”

When publicity photos for the Season 4 premiere of Charlie Brooker’s Netflix anthology series began to circulate, they led to a lot of questions — most especially why the show, normally based in a world that looks a lot like ours, was doing a “ Star Trek ” homage. The answer not only proved to be one of the show’s most intriguing twists to date, as we discover that the world of “Space Fleet” has been recreated by bullied-turned-bully Robert (Jesse Plemons), and he’s using his virtual world to torture those he feels have wronged them. While “USS Callister” is in many ways a postmodern riff on “Trek,” it also manages to build up to an exciting climax that J.J. Abrams himself would be proud to direct.

12. “Star Trek: The Next Generation”

Proving that “Star Trek” wasn’t just the domain of Kirk and Spock, the 1987-1994 series featured some pretty epic moments. While not as dark or complex narratively as subsequent “Trek” installments, “Next Generation” did manage to wow us both narratively and visually — whether facing off against the Borg, the Klingons, the Romulans, or beyond. Life wasn’t all that tough on board the Enterprise (compared to other ships, the place was basically a Lexus) but it didn’t skimp on the action when the time came for it.

11. “Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2003)”

The 2003 animated series technically no longer exists in “Star Wars” canon, but while later shows like the 2008 “Clone Wars” and “Star Wars: Rebels” represented quality efforts to extend the universe to new worlds, artistically neither reach the same levels as this. In hiring “Samurai Jack” creator Genndy Tartakovsky to tell his version of the events between “Attack of the Clones” and “Revenge of the Sith,” Lucasfilm ended up with a truly groundbreaking series that was rich with striking visuals and exciting action; as Tartakovsky recently discussed with Uproxx , his work might continue to have a strong influence on the franchise.

10. “Babylon 5”

Created by J. Michael Straczynski (who would later collaborate with the Wachowskis for the Netflix series “Sense8”), this five-season adventure took some very odd twists and turns, with epic interplanetary struggle getting showcased alongside some groundbreaking CGI effects. While the battles were good, it was the political aspect of the show that was the most intriguing, as the premise focused on a space station created to serve as a neutral ground for peaceful deliberations between alien species — whose battles often took on a Shakespearean feel. But there were also religious overtones introduced, warring telepaths, a Earth government which becomes increasingly totalitarian in scope, and some badass standoffs. “Babylon 5” had great ambition that has kept it memorable for sci-fi fans. (Never forget Ivanova’s take on the Babylon 5 Mantra. )

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10 great films about space travel

To infinity and beyond... Celebrate 60 years of human spaceflight with our countdown of awe-inspiring space movies.

By  Brogan Morris

Since its earliest days, cinema has been fascinated by the idea of space travel. Some 67 years before Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, Georges Méliès took audiences there with 1902’s Le Voyage dans la lune. Considered cinema’s first sci-fi, Méliès’ film sees explorers crash into Earth’s closest neighbour in a rocket shot out of a cannon, and then proceed to do battle with the insectoid inhabitants.

Today, with the benefit of another century-plus of scientific understanding, the space film looks very different. Space travel in the movies is constantly evolving. In the space race era, space movies looked forward to a utopian future. In the 70s, a murkier vision reflective of growing real-world social and political distress took hold. And then, post-Star Wars, a more fantastical and action-packed take on life in space became the norm.

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In the last decade, cinema’s view of space travel has shifted again. While the Guardians of the Galaxy movies and reboots of the Star Trek and Star Wars franchises have emphasised the adventure, many others, including Gravity (2013) and The Martian (2015), have addressed the potential perils of space travel becoming more commonplace in an age of renewed exploration. Meanwhile, an increasing number of films, among them Interstellar (2014) and this year’s upcoming Voyagers, are asking whether, if humankind exhausts the Earth, we might find a new home on a planet B.

The same basic curiosity, however, endures from the days of Méliès: what are we going to find out there among the stars? And how might the answers change the way we see the world – or ourselves?

Ikarie  XB -1 (1963)

Director: Jindrich Polák

Made in a period when a limitless future was typically imagined for extraterrestrial travel, one in which food would be magically plentiful and no star system would be too distant, Ikarie XB -1 injected some scientific and psychological realism into the space film. Adapted from Stanislaw Lem’s novel The Magellanic Cloud, Czech director Jindrich Polák’s film finds a crew travelling at light speed to a potentially life-harbouring white planet orbiting Alpha Centauri.

Although resources and leisure time are ample aboard the Ikarie, the journey is not without consequence. The trip will seem like 28 months to the crew, but the nature of relativity means their loved ones will be 15 years older when they return to Earth. Meanwhile, cabin fever (and a heavy dose of space radiation) brings some crew members to the edge of sanity. Ikarie XB -1 was a clear influence on 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), with Stanley Kubrick calling it “a half step up from your average science fiction film” – which amounts to a ringing endorsement from the perfectionist filmmaker.

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Director: Stanley Kubrick

A film that showed what was possible in sci-fi cinema, Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 continues to be a touchstone for any picture that deals in space exploration. The story was a result of almost two years of intensive discussions between Kubrick and his co-writer, sci-fi novelist Arthur C. Clarke, and it took even longer to execute, with the director beginning filming in December 1965 and only finalising the film’s effects in March 1968.

Whether it’s a commercial flight to the moon or a classified long-range mission to Jupiter, 2001 luxuriates in its space sequences, majestic ballets of sound and movement set to classical music. Stanley Kubrick might famously never have won a best director Oscar, but he did take home one Academy Award, for 2001’s visual effects – and rightfully so. More than half a century on, the film’s depiction of space travel – realised practically through a combination of model work, huge sets and precise photographic projection – remains flawless.

Silent Running (1972)

Director: Douglas Trumbull

Some time in the future, Earth has become a climate-controlled utopia, free of disease and poverty. But it’s one which apparently has so little use left for nature that its last forests are now kept in geodesic domes orbiting Saturn. On the ship Valley Forge, botanist Freeman Lowell (Bruce Dern) obsessively tends to three of these vast gardens when the order comes in to destroy them – an order Lowell disobeys by murdering the rest of the crew and piloting the ship out into deep space.

There’s a hangover of 1960s idealism to Silent Running. 2001 effects supervisor Douglas Trumbull’s directorial debut includes flower-power interludes featuring music by Joan Baez, while a multicoloured trip through Saturn’s rings has shades of an acid experience. The overriding tone, though, is one of new 1970s pessimism. Ultimately, Lowell‘s environmentalist dream sours, the peace he initially finds out in the cosmos soon giving way to loneliness and guilt over his killing for a fruitless ‘greater good’.

Star Wars (1977)

Director: George Lucas

Although sci-fi cinema generally went in a more mature direction in the 1970s, George Lucas’s empire-building third feature took a refreshingly opposite approach. Opening on an epic battle among the stars and climaxing with an even bigger one, Star Wars would present a universe where man (and Wookiee) has mastered space travel, with a quick leap from one habitable planet to the next possible at the mere push of a button.

Taking inspiration from pre-space race pulp sci-fi comics and film serials, Star Wars pays no mind to real physical or existential concerns about space travel. “Star Wars is a fantasy, much closer to the Brothers Grimm than it is to 2001…The word for this movie is fun,” said Lucas at the time. Still, not even this proto-blockbuster could totally escape the influence of the 70s, with its beat-up freighters and junky ship interiors suggesting a more hardscrabble life in space than Flash Gordon ever knew.

Alien (1979)

Director: Ridley Scott

By the time Ridley Scott made this landmark sci-fi horror, space travel had become so routine in the movies it seemed almost anyone could do it. In Alien, the astronauts are blue-collar types complaining about bonuses and food. Their latest job is towing 20 million tonnes of mineral ore back to Earth. It’s only the threat of suspension of wages that convinces the crew of the Nostromo to make their fateful detour to a nearby ‘primordial’ moon, from which they unwittingly bring back to the ship the universe’s deadliest apex predator.

From there, Scott’s film becomes a spacebound haunted house picture, as H.R. Giger’s nightmarish xenomorph eliminates the crew one by one. Alien would be followed by a number of sequels, prequels and regrettable franchise crossovers, with all but one of them set primarily on terra firma. What makes the original so uniquely frightening is how impossible escape seems for its protagonists: what awaits the crew beyond the confines of the ship is no less hostile to them than their ravenous intruder.

Apollo 13 (1995)

Director: Ron Howard

Released in a fallow period for the space movie, Apollo 13 is itself about a period in which, post-Neil Armstrong, space travel had suddenly become passé to a world preoccupied with problems on the ground. In Ron Howard’s telling of 1970’s doomed Apollo 13 adventure, it isn’t until astronauts Jim Lovell (Tom Hanks), Fred Haise (Bill Paxton) and Jack Swigert (Kevin Bacon) find themselves in mortal danger on their way home from an aborted moon landing that the TV networks even start giving the mission any airtime.

Made just years before CGI would become de rigueur for the space movie, Apollo 13 is an impressively practical spectacle. Bolstered by digital effects, the film makes extensive use of spacecraft miniatures and replica sets. Most impressively, to achieve scenes of weightlessness, Howard shot aboard the so-called ‘Vomit Comet’, a modified NASA training aircraft that – for 20 seconds at a time – would place the actors in a simulated zero-G environment.

Sunshine (2007)

Director: Danny Boyle

To save Earth from the chill of a solar winter, a crack team of scientists are despatched to the heart of our solar system on a flying bomb named Icarus II (the first Icarus having become lost after it flew literally too close to the sun). Their mission: to nuke our dying star back to life. Sunshine may have the absurd premise of a Michael Bay movie, but it also has the combined scientific and philosophical imagination of screenwriter Alex Garland and science advisor Brian Cox.

What happens when a crew of diverse credos and fallibilities embarks on a long-distance space voyage? A clash of passion and pragmatism leads to regular fights between sensitive physicist Capa (Cillian Murphy) and surly engineer Mace (Chris Evans). A miscalculation by navigator Trey (Benedict Wong) destroys biologist Corazon’s (Michelle Yeoh) precious oxygen garden, leaving him suicidal and her bereft. Faced with the desolate blackness of endless space, some crew members fall under the spell of the blazing sun. But where one sees a merciless, overwhelming celestial body, another finds God.

First Man (2018)

Director: Damien Chazelle

Following Neil Armstrong (Ryan Gosling) from his days as a test pilot through NASA training to his historic walk on the moon, First Man is a twofer: a dramatisation of the space race from the American side as well as a revisionist biopic of a mythical figure. Here the Apollo astronauts are portrayed as everyday suburban joes – husbands and fathers whose unique attributes allowed them to do remarkable things in their time, with Armstrong the most ordinary of the bunch.

Similarly deglamorised are the recreations of historic NASA space flights, which situate the viewer inside the cockpit from Armstrong’s point-of-view and depict early spacecraft as shockingly primitive, all creaking metal and analogue tech. The docu-style brings verisimilitude, but Justin Hurwitz’s ghostly score and some fluid space scenes see there’s also a musical grace to La La Land filmmaker Damien Chazelle’s fourth feature. It’s a poetic film about unpoetic men.

