Out of this world: The 20 best films about space

During a long, near-lightspeed journey, a spacecraft carrying U.S. astronauts crashes on an unknown planet and the survivors realize the date is Nov. 25, 3978, more than 2,000 years after they left on their mission. They discover the planet is inhabited by a species of superintelligent apes, and most movie fans know how it unfolds from there. After all, the Oscar-winning “Planet of the Apes”— starring Charlton Heston, Roddy McDowall, Kim Hunter and Maurice Evans — is now regarded as a classic sci-fi film, and it has since spawned four sequels, one remake, a three-installment reboot, and two TV series. However, despite valiant attempts, none of them can compare to the 1968 original.

Clocking in at 161 minutes, 1968’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” is an epic in every sense of the word. On the surface, the Stanley Kubrick masterpiece is about a voyage to Jupiter to investigate the discovery of a Monolith, a machine built by extraterrestrials that has a profound effect on evolution. However, more deeply, it is a dialogue on existentialism, artificial intelligence and the existence of aliens. A beautifully shot piece of cinema, “2001: A Space Odyssey” earned four Academy Award nominations, including a win for Best Visual Effects, and is widely regarded as one of the greatest films of all time.

A long time ago (but not in a galaxy far, far away), George Lucas’ “Star Wars” made its debut and the Earth was never the same. Sci-fi fans instantly fell for Luke (Mark Hamill), Leia (Carrie Fisher), Han (Harrison Ford), Chewie (Peter Mayhew), and even Darth Vader (David Prowse/James Earl Jones), and the film’s $775 million box office haul makes it one of the most successful films ever made. Although the first two films — “A New Hope” (1977) and “The Empire Strikes Back” (1980) — are regarded as the best, the franchise includes another dozen installments, including sequels, prequels, spinoffs, animated films, and a TV movie. If you’re looking for the most successful sci-fi brand of all time, look no further, and may the Force be with you.

Mr. Spock always gave the Vulcan salute and issued a blessing of “Live long and prosper,” and the Star Trek brand has done just that since debuting in 1966 as a TV show starring Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner. A film, “Star Trek: The Motion Picture,” was released in 1979, and although it was received negatively by most fans and critics, its sequel, 1982’s “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan,” put the film franchise back on track. This was followed by four more sequels in the ‘80s and ‘90s, four “Star Trek: The Next Generation” films and three recent reboots, with at least two more in the works. Live long and prosper, indeed.

All the crew of the Nostromo wanted to do was return home to Earth, but their plans were derailed when the ship detected a distress signal on a distant moon and one of the crew was attacked by an alien species, which unknowingly planted an offspring inside him. With an alien aboard the Nostromo, all hell breaks loose and Warrant Officer Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) and the rest of the humans suddenly realize they are its prey. “Alien” (1979) ended up being a breakout for both Weaver and director Ridley Scott (both newcomers to the silver screen), it earned $80 million against a budget of about $10 million, and it is regarded as one of the top extraterrestrial films in the genre. Of course, “Alien” spawned several solid sequels and a couple of widely acclaimed prequel spinoffs, but nothing can top the original.

Critics be damned: We think “Airplane II: The Sequel” was hilarious. Sure, when compared to its predecessor, 1980’s “Airplane!” it doesn’t hold up, but it still had plenty of sight gags, slapstick, crude humor, and guest stars to make it work. Plus, “Airplane II” saw the return of Robert Hayes, Julie Hagerty, Lloyd Bridges and Peter Graves, and it brought Sonny Bono, William Shatner and Rip Torn along for the trip the second time around. And for the record, if you haven’t seen the 1982 comedy, it’s basically “Airplane!” with a space shuttle. 

Adapted from the bestselling Tom Wolfe book of the same name, “The Right Stuff” (1983) is based on the true experiences of pioneer astronauts Gus Grissom, John Glenn, Alan Shepard, Chuck Yeager and Gordon Cooper (played by Fred Ward, Ed Harris, Scott Glenn, Sam Shepard and Dennis Quaid, respectively). The nearly three-and-a-half-hour epic was a box office bomb, but it nevertheless received overwhelming universal acclaim from critics, as evidenced by its near-perfect 98 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Sure, “Spaceballs” is basically just a parody of almost every movie that appears ahead of it in this slideshow, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t deserve a spot on the list, too. The 1987 Mel Brooks comedy is a nonstop laugh-fest featuring an all-star cast consisting of Bill Pullman, John Candy, Rick Moranis, Dick Van Patten, Joan Rivers, and Brooks himself, among others. Interestingly, the slapstick-packed “Spaceballs” was such a carefully crafted spoof of “Star Wars” that George Lucas’ company actually handled the post-production. (And for the record, Mel, we’re still waiting on “Spaceballs 2: The Search for More Money.”)

“Apollo 13” was such a universally acclaimed hit upon its release in 1995 that the line “Houston, we have a problem” became something of a pop culture phenomenon over the next several years and is still a famous phrase today. It was of course uttered by the great Tom Hanks, who played real-life astronaut Jim Lovell, a member of the Apollo 13 crew alongside Jack Swigert (Kevin Bacon), Fred Haise (Bill Paxton), and Ken Mattingly (Gary Sinise). Ed Harris played flight director Gene Kranz, which was the actor’s second major role in a successful space film, as he also played John Glenn in the aforementioned movie, “The Right Stuff,” in 1983. “Apollo 13” cashed in on two of its nine Academy Award nominations, winning honors for Best Film Editing and Best Sound.

