If cinema is an invitation to escape the real world, there’s no better place to go to then the stars. However, while there are plenty of movies about space travel circling the cosmos, which ones are actually worth watching?
Even before the Space Race, which kicked off in 1961 after the Russians launched the Vostok 1 spacecraft, artists of all stripes were inspired by the endless expanse of outer space. It was the “next frontier” – a whole new road paved by the bricks of innovation and brilliance. Finally, in 1969, mankind took its giant leap when the Apollo 11 mission put the first-ever human beings on the Moon’s surface.
Science fiction is a popular movie genre, as you might already know. But not all the best sci-fi movies venture into the great unknown. Similarly, not all “space movies” are science fiction. From period pieces set during the politically-charged Space Race to contemporary dramas that happen to deal with astronauts, some movies that take place lightyears away actually hit close to home.
If you’re feeling stuck and wonder what it might be like to be in the vastness of the universe, here are the greatest 35 movies about space travel to get you there.
35. The Midnight Sky
Year: 2020
Director: George Clooney
In George Clooeny’s seventh feature as a director, the actor/filmmaker/Nespresso salesman looked to the stars for Netflix’s movie The Midnight Sky. Based on the 2016 novel by Lily Brooks-Dalton, Clooney stars as an emotionally detached academic living in isolation in the Arctic in the aftermath of a widespread disaster that has poisoned Earth’s atmosphere. But Clooney isn’t actually alone, as he finds company in a stranded mute girl (Caoilinn Springall) and tries to warn a spaceship from returning to Earth. Though Clooney’s haunted protagonist doesn’t really go into space himself, The Midnight Sky is a worthy slow ride through the stars.
34. Armageddon
Year: 1998
Director: Michael Bay
When Earth is in danger, who else can save it but Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck? In Michael Bay’s bombastic classic, all of Earth is in danger as an asteroid is headed straight into the blue planet’s path. The urgency compels NASA to recruit and train a team of rugged oil drillers to become astronauts and break up the rock before it’s too late. While it saw heated competition with the similar sci-fi disaster epic Deep Impact, Armageddon is summer movie goodness that plays out like an arena rock anthem. It’s silly, loud, and the peak of Michael Bay’s awesome powers. Don’t close your eyes, because you don’t want to miss a thing.
33. Lucy in the Sky
Year: 2019
Director: Noah Hawley
In Lucy in the Sky, Natalie Portman goes to space. But it’s the story of when she comes back down to Earth that the movie is really about. Loosely based on the highly-publicized personal life of NASA’s Lisa Nowak, Lucy in the Sky follows an astronaut (Portman) whose transcendent experience in space is followed by emotional turmoil upon her return home, with a love triangle causing her to lose all grip of reality. With dreamlike direction by Legion’s Noah Hawley, Lucy in the Sky free-floats through a woman’s existential crisis that is both delicate and devastating.
32. I.S.S.
Year: 2023
Director: Gabriela Cowperthwaite
In space, no one can hear you wage war. In Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s pressure-cooker space thriller, the brotherly peace between American and Russian astronauts aboard the International Space Station is disrupted when a ground war suddenly breaks out back on Earth. Without contact to their home nations, allegiances divide, and trust breaks down in low orbit. A microcosm of humanity’s rabid tribalism, I.S.S. packs B-movie thrills and political paranoia in an impressively grounded sci-fi drama.
31. Apollo 11
Year: 2019
Director: Todd Douglas Miller
It’s one of the most realistic space travel movies ever made, because it actually follows one in real time. In Todd Douglas Miller’s mesmerizing documentary, Apollo 11 recounts its namesake: the historic mission to Earth’s Moon in 1969. But rather than bury one of humanity’s greatest achievements with talking head interviews and snooze-inducing narration, Miller lets the action speak for itself by following the event via well-preserved, previously unseen archival footage. This includes an immersive sequence of the entire Moon landing in real time. Widely acclaimed upon release, the movie won three Primetime Emmy Awards; NASA astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collons received nominations for Outstanding Cinematography due to their camerawork during the missions.
30. Space Cowboys
Year: 2000
Director: Clint Eastwood
You don’t need zero gravity to be an OG. In Clint Eastwood’s rip-roaring underdog adventure, a team of retired U.S. Air Force test pilots – played by Eastwood, Tommy Lee Jones, Donald Sutherland, and James Garner – are called back by NASA for one more ride to repair an old Soviet satellite. Though these geriatric pilots are way over the hill, these “Space Cowboys” set out to prove their worth while living out their unfulfilled dreams. Space Cowboys is one of Eastwood’s more easygoing movies of his career, being an action-oriented comic romp with NSYNC needle drops.