Aniara (2018)

Directors: Pella Kagerman and Hugo Lilja

Released the same year as Claire Denis’ unsettling space oddity High Life, Aniara is that film’s somehow even more despairing cousin. Adapted from Harry Martinson’s epic poem, Pella Kagerman and Hugo Lilja’s film traps the viewer inside a luxurious civilian transport meant for Mars but which – following an accident – is left cruising through space, rudderless and without any way to turn around.

In time, the micro-society on board the Aniara disintegrates, High-Rise-style, with passengers first embracing hedonism and cultish new religions. Then, as resources and hope of salvation both dwindle, they succumb to despair. This is one of a number of sci-fi films this century to depict mass space transportation gone horribly awry, but where Aniara differs from the likes of Pandorum (2009) or Alien: Covenant (2017) is that its horror is entirely existential. So many films about space travel end with characters triumphing over harsh odds and ultimately finding meaning in the void. Not this one.

Ad Astra (2019)

Director: James Gray

Ad Astra is a sci-fi Heart of Darkness that is, in essence, another contemplative drama about one of director James Gray’s trademark troubled men. In this case, the customary angst and father issues go to an astronaut in the shape of a never-more-fragile Brad Pitt. On a mission from US Space Command, Pitt’s Major Roy McBride planet-hops through a solar system in the early stages of colonisation to track down daddy Tommy Lee Jones, a brilliant scientist last heard from 16 years prior, circling Neptune.

Gray’s lonely, cynical vision of late 21st-century space as a commercialised wild west makes for a spectacular backdrop to a tale of familial discord. In this future, you’ll find a branch of Subway on the moon and audiovisual displays made to simulate the wonder of Earth inside Mars’ underground bunkers. You’ll also find warring tribes figuring out new ways to kill each other in a low-gravity environment. On Earth or in space, in Ad Astra humans continue to be stubbornly human.

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The 30 best space movies

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

From the time the movies were invented, filmmakers have been dreaming of outer space. Mankind hadn’t even figured out how to get off the ground yet when Georges Méliès imagined voyaging to the moon, and in the century-plus since, many other directors have taken audiences on trips far deeper into the cosmos. To infinity and beyond, you might say.

It’s no wonder, really. The concept of space is vast enough to allow for the exploration of all sorts of big ideas. What is mankind’s place in the universe? What lies outside our tiny little rock – and do we really want to know what’s out there? For that reason, the ‘space movie’ exists as its own genre beneath the wider umbrella of science fiction. And so, we’ve decided to rank them. Here are our picks for the 30 best movies about that big, overwhelming, sometimes frightening, sometimes beautiful void above our heads.

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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

Derided for its relentless sadism upon release, Paul ‘Not PT’ Anderson’s trippy space saga has had an overdue reassessment and is emerging from the wormhole as a certified cult film. Part ‘ The Shining in space’, part ‘ Interstellar in hell’, Event Horizon ’s tale of misbegotten astronauts transported straight into the seventh circle isn’t for the squeamish. But for those who can stomach the viscera, it’s a wild ride through the gore-spattered corridors of an extremely haunted space station. Never has the cold vacuum of space seemed more welcoming than the supposed sanctuary of an airlock. 

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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An unofficial list of the most influential science fiction works ever

On a Monday evening last September, a NASA spacecraft intentionally blasted into an asteroid in deep space. The goal was planetary defense — protecting our planet from the kind of wayward rock that could end civilization as we know it. The unprecedented moment seemed surreal, with a camera from the craft sending footage back to Earth of a large asteroid getting bigger and bigger until — pow! — impact. It was both incredible and credible — equal parts jaw-dropping and successful in its proof of concept.

Who could have imagined such a thing?

Well, science fiction writers did.

“Crashing big things into celestial objects goes all the way back to the 1930s stories of Edmond ‘World Wrecker’ Hamilton,” Lisa Yaszek, regents professor of science fiction studies at Georgia Tech, wrote in a text message. “In ‘Thundering Worlds,’ we throw Mercury at an invading alien army to save the rest of the solar system.”

Space exploration is in a renaissance , as the private space industry takes on a growing presence in the United States, and as the space agencies of several countries have joined NASA in setting their sights on the moon and other deep-space goals. But like stars that sent their light long before Earth could see it, science fiction creators helped inspire this wave of interest decades ago.

“We may envision the outcome we want to achieve through the imagination and inspiration of our team members, or we may be inspired by concepts found in the art,” said NASA’s Barbara Brown, director of exploration research and technology programs. “And then science, engineering and math drive the rest.”

Space moguls like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson and Paul Allen have credited their interest in the final frontier to several written and filmed works. And that doesn’t include the NASA visionaries who love sci-fi.

The New Space Age

“I’ve got a wall of autographs from Star Wars actors and actresses, and this year I got an autograph from William Shatner,” said Tracy Gill, deputy manager for lander ground operations in NASA’s Human Landing System Program. “I go to Comic-Con. I’m down in deep.”

Mark Wiese, manager for NASA’s Deep Space Logistics project, grew up with “The Jetsons” and now spends his mornings watching “The Expanse” while working out on his rowing machine.

“Beyond creating a climate where innovative thinking is acceptable,” said Chris McKitterick, who directs the Ad Astra Center for Science Fiction and the Speculative Imagination at the University of Kansas, “science fiction has influenced countless scientists, engineers and technologists to make real the things depicted in science fiction narratives.”

Based on a canvassing of experts ranging from the Kennedy Space Center to academia, here is a brief tour of the sci-fi works that were most influential in helping to pave a real-life path to the stars:

‘Star Trek’

It’s hard to imagine space — or even the future itself — without thinking of “Star Trek.” The original 1960s series inspired early designs for everything from desktop computers to cellphones to Zoom. Bezos even fashioned Amazon’s Alexa based on the shipboard computer of the Starship Enterprise and named one of his holding companies “Zefram LLC” after the “Star Trek” character who invented the warp drive.

Ronald D. Moore, a screenwriter and producer who worked on “ Star Trek: The Next Generation ” beginning in 1988, took a tour of the SpaceX craft and couldn’t help but see the influence of the iconic series. “You get used to certain ideas for what a spaceship looks like, and it’s hard not to be impressed by the things you’ve seen,” said Moore, who is the creator of the Apple space series “For All Mankind.” “There are a lot of ways you can lay out controls, but they had chosen a black and white, high contrast, sleek design that could have been on any Hollywood set in the last 40 years.”

But there are more layers of influence. Moore, who said he watched the original “Star Trek” series five days a week growing up in the 1970s, was moved by the noble optimism of the series. “It was one of the very few scientific shows that says the future is going to turn out okay,” he said. “We are going to solve poverty and racism and disease. I’m inspired by the hope these problems are temporary setbacks.”

Robert Heinlein’s writings

Heinlein was a revolution unto himself. He relied on science and engineering to imagine brave new worlds, he overlaid timeless human traits into a futuristic setting, and he came up with protagonists Yaszek refers to as “creative capitalists,” who leveraged private industry and navigated government oversight to chase space glory. Sound familiar?

Inside the rockets that NASA and SpaceX plan to send to the moon

In “ The Man Who Sold the Moon ,” central character D.D. Harriman “creates a coalition of corporations, governments, and media to create the first viable space company,” Yaszek wrote in an email, “and, not coincidentally, to secure the moon as his own private resource, free of government interference.” Heinlein also contributed to the screenplay of the 1950 film “ Destination Moon ,” which imagined a manned trip to the lunar surface — less than 20 years before the real thing happened.

Heinlein’s attention to not only space travel, but also the cooperation between the public and private sectors, lived on long after him. He devoted a portion of his estate to creating the Heinlein Prize for accomplishments in commercial space — won by Musk and Bezos.

Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series

Asimov’s famous Foundation trilogy , written in the 1940s, centers on a mathematician who figures out a way to stave off the fall of a decaying empire. Part of Asimov’s legacy — and the genre’s legacy — is not just imagining a landscape somewhere out there, but also putting humans in a setting where they can potentially solve future problems. It’s a call to action that spoke to Musk and Bezos. Asimov had so much impact on Musk that he put a copy of the series into a Tesla roadster that was sent into orbit.

Asimov and Heinlein are considered by many to be among the “Big Three” of science fiction writing, along with Sir Arthur C. Clarke, who co-wrote the screenplay for “ 2001: A Space Odyssey ,” which was based on Clarke’s novel.

‘The Martian’

Andy Weir’s tale of an astronaut stranded on Mars, which he first published on his own website, takes a unique place in sci-fi history. “ The Martian ” not only spawned a movie starring Matt Damon, it also boosted interest in NASA and ignited a new wonder about visiting the Red Planet. It was a new twist on an old story: A daring sci-fi plotline nourishes ideas about what we can do in real life. NASA’s Gill said he is asked about the film whenever he visits schools.

“They tried to grow their own food, which is something we’re working on,” Gill said. “It would be considered sci-fi, but it’s really something that we’re going for.”

The connection between science fiction and real-life spaceflight has cut both ways. Moore fondly recalls when he was working on the “ Battlestar Galactica ” series and NASA reached out. One of their astronauts wanted to call … from the space station. He was a fan of the show. “It blew my mind,” Moore said. “He was watching fake space on his laptop while real space is outside his window.” That astronaut, Garrett Reisman, became a key contributor to “ For All Mankind ,” which imagines an alternate space history in which the Soviet Union beats the United States to the moon.

A woman on the moon: Why has one small step taken so long?

As space exploration has found new reverence, so has sci-fi itself. Fighting orbital threats is now a real-life exercise, and eye-rolling has given way to respect. “It’s always been viewed as kid stuff or not taken seriously,” Moore said. “It’s always had a second-class status. Sci-fi and fantasy always get pushed to the margins. I’ve seen in the last 20 years they’ve gotten more acclaim, more critical response.”

They’ve also become more diverse. Voices like those of Mary Robinette Kowal — author of the award-winning alt-history novel “ Calculating Stars ” — and Ted Chiang have grown the sci-fi oeuvre over the past several years. And just as space travel ambitions have spread to other countries, a number of international authors have emerged among science fiction’s elite. For example, Chinese novelist Liu Cixin’s “ The Three-Body Problem ” has sold more than 8 million copies, is being adapted into a Netflix series and drew President Barack Obama’s praise after he read it during his time in the White House. “The scope of it was immense,” Obama said in 2017 .

Indeed, it seems the possibilities for space and sci-fi are now as limitless as ever. As Asimov himself said, “Science fiction writers and readers didn’t put a man on the moon all by themselves, but they created a climate of opinion in which the goal of putting a man on the moon became acceptable.”

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

Let's head to the cosmos.

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.

KEEP READING: Every Comic Book Movie of the 2010s Ranked From Worst to Best

Space Travel

Sci-Fi Books About Space Travel

Steph Auteri

Steph Auteri is a journalist who has written for the Atlantic, the Washington Post, Pacific Standard, VICE, and elsewhere. Her more creative work has appeared in Creative Nonfiction, under the gum tree, Poets & Writers, and other publications, and she is the Essays Editor for Hippocampus Magazine. Her essay, "The Fear That Lives Next to My Heart," published in Southwest Review, was listed as a Notable Essay in Best American Essays 2021. She also writes bookish stuff here and at the Feminist Book Club, is the author of A Dirty Word, and is the founder of Guerrilla Sex Ed. When not working, she enjoys yoga, embroidery, singing, cat snuggling, and staring at the birds in her backyard feeder. You can learn more at stephauteri.com and follow her on Insta/Threads at @stephauteri .

