The 30 Best Space Movies of All Time
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Space, man. It's just up there, floating and so far beyond the regular comprehension of us plebeians stuck down here on Earth. (The billionaires are, of course, exempt from our land-locked status.) We sit down here on the big blue planet and imagine what it might be like out there. We do it so often, in fact, that we regularly turn the concept into a movie. Independence Day, Star Wars, 2001: A Space Odyssey—films that inspired multiple generations. You know them all by heart.
That leads us to this: a roundup of the best space movies of all time. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took one small step for man and one giant leap for mankind, but did they walk an animal cracker up and down Liv Tyler's stomach? I think not. Leave the science to the geniuses. Leave the kitschy, nausea-inducing space flicks to us.
Aniara
This tense Swedish drama, based on a 1968 epic poem, follows a huge space freight carrying human refugees from an Earth destroyed by climate change—which suddenly veers off course with no hope of reaching its destination. Fair warning: don’t expect much optimism here, but it’s still a profoundly beautiful and sweeping film.
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Solaris
Andrei Tarkovsky’s science fiction masterpiece was overshadowed by 2001: A Space Odyssey upon its initial 1972 release, but it’s a beautiful film in its own right, with many poignant things to say about humanity. The film follows a psychologist who comes to observe a small crew of a space station orbiting the planet Solaris, and begins to experience the supernatural phenomena that have been driving all the crew members into emotional disarray.
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Prospect
Prospect came and went with little fanfare, which is unfortunate—because audiences missed a gripping thriller anchored by excellent lead performances from Pedro Pascal, Jay Duplass, and newcomer Sophie Thatcher. This indie feature made great use of Washington’s Olympic National Park to replicate the environment of a hostile alien moon.
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Barbarella
This campy and imaginative '60s space romp starring Jane Fonda was panned upon its premiere, but has earned a well-deserved critical reevaluation in recent years after attaining cult-classic status. A remake starring Sydney Sweeney is reportedly in development at Sony Pictures, but it’ll take a miracle to reproduce the unique vibe of the original.
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Gattaca
Gattaca is a stone-cold classic with a dystopian setting and themes that still feel relevant today. Ethan Hawke plays a man who dreams of going to space, but faces discrimination in this futuristic society because he was born outside of a widely-accepted eugenics program, where parents select children’s ideal hereditary traits.
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Sunshine
If you want an interstellar psychological thriller with a fantastic ensemble cast including Cillian Murphy, Michelle Yeoh, Rose Byrne, and Chris Evans, Sunshine—from director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland—still holds up. Our stars play a small crew tasked with revitalizing the Sun from its impending heat death in the year 2057.
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The Right Stuff
This historical drama, based on the Tom Wolfe book of the same name, dramatizes the first United States spaceflight mission Project Mercury. Its release in 1983 was a whiplash, bombing at the box office but lighting critics ablaze, later winning four Academy Awards out of eight nominations—including Best Film Editing and Best Original Score.
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High Life
Don’t go into this film if you aren’t ready for a challenging (and staggering) experience, but Claire Denis’s slow-burn science fiction horror is worth experiencing. In a nonlinear narrative, criminals aboard a spaceship heading for a black hole are forced to be guinea pigs to a scientist’s experiments. Physicist Aurélien Barrau, an expert in black holes, consulted on the film, adding a shade of authenticity to this chilling movie.
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Stowaway
This cerebral and gorgeously-shot survival adventure features a small, but stellar cast including Anna Kendrick, Daniel Dae Kim, Toni Collette and Shamier Anderson. Anderson plays an accidental stowaway on a Mars spaceflight mission, immediately endangering the crew—as their vessel is only equipped to support three people.
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Muppets From Space
Of course we’re serious! The first non-musical Muppets film was a touching tale of Gonzo finally finding out where he came from... space, of course! This film was full of hilarious moments and had a surprising amount of celebrity cameos. Remember Hulk Hogan and Ray Liotta’s bit parts?
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Star Trek
Whether you’re a Wrath of Kahn purist or you can get behind the Chris Pine-fronted reboot series as well, the Star Trek universe has a solid place in film, not just TV! There’s so much great material in the Trek-verse to make a movie from, and both the classic films and new series continue to impress, with rock-solid visuals and excellent performances from their ensemble casts.
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Serenity
Hardly any other film out there captures the space western idea as well as Serenity and its preceding Fox series, Firefly. It stands on its own if you haven’t seen the series, but you’ll be much more invested in these fantastic characters if you watch the show. Plus, Firefly is only fourteen episodes total, so it’s worth your time.
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Lilo & Stitch
Some of you may be questioning this inclusion, but here’s our argument that this Disney animated classic deserves a mention. There’s a lengthy intro of the film set in the spaceship Stitch escapes from—and from his perspective, Earth is actually an alien planet that he touches down on for the first time. We rest our case!
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The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Sure, some may prefer to read the book instead, but this hyperactive space comedy is still damn good fun. Even for 2005, the direction is especially strong, and the Jim Henson’s Creature Shop renditions of characters from the books, such as Vogons, Marvin the Paranoid Android, and The Whale are incredibly memorable.
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Treasure Planet
This fun, swashbuckling space adventure is often overlooked when remembering classic Disney animations—but Treasure Planet certainly deserves more love. At the time, this film’s blending of 3D backdrops with traditional 2D characters, sets, and props was revolutionary.
