The 25 Best Space Movies Ever - The Ringer

12/7/2018 The 25 Best Space Movies Ever - The Ringer
MOVIES POP CULTURE
The 25 Best Space Movies, Ranked

Whether a story unfolds in our own galaxy or one far, far away, space makes a great
setting for film. But which space movies are truly out of this world?
By The Ringer Staff Sep 11, 2017, 8:30am EDT
Disney/Warner Bros./20th Century Fox/Ringer illo
Outer space is everywhere: Not only are we physically surrounded by it, but we’re
inundated with images of it, both real and fictional. NASA’s long-lived Cassini mission is
ending this week, just after its even longer-lived Voyager mission marked its 40th
anniversary. SpaceX is about to launch the most powerful operational rocket in the
world. Star Trek is returning to TV, The Martian author Andy Weir is returning to
bookshelves, and Destiny 2 and a new Metroid release are bringing gamers back to the
stars. Please join us at The Ringer as we celebrate and explore the cultural resonance
and science of space all week long.
S
pace: It’s the final frontier, the place where no one can hear you scream, and
a boundless backdrop that squashes any man’s ego. Or so we’ve been told
by three of the best space movies ever, as determined by the semi-rigorous
ranking process we’re presenting today.
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Whether a story unfolds in the past, the present, or the future — in our own galaxy or one
far, far away — space makes a great setting for film. For one thing, it’s always trying to kill
characters, which raises the storytelling stakes. Its scale, and the speed required to
traverse it, make space a natural special-effects showcase. And most importantly, the
inhuman emptiness of space forces characters to confront their private fears and self-
doubts even as it inspires existential and epistemological questions that fascinate us all.
It’s no wonder that Hollywood never stops making space movies. (Brad Pitt, James Gray,
and Insterstellar’s cinematographer are at work on another epic right now.) Our appetite
for them is as vast as the vacuum.
We’ve seen several space movies added to the index in 2017, from the great to the
terrible (and everything in between), and we still have the annual Star Wars installment
(and, uh, Geostorm) to salivate over. But today’s exercise is an attempt to determine the
best space movies of all time, with a list of nominees dating back decades.
To qualify for the list, it’s not sufficient for a film to be sci-fi (Blade Runner doesn’t count).
Nor are aliens alone enough (sorry, E.T., Close Encounters, and Arrival). The
prerequisite is simple: To be eligible, a movie has to be at least partly set in space. Some
of the movies below entirely take place in space, while in others, space makes more of a
cameo. But if you’re wondering why a movie you love didn’t make our cut, an absence of
actual space scenes might explain the snub.
To arrive at our ranking, we stuck to almost the same formula we followed in our ranking
of Good Bad Movies earlier this year. First we canvassed our staff for favorite-space-
movie nominees. After weeding out nonqualifiers (apologies to Alien Nation) and
supplementing the list with some worthy candidates that weren’t mentioned, we ran the
resulting 55 films through the equation below:
Let’s take this one acronym at a time.
CR stands for Cultural Relevance and, in the words of Good Bad Movie maven Andrew
Gruttadaro, “was determined by multiplying a movie’s number of Google News hits in the
last year (with 1 point being awarded per 100 hits) by the number of years it’s been since
that movie’s release.” We want to reward movies that never grow old, becoming artistic
touchstones and constantly resurfacing in our cultural conversation. Of course, this
metric favors movies that belong to ongoing series such as Star Wars, Star Trek, and
Avatar — which, judging by Google, James Cameron has at least been busy discussing,
if not directing — but that’s OK, since sequels help draw attention (and devotion) to the
originals.
RT stands for Rotten Tomatoes score. This time around, we aren’t targeting poorly
reviewed movies, so the higher here, the better (although not all of our leaders are
completely critic-approved).
PO stands for Public Opinion. Last week, we asked you — that is, those of you who
follow The Ringer on Twitter and happened to see this tweet — to select your 10 favorite
films from our list of 55. More than 5,500 readers responded. After the crowdsourced
picks came in, we tabulated the vote totals and ordered each movie from 1 to 55, with
first place receiving 55 points, second place receiving 54 points, and so on.
With each of those three components in hand, we did the arithmetic to calculate each
movie’s GSS, or Great Space Score. The higher the score, the higher the ranking.