View All posts by Steph Auteri

I don’t know what it is about space travel that just seems like magic.

When I was young, I was a fan of both the original Star Trek series and that first Star Wars trilogy. These works made me daydream about teleportation and Tribbles… about the life that might exist on other planets.

On trips to the Museum of Natural History or the Liberty Science Center, I favored planetarium sessions where I sat in the dark, staring up at the stars, watching planets drift by. Later on, I’d always get astronaut ice cream from the gift shop.

My favorite movie of all time was E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial . I slept with my E.T. doll clutched tight to me every night and, when I was slightly older, read the William Kotzwinkle novel based on the screenplay, followed by its sequel, E.T.: The Book of the Green Planet .

Despite this, sci-fi wasn’t actually my favorite genre. Not by a long shot. But my dad had a few books and franchises he treasured. And so I treasured them, too.

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I’ve only recently come back to sci-fi. Horror is my main jam , and has been for quite some time. And while I’ve been getting into narratives about time travel and the multiverse lately, there’s still nothing like a good, solid space travel book to bring you closer to other worlds. Here are some that I recommend.

The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury

This was the first sci-fi book I ever read, and it was plucked from my father’s bookshelves, tucked away in a basement closet. A collection of loosely-connected short stories that were initially not meant for novel form, taken together, they chronicle a Mars that is explored and eventually colonized by those back on Earth who are living under the threat of nuclear war. I’ve read this book many times over the years and I love that every time I come back to it, I take away something new.

Bitch Planet by Kelly Sue DeConnick and Valentine De Landro

And here we have one of the first comics I ever read, which catapulted me into a full-on comics obsession . This series is a no holds barred sci-fi story from a future in which women who are found to be “noncompliant” are shipped off to a prison planet. Noncompliance takes many forms, from “seduction and disappointment” to “disrespect” to being a “bad mother.” A reclamation of the women in prison exploitation films from the ’60s and ’70s, the storyline centers around a group of inmates who agree to compete in “Megaton,” Earth’s most popular sporting event. But winning the game isn’t necessarily their first priority. Could those imprisoned on Bitch Planet possibly escape this carceral world?

Saga by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples

The Saga series is known for being a gateway comic for people who think they don’t like comics and, in fact, a buddy of mine gave me the first volume around the same time I first read Bitch Planet . This space opera is about two lovers from long-warring extraterrestrial races who are forced to flee the authorities from both sides as they struggle to care for their newborn daughter. In the process, they find themselves seeking shelter on a multitude of planets, but they are sadly unable to ever settle down for very long. This series went on a three-year hiatus following the most upsetting cliffhanger ever and has just recently returned, thank the gods.

The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez

This sci-fi epic spans lifetimes, laying out a sprawling tale you can get lost in. The novel covers everything from space travel and colonization to ambition and regret to the importance of found family. At the heart of this story is a mute child who may carry the power to cross light-years in the blink of an eye, enabling space travel to be completely revolutionized. But at what cost?

Sea of Stars by Jason Aaron, Dennis Hallium, Stephen Green, and Rico Renzi

This one is a recent read for me, and I’m eager to read the next volume. In this first volume, a man and his son are transporting cargo across space when a large creature destroys their vessel and they become separated. As the father fights to find his way back to his son, the young boy revels in the newfound powers he’s suddenly picked up, powers that allow him to swim through space safely, among other things. But when a group of people from another planet become aware of the power he carries, things get dicey. Aside from being a fun story on its own, I really enjoy its humor.

Do You Dream of Terra-Two? by Temi Oh

An astronomer discovers an Earth-like planet orbiting a nearby star and predicts that one day, humans will build a new utopia there. This book chronicles a time in which this prediction comes close to becoming a reality. Ten astronauts — four veterans and six teenagers — spend 23 years on the journey to Terra-Two. And, well, 23 years is a hella long time to be living together in such close quarters. Will their mission be successful?

The Binti trilogy by Nnedi Okorafor

In this trilogy, Binti is accepted into prestigious Oomza University thanks to her skill with math and astrolabes. She sets off on an interstellar journey, filled with both nerves and excitement for what the future may hold. But when her ship is attacked, she ends up as the only survivor. There are still five days until she reaches her destination, and she is stuck on a ship with beings who murdered everyone else. Can she survive her voyage and also save the inhabitants of the planet that houses her university?

Lilith’s Brood by Octavia E. Butler

In this chilling and troubling trilogy, the human survivors of a nuclear war awake to find that they’ve been “rescued” by the Oankali. But what at first seems like salvation becomes something darker when they learn that the Oankali intend to bond with them, crossbreeding to form a hybrid species that are more likely to survive. Over the course of the trilogy, humanity is split between rebellion and resignation.

If this list only makes you hungry for more, I suggest checking out this list of must- read space fantasy books, another list of spacefaring comics and graphic novels , and yet 50 more books set in space .

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32 sci-fi movies that deserve a sequel

From space travel to time travel, these are the sci-fi movies begging to tell more stories

Science fiction is one of the oldest genres in movie history, dating back to Georges Méliès’s 1902 film A Trip to the Moon. But because sci-fi asks so much more from its audience to suspend disbelief, and more out of filmmakers to execute on their visions more precisely, a lot of sci-fi classics go underappreciated and under the radar. Some, however, are deserving of more sequels.

Whether they’re based on comics or cartoons, or completely original ideas from writers and directors, sci-fi tentpoles tend to be the riskiest investments in the modern movie business. While hits like Star Wars, Avatar, and Avengers: Endgame are seismic hits that make billions of dollars around the world, some sci-fi movies have a harder time making any noise before it’s too late.

To mark the genre’s continued relevance and to bring attention to some overlooked gems, here are 32 sci-fi cult classic movies that actually deserve a sequel. 

32. Titan A.E. (2000)

In what is currently the last theatrical feature from legendary animator Don Bluth, the remnants of mankind live among hostile alien species all throughout the galaxy. A young man, voiced by Matt Damon, discovers he holds the key to humanity’s new home. Released during a transitional period when Hollywood animated movies were still mostly drawn by hand, Titan A.E. memorably combined Bluth’s beloved style with sophisticated CGI. Decades later, Titan A.E. remains attractive not only for its unusual artistic style, but because of its original story that felt so much bigger than one movie ought to contain.

31. Godzilla Minus One (2023)

One of the most unexpected hits of 2023, Godzilla Minus One from Takashi Yamazaki is a breathtaking, mesmerizing monster horror epic that re-instilled our fear for kaiju terrors. While not a traditional remake or reboot of the original 1954 movie, Godzilla Minus One takes place in Japan’s turbulent postwar recovery period when Godzilla rises from the seas for the first time. With its touching story about community, family, bravery, and sacrifice, Godzilla Minus One shook audiences when they least expected. While Yamazaki has publicly commented on his own ideas for a sequel, producer Minami Ichikawa told GQ Japan in November 2023 that any sequel will be shepherded at a snail’s pace, believing Toho is in no rush to get another hit out the door.

30. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (2005)

While fans of Douglas Adams’ book series aren’t such big fans of Garth Jenningers’ Hollywood film version, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy maintains a devout following who still appreciate its humor, special effects, and delightful performances from a strong cast. (Martin Freeman stars, alongside Mos Def, Sam Rockwell, Zooey Deschanel, and the late Alan Rickman in a voiceover capacity.) The movie tells of a man from Earth, living in the UK, whose house is being demolished for a highway, only to find that all of Earth is slated for demolition for a space highway. While the complete Hitchhiker’s franchise consists of several different books, the 2005 version simply didn’t make enough bank to warrant sequels based on them. That’s a shame, because it sure would be a treat to finally visit The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.

29. Flash Gordon (1980)

The sci-fi comic and movie serial that inspired George Lucas to create Star Wars got a more authentic blockbuster film adaptation in 1980. From director Mike Hodges came Flash Gordon, with Sam J. Jones in the title role, that of a football star who becomes Earth’s hero against the terrifying Ming the Merciless (Max von Sydow). Although the movie earned solid reviews and a strong box office showing, Jones reportedly did not get along with producer Dino De Laurentiis. Their disagreements prohibited a sequel from going forward. A shame, considering just how expansive Flash Gordon’s adventures are that are begging to be enjoyed by a wider audience. Since 2014, there have been attempts at a reboot, including an animated movie from Taika Waititi that was canceled in 2019. 

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28. Upgrade (2018)

Leigh Whannell’s sci-fi thriller Upgrade is basically, “What if Venom was a thousand percent darker and more violent?” Logan Marshall-Green stars as a paralyzed widower who is implanted with a cutting-edge computer chip. The chip not only allows him to walk again, but infects him with a super intelligent A.I. alter ego with its own motivations. Viciously violent and tonally bleak, Upgrade isn’t necessarily franchise friendly. But it’s just too good to not want more of Leigh Whannell and Logan Marshall-Green together raising more hell.

27. The Black Hole (1979)

Emerging during Disney ’s flop era, The Black Hole is an original science fiction movie about space explorers who find a lost spaceship floating dangerously close to a black hole. At the time the most expensive live-action movie from Disney and the first to be rated PG, The Black Hole did not win favorable reviews - the late Roger Ebert panned it as “[taking] us all the way to the rim of space only to bog us down in a talky melodrama” - but remains infamous for showing Disney’s willingness to experiment during a prolonged drought. The Black Hole may not be begging for a spot in the Disney parks, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t try again.

26. Jumper (2008)

After the dust settled on the Star Wars prequels, Hayden Christensen appeared in Jumper, based on the 1992 novel and directed by Doug Liman. An original superhero movie concept that hit before the critical mass popularity of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Jumper leaps free from restrictive IP parameters and burdensome expectations for shared universe worldbuilding. Still, a sequel could do wonders to make Jumper into something more than a forgotten, one-off production. Even after all these years, Jumper feels like it’s still got places to go.

25. Real Steel (2011)

At first glance, it’s a little hard to believe that a movie about robotic boxers would have a soul. But through some genuinely impressive VFX craftsmanship, the star power of Hugh Jackman, and strong direction from Shawn Levy - since having gone on to direct Free Guy, The Adam Project, and Deadpool & Wolverine - Real Steel packs a wallop as an authentic sports drama about fighting against one’s own limits. Talks of a sequel and even a Disney+ series version have been discussed, but for now, Real Steel remains down for the count.

24. Shin Kamen Rider (2023)

As part of Hideaki Anno’s “Shin” cinematic anthology, Shin Kamen Rider sees the celebrated animator and filmmaker put his own stamp on a Japanese tokusatsu icon. In this reimagining of the original 1971 series Kamen Rider, motorcyclist and college student Takeshi Hongo (Sosuke Ikematsu) confronts his newfound inhumanity and works to destroy the evil organization SHOCKER. While the other movies in the Shin series - Shin Godzilla (2016) and Shin Ultraman (2022) - are equally deserving of sequels, Shin Kamen Rider is singularly great, with so many years of Kamen Rider history to draw further from.