29. Proxima
Year: 2019
Director: Alice Winocour
Eva Green embarks on the adventure of a lifetime, but it’s her duties as a mother that bring her back to Earth. In Alice Winocour’s moving drama Proxima, Eva Green stars as a single mother whose lifelong dreams of becoming an astronaut are challenged by her obligations to her eight-year-old daughter (Zélie Boulant-Lemesle). There are no incoming asteroids or alien threats here in Proxima. Instead, on the edge of the final frontier, there are only uneasy questions about what it means to make history and what it means to actually lead a life worth living.
28. October Sky
Year: 1999
Director: Joe Johnston
In this sun-dabbled, nostalgic period drama, America’s past and future collide in one man’s journey to set out on his own path. Based on the life of real-life NASA engineer Homer H. Hickam Jr., October Sky follows a young Homer (Jake Gyllenhaal), a coal miner’s son who is inspired by the 1957 launch of Sputnik 1 to pursue a career in aerospace engineering, which puts him in conflict with his father who hoped his son would follow in his more earthly footsteps. October Sky has plenty of heart as a good old-fashioned coming-of-age story about making a name for oneself against the infinite skies.
27. Spaceman
Year: 2024
Director: Johan Renck
Adam Sandler is on a whole new level in the sci-fi drama Spaceman. The comedy star plays a depressed Czech cosmonaut who is six months into a deep space mission. Back home, his wife (Carey Mulligan) grows estranged, resentful of Sandler’s Jakub for leaving her and their unborn child. When Jakub encounters a bizarre creature (voiced by Paul Dano), Jakub learns to resolve all that ails him millions of lightyears away. Though its premise sounds like a layup for another wacky Sandler comedy, Spaceman is an infinitely more introspective drama about one man on the farthest reaches of space trying to save all that he can, including himself.
26. Gravity
Year: 2013
Director: Alfonso Cuarón
Sandra Bullock goes where no man or woman has ever gone before – and no one in their right mind would ever want to. In Alfonso Cuarón’s white-knuckle thriller Gravity, the Oscar-winning star plays an astronaut whose spacewalk around Earth’s orbit ends in disaster, leaving her untethered to float in space. As Bullock’s Dr. Ryan Stone tries to find purpose again, she endures psychological traumas and emotional distress beyond reason. Gravity makes the most of its A-list star, as if Bullock has her own gravitational pull that draws us in even closer.
25. Alien
Year: 1979
Director: Ridley Scott
What awaits us in the dark corners of space? Ridley Scott’s sci-fi masterwork Alien shows precisely what terrors lurk beyond. Set aboard a commercial space tug ship, Scott’s Alien sees the crew of the Nostromo answer a distress call only to inadvertently bring aboard an acid-spewing menace of unknown origin. Alien not only made Sigourney Weaver a star and launched a franchise but also redefined science fiction on the big screen with its mature approach to the genre and eye-popping production design. It’s easy to see why this film kickstarted the Alien timeline and why it’s an easy addition to teh list of the best movies about space travel.
24. WALL-E
Year: 2008
Director: Andrew Stanton
Humanity has left Earth behind and, in the comfort of automation, has forgotten what it means to plant roots. In Pixar‘s celebrated family-friendly adventure, the humble little robot WALL-E is left behind to clean up a ravaged, devastated Earth. While falling in love with cutting-edge EVE, WALL-E’s adventures slowly beckon the remnants of humanity back to Earth. A massive hit for both Pixar and Disney, WALL-E is an achievement of animated filmmaking, inviting as it is foreboding in its warning that humanity really only has one planet to call home.
23. Apollo 13
Year: 1995
Director: Ron Howard
Houston, we have a problem. In the shadow of the Moon landing came the Apollo 13 mission in 1970, where mankind’s third visit to the Moon is interrupted by a harrowing explosion, thus turning a visit into a rescue mission. In 1995, the events of Apollo 13 were recounted and dramatized with director Ron Howard’s critically acclaimed Apollo 13, which stars Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, and Bill Paxton as real-life astronauts Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise, respectively. Apollo 13 may not have led mankind further into the stars, but its legacy in inspiring one of the greatest NASA movies is undeniable.