Now that you know the methodology, you, like Lewis Pirenne in Isaac Asimov’s
Foundation, might be thinking, “Space, man, have you no respect for science?” To which
we, like Foundation’s Anselm haut Rodric, say, “Science be damned!” (Foundation has
very lifelike dialogue ) No not really we like science But movie greatness is more than 3/22
https://www.theringer.com/2017/9/11/16285932/25-best-space-movies-ranked
very lifelike dialogue.) No, not really — we like science. But movie greatness is more than
a matter of math, so there’s room to disagree.
We hope you’ll join us on this top-25 journey; when you’ve touched down at the bottom
of the page, you’ll find a link to the rankings for the full 55. We’re now T-minus one
paragraph away from the rankings, so it’s time to stare at your screen and start saying
that stuff is a go.
Remember to check back for more space-related content throughout the week. And don’t
miss our interview elsewhere on the site Monday with Industrial Light & Magic effects
legend John Knoll, who had a hand in the looks of a few of the films below. — Ben
Lindbergh
Just Missed the Cut
TriStar Pictures
Total Recall (1990)
Directed by Paul Verhoeven and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Total Recall is a

perfectly weird space movie, a standout of ’90s science fiction. In it, Schwarzenegger
frantically yelps “Two weeks!” while his old-lady disguise malfunctions when he’s trying to
infiltrate the planet Mars. Later, he kills a henchman named Richter by dragging him in
front of a moving elevator and bisecting his arms from the rest of his body; then he holds
up both arms and says, “See you at the party, Richter!” I really, really love Total Recall.
— Andrew Gruttadaro
Sunshine (2007)
Danny Boyle’s Sunshine, which recently turned 10, is the ultimate “except for the ending”
film. Most of the movie perfectly captures the oppressive silence of space, channeling
the serene-yet-sinister stateliness of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Andrei Tarkovsky.
Boyle understands that aliens, enemy spacecraft, and crazed killers aren’t the only
things that make space scary; the unforgiving environment, and the small-but-costly slip-
ups that can occur under intense pressure, are terrifying enough. I just wish he could do
over the third act, which transitions too abruptly and cryptically into shaky-cam slasher
horror that almost — but not quite — spoils the exquisite setup. —Ben Lindbergh
The Fifth Element (1997)

The Fifth Element was released in 1997, and it would still be ahead of its time if it came
out today. It’s a fantastical depiction of the future that never loses sight of the essential
absurdity of human beings and the societies we create. The movie is a two-hour acid trip
with Chris Tucker and Gary Oldman turning it up to 11 in supporting roles, yet it
somehow manages to remain grounded with a strong leading performance from Bruce
Willis and a love story between him and a supernatural being who was built in a lab from
alien DNA. Luc Besson, the writer and director, caught lightning in a bottle with this one:
It shouldn’t work, but it does. — Jonathan Tjarks
Hidden Figures (2016)
That we have the technology for space exploration in 2017 is incredible. That the same
technology also existed in the 1960s, long before the internet, smartphones — hell, even
calculators became commonplace? It’s frankly unbelievable. Hidden Figures puts that
intelligence into perspective via the stories of three African American women whose
brilliant number-crunching launched John Glenn into orbit. It’s a truly “untold” story, and
one of the most compelling ever put to film. — Rubie Edmondson
Interstellar (2014)
Interstellar brought me on an emotional voyage unlike anything I’ve felt before. I saw it
three times in IMAX over the first few weeks of its release because I may never again
come so close to experiencing the sensation of traveling through space and time. Its
booming sounds and striking images physically enthralled me. The way in which it fused
both the fantastical and the familiar mentally captivated me. The plot holes don’t hamper
the journey through wormholes and black holes, because no film will bring you closer.