23. A Wrinkle in Time (2018)

In 2018, Ava DuVernay took on adapting Madeleine L’Engle’s seminal 1962 sci-fi novel A Wrinkle in Time, about a young girl who embarks on a journey across the multiverse in search of her father. (Ask Trent Crimm from Ted Lasso about it.) While it had an appealing all-star cast of Chris Pine, Reese Witherspoon, Oprah Winfrey, Mindy Kaling, and Zach Galifianakis, A Wrinkle in Time was just too expensive for its total gross of $133 million to make sequels worthwhile. Still, DuVernay demonstrated a strong grasp of L’Engle’s work via gorgeous renderings of its cosmic spiritualism, which would have made for killer movies based on the rest of the series. For now, A Wrinkle in Time seems lost in a black hole.

22. Serenity (2005)

While its story acts as a conclusion to the beloved sci-fi series Firefly, Serenity is still so singularly great that it makes sequels still fun to think about. Despite a passionate fanbase who rallied behind the movie’s release in 2005, disinterest of regular moviegoers who hadn’t seen Firefly meant Serenity was never going to be a box office smash. Creator, director, and writer Joss Whedon went on to direct billion-dollar hits like The Avengers and Avengers: Age of Ultron, and later suffered a career collapse after allegations of misconduct came to light. But with or without Joss Whedon, some fans still believe that no one can stop the signal.

21. Hancock (2008)

In a time before Marvel amassed powerful influence over the movie industry, there occasionally came more off-beat superheroes who strayed away from paved roads. In 2008, Will Smith used his own proven star power for Hancock, in which Smith plays a crude, alcoholic superhero whose discovery of another like him complicates everything. While the movie ends up too overcooked plot-wise, nothing is better than Smith drunkenly flying around L.A. and making a mess of rush hour traffic. If the superhero genre is all about sequels, there’s no superhero more deserving of another chance at redemption than Hancock.

20. Oblivion (2013)

Based on Joseph Kosinski’s own unpublished graphic novel, Oblivion takes place in a futuristic Earth devastated by intergalactic war. A maintenance technician, played by Tom Cruise, is on the verge of finishing a job when he encounters a mysterious woman (Olga Kurylenko) seemingly from his own dreams that leads him to discover the truth about what happened on Earth. While Oblivion is appealing as a stylish standalone movie that admirably told a complete story, it still left enough threads loose for a continuation. And who doesn’t want to see more of Tom Cruise in space?

19. Underwater (2020)

The last theatrical release from 20th Century Fox before it was renamed by Disney, the 2020 sci-fi horror Underwater is a muscular monster feature with one of the most famous literary creatures of all time waiting at the end of it. Kirsten Stewart leads a cast that also includes Vincent Cassel, Jessica Henwick, and John Gallagher Jr., all playing scientists and engineers who live and work deep in the Mariana Trench. As earthquakes destroy the facility, the team tries to make a desperate escape. Despite the widespread influence of H.P. Lovecraft in modern pop culture, there still aren’t that many faithful adaptations of the famous author’s works. But being one of the first original universes in pulp literary fiction, movies like Underwater could, and should, be the first to spawn a franchise featuring all the Great Old Ones.

18. Innerspace (1987)

One of the most inventive and playful sci-fi movies of the 1980s, Innerspace from Joe Dante is basically Fantastic Voyage reimagined as a contemporary romantic comedy. Dennis Quaid plays a handsome but down-on-his-luck Navy aviator who submits to a top secret experiment that shrinks subjects to microscopic size. Somehow, the experiment places the pilot in neurotic grocery clerk Jack (Martin Short), kicking off a kooky buddy comedy where Quaid basically tells Martin Short how to man up. While too much time has passed to really follow any of its characters, it’s hard not to vibe with a modern retelling of the same premise.

17. The One (2001)

Before Spider-Man and The Flash flung through the multiverse, Jet Li fought his way through it. In this vastly underrated sci-fi kung fu movie from 2001, Jet Li plays both hero and villain: noble cop Gabe Law and outlaw Yulaw, who aspires to traverse all parallel dimensions and kill his other selves to gain their strength and become “The One.” The One is easily one of Jet Li’s most ridiculous (and most fun) movies in his career, staying fresh decades later. Now that audiences are more familiar with the multiverse theory, it would be quite something for Jet Li to reclaim his dominance and show all the fancy superheroes that there can still only be “one.” (Cue Papa Roach.)

16. Chronicle (2012)

Before Josh Trank suffered a career downfall after his 2015 Fantastic Four, he was a hotshot up and comer with his remarkable found-footage thriller Chronicle. Dane DeHaan, Alex Russell, and Michael B. Jordan all play high school teenagers who suddenly possess telekinetic superpowers, which they use for fun until the powers dangerously corrupts one of them. Emotional, harrowing, and inventive with its unique touchstones - with visible influences from the likes of The Blair Witch Project, Akira, and X-Men - Chronicle is too astonishing for just one movie.

15. Alita: Battle Angel (2019)

A passion project of producer James Cameron based on his own anime fandom, Alita: Battle Angel was an immediate cult favorite when it opened to relatively little fanfare in 2019. Based on Yukito Kishiro’s manga, Alita tells of a cyborg who awakes in a new body but lacks any memory of her past. Directed by Robert Rodriguez and starring Rosa Salazar, Christoph Waltz, Jennifer Connelly, Mahershala Ali, Ed Skrein, and Jackie Earle Haley, Alita’s fans still love it for its impressive visual effects, sympathetic characters, and unique sense of sci-fi. While James Cameron believes more Alita movies are possible, it is unknown if the movie is to stay doomed to the scrap heap. 

14. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003)

Renowned comics author Alan Moore quite famously wants nothing to do with movie versions of his works. This extends to The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, with Moore having more or less ignored its existence; artist Kevin O’Neill also expressed in a 2009 interview with The Times UK that he found the script lacking the source material’s spirit. Still, it says a lot that moviegoers who caught the movie back in 2003 have expressed wanting more of it. Basically an “Avengers”-like team-up of public domain figures - we’re talking Allan Quartermain from King Solomon’s Mines, Mina Harker from Dracula, Dorian Gray, and Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde - The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen really lends itself to more, or at least just adapting Volume II of the book. 

13. Jupiter Ascending (2015)

Other than The Matrix, the Wachowskis’ works as filmmakers are only really loved long after the fact. That includes movies like Speed Racer, Cloud Atlas, and especially 2015’s Jupiter Ascending. An epic space romance, Mila Kunis plays a cleaning lady who is informed by a handsome warrior (played by Channing Tatum) that she has a greater destiny beyond the stars. While the movie earned polarizing reviews and an underwhelming box office upon release, the movie has slowly earned positive reappraisal as a modern classic full of imagination. The movie ends on a positive note that leaves open the possibility for sequels, but it’s unknown if more is written in the stars for Jupiter Jones.

12. Galaxy Quest (1998)

By Grabthar’s Hammer… there shall be a sequel! In this laugh riot comedy, former sci-fi TV stars are recruited by aliens to save their species. Predictive of the rise of fandom culture but never belittling it, Galaxy Quest could easily make for a great franchise of its own in the modern era. (Although it would be devastating to reunite with these characters without the late, great Alan Rickman.) There has been some traction regarding a sequel, including rumors of a series for the Paramount+ streaming service. But that a sequel didn’t happen immediately after the original movie’s release speaks to how hard it is for anything in Hollywood to blast off.

11. The Rocketeer (1991)

Before Disney had the keys to the Marvel kingdom, the studio had its own superhero in The Rocketeer (created by Dave Stevens as an indie comic). From director Joe Johnston, Billy Campbell plays the title character, a washed-up pilot who puts on a jet pack and adopts the name The Rocketeer to fight Nazis. Beloved today as a cult classic, The Rocketeer’s lukewarm box office intake meant it did not take off as a franchise for Disney. While there was finally an expansion to The Rocketeer, in the form of a childrens’ cartoon in 2019 and various attempts at sequels and remakes, The Rocketeer has been left dangling instead of flying like it should.

10. Brightburn (2019)

What if Superman were evil? That’s hardly a new idea, but the original superhero horror Brightburn dared to explore that idea, and it did so with flying crimson colors. Produced by James Gunn and helmed by David Yarovesky, Brightburn basically tells an off-brand version of Superman’s origin story - alien child adopted by a kind Kansas couple - but instead of the child growing up into a Man of Tomorrow, he grows into a nightmare incarnate. Elizabeth Banks and David Denman co-star in his overlooked horror movie that shows just how much we as humans are at the mercy of a cruel, indescribable universe.

9. District 9 (2009)

A searing sci-fi with deep-rooted political themes, District 9 marked the feature film debut of Neill Blomkamp who explored his native South Africa’s history of segregation and xenophobia via space aliens as a metaphor. In an alternate 1982, aliens arrive in Johannesburg and are quickly quarantined in the internment camp District 9. The movie picks up 20 years later, with a bumbling bureaucrat (Sharlto Copley in his feature acting debut) slowly turning into one of the aliens. While hope for a District 10 has lingered in the ether, Blomkamp put such hopes on ice, telling The Hollywood Reporter in 2023 that progress has stalled indefinitely. 

8. Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

Unofficially one of the greatest video game movies ever made, Doug Liman’s sci-fi blockbuster Edge of Tomorrow is a time loop thriller that takes Groundhog Day and cranks it up to aggressive extremes. An adaptation of Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s All You Need is Kill, the movie stars Tom Cruise as a U.S. Major with limited combat experience who is forced onto the battlefield. His death ignites a time loop, allowing him to gain the experience he needs to survive and to team up with a more capable war hero (Emily Blunt). Talk of a sequel has been murmured for years; in 2024, Tom Cruise’s partnership with Warner Bros. led to loose talks of an overdue sequel.

7.  Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017)

A passion project of writer/director Luc Besson, who funded a large portion of its extravagant $223 million production budget himself, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets adapts the French comics Valérian and Laureline (a childhood favorite of Besson’s). Both the movie and its original source comics tell of two futuristic space explorers who encounter various galactic challenges with equal parts humor and heroism. The film starred Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevigne, and while they lacked chemistry as actors, the rest of the movie made up for it with impeccable and eye-popping sci-fi magnificence. While Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets was just too expensive for any reasonable box office gross to even out, there has still been enough fans of the movie to generate interest in a sequel. 

6. Saban’s Power Rangers (2017)

The coolest heroes of Saturday mornings, the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, got the dark PG-13 reboot treatment back in 2017. Its brooding tone and overall angsty emo vibe reminiscent of The CW shows didn’t win over critics, nor did the movie crush its billion-dollar hit rival Beauty and the Beast like a Megazord. But Dean Israelite’s Power Rangers keeps a loyal following who heap it retrospective appreciation for its boldly un -affectionate treatment of ‘90s nostalgia. While its cast of twenty-something actors, including Naomi Scott, Dacre Montgomery, RJ Cyler, Ludi Lin, and pop star Becky G have aged past the point of playing teenagers, there are still those who wish for a sequel to finally bring the iconic Green Ranger to the big screen.

5. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004)

A throwback to sci-fi pulp with innovative VFX filmmaking, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is a cult classic still loved for its arresting art deco visual design and unfulfilled potential as a franchise starter. Set in an alternate 1930s, a reporter (Gwyneth Paltrow) hires an old flame, the dashing “Sky Captain” (Jude Law) to investigate the whereabouts of kidnapped scientists. Clearly primed for more stories to tell, it’s bewildering that Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow failed to fly at the box office. The movie remains director Kerry Conran’s one and only theatrical film to date.

4. Event Horizon (1997)

Paul W.S. Anderson is synonymous with below average video game movies. But once, in 1997, Anderson swung for the fences with his own original story in Event Horizon. Starring Laurence Fishburne, Event Horizon takes place in the year 2047 and follows astronauts on a rescue mission to investigate a spaceship that has suddenly resurfaced by Neptune. A moody sci-fi horror in the spirit of Ridley Scott’s Alien, Event Horizon is now enjoyed as a cult classic that is still largely overlooked. A solid sequel could not only bring more deserved attention to the original, but possibly create a brand new franchise out of old parts.

3. Dark City (1998)

After The Matrix blew up in 1999, sci-fi enthusiasts were quick to point out the thematically similar and little-seen movie Dark City, released a year prior in 1998. Directed by The Crow’s Alex Proyas, Dark City follows an amnesiac (Rufus Sewell) who is suspected of murder and works to clear his name and find out his real identity. Characterized by startling and striking visuals and an abundantly bleak atmosphere, Dark City earned positive reviews but fared poorly commercially. Years after its release, Dark City enjoys cult status, though a sequel, great as it might be, still feels way out of reach.

2. Dredd (2012)

Long after the polarizing 1995 movie Judge Dredd with Sylvester Stallone, director Pete Travis gave the world the hard-R treatment the original Judge Dredd comics deserve. In Dredd, Karl Urban stars as the relentless, square-jawed super cop Judge Dredd - part of an order of law enforcers in crime-riddled Mega-City One - with a rookie partner (Olivia Thirlby) caught in a hostile environment. While critics raved over Dredd during its release in September 2012, the movie’s anemic marketing kept audiences from flocking to theaters, cementing its future as a cult classic to be discovered later on. At one point in 2017, Dredd was to expand as a television series, with Karl Urban reprising his role. 

1. John Carter (2012)

In the same year that Disney won big with The Avengers, it also lost big with John Carter. Still one of the biggest box office bombs of the 21st century, Andrew Stanton’s John Carter strove to adapt Edgar Rice Burroughs’ A Princess of Mars into the next big cinematic franchise. While reviews were lukewarm, erring towards favorable, John Carter has since found a more devoted following due to its crowd-pleasing story and sense of spectacle. While Disney had hopes for John Carter to start a franchise, its failure was so disastrous that by January 2013, Disney owned a far safer bet in Star Wars. But that doesn’t stop John Carter fans from wondering what the next movie could have been.

Eric Francisco is a freelance entertainment journalist and graduate of Rutgers University. If a movie or TV show has superheroes, spaceships, kung fu, or John Cena, he's your guy to make sense of it. A former senior writer at Inverse, his byline has also appeared at Vulture, The Daily Beast, Observer, and The Mary Sue. You can find him screaming at Devils hockey games or dodging enemy fire in Call of Duty: Warzone.

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Best Sci-fi (films and series) set in space

No particular order

• Movies or TV
• IMDb Rating
• In Theaters
• Release Year

1. Battlestar Galactica (2003)

TV-14 | 92 min | Action, Adventure, Drama

Following the destruction of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol by the Cylons, a rag-tag fugitive fleet of the last remnants of mankind flees the pursuing Cylons while simultaneously searching for their true home: Earth.

Stars: Edward James Olmos , Mary McDonnell , Katee Sackhoff , Jamie Bamber

Votes: 80,160

2. Battlestar Galactica (2004–2009)

TV-14 | 45 min | Action, Adventure, Drama

When an old enemy, the Cylons, resurface and obliterate the 12 colonies, the crew of the aged Galactica protect a small civilian fleet - the last of humanity - as they journey toward the fabled 13th colony, Earth.

Stars: Edward James Olmos , Mary McDonnell , Jamie Bamber , James Callis

Votes: 175,529

3. Battlestar Galactica: Razor (2007 TV Movie)

Not Rated | 101 min | Action, Drama, Sci-Fi

A two-hour Battlestar Galactica special that tells the story of the Battlestar Pegasus several months prior to it finding the Galactica.

Director: Félix Enríquez Alcalá | Stars: Edward James Olmos , Mary McDonnell , Katee Sackhoff , Jamie Bamber

Votes: 24,152

4. Battlestar Galactica: The Plan (2009 Video)

Not Rated | 112 min | Action, Adventure, Drama

When the initial Cylon attack against the Twelve Colonies fails to achieve complete extermination of human life as planned, twin Number Ones (Cavils) embedded on Galactica and Caprica must improvise to destroy the human survivors.

Director: Edward James Olmos | Stars: Edward James Olmos , Dean Stockwell , Michael Trucco , Grace Park

Votes: 21,211

5. Firefly (2002–2003)

TV-14 | 45 min | Adventure, Drama, Sci-Fi

Five hundred years in the future, a renegade crew aboard a small spacecraft tries to survive as they travel the unknown parts of the galaxy and evade warring factions as well as authority agents out to get them.

Stars: Nathan Fillion , Gina Torres , Alan Tudyk , Morena Baccarin

Votes: 281,665

6. Missions (2017– )

Not Rated | 26 min | Drama, Sci-Fi

The first manned mission to Mars is now approaching the red planet. The crew includes top-flight scientists and a young female psychiatrist, responsible for their mental health. But just as they are about to land, something goes wrong.

Stars: Hélène Viviès , Mathias Mlekuz , Giorgia Sinicorni , Clément Aubert

Votes: 3,018

7. Mars (2016–2018)

TV-PG | 60 min | Adventure, Drama, Sci-Fi

The first manned mission from Earth to Mars in 2033 attempts to colonize the red planet.

Stars: Jihae , Alberto Ammann , Sammi Rotibi , Clémentine Poidatz

Votes: 15,205

8. John Carter (2012)

PG-13 | 132 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi

Transported to Barsoom, a Civil War vet discovers a barren planet seemingly inhabited by 12-foot tall barbarians. Finding himself prisoner of these creatures, he escapes, only to encounter Woola and a princess in desperate need of a savior.

Director: Andrew Stanton | Stars: Taylor Kitsch , Lynn Collins , Willem Dafoe , Samantha Morton

Votes: 286,177 | Gross: $73.08M

9. Ad Astra (2019)

PG-13 | 123 min | Adventure, Drama, Mystery

Astronaut Roy McBride undertakes a mission across an unforgiving solar system to uncover the truth about his missing father and his doomed expedition that now, 30 years later, threatens the universe.

Director: James Gray | Stars: Brad Pitt , Tommy Lee Jones , Ruth Negga , Donald Sutherland

Votes: 260,434 | Gross: $50.19M

10. Sunshine (2007)

R | 107 min | Sci-Fi, Thriller

A team of international astronauts is sent on a dangerous mission to reignite the dying Sun with a nuclear fission bomb in 2057.

Director: Danny Boyle | Stars: Cillian Murphy , Rose Byrne , Chris Evans , Cliff Curtis

Votes: 267,387 | Gross: $3.68M

11. Gattaca (1997)

PG-13 | 106 min | Drama, Sci-Fi, Thriller

A genetically inferior man assumes the identity of a superior one in order to pursue his lifelong dream of space travel.

Director: Andrew Niccol | Stars: Ethan Hawke , Uma Thurman , Jude Law , Gore Vidal

Votes: 323,159 | Gross: $12.34M

12. Away (2020)

TV-14 | 50 min | Drama, Romance, Sci-Fi

An American astronaut struggles with leaving her husband and daughter behind to embark on a dangerous mission with an international space crew.

Stars: Hilary Swank , Josh Charles , Vivian Wu , Ray Panthaki

Votes: 25,803

13. Armageddon (1998)

PG-13 | 151 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi

After discovering that an asteroid the size of Texas will impact Earth in less than a month, NASA recruits a misfit team of deep-core drillers to save the planet.

Director: Michael Bay | Stars: Bruce Willis , Billy Bob Thornton , Ben Affleck , Liv Tyler

Votes: 450,730 | Gross: $201.57M

14. Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

PG-13 | 121 min | Action, Adventure, Comedy

A group of intergalactic criminals must pull together to stop a fanatical warrior with plans to purge the universe.

Director: James Gunn | Stars: Chris Pratt , Vin Diesel , Bradley Cooper , Zoe Saldana

Votes: 1,273,110 | Gross: $333.18M

15. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017)

PG-13 | 136 min | Action, Adventure, Comedy

The Guardians struggle to keep together as a team while dealing with their personal family issues, notably Star-Lord's encounter with his father, the ambitious celestial being Ego.

Director: James Gunn | Stars: Chris Pratt , Zoe Saldana , Dave Bautista , Vin Diesel

Votes: 759,437 | Gross: $389.81M

16. Passengers (I) (2016)

PG-13 | 116 min | Drama, Romance, Sci-Fi

A malfunction in a sleeping pod on a spacecraft traveling to a distant colony planet wakes one passenger 90 years early.

Director: Morten Tyldum | Stars: Jennifer Lawrence , Chris Pratt , Michael Sheen , Laurence Fishburne

Votes: 447,306 | Gross: $100.01M

17. Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017)

PG-13 | 136 min | Action, Adventure, Fantasy

A dark force threatens Alpha, a vast metropolis and home to species from a thousand planets. Special operatives Valerian and Laureline must race to identify the marauding menace and safeguard not just Alpha, but the future of the universe.

Director: Luc Besson | Stars: Dane DeHaan , Cara Delevingne , Clive Owen , Rihanna

Votes: 196,859 | Gross: $41.19M

18. WALL·E (2008)

G | 98 min | Animation, Adventure, Family

In the distant future, a small waste-collecting robot inadvertently embarks on a space journey that will ultimately decide the fate of mankind.

Director: Andrew Stanton | Stars: Ben Burtt , Elissa Knight , Jeff Garlin , Fred Willard

Votes: 1,200,223 | Gross: $223.81M

19. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

G | 149 min | Adventure, Sci-Fi

After uncovering a mysterious artifact buried beneath the Lunar surface, a spacecraft is sent to Jupiter to find its origins: a spacecraft manned by two men and the supercomputer HAL 9000.

Director: Stanley Kubrick | Stars: Keir Dullea , Gary Lockwood , William Sylvester , Daniel Richter

Votes: 719,355 | Gross: $56.95M

20. The Martian (2015)

PG-13 | 144 min | Adventure, Drama, Sci-Fi

An astronaut becomes stranded on Mars after his team assume him dead, and must rely on his ingenuity to find a way to signal to Earth that he is alive and can survive until a potential rescue.