22. Moon
Year: 2009
Director: Duncan Jones
Duncan Jones’ acclaimed 2009 sci-fi Moon, which topped a list of most scientifically accurate movies in an October 2013 issue of the peer-reviewed journal Trends in Cognitive Science, follows an isolated and troubled space miner (Sam Rockwell) whose three-year job mining helium-3 on the Moon finally nears its end. But on the brink of his return home, an accident changes everything. Though produced on a minuscule budget, Jones’ engrossing Moon makes the most of every penny, with a compelling Sam Rockwell as the movie’s chief anchor that gives this zero-gravity drama all its weight.
21. Event Horizon
Year: 1997
Director: Paul W.S. Anderson
Although Paul W.S. Anderson has built his career with questionable video game adaptations, his few forays into original material have proved formidable, most especially with 1997’s Event Horizon. Laurence Fishburne stars as a rescue crew captain whose team is dispatched to investigate Event Horizon, a previously missing spaceship that has suddenly reappeared near Neptune. But something is aboard Event Horizon, and it doesn’t come in peace. Easily one of Anderson’s best movies as a director, Event Horizon endures as a cult classic whose legacy becomes more apparent with each passing turn around the sun.
20. Solaris
Year: 1972
Director: Andrei Tarkovsky
Conceived as a counter-argument to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, Andrei Tarkovsky’s influential Russian sci-fi Solaris follows a psychologist (Donatas Banionis) who is sent to psycho-analyze a crew aboard a space station near the planet Solaris. However, the psychologist experiences some problems of his own when he sees visions of his deceased wife. While Kubrick’s glossy sci-fi epic imagined the unspeakable horrors that await mankind’s forward progress, Tarkovsky’s Solaris looks inward, interrogating our collective erosion as we tread further into infinite space and beyond.
19. Deep Impact
Year: 1998
Director: Mimi Leder
Michael Bay’s Armageddon envisioned the imminent disaster of something colliding with Earth as a rollercoaster spectacle, but Mimi Leder’s Deep Impact saw it for the existential horror it really is. Where Armageddon had an asteroid to worry about, Deep Impact deals with an incoming comet big enough to wipe out all life on Earth. Humanity, united by Morgan Freeman as President of the United States, works to bunker down while a team of American and Russian astronauts head off to space to blow up the rock with nukes. Compared to the rollicking Armageddon, Deep Impact lives up to its very title as a surprisingly somber and serious disaster thriller that’s light on laughs and heavy on the heart.
18. Star Trek
Year: 2009
Director: J.J. Abrams
Since 1966, the Star Trek timeline has taken audiences worldwide to the farthest reaches of the final frontier. With over a dozen movies and counting, it’s hard to pin down just one Star Trek movie that’s worth hitching a ride onto. (And ask any Trekkie: Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan is untouchable.) But J.J. Abrams’ 2009 reboot movie is something special, being an accessible adventure anyone can sink into regardless if they speak Klingon or not. In this cinematic remake of the original series, Captain Kirk (Chris Pine) and the crew of the USS Enterprise fly their maiden voyage, going up against an enemy from a much different time. While virtually any Trek movie can satisfy, Abrams’ Star Trek goes to warp speed.
17. Hidden Figures
Year: 2016
Director: Theodore Melfi
Not all heroes wear spacesuits. In Theodore Melfi’s moving Space Race drama Hidden Figures, the lives of three real-life African American mathematicians – Katherine Goble Johnson (played by Taraji P. Henson), Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer), and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe) – who all worked out the calculations to get astronaut John Glenn to space are on display, showing us the first step in mankind’s journey to the Moon on the big screen. While Hidden Figures rehashes tired white savior tropes, the movie is a graceful tribute to the women who gave so much and endured so much in assuring humanity’s place among the stars.
16. The Right Stuff
Year: 1983
Director: Philip Kaufman
To be part of Project Mercury was to be like a warrior of ancient times. You had to have the smarts, the grit, and the guts to fly with NASA at the dawn of the Space Race. In 1979, Tom Wolfe wrote about the real-life Mercury Seven, and in 1983, director Philip Kaufman turned it into one of the greatest NASA movies ever made. The Right Stuff tells of the American military test pilots who were involved in the first-ever human spaceflight missions. Though The Right Stuff didn’t take off in theaters, it earned eight Oscar nominations at the 56th Academy Awards. In 2013, the movie entered the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.