Interstellar is cinematic magic that brought me to a place that’s hard to reach as you get
older: a place of childlike wonder. — Kevin O’Connor
Top 25
25. Galaxy Quest (1999)
“How did I come to this?” an anguished, purple-head-pronged Alan Rickman asks early
in Galaxy Quest, moments before a hungover and oblivious Tim Allen strides into the
green room, an hour late to his own fan convention. Galaxy Quest is a thought
experiment taken to its most chaotic, delightful, and even tentacly heart-warming
extremes, a loving portrait of a galactic cargo cult that simultaneously makes fun of
everything and takes all of it completely seriously. Sure, Allen has since outed himself as
the worst kind of internet troll — but in Galaxy Quest, we can still enjoy him at his David
Duchovny–esque best. The film is a perfect send-up of Star Trek fandom as well as a
perfect sci-fi voyage in its own right. It is, just in general, perfect, and never — never —
something to be skipped over in its deservedly infinite cable syndication loop. — Claire
McNear
Columbia Pictures
24. Gattaca (1997)
An original sci-fi movie with top-of-the-line movie stars and a cameo from Gore Vidal.
Remember when that was possible? Gattaca is a story about the dangers of eugenics
centered on three objectively genetically blessed white people, but once you get past
that minor hurdle, Andrew Niccol’s 1997 feature is the best kind of thought experiment —
pointed and human-scale in a way that encourages us to emotionally invest in its
hypotheticals. In keeping with the theme of this list, though, Gattaca’s vision of space is
less futuristic than old school. It’s still the last frontier, an impossible dream for Ethan
Hawke’s Vincent, a naturally conceived human being in a society where everyone’s been
genetically engineered for perfection, and Uma Thurman’s Irene alike. And when Vincent
finally gets there, it’s pure catharsis. Gattaca’s a deeply American movie about how DNA
shouldn’t be and isn’t destiny that shockingly flopped at the American box office, but at
least we appreciate it now. —Alison Herman
east e app ec ate t o so e a
23. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)

Sure, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story has its issues. There’s a blind character who offs
Stormtroopers with a staff. There is classic Star Wars plot armor in the form of crucial
information being available only via physical media. (The internet doesn’t exist, but
intergalactic travel does?) There’s a creepy CGI reincarnation. And — spoiler alert — you

can’t count on getting to know any of your new friends better in future installments.
But as a wise man once wrote on the internet, Rogue One is the best popcorn war movie
since Saving Private Ryan. Taken that way — as a war movie set in space instead of as a
meaningful installment of a larger mythology (which it still is, IMO) that is both still being
formed and was largely set in stone long ago — Rogue One is immensely entertaining.
Yes, it’s dark, but so is life. Whether or not Rogue One should be counted as one of the
best space movies of all time comes down to how you answer a simple question:
Dreamworks Pictures
—Jack McCluskey
y
22. The Martian (2015)
The Martian begins as most tales of disaster do: with unexpected weather and very bad
luck. One moment Mark Watney (Matt Damon) is just a botanist on Mars, studying dirt
and wisecracking with his suspiciously good-looking crew members. The next, he is
abandoned on a planet whose entire environment is antithetical to his existence. There

are no alien invasions or flashbacks to his beautiful wife and children back home, just
shots of Watney, who is forced to confront a set of circumstances that most likely end in
death. What follows is an intricate study in triage, both for Watney — who switches from
panicked, to despondent, to determined that he will “science the shit” out of his survival
— and his dedicated saviors back home. (Shout out to Donald Glover as the token
oblivious-yet-brilliant aerodynamicist.) The movie’s most thrilling moments don’t come in
the form of explosions or fantastical space tomfoolery, but via the inventive victories
cooked up by Watney and his very loyal support system. I never thought I would tear up
witnessing a space botanist discover the first potato sprout in a farm that he fertilized
with his own shit, but that’s The Martian’s charm: It’s a movie about making due with a
handful of supplies and your brain, a love letter to the power of intellect. — Alyssa
Bereznak
21. Contact (1997)
Growing up Catholic, I think I liked Contact so much for the whole “science versus
religion as told by Jodie Foster versus Matthew McConaughey” storyline. But really, just
the whole scene where Foster is being hurled around the galaxy still makes me wish
Contact: The Theme Park Ride existed, and also I am very glad 3-D was not a thing at
the time the movie came out. Oh, and how about that whole mirror scene in the
beginning?! How did they shoot that?! Just kidding, we all know now, but here’s a very
fun Reddit thread about it. So many layers! — Molly McHugh
20. Wall-E (2008)
Wall-E is the most experimental and audacious film Pixar has ever made. As far as
animated movies for kids go, this one stands out for having the most socially responsible
message since FernGully, its use of live action actors in quick-cut scenes, and
essentially being a silent film for the entire first half. Wall-E poetically issues a stern
warning about the consequences of society’s blatant disregard for the planet and our
increased dependence on automation and technology while sending a ray of hope via
the uncompromising spirit of life. Plus there’s an adorable robot love story and beautiful
animation. — Zach Mack
19. Space Jam (1996)

Rumors circulate every few years about a Space Jam sequel, but it’s never going to
happen. Only once in this world will a superstar athlete who quit mid-career to be a
mediocre athlete in another sport decide to participate in a 88-minute image-
rehabilitation project that is also a full-length children’s movie about greedy aliens who
want to enslave a beloved Warner Bros. property but also agree not to enslave said
property if it can beat them in basketball. Also, Bill Murray is too busy for this shit now.