Director: Ridley Scott | Stars: Matt Damon , Jessica Chastain , Kristen Wiig , Kate Mara

Votes: 925,033 | Gross: $228.43M

21. Star Trek (2009)

PG-13 | 127 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi

The brash James T. Kirk tries to live up to his father's legacy with Mr. Spock keeping him in check as a vengeful Romulan from the future creates black holes to destroy the Federation one planet at a time.

Director: J.J. Abrams | Stars: Chris Pine , Zachary Quinto , Simon Pegg , Leonard Nimoy

Votes: 620,204 | Gross: $257.73M

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

PG-13 | 133 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi

In a time of conflict, a group of unlikely heroes band together on a mission to steal the plans to the Death Star, the Empire's ultimate weapon of destruction.

Director: Gareth Edwards | Stars: Felicity Jones , Diego Luna , Alan Tudyk , Donnie Yen

Votes: 686,326 | Gross: $532.18M

23. Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

PG | 124 min | Action, Adventure, Fantasy

After the Rebel Alliance are overpowered by the Empire, Luke Skywalker begins his Jedi training with Yoda, while his friends are pursued across the galaxy by Darth Vader and bounty hunter Boba Fett.

Director: Irvin Kershner | Stars: Mark Hamill , Harrison Ford , Carrie Fisher , Billy Dee Williams

Votes: 1,379,500 | Gross: $290.48M

24. Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977)

PG | 121 min | Action, Adventure, Fantasy

Luke Skywalker joins forces with a Jedi Knight, a cocky pilot, a Wookiee and two droids to save the galaxy from the Empire's world-destroying battle station, while also attempting to rescue Princess Leia from the mysterious Darth Vader.

Director: George Lucas | Stars: Mark Hamill , Harrison Ford , Carrie Fisher , Alec Guinness

Votes: 1,449,365 | Gross: $322.74M

25. Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983)

PG | 131 min | Action, Adventure, Fantasy

After rescuing Han Solo from Jabba the Hutt, the Rebel Alliance attempt to destroy the second Death Star, while Luke struggles to help Darth Vader back from the dark side.

Director: Richard Marquand | Stars: Mark Hamill , Harrison Ford , Carrie Fisher , Billy Dee Williams

Votes: 1,121,245 | Gross: $309.13M

26. Moon (2009)

R | 97 min | Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi

Astronaut Sam Bell has a quintessentially personal encounter toward the end of his three-year stint on the Moon, where he, working alongside his computer, GERTY, sends back to Earth parcels of a resource that has helped diminish our planet's power problems.

Director: Duncan Jones | Stars: Sam Rockwell , Kevin Spacey , Dominique McElligott , Rosie Shaw

Votes: 376,668 | Gross: $5.01M

27. Avatar (2009)

PG-13 | 162 min | Action, Adventure, Fantasy

A paraplegic Marine dispatched to the moon Pandora on a unique mission becomes torn between following his orders and protecting the world he feels is his home.

Director: James Cameron | Stars: Sam Worthington , Zoe Saldana , Sigourney Weaver , Michelle Rodriguez

Votes: 1,386,253 | Gross: $760.51M

28. Gravity (2013)

PG-13 | 91 min | Drama, Sci-Fi, Thriller

Dr Ryan Stone, an engineer on her first time on a space mission, and Matt Kowalski, an astronaut on his final expedition, have to survive in space after they are hit by debris while spacewalking.

Director: Alfonso Cuarón | Stars: Sandra Bullock , George Clooney , Ed Harris , Orto Ignatiussen

Votes: 863,125 | Gross: $274.09M

29. The Fifth Element (1997)

PG-13 | 126 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi

In the colorful future, a cab driver unwittingly becomes the central figure in the search for a legendary cosmic weapon to keep Evil and Mr. Zorg at bay.

Director: Luc Besson | Stars: Bruce Willis , Milla Jovovich , Gary Oldman , Ian Holm

Votes: 506,079 | Gross: $63.54M

30. Contact (1997)

PG | 150 min | Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi

Dr. Ellie Arroway, after years of searching, finds conclusive radio proof of extraterrestrial intelligence, sending plans for a mysterious machine.

Director: Robert Zemeckis | Stars: Jodie Foster , Matthew McConaughey , Tom Skerritt , John Hurt

Votes: 293,053 | Gross: $100.92M

31. Total Recall (1990)

R | 113 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi

When a man goes in to have virtual vacation memories of the planet Mars implanted in his mind, an unexpected and harrowing series of events forces him to go to the planet for real - or is he?

Director: Paul Verhoeven | Stars: Arnold Schwarzenegger , Sharon Stone , Michael Ironside , Rachel Ticotin

Votes: 354,480 | Gross: $119.39M

32. Mission to Mars (2000)

PG | 114 min | Adventure, Sci-Fi, Thriller

When the first manned mission to Mars meets with a catastrophic and mysterious disaster after reporting an unidentified structure, a rescue mission is launched to investigate the tragedy and bring back any survivors.

Director: Brian De Palma | Stars: Tim Robbins , Gary Sinise , Don Cheadle , Connie Nielsen

Votes: 76,491 | Gross: $60.88M

33. Red Planet (2000)

PG-13 | 106 min | Action, Sci-Fi, Thriller

Astronauts, and their robotic dog AMEE (Autonomous Mapping Evaluation and Evasion), search for solutions to save a dying Earth by searching on Mars, only to have the mission go terribly awry.

Director: Antony Hoffman | Stars: Val Kilmer , Carrie-Anne Moss , Tom Sizemore , Benjamin Bratt

Votes: 59,917 | Gross: $18.00M

34. Starship Troopers (1997)

R | 129 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi

Humans, in a fascist militaristic future, wage war with giant alien bugs.

Director: Paul Verhoeven | Stars: Casper Van Dien , Denise Richards , Dina Meyer , Jake Busey

Votes: 321,071 | Gross: $54.81M

35. Stargate (1994)

PG-13 | 116 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi

An interstellar teleportation device, found in Egypt, leads to a planet with humans resembling ancient Egyptians who worship the god Ra.

Director: Roland Emmerich | Stars: Kurt Russell , James Spader , Jaye Davidson , Viveca Lindfors

Votes: 205,041 | Gross: $71.57M

36. The Chronicles of Riddick (2004)

R | 119 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi

The wanted criminal Richard Bruno Riddick arrives on a planet called Helion Prime and finds himself up against an invading empire called the Necromongers, an army that plans to convert or kill all humans in the universe.

Director: David Twohy | Stars: Vin Diesel , Judi Dench , Colm Feore , Thandiwe Newton

Votes: 241,771 | Gross: $57.76M

37. The Chronicles of Riddick: Into Pitch Black (2000 TV Movie)

TV-14 | 60 min | Action, Sci-Fi

After the events of Pitch Black, a contractor is hired to locate Riddick, dead or alive. He reviews available information on him and the events of Pitch Black. Terrified, he hires a female cyberpunk merc to do the job for him.

Director: M. David Melvin | Stars: Vin Diesel , Brian Gant , Lisa Saum , Robert W. Richards

Votes: 3,248

38. Pitch Black (2000)

R | 109 min | Action, Horror, Sci-Fi

A transport ship crashes and leaves its crew stranded on a desert planet inhabited by bloodthirsty creatures that come out during an eclipse.

Director: David Twohy | Stars: Radha Mitchell , Cole Hauser , Vin Diesel , Keith David

Votes: 252,944 | Gross: $39.24M

39. Space Cowboys (2000)

PG-13 | 130 min | Action, Adventure, Thriller

When retired engineer Frank Corvin is called upon to rescue a failing satellite, he insists that his equally old teammates accompany him into space.

Director: Clint Eastwood | Stars: Clint Eastwood , Tommy Lee Jones , Donald Sutherland , James Garner

Votes: 86,176 | Gross: $90.46M

40. For All Mankind (2019– )

TV-MA | 60 min | Drama, Sci-Fi

In an alternative version of 1969, the Soviet Union beats the United States to the Moon, and the space race continues on for decades with still grander challenges and goals.

Stars: Joel Kinnaman , Michael Dorman , Wrenn Schmidt , Krys Marshall

Votes: 69,061

41. Ascension (2014)

TV-MA | 77 min | Drama, Sci-Fi

A young woman's murder causes the subjects of a century-long mission to populate a new world to question the true nature of the project as they approach the point of no return.

Stars: Tricia Helfer , Gil Bellows , Brian Van Holt , Andrea Roth

Votes: 19,187

42. Stargate SG-1 (1997–2007)

TV-14 | 44 min | Action, Adventure, Drama

A secret military team, SG-1, is formed to explore other planets through the recently discovered Stargates.

Stars: Richard Dean Anderson , Michael Shanks , Amanda Tapping , Christopher Judge

Votes: 101,366

43. Loki (2021–2023)

TV-14 | 586 min | Action, Adventure, Fantasy

The mercurial villain Loki resumes his role as the God of Mischief in a new series that takes place after the events of “Avengers: Endgame.”

Stars: Tom Hiddleston , Owen Wilson , Sophia Di Martino , Wunmi Mosaku

Votes: 411,296

44. Alien (1979)

R | 117 min | Horror, Sci-Fi

The crew of a commercial spacecraft encounters a deadly lifeform after investigating a mysterious transmission of unknown origin.

Director: Ridley Scott | Stars: Sigourney Weaver , Tom Skerritt , John Hurt , Veronica Cartwright

Votes: 950,347 | Gross: $78.90M

45. Down with Love (2003)

PG-13 | 101 min | Comedy, Romance

In 1962 New York City, love blossoms between a playboy journalist and a feminist advice author.

Director: Peyton Reed | Stars: Ewan McGregor , Renée Zellweger , David Hyde Pierce , Sarah Paulson

Votes: 44,346 | Gross: $20.30M

46. Aliens (1986)

R | 137 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi

Decades after surviving the Nostromo incident, Ellen Ripley is sent out to re-establish contact with a terraforming colony but finds herself battling the Alien Queen and her offspring.

Director: James Cameron | Stars: Sigourney Weaver , Michael Biehn , Carrie Henn , Paul Reiser

Votes: 762,890 | Gross: $85.16M

47. The Mandalorian (2019– )

TV-14 | 40 min | Action, Adventure, Fantasy

The travels of a lone bounty hunter in the outer reaches of the galaxy, far from the authority of the New Republic.

Stars: Pedro Pascal , Chris Bartlett , Katee Sackhoff , Carl Weathers

Votes: 586,762

48. Obi-Wan Kenobi (2022)

TV-14 | 44 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi

Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi must save young Leia after she is kidnapped, all the while being pursued by Imperial Inquisitors and his former Padawan now known as Darth Vader.

Stars: Ewan McGregor , Moses Ingram , Vivien Lyra Blair , Hayden Christensen

Votes: 229,484

49. Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)

PG-13 | 118 min | Action, Adventure, Comedy

Thor enlists the help of Valkyrie, Korg and ex-girlfriend Jane Foster to fight Gorr the God Butcher, who intends to make the gods extinct.

