There is a corner of the Science Fiction genre devoted to the actual event that dazzles plenty of us – traversing the cosmos! From the very first Sci-Fi film, the epic 18 minute, A Trip To The Moon all the way to last year’s First Man; heading to the stars opens us up to all of the other wild adventures that have happened on screen, like Star Trek and Total Recall.
With the exception of a few films on this list, most of these movies are still fiction. But they’re based in science fact. With help from scientists like Kip Thorne and Carl Sagan, these movies also do their best to maintain the integrity of the real science that might be involved to what the movies need them to do. Here are 10 Of The Best Space Travel Movies Of All Time, Ranked.
10 2001: A Space Odyssey
For most sci-fi fans, Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 is the pinnacle of everything a science fiction movie should be. Co-written by one of the Big Three of Science Fiction, Arthur C. Clarke and based off of his short story, “The Sentinel,” there was literally nothing like it in cinema ever in 1968.
No matter what you think of the film’s actual plot about an ominous monolith affecting human evolution, the visual beauty of the film and many of the scenes and tropes it introduced still hold up over fifty years after its release and influence many films.
9 Interstellar
One of those many films and filmmakers inspired by 2001 and Kubrick is Interstellar, directed by unabashed Kubrick devotee, Christopher Nolan. The film takes place in a not too far off future where most of our world’s food resources are depleted, real history about space is replaced to keep people from looking up and NASA is hiding.
Until former pilot, Cooper and his daughter stumble upon them. Coop’s presented with the most arduous of missions – find a suitable replacement to bring all of mankind to its new home.
8 The Martian
What if there was a whole team working to find and bring Tom Hanks home in Castaway? The Martian features Matt Damon as an astronaut, Mark Watney stranded on Mars.
After calculating that he has four years he has to survive until the next crew will touch down, Mark goes to work, growing his own potato farm. Once he gets a Pathfinder going is when NASA realizes that he’s still alive and the journey to bring him home begins.
7 The Right Stuff
We’ve all seen that big hero shot – all of the film’s stars walking in slow motion getting ready to do the task at hand. That shot was originated in the astronaut movie, The Right Stuff.
The movie tells the real-life story of the military pilots, including John Glenn, who helped test and refine the space program that would lead to Project Mercury, the first US manned mission into space.
6 Apollo 13
Ed Harris did such a good job at playing and astronaut in The Right Stuff, that Ron Howard had tapped him to play flight director Gene Kranz in Apollo 13.
The film features Kevin Bacon, Bill Paxton, and the incomparable Tom Hanks as the three astronauts who were set to orbit the moon. Until an explosion happens on the shuttle, turning the mission into getting back to Earth safely.
5 Gravity
Being lost in the vastness of space sounds absolutely terrifying. Combine that with your shuttle being broken. Veteran astronaut, Matt Kowalski and Dr. Ryan Stone are aboard the Explorer tasked with repairing the Hubble Telescope.
That mission goes haywire when debris smashes the Explorer forcing Matt and Ryan to find a way to a nearby station and find a way home. But they have to work fast, the debris field is orbiting them.
4 Contact
Based on Carl Sagan’s novel, Contact is about a different type of space exploration. Instead of physically traversing the cosmos, it’s up to Ellie Arroway and her team to research radio emissions and waves from space looking for signs of intelligent life.
As she is about to be shut down, a sequence appears from the Vega system, light years away. It’s one of the best movies that feature the research that actually goes into helping the astronauts.
3 From The Earth To The Moon
After the success of Apollo 13, director Ron Howard teamed up with Tom Hanks for the HBO miniseries, From The Earth To The Moon. The ambitious series took a look at the lives of the men and women from the early Apollo missions.
The show was memorable for its use of archive footage of prior missions and news reports, mixed in with dramatic scenes as well to give the show a documentary type of feel while still being a high-stakes drama.
2 First Man
“That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for all mankind” might be the most famous quote of the 20th century. Neil Armstrong’s life has been whittled down to that one epic moment (and can you blame history for doing so?!).
But the personal triumphs and tragedies that led Armstrong to that one moment and Kennedy’s “We Go To The Moon” speech; the death of his daughter, is something that no one should ever have to endure.
1 Galaxy Quest
While there is absolutely zero scientific research involved in the events of Galaxy Quest. But not every movie about space travel has to be scientifically accurate or filled with soon doom and gloom. It’s also not every day that a parody of Star Trek is so well received that fans of that franchise actually rank it when they’re discussing their favorite Trek movies.
While the cast of the TV series Galaxy Quest, series star Jason Nesbit is approached by several members of the Thermian race contact him to get his crew together and help them stop an evil threat. They really think that Nesbit is his character, Commander Taggart and the rest of the actors are their characters. It’s up to them to now stop pretending their astronauts and save the galaxy for real.