No, we have to enjoy Space Jam for the bizarre, embarrassing, perfect miracle that it is:
a slapstick commercial for the NBA, Michael Jordan, Looney Tunes, and physically
impossible dunks. — Kate Knibbs
18. Star Trek (2009)
I first watched Star Trek as a begrudging favor to a friend. She “liked science fiction” and
I “decidedly did not,” but I figured there are worse things than staring at Chris Pine for
two hours while he swaggers around causing mayhem as a young Captain Kirk (at least
that’s how the film was advertised to me). This is where I admit that I had never seen an
episode of the original series, nor did I have much of a concept for it beyond character
names and the fact that it involved space. However, by the bar fight scene I was
intrigued, and once the stoic Spock is forced to admit that he was emotionally
compromised by the death of his mother, I was feeling a bit emotionally compromised
myself.
This is a movie about happenings in space sure (and there are definitely a lot of CGI
This is a movie about happenings in space, sure (and there are definitely a lot of CGI
renderings, strange species, and shots of the wiiide vaaaastness of spaaace to prove it).
But it’s also a film about emotion and family and the things that link people (and Vulcans)
to one another. It’s raw in some places and not-so-great in others, but as my introduction
to the Star Trek universe, it was memorable. —Megan Schuster
20th Century Fox
17. Independence Day (1996)
Some space movies are about the majesty of space, the sublime wonder of the void, the
mindblowing possibility of contact with a celestial other. Not Independence Day, which is
essentially a film about how much aliens suck and America rules. Instead of glorifying
worlds beyond ours, the ultimate summer popcorn flick turns alien life into a formidable
but punchable villain, and the results are far more charming than they have any right to
be. “WELCOME TO EARTH!” Will Smith bellows, an irresistible avatar for jingoism. Jeff
Goldblum outsmarts his galactic foes using the power of 1990s computer technology in a
plot point so stupid it can only be wonderful. Independence Day is a dumb, beautiful
celebration of our dumb, beautiful world. — Kate Knibbs
16. Predator (1987)
If it wasn’t for the fact that the words “ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER” and
“PREDATOR” flash across the screen within the first few seconds, there’d be no way to
distinguish between this movie’s opening scene and that of any of the Star Wars films.
Even the music is Star Wars-y.
And fine, the next hour and 47 minutes take place in a Central American jungle and
specifically not in space, but the first minute and a half lays it all out for us: Whatever it is
our big-bicepped heroes are dealing with, it’s not of this world. They’re not gonna be on a
level playing field with this mysterious figure as it lurks about in an OG invisibility cloak.
As we quickly find out, not even (most of) America’s biggest sexual tyrannosauruses can
contend with an invisible alien trophy-hunter with thermal goggles and a shoulder-
mounted missile-launcher. After indulging in a game of cat-and-mouse, the Predator
takes out Blain (ex real-life Navy SEAL Jesse Ventura), and Mac (Bill Duke) sees his
translucent outline run into the jungle. This sets in motion one of the most satisfying and
gratuitous shows of firepower in movie history: For a full 86 seconds, these dudes just
bite their lips and shoot from the hip — with the most ridiculous collection of guns a small
team of vehicle-less commandos could carry.