Director: Taika Waititi | Stars: Chris Hemsworth , Natalie Portman , Christian Bale , Tessa Thompson

Votes: 400,841 | Gross: $343.26M

50. Forbidden Planet (1956)

G | 98 min | Adventure, Sci-Fi

A starship crew in the 23rd century goes to investigate the silence of a distant planet's colony, only to find just two survivors, a powerful robot, and the deadly secret of a lost civilization.

Director: Fred M. Wilcox | Stars: Walter Pidgeon , Anne Francis , Leslie Nielsen , Warren Stevens

Votes: 53,189 | Gross: $3.00M

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10 Amazing Sci-Fi Movies Set On Fictional Planets

• Science fiction films often tell stories set on other worlds, allowing for the exploration of new elements, technologies, and species that don't exist on Earth.
• Films like Avatar, Solaris, and Dune take audiences on intergalactic adventures, showcasing rich world-building, complex political systems, and a blend of fantasy and sci-fi elements.
• Planets like Pandora, LV-223, and Orous offer unique settings with interconnected nature, ancient ruins, and intergalactic capital cities, making them intriguing backdrops for sci-fi stories.

Science fiction films often include elements of advanced technology, alien races, and even time travel, but much fewer explore stories that happen on other worlds. Sci-fi is all about exploring a reality just outside of human reach, and because of that, it sometimes guides and leads human innovation, like with technology on Star Trek inspiring communication devices and holographic videos. A much higher-level concept that edges into fantasy territory is exploring stories that are set in distant, fictional worlds .

There are the obvious franchises that explore alien planets like Star Wars , Star Trek , Marvel, and DC, but many other projects take the intergalactic leap to create a story outside of our solar system. From the mega blockbusters like Avatar and Dune , to the much less well-known Pandorum or Jupiter Ascending , several films take sci-fi adventures off-world. Creating a fictional setting also allows for a story to explore a variety of new elements, technologies, species, and knowledge that simply don't exist on Earth just yet, making a perfect setting for ambitious sci-fi stories.

Avatar (2009)

James Cameron does an incredible job building the world of Pandora , and all of the elements that come with it, in his Avatar films. From the landscape to the wildlife and even the plants, Cameron spent a great deal of time with other creatives to bring Pandora to life and explore what that looks like for the native Na'vi. Pandora captured the attention of Earth thanks to a plentiful supply of a rare substance that humans hope to harvest. However, this rich world and all of its living inhabitants fight back against the human threat thanks to the interconnected nature of the planet and its inhabitants.

Related: Avatar: All 15 Na'vi Clans Explained (Cultures, Locations & Inspirations)

Solaris (1972)

Based on the novel by Stanisław Lem and directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, Solaris is the story of scientists exploring an alien planet in the hopes of understanding its unusual nature and the odd events that keep happening on the planet's surface. As it turns out, the planet Solaris itself is a living being trying its best to communicate with the researchers through apparitions and visions created from their memories. The concept is fascinating, and the 1972 adaptation is the most widely praised of several attempts to bring the high-concept sci-fi story to the screen.

Dune (2021)

Frank Herbert's novel, and its many movie adaptations, Dune is about intergalactic rulers and a high-value trade built around the spice of Arrakis is deeply thought-provoking and explores interplanetary relations and the value assigned to assets. The story itself is an incredible mixture of fantasy and sci-fi with rich world-building, complex political systems, and an element of magic and prophecy, all spliced with advanced intergalactic travel, technologies, and science. Arrakis is also an incredibly intriguing planet inhabited by a humanoid race and giant sand worms which appear to refine the deserts into the incredibly powerful spice that is highly sought after.

The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy (2005)

Vogsphere, magrathea, and earth ii.

Strictly speaking, Hitchhiker's Guide does begin on Earth, but early in the story, the planet is blown up to make way for an intergalactic space highway. Arthur Dent and his friends travel to a number of intriguing planets including one populated by an extremely bureaucratic race of Vogons and a planet that houses the universe's most advanced computer capable of answering life's greatest questions, and eventually, a newly formed Earth II. The planets that appear throughout and the story in general are light and comical, which makes sense considering the film is an adaptation of a novel from the hilarious writer, Douglas Adams.

Pandorum (2009)

In a future where the Earth's resources have dwindled, humanity sends a group of 60,000 people on an interstellar ark in the hopes of making a new life on a distant Earth-like planet named Tanis. When a few crew members wake up confused and struggling to remember who they are and what the mission is, the story unfolds to reveal they have reached their destination and things have not gone according to plan. Life on Tanis is not what anyone expected , and as the mystery unfolds, it becomes clear why things are not as they should be. The planet is interesting from what is seen, while the ship and its crew are trapped deep in a shipwreck in the ocean for much of the film.

Prometheus (2012)

Ridley Scott returns to the Alien franchise for this outing, which explores the origins of humankind by exploring a highly advanced race of aliens known as the Engineers . In Prometheus , the exomoon LV-223 appears desolate, with interesting ruins and potential clues about the origin of the species hidden away in dark caverns and deep tunnels beneath the surface. Prometheus does a great job exploring this landscape with Doctor Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace), an archaeologist leading the mission.

Related: Alien & Covenant Movie Series Timeline Explained

The Chronicles Of Riddick: Pitch Black (2000)

Vin Diesel stars Riddick , a series following the criminal Riddick who has ultra-sensitive, enhanced eyes. When a ship transporting him and several others crash lands on planet M6-117, they discover the desert planet to be mostly arid and with very little life due to the three suns that orbit the planet and keep it in a constant state of day. Apart from when the planet enters a certain phase in the solar cycle where all light is blocked for an extended period by the surrounding planets and nocturnal creatures emerge to destroy the little life that remains on the planet's surface.

Flash Gordon (1980)

When a tyrannical alien warlord decides to turn his attention towards Earth as his next target, he begins by causing several natural disasters. A quarterback named Flash Gordon and some unlikely allies team up to form a team that boards a small spacecraft to travel out to the planet where the troubles seem to be stemming from. Mongo is a planet under the strict rule of Ming the Merciless , and the planet contains a race of humanoid beings with blue or green blood. Mongo also exists in a state somewhat apart from time and space, which allows Ming to terrorize other planets through his Imperial Vortex.

Jupiter Ascending (2015)

Jupiter Ascending begins with Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis) as a modest Earthling. However, the story quickly escalates and Jupiter finds herself in the middle of an intergalactic family feud between royals who own some of the most valuable resources throughout the galaxy. Jupiter travels to a number of planets, but the primary location where the story develops is the planet Orous. Orous is the intergalactic capital planet , and it is here that Jupiter is taken to realize her part in the plot and claim her inheritance. Orous is also the birthplace of humankind, as all other planets are simply extensions of the civilization that was born there and traveled outward.

Krull (1983)

On a planet in a distant universe, a terrible enemy known as the Beast and his army of slayers besieges the planet, Krull, and kidnaps Princess Lyssa just before she is due to be married. Krull walks the line between fantasy and sci-fi with an array of magic and kingdoms and the enemy forces powerful spaceships and technologically advanced weapons. Krull itself appears to be a planet full of large open landscapes, magic, and mystery , which quickly descends into turmoil when attacked by the evil forces of the Beast.

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Starfield makes space travel feel way too safe

We choose to go to the moon... because it is easy, turns out

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If I’ve learned anything from science fiction — and actual science — it’s that space travel is difficult. It requires vast political capital and financial heft to travel through space for even short distances, and exiting a ship to explore a planet means counting out oxygen tanks and accepting that even a small error could result in death. From Outer Wilds to Alien , the best sci-fi stories about space exploration emphasize those stakes — how even in societies where space exploration has become accessible and even normalized, it’s still extraordinarily dangerous.

Except in Starfield , where flying across the galaxy feels about as tricky as doing donuts on a tricycle in my parents’ driveway.

The most obvious illustration of this is Starfield ’s emphasis on fast travel , which minimizes the very existence of your spaceship. You also can’t manually land on planets or satellites; instead, you press a button to dock (or, more accurately, you press a button to watch a cutscene of your ship docking, then you press a button to disembark). All of this makes the experience of traveling to mysterious galaxies and hostile planets feel less like riding in the rickety yet powerful Millennium Falcon and more like, say, using the transporter in Star Trek. But Star Trek stories focus on other ways in which space travel can be exciting and risky. Starfield , not so much.

Take your spacesuit, for example. In Starfield , it’s equipped automatically. If you want to make it disappear while you’re at an oxygen-rich indoor spaceport, you can press a button in one of the menus to render it invisible. That’s what I’ve chosen to do, since my character fits in better with the game’s NPCs by wearing her space trucker flannel rather than a full helmet and suit — but changing from my flannel back into my spacesuit happens automatically and instantly whenever I get to an airlock. The only thing that does take time is the loading screen while an airlock door opens.

Was it annoying to have to press a button to re-equip my spacesuit and helmet every time I left my ship in Outer Wilds ? Yes, it was. But it was annoying in a way that I ultimately found rewarding. The experience of having to remember to put on my suit served to reinforce the hostility of the planets I explored. I had to go out of my way, every time, to protect myself — or else I’d open the airlock and asphyxiate. I made that mistake a handful of times early on in Outer Wilds , and the sense of panic it inspired — as well as that game’s emphasis on refilling your oxygen tank, preventing you from exploring too far from your ship, lest you die — lent significant excitement and danger to the experience of exploring.

Then there’s the matter of fuel. In Starfield , spaceship fuel is infinite, and the only limitation on traveling is how far you can go . Outer Wilds ’ ship had infinite fuel, but no fast travel; you had to fly the distances and land on planets manually, which made sense in a smaller-scale game with only a few planets. But also, in Outer Wilds , you had to refill your oxygen tank and jetpack fuel, whereas Starfield ’s oxygen tank and jetpack fuel are regenerative. Yet another example of a mechanic being sanded down into something approaching superfluous.

But hey, Starfield isn’t about hardscrabble survival; it’s about exploration, right? Take Metroid as an example, then, since Samus Aran gets infinite oxygen and ammo, as well as plentiful missiles. In order to add friction, though, Metroid makes traversal itself difficult; fast travel is almost never an option, so backtracking and paying careful attention to your surroundings become imperative. In older Metroid games, having to keep track of the location of every save point in enemy-laden environments can add a level of exciting stress that’s tantamount to the best of the Dark Souls series — even with infinite ammo at your fingertips.

What I’m saying is, small frustrations can actually make a video game thrilling, as counterintuitive as that may sound. I don’t want my Starfield spacesuit to be constantly running out of oxygen, nor do I want to asphyxiate because I accidentally fired my weapon at a window. But because I don’t want those things, they should actually happen at some point — or at least, I should feel like they could happen if I’m not careful. The inclusion of inconvenient and even outright dangerous elements makes sci-fi stories about space travel far more exciting. I mean, hell, I had to stop watching For All Mankind because I got so stressed out after the characters brought guns to the moon and shattered the windows of one of their few oxygen-rich outposts. It should feel scary to fire a gun in space! Air is precious out there!