Due to the delayed release of “Titanic,” Paramount rushed the production of “Event Horizon,” edited its original 130-minute runtime down to 93 minutes and infuriated director Paul W. S. Anderson in the process, with the resulting franken-film earning only $26.7 million against a $60 million budget. However, the sci-fi horror film ended up becoming a cult classic on video thanks to its spooky and seriously disturbing story about a rescue mission gone terribly wrong, graphic imagery, thought-provoking pseudoscience and strong cast helmed by Sam Neill and Laurence Fishburne.

Unlike the asteroid disaster movie “Deep Impact,” which focuses on what happens on Earth when a comet is about to and eventually hits the planet, “Armageddon” (released four weeks later) deals mostly with the effort to prevent the impact. This effort consisted of sending a crew of Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck, Steve Buscemi, Owen Wilson, Michael Clarke Duncan and a couple of others into space to detonate a bomb on the asteroid. Sure, it’s not totally realistic, but it’s a Michael Bay movie, so what do you expect? Touchstone expected a huge profit and got it to the tune of $554 million.

In “Galaxy Quest,” Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Alan Rickman, Tony Shalhoub, Sam Rockwell, and Daryl Mitchell play actors who formerly starred on a fictional TV show about space but are mistaken by aliens as actual intergalactic heroes and drawn into a real-life, out-of-this-world conflict. Sounds like the recipe for a financial disaster, but the well-written 1999 sci-fi film actually fared quite well as both a parody and an original comedy, earning a 90 percent freshness rating on Rotten Tomatoes and 10 Saturn Award nominations, including a Best Actor win for Allen.

Douglas Adams’ “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” began as a radio show in 1978, followed by a novel in 1979, a TV series in 1981, a video game in 1984, and finally a movie in 2005. The film centers on the adventures of Arthur Dent (Martin Freeman), a citizen of Earth who escapes the destruction of the planet when it is demolished to make way for a hyperspace bypass. Sam Rockwell, Mos Def, Zooey Deschanel, Bill Nighy and John Malkovich co-star in the sci-fi adventure comedy, which earned more than $100 million worldwide.

Kids love space, so we couldn’t have a list of the best space movies without including something for younger moviegoers. However, just because “WALL-E” is a Disney-Pixar film about a sentient robot, it doesn’t mean there aren’t some parts of the 2008 animated film that appeal to adults. After all, “WALL-E” is full of commentaries on modern living, from criticisms of consumerism and the obesity issue to the abundance of man-made waste and the need to protect the environment. “WALL-E” won an Academy Award in 2009 for Best Animated Feature, in addition to earning five other nominations.

Despite positive reviews and success at numerous award shows, “Moon” is a criminally underrated sci-fi film that only managed $9.5 million at the box office. The 97-minute movie almost exclusively consists of a computer named GERTY and astronaut Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell), who begins to hallucinate while nearing the end of his three-year solo stay on Earth’s moon while overseeing a mining operation. Thought-provoking, dark and even a bit scary, “Moon” was directed and co-written by Duncan Jones, who released the film “Mute” nine years later as what he calls a “spiritual sequel.”

After their spacecraft is destroyed by a field of debris, two astronauts (Sandra Bullock and George Clooney) must navigate the dark and dangerous reaches of space to explore numerous abandoned stations and attempt to find a way home. 2013’s “Gravity” is a gripping, suspenseful, and heart-wrenching sci-fi drama that raked in a whopping $723 million at the box office, earned an impressive 96 percent freshness rating on Rotten Tomatoes and cleaned up at the Academy Awards, winning Best Director (Alfonso Cuarón), Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, Best Original Score, and Best Visual Effects.

Star-Lord (Chris Pratt), Gamora (Zoe Saldana), Drax the Destroyer (Dave Bautista), Rocket (voiced by Bradley Cooper) and Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel) aren’t your typical group of superheroes — they’re the Guardians of the Galaxy, a motley crew based on characters from the Marvel comic book series of the same name. The 2014 superhero film “Guardians of the Galaxy” was a breath of fresh air in a genre that often features nothing but remakes, reboots, and sequels, and it earned a stunning $773 million at the box office worldwide, as well as two Academy Award nominations. A sequel, “Guardians of the Galaxy 2,” was released in 2017, with a third scheduled to drop in 2020.

Directed, co-written and co-produced by Christopher Nolan, 2014’s “Interstellar” is set in a dystopian future where a group of astronauts (including Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway) enter a wormhole in an attempt to find a new home for the human race. The film’s all-star cast also features Matt Damon, Jonathan Lithgow, Jessica Chastain, Casey Affleck, Michael Caine, Ellen Burstyn, and Topher Grace, and the sci-fi drama earned generally positive reviews from critics, more than $677 million at the box office and an Oscar for Best Visual Effects, in addition to four other nominations.

In 2035, astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon) is left behind on Mars during a dust storm and presumed dead by his colleagues. He somehow manages to survive, but his challenges are just beginning, as he must find enough food and shelter to last until he can be rescued... which is obviously no quick or easy task. Jessica Chastain, Jeff Daniels, Kristen Wiig, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Peña, Sean Bean, and Donald Glover co-star in “The Martian,” which is based on Andy Weir’s 2011 novel of the same name. It nabbed seven Oscar nods and two Golden Globe wins for Best Actor (Damon) and Best Picture, both of which, somewhat curiously, were in the musical or comedy category.

Based on the non-fiction book of the same name by Margot Lee Shetterly, “Hidden Figures” is the real story of Katherine Goble Johnson (Taraji P. Henson), Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer), and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe), three black mathematicians who overcame society’s racial and gender segregation and prejudices to become integral parts of NASA’s early years. Although it was praised by critics and fans, “Hidden Figures” couldn’t capitalize on any of its three Oscar or two Golden Globe nominations.