Sure, they’ve got the old reliables — the MP5s, M16s, and an M60 — but these guys also
humped an automatic grenade launcher into the bush, Billy (Sonny Landham) carries an
M-16 with a shotgun attached to it, and, most impressively and improbably, Blain is
carrying around a fucking gatling gun. But the week’s worth of ammo they burnt through
is all for naught; they kill nothing, and from there, Dutch and his crew finally start to
understand that they’re completely outmatched — and that they’re being hunted. Without
spoiling too much of the fun, I’ll say that Dutch goes Apocalypse Now on Predator’s ass,
relying on a few primitive methods of warfare. He’s so cunning that the Predator
develops a grudging respect for his quarry, abandons all the high-tech alien weaponry
that puts him at such an advantage, and decides instead that this beef should come
down to a good old-fashioned fisticuffs. It’s great in every way. —Danny Kelly
15. Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)

5 Sta a s e o ce a e s ( 0 5)
Think back for a moment to the tremendous pressure The Force Awakens faced before
its opening in 2015: a critical community burnt out on cynical IP plays; a massive
fanbase already stung by one bungled addition to their beloved original trilogy; the
possibility that even if this revival wasn’t an abomination, it’d be a pointless retread. You
likely don’t remember that build-up because J.J. Abrams’s revamp arrived on the scene
fully formed and ready to make a billion dollars: effortlessly diverse, cognizant of its
heritage, and taking full advantage of the 21st century with some gorgeous (and
frequently practical!) special effects. The Force Awakens works because it offers
archetypes that feel both universal and of the moment: a villain literally related to Darth
Vader (who nonetheless smacks of the beta masculinity that gave us Gamergate) and
another orphan-turned-prophesized hero (who, when she wielded a lightsaber, still sent
chills down my spine). Episode VII pulled off the near-impossible and sealed Star Wars’
reputation as the best-managed mega-franchise in the business. Shout out to you,
Kathleen Kennedy, and take some notes, Marvel and DC. —Alison Herman
14. Planet of the Apes (1968)
The original Apes isn’t really a space movie compared to some on this list, but its
protagonist is an astronaut, and it does start in space. It also makes the most of the
several minutes it spends there. You’re more likely to remember “You maniacs!” or “You
damn dirty ape!” or Charlton Heston’s maniacal, meme-able laugh than anything George
Taylor says in the opening scene (while smoking, as astronauts do), but as an
encapsulation of space’s appeal as a setting, one could do worse than this quote: “Seen
from out here, everything seems different. Time bends. Space is boundless. It squashes
a man’s ego. I feel lonely.”
Like most great space movies, Apes is imbued with wonder and mystery, and like most
successful sci-fi, its depiction of a different time isolates and amplifies the flaws of our
own. Almost half a century later, the film’s effects and costumes look all of their age, but
the story still works as a cautionary tale and an allegory about racial conflict. After four
direct sequels and two reboots (which has spawned two well-received sequels of its
own), the end of Apes is nowhere in sight.
Planet of the Apes went into wide theatrical release a few days before 2001: A Space
Odyssey, so it’s appropriate that it also precedes 2001 on our ranking. — Ben Lindbergh
13. Gravity (2013)
This will sound like an overstatement or an exaggeration, but, truly, it is not: Watching
Gravity in the theater was a profoundly moving experience for me. I thought that every
single part of it — Sandra Bullock’s forced-into-heroism heroism; George Clooney’s
perfectly chiseled fearlessness; the terrifying soundtrack; the way that Alfonso Cuarón
dangled the tiniest morsel of hope in front of everyone with the thinnest piece of thread
— was exactly perfect. Gravity does what every movie about space should aspire to do,
which is to make you feel entirely inadequate and unimportant (HOW CAN I POSSIBLY
MATTER WHEN MEASURED UP AGAINST THE BIGNESS OF SPACE???) while also
making you feel like maybe that empty feeling in your chest you can’t outrun is
something more than just nothingness — it’s your literal connection to the universe, big
and vast and beautiful and terrifying and perfect. — Shea Serrano
12. Spaceballs (1987)
Carl Sagan may or may not have uttered the phrase “billions and billions” during his pop-
cosmology TV series a generation ago, but it is an accurate descriptor of how many
jokes are contained within Mel Brooks’s sublime outer-space farce. Spaceballs, of
course, is the defining parody of the self-serious Star Wars. Brooks calls up the major
elements of George Lucas’s universe — the princess, the secret prince, the shaman, the
sidekicks both furry and robotic, the villains, the white-helmeted soldiers — and wrings all
of them for laughs.