15. High Life
Year: 2018
Director: Claire Denis
In need of a hunky father figure? Well, Robert Pattinson in Claire Denis’ sci-fi survival horror movie High Life is here to help. Pattinson stars as Monte, who was one of many death row criminals serving out their sentence extracting energy from a black hole. But now Monte and his infant daughter are the ship’s last survivors who are headed into the total oblivion of deep space. A mystifying and mesmerizing piece of space horror, High Life envisions a dark future where space isn’t a promise of new adventures but rather a tomb where nothing but black infinity awaits.
14. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Year: 2005
Director: Garth Jennings
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy doesn’t make the slightest bit of effort to be “realistic,” but when you’ve got singing dolphins, bureaucratic aliens, and depressed robots voiced by Alan Rickman, who needs realism? In this Hollywood adaptation of Douglas Adams’ best-selling British sci-fi novels, Martin Freeman stars as ordinary Arthur Dent, who is whisked away on a spaceship after Earth is scheduled for demolition. On a ride across the galaxy with a pretty crush (Zooey Deschanel), his alien best friend (Mos Def), and the President of the Galaxy (Sam Rockwell), Arthur learns the answers to life and the universe. Spoilers: It’s 42.
13. Titan A.E.
Year: 2000
Director(s): Don Bluth, Gary Goldman
From animation auteur Don Bluth comes one of his final theatrically-released movies: the 2000 sci-fi adventure Titan A.E. In the aftermath of Earth’s destruction, humanity is left homeless, forced to wander the stars as a second-class species. But years later, yard salvager Cale (Matt Damon) learns he might have the key to guide humans to their new home. Released between eras of animated filmmaking, Titan A.E.’s crude mixture of hand-drawn and early CGI underscores its Pathfinder vibes, a piece of work that represents both the past and future of big screen escapism.
12. Aniara
Year: 2018
Director: Pella Kågerman
Pella Kågerman’s cinematic adaptation of Harry Martinson’s 1956 poem is underscored by urgency and desperation, a minimalist thriller that posits our damnation isn’t in the stars but right here on Earth after we’ve sucked its resources dry. In this dark, dramatic thriller, mankind leaves a ravaged Earth in droves aboard luxury spaceships headed for Mars. But one ship on a three-week course packed with colonists veers way off course, turning the ship into a flying graveyard going nowhere. A slow-burn, slow-march existential horror, Aniara is a dreadful but meaningful experience that doesn’t compromise on the brutality of space.
11. Star Wars
Year: 1977
Director: George Lucas
What hasn’t already been said about Star Wars? One of the biggest and most influential movies of all time, Star Wars’ mark is loud and clear wherever you look. But turning the clock back to 1977, it’s critical to remember how much of a game-changer it was for mainstream science fiction. A pastiche of director George Lucas’ creative influences, Star Wars renders the clean lines and stiff sophistication of space travel into a medieval adventure, where hives of scum and villainy and forces of lightness and darkness duke it out to brass-heavy orchestras. In 1977, the Force truly awoke for us all.
10. Ad Astra
Year: 2019
Director: James Gray
James Gray’s meditation on masculinity goes planetary in his 2019 thriller Ad Astra. Brad Pitt stars as an astronaut who blasts off to Neptune to investigate a derelict spaceship deemed to be the source of dangerous power surges. That spaceship also happens to be a post formerly commanded by his legendary father (Tommy Lee Jones), who has been missing for years. A gorgeous movie about the fallacy of hero worship, Ad Astra impresses with some out-there action sequences, including a standout rover shootout on the Moon. Ad Astra packs plenty of weight even in zero Gs.
9. Dune: Part One and Dune: Part Two
Year: 2021 and 2024
Director: Denis Villeneuve
The spice must flow. Frank Herbert’s seminal sci-fi novels come roaring to life in Denis Villeneuve’s smash hit duology, released in 2021 and 2024. In this sand-blasted masterpiece, young Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) rises from a house prince to revolutionary against the overwhelming might of the rival Harkonnen family. At the center of the war for power is planet Arrakis’ Spice, the hallucinogenic drug that literally fuels the universe’s space travel. Part military action-thriller, part coming-of-age drama, Villeneuve’s Dune movies are as epic as the sandworms that roam all across Arrakis.
8. The Black Hole
Year: 1979
Director: Gary Nelson
In the middle of Disney’s “Dark Ages” came the original sci-fi disaster movie, The Black Hole. At the time, one of the most expensive movies ever made, The Black Hole, follows the crew aboard the USS Palomino who find another ship once thought missing. While The Black Hole comes off too strongly as a Star Wars ripoff – which is rather ironic, given Disney’s ownership of the latter franchise decades later – the movie remains a work of impressive craftsmanship, even if it feels like the script was written in the void.