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Armageddon
This is the absolute best of the worst space movies. When a giant asteroid is headed for Earth, Billy Bob Thornton enlists the drilling expertise of Bruce Willis because the only way to stop this bad boy of a space rock is to drill a giant hole into it, drop in a bomb, and blow it up in space. Why not just teach astronauts how to drill? Who knows!? At least there’s also a strangely erotic scene where Ben Affleck runs an animal cookie across Liv Tyler’s body while explaining space.
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Independence Day
Independence Day is America wrapped right up in a movie. There’s not a lot that happens in actual space—a knock that keeps it from ranking higher—but it does involve Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum going to space to fight aliens who are looking to destroy humanity and the world they inhabit, so it tracks.
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The Martian
Ah, the 127 Hours of space movies. Matt Damon gets left behind on Mars after a giant space storm in The Martian, leaving him to fend for himself. Like many space films, this one hones in on human resilience and also shines a wonderful musical spotlight on “Don’t Leave Me This Way.”
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Interstellar
Christopher Nolan's visually-stunning space epic follows Matthew McConaughey as a pilot tasked with finding a new home for the human species. His character sets off into the unknown leaving his family on a dust-filled Earth that's rapidly becoming unable to support life. Prepare to bend your brain trying to understand the concept of relativity as McConaughey races against the clock in an extremely sci-fi way.
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Galaxy Quest
On paper, Galaxy Quest sounds like just a throwaway space comedy about a group of washed up sci-fi actors who accidentally get embroiled in a real intergalactic battle. But with a brilliant cast that consists of Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Alan Rickman, Tony Shalhoub, and Sam Rockwell—Galaxy Quest goes well beyond its expectations. In hindsight, this might be the greatest sci-fi comedy this side of Spaceballs.
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Spaceballs
Spaceballs is a fully insane Mel Brooks comedy, running at warp speed. Even if it’s not his best movie, it’s hard to make a space movie list without including the best space comedy of all time (come at me, Mars Attack!). A brilliant parody of Star Wars, Spaceballs brilliantly weaves together the Darth Vader-lite Dark Helmet with the Han Solo-adjacent Lone Starr and his trusty dog-ish sidekick Barf.
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Contact
This Jodie Foster film is a special kind of space beast. Playing Dr. Arroway, she is contacted by a something off in the far reaches of the universe and must race to figure out exactly who is contacting Earth. Sure, there's not much actual space until the brilliant closing scenes, but it had to be on this list for being a patient, intelligent sci-fi movie that involves the unknown of what's beyond our little planet.
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Wall-E
Hanging out on Earth to literally clean up humanity's mess, Wall-E finds another robot on a scanning mission who was sent to what remains of the third rock from the sun. Together, the two go on a universe-spanning adventure that will warm your heart unlike any other space story. Wall-E remains one of Pixar's greatest accomplishments thanks to its stunning visuals and an ever more important environmental message.
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Moon
Sam Rockwell stars in Moon, a film about a miner in the future who is sent to bring alternative fuel home to Earth. But as he's about to come home, his health takes a serious turn for the worse. Things get even stranger when he runs into a younger version of himself, and he’s tasked along with his clone with figuring out what the hell is going on before they both pay the price of being discovered. This quiet, incredible sci-fi thriller marked a stunning debut for director Duncan Jones, David Bowie's son.
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Gravity
With its orbital camera and ultra-realism, this Alfonso Cuarón-directed sci-fi masterpiece showcases the phenomenal ability of Sandra Bullock, who spends the majority of this movie isolated and surviving the terrors of space. Wanted to be an astronaut when you grow up? Not after seeing this thriller, where the villain is the unforgiving vacuum of space.
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Apollo 13
How do you argue with Ron Howard? His 1995 summer blockbuster about the near-fatal moon mission gone awry is one of the best space movies to ever exist. Like many of the top films in this genre, this Tom Hanks and Kevin Bacon film relies on the ingenuity, fears, and intelligence that make us truly human.
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Hidden Figures
In the rundown of damn good space movies, one of the absolute best never actually features its stars getting off the ground. Hidden Figures tells the true story of Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson), Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monae) and the deeply integral role those three women played in getting John Glenn into space to orbit Earth.
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Alien
Ridley Scott's 1979 masterpiece at once revolutionized the horror and sci-fi genres. Beneath the surface of this space terror bubbles themes tackling everything from feminism to Freudian sex to traditional gender roles and reproduction. Along with that, Alien debuted one of the best heroes in film history with Sigourney Weaver's Ridley, along with one of the greatest monster's in film history with the titular Alien.
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Star Wars
It's the greatest sci-fi franchise in film history, and much of moviemaking as we know it today would not have been possible without George Lucas' original Star Wars. Though it lifted much of its structure and characters from pulp action-adventure of the time, everything from the special effects to the concept of "droids" were absolutely groundbreaking.
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2001: A Space Odyssey
More than years later, humanity has gotten no closer to unraveling the mystery that is Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. It remains a mind-bending achievement of imagination and technical filmmaking that is the Hollywood equivalent of putting a man on the moon. And, to that end, Kubrick's directing is so good in A Space Odyssey, people still believe that he's the one who helped the U.S. Government fake the moon landing. Yes it's slow, yes it's baffling—but in terms of ideas and visual mastery, 2001 is incomparable. It remains the standard for sci-fi movies and laid the groundwork for the genre as we know it today.
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