The only points of friction I’ve experienced in Starfield are that I don’t ever seem to have enough digipicks or ammo, and I have to keep an eye on my weight limit for carrying items and on my health bar. But here’s the thing about those points of friction: None of them have anything to do with space travel. So why is Starfield even about space travel, given how much of a triviality space travel apparently is when you play the game?

Starfield characters will ask you to visit another planet as though it’s a simple matter of, well, hitting a button. And in Starfield , they’re right. Forgot something on the other side of the galaxy? The worst part of retrieving it will be watching several seconds of loading screens. And that just isn’t a form of friction that I find particularly satisfying.

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The idea that characters can fly from planet to planet, or star to star, defying current science and technology, is central to science fiction. Although some of these ideas predated the space age, after the 1950s, fictional depictions of space travel needed to suggest conceivable ways to cross interstellar distances to seem plausible. Some authors suggested faster-than-light drives, hyper drives, jump drives, worm holes, and black holes.

Scientific understanding of light speed as an absolute natural limit derives from Albert Einstein’s publications on special relativity in 1905, confirmed by his work on general relativity in 1916. In classical physics, speed has no limits. But relativistic theory shows that mass increases with acceleration until mass becomes infinite at light speed. Yet author E. E. “Doc” Smith imagined spaceships traveling faster than the speed of light in his “Skylark of Space” stories. Smith’s cover story appeared in the same issue of Amazing Stories in 1928 that included Philip Francis Nowlan’s first short story about Anthony (later “Buck”) Rogers.

Within a couple of decades, the fictional idea of faster-than-light travel made intuitive sense to a public familiar with recent supersonic flights. In 1947, Chuck Yeager broke the speed of sound aboard the Bell X-1 Glamorous Glennis . Writers extrapolated supersonic speeds into the idea of spacecraft traveling at multiples of the speed of light. Frank Hampson’s British comic Dan Dare offered one of the earliest uses of faster-than-light travel. In 1955, he introduced interstellar travel in “The Man from Nowhere” trilogy. The technology was inherently alien, however, and faster-than-light travel was not featured regularly afterward. Forbidden Planet (1956) was the first film to depict a fictional faster-than-light spaceship created by humans. From the exterior, the C-57D ship was an undifferentiated flying saucer. After a loudspeaker announcement, however, the crew stood in “DC stations” that held them immobile while the ship slowed. By the mid-1960s, however, as both the United States and the Soviet Union made regular human spaceflights, science fiction audiences became more intuitively aware of the time that it took to travel in space.

The U.S.S. Enterprise created for Star Trek (NBC, 1966-69) represented a major leap forward. Walters “Matt” Jefferies, a WWII flight engineer and private pilot, used “aircraft logic” to design a vehicle with components that visually communicated their purpose. With the two engine nacelles, Jefferies effectively invented warp drives, fictional engines that could propel the ship at multiples of the speed of light. As seen in Star Trek: First Contact (1996), the first flight of Zephram Cochran’s warp-capable Phoenix demonstrated the mark of a culture that was ready to participate in interstellar civilization. Jefferies’ design raised the bar for imagined vehicles. After Star Trek, undifferentiated flying saucers and flame-spewing pointed rockets largely disappeared from fictional depictions. Instead, imagined propulsion that bent space-time or traversed alternate dimensions become more prevalent.

Rather than just having the vehicles fly faster, some science fiction suggested traveling through or outside of normal four-dimensional space (including time), either by jumping within ordinary space, utilizing hyperspace, or exploiting natural or artificial shortcuts through space. Beginning in the 1940s, Isaac Asimov included jump drives in the short stories that later became his Foundation (1951) series of novels. Because fictional jump drives turn long flights into direct hops, allowing ships to disappear from one place and reappear in another, they facilitate storytelling without interrupting it. The reimagined Battlestar Galactica (2003) uses the same kind of travel but calls the mechanisms “FTL drives.”

A production model of the Millennium Falcon was on display at the Museum in 1998-99 as a part of the "Star Wars: The Magic of Myth".

The Star Wars universe postulates a hyperdrive, a computer-guided system that allows spacecraft to enter hyperspace at faster-than-light speeds and navigate to a successful exit at a distant destination. Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018) reveals that the extensive navigational maps and rapid calculating ability of the Millennium Falcon ’s hyperdrive computer are actually the downloaded memories of L3-37, a spirited and female-identified droid pilot.

The two-season program Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (NBC, 1979-1981) showed interstellar travel being accomplished using stargates. Four lights arranged in a diamond in space showed that the stargate had opened, offering access to hyperspace. A similar concept had a more physical presence in J. Michael Straczynski’s Babylon 5 (Syndicated & TNT, 1993-1998). In that show, external “jumpgates” shown using computer-generated imaging provided a physical infrastructure for generating stable vortices to hyperspace.

The idea of artificial space-time vortices as conduits drew power from speculation published in technical and popular literature. Speculation about wormholes must be distinguished, however, from black holes, which are real astronomical phenomena. Stories involving black holes often include time dilation. Einstein’s theories—including special and general relativity—explain that a person travelling near a massive gravitational field experiences time more slowly. The plot of director Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar (2014) employed time differences for dramatic purposes and also represented a giant leap in visual effects. To create the effect of the rapidly spinning black hole, theoretical astrophysicist Kip Thorne assisted the Interstellar production team. The resulting black hole appeared as a three-dimensional, spherical, hole in spacetime, drawing in all of the light around it. When the Event Horizon Telescope project imaged a real black hole in 2019, that image demonstrated how close to reality Interstellar ’s fictional imagination had come.

This explanation of the various aspects of a black hole shows the recent three-dimensional visualization.

Although writers have been imagining travel to space-based destinations for hundreds of years, the use of faster-than-light travel as a narrative device remains relatively young. As the sound barrier disappeared and the space age dawned, writers began imagining ways for interstellar travelers to cross the immensity of space. More important, audiences came to expect plausible explanations of faster-than-light travel to consider the stories credible.

Dr. Margaret A. Weitekamp is the Chair of the Museum’s Space History Department and author of “Ahead, Warp Factor Three, Mr. Sulu”: Imagining Interstellar Faster-Than-Light Travel in Space Science Fiction.” The Journal of Popular Culture 52 (2019), 1036-57.

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HALO Space unveils capsule design for stratospheric space 'glamping'

A Spanish balloon company plans to begin flying paying space tourists in 2026

LONDON — Stratospheric balloon company HALO Space plans to offer aspiring space travelers the space tourism equivalent of glamping. Instead of tight space suits and stomach-churning G-forces typically attached to a rocket flight, the company's pressurized capsule, attached to a helium-filled balloon, will offer comfy swivel seats, giant windows and a selection of fine cuisine.

The Spanish-headquartered firm unveiled the design of the 3.9-ton (3.5 metric tonnes) Aurora capsule at an event in London on Wednesday, April 10, and said it hoped to begin commercial operations in 2026. 

Unlike suborbital space tourism companies such as Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin , HALO Space won't be taking passengers high enough to experience weightlessness . The flight will be a rather leisurely affair lasting up to six hours, almost four of which will be spent hovering in the stratosphere some 22 miles (35 kilometers) above Earth's surface. There, high above the cloud tops, passengers will be able to admire the star-studded blackness of space above, as well as the curvature of the planet shrouded in the atmosphere beneath their feet.

Related: Space Perspective is nearly ready to fly tourists on luxury balloon rides near the edge of space (exclusive)

"When you talk to astronauts, they tell you that this experience of watching the planet from above is really something unique and extraordinary," HALO Space CEO Carlos Mira said in the press conference. "So far, only 650 humans have had the opportunity to experience this overview effect. But you don’t need to go all the way to space to have it. We hope to offer this experience to 1,000 people by 2030."

HALO Space is one of two companies currently readying its balloon technology to begin commercial operations in the next two years. The other is Florida-based Space Perspective, which revealed a completed test model of their Spaceship Neptune in February. HALO Space said they have conducted five test flights with a mockup and plan to take off for the first crewed test in 2025 before commencing flights with paying passengers a year later. 

Both companies hope their propositions will attract a wider customer base than the jerky rocket rides of Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic, which propel daredevil clients on short joy rides to the edge of space and back. Reaching an altitude nearly three times higher than stratospheric balloons, Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin's spacecraft experience several-minute-long spells of microgravity before falling back to Earth . 

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At $164,000 per seat, a trip with HALO Space will cost about a third of the price of a Virgin Galactic flight and won't require any advanced medical certifications. 

"The take-off will be like being in an elevator," said Mira. "The ascent is soft and gentle, climbing at 12 miles per hour."

The 16-foot-wide (5 meters) and 11.5-foot-tall (3.5 m) capsule will be made of aluminum alloy and composite materials. With an internal space of 30.4 square feet (2.8 square meters), the spaceship could host eight paying passengers, plus a pilot. The internal atmosphere will be maintained by a life-support system similar to that of an aircraft. Yet despite this crammed interior and the extreme environment outside the capsule, passengers should still feel perfectly comfortable and able to relax.

"It's meant to be a sort of a glamping experience," Frank Stephenson, creative director and founder of Frank Stephenson Design who led the design work said at the conference. "It's a high-level experience for these people who are used to flying first class rather than economy."

Stephenson, who had previously worked for high-end car makers including BMW, Ferrari, Maserati and McLaren, said the biggest challenge was keeping the capsule light enough so that it can be safely lifted by the balloon while still making sure every aspect of the interior lives up to the expectations of passengers. 

“It's very easy to add weight to things and make it super comfortable," Stephenson said. "It's more difficult to reduce weight, reduce material and still make it feel like a very unique experience."

When fully inflated, the stratospheric balloon will be 460 feet (140 meters) tall, towering over the gleaming space capsule. The balloon is designed to detach from the capsule during descent. The capsule will then be brought down to a landing under a steerable parachute. Mira said the balloon technology is inherently safer than rockets loaded with explosive fuels. It also produces no greenhouse gas emissions, making the experience 100 percent compliant with the most stringent environmental protection standards.

—  Space Perspective wants to take tourists on balloon rides to the stratosphere

—  Space Perspective partners with Exclusive Resorts for balloon rides to the stratosphere

—  Space Perspective starts selling seats for balloon rides

"We are using mature technologies," said Mira. "Balloons in general have been around for more than 200 years. This type of balloon, stratospheric balloons, have been around for almost 100 years. The first human went to the stratosphere on a balloon in 1931."

HALO Space plans to fly from spaceports in the Mojave Desert in the U.S., Spain, Australia and Saudi Arabia. The company is currently working with the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration to receive a license before its first crewed flight next year.  

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: [email protected].

Tereza is a London-based science and technology journalist, aspiring fiction writer and amateur gymnast. Originally from Prague, the Czech Republic, she spent the first seven years of her career working as a reporter, script-writer and presenter for various TV programmes of the Czech Public Service Television. She later took a career break to pursue further education and added a Master's in Science from the International Space University, France, to her Bachelor's in Journalism and Master's in Cultural Anthropology from Prague's Charles University. She worked as a reporter at the Engineering and Technology magazine, freelanced for a range of publications including Live Science, Space.com, Professional Engineering, Via Satellite and Space News and served as a maternity cover science editor at the European Space Agency.

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