7. The Martian
Year: 2015
Director: Ridley Scott
The mission: Get Matt Damon home. Based on Andy Weir’s self-published best-selling novel, The Martian chronicles the survival of an astronaut botanist and engineer (Damon) who is left behind on Mars after his team returns home. As NASA prepares a rescue effort, Damon’s protagonist uses his smarts and sense of humor to survive months in isolation. The Martian is a gorgeously rendered sci-fi that, almost like Scott’s other classic Alien, doubles down in high-fidelity realism.
6. Sunshine
Year: 2007
Director: Danny Boyle
Danny Boyle’s underrated sci-fi thriller Sunshine is a startling meditation on science, faith, and survival – or at least it starts out that way until it suddenly becomes a sweeping slash-and-horror. In this star-studded ensemble that includes Cillian Murphy, Rose Byrne, Chris Evans, Michelle Yeoh, and Hiroyuki Sanada, a team of scientists is tasked with “bombing” the sun to reinvigorate it after Earth has frozen over. Soon, the team encounters a dilemma: do they investigate the derelict ship of their immediate predecessors or proceed with their high-risk mission? Though Sunshine veers into conventional action movie territory by its end, the journey on the way is an impressive study of what it means to stave off the threat of a bitterly cold demise.
5. Europa Report
Year: 2013
Director: Sebastián Cordero
What takes priority: The safety of a crew or the success of a mission? In Sebastián Cordero’s Europa Report, mankind makes its first journey to one of Jupiter’s moons after the discovery of a hidden ocean that might contain life. But when the crew of Europa One suffers unimaginable losses – including severed communication back to Earth – the survivors overcome psychological and physical turmoil for the sake of discovery. To compensate for its minuscule budget, Europa Report adopts a found-footage format to be comprised of (fictional) interviews and archival footage that lend the movie a lifelike realism of a rare kind.
4. First Man
Year: 2018
Director: Damien Chazelle
In between his Tinseltown-centric films La La Land and Babylon, director Damien Chazelle swerves away from the glamour of Hollywood stardom to zero in on a different “star” entirely: astronaut Neil Armstrong, played by Ryan Gosling. Based on a 2005 Armstrong biography by James R. Hansen, First Man follows Armstrong in the lead-up to the historic Apollo 11 mission in 1969. However, First Man isn’t fueled by overtly sentimental hero worship and nostalgia for bygone Americana. Instead, the movie is an uncompromising journey into Armstrong’s personal troubles at home that quietly underscores one of the greatest achievements in all of human history.
3. A Trip to the Moon
Year: 1902
Director: Georges Méliès
In one of the first science fiction movies ever made, Georges Méliès uses his technical wizardry to take audiences to the Moon and back again in his landmark silent film short, A Trip to the Moon. The plot might be primitive – a group of astronomers visit the Moon, explore its surface, and escape from “Moon aliens” before coming back to Earth – but A Trip to the Moon is nothing short of a miracle, being a technically complex achievement that predates future wonders like Star Wars and Avatar. Clocking in at less than 20 minutes, A Trip to the Moon is a worthwhile adventure that takes less time than a trip to Starbucks.
2. 2001: A Space Odyssey
Year: 1968
Director: Stanley Kubrick
To call Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey one of the greatest sci-fi movies of all time is an understatement. A mind-melting masterpiece of the imagination, the movie’s vaguely sketched yet simple plot – 21st-century mankind’s search for intelligent life beyond Earth – masks a mystifying descent into the unknown. Between ominous obelisks and menacing AI, Kubrick’s movie is an elaborate interpretive dance that posits that pursuing the future will forever be a risky endeavor. 2001: A Space Odyssey might befuddle all who come its way, but it will never be forgettable.
1. Interstellar
Year: 2014
Director: Christopher Nolan
Christopher Nolan’s treatise on love, survival, and exploration is found in Interstellar. Set in a near future where humanity faces a slow death on an increasingly dry and arid Earth, Matthew McConaughey plays a widower and ex-NASA test pilot who stumbles into a secret mission to find humanity a new home. With meticulous and stunning creative direction and a stirring score by Hans Zimmer (in what is arguably his best work yet as a composer), Interstellar is so much more than the million memes it’s spawned. It’s a movie about what it means to love so much, it takes you far away.