There is a committed band of cultists who trade one-liners back and forth in knowing
shorthand. “I’m surrounded by assholes.” “Merchandising! Merchandising!” “Please,
please, don’t make a fuss. I’m just plain Yogurt.” And, a personal favorite, “What’s the
matter, Colonel Sandurz? Chicken?” (Here is where I disclose that the actor who played
the target of the chicken joke, the pro’s pro George Wyner, is a longtime friend of my
wife’s family.)
Now that I’ve announced my bias, I’ll leave you with the film’s best scene, a bit of meta-
comedy featuring Rick Moranis and Wyner in which they watch a VHS tape of
Spaceballs and fast-forward to the moment in the film when the two characters are
watching a VHS tape of Spaceballs. It’s a masterful bit of writing and acting whose
intricate wordplay recalls Tom Stoppard and nimble delivery honors Abbott and Costello.
And it all happens in space.
—Craig Gaines
11. Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
You can split the Marvel Cinematic Universe into two eras: Before Guardians and After
Guardians. The 10th movie in the franchise, Guardians of the Galaxy, was the first
Marvel movie to feel like it had a separate personality. Without the weight of the
Avengers to bring him down, director James Gunn created a film that was surprising,
compelling, and genuinely fun — and not in a cheap, look-at-that-big-explosion kind of
way.
Chris Pratt is excellent as intergalactic cool-jerk Peter “Starlord” Quill — the perfect

combination of invested heroism and detached sarcasm, a quality that’s welcome in a
movie featuring a blue villain and planets called Morag and Xandar. (Pratt’s star power
has been overstated since, but watching Guardians, you can at least understand why he
broke out.) Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Vin Diesel, and Bradley Cooper round out the
crew as Quill’s various extraterrestrial companions — Diesel literally plays a tree who can
only say three words — and Guardians blossoms into an endlessly enjoyable origin story
about a mismatched, ragtag group of heroes. The soundtrack’s pretty great, too. Nothing
against Iron Man or Captain America, but Guardians of the Galaxy makes it hard to
come back to Earth. —Andrew Gruttadaro
10. Avatar (2009)
It took all of five years for James Cameron’s story of Jake Sully and the Na’vi to become
a punch line. Maybe less than that. How did this happen? How did the most successful
non-sequel story in movie history become a landmark for jokes about febrile alien tails,
Cameron’s notorious self-absorption, and Sam Worthington’s un-starriness? Cameron’s
largesse made the movie a target, but its province is what made it forgettable — Avatar
was one of the great moviegoing events of the 21st century, a bombastic and painterly
exertion of force. But it looked bad — cheap, even — on TVs. More so on computer and
tablet screens. The digital imagery that Cameron employed to bring the blue-skinned
Na’vi to life has also aged poorly in the intervening decade. But what is most lost about
Avatar’s initial, thunderous impact is not the film’s reach for a visceral grandeur or
technological audacity — two of Cameron’s lifelong pursuits — but its intergalactic story of
species at odds.
Avatar is a space movie in much the same way The Searchers is a Western. It captures
a conflict between races, one militaristic and ceaseless in its quest for dominance, the
other more spiritual but no less equipped for battle. And like The Searchers, John Ford’s
complex, cockeyed summation of race and power in the American West, Avatar portrays
its native people with a simplistic nobility and violent underbelly. Avatar is not quite the
iconic vision of a world that has passed us by that The Searchers is. But it does show
what could be in a fractured future — privatized military leading the way through the
cosmos in search of valuable wares from vulnerable far-off lands. It’s not so much a
parable as a straight warning. Careful what you go searching for in space — you just
might find it. — Sean Fennessey
9. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)
At its best, Star Trek is less about the action than it is about problem-solving and Asking
Big Questions — the reboot movies suck precisely because the franchise was handed
over to the chuckleheads from Lost, who aggressively and resolutely do not understand
this — and Wrath of Khan is all about aging, mortality, fatherhood, the limits of human
agency, and not one but three different questions about scientific ethics. (Also, apropos
of nothing, I always thought Merritt Butrick was really good as David Marcus.)
It’s one of the best examples of one of the best Star Trek movie traditions: Having the
bad guy played by a big-name guest actor who swings from his (or her) heels. It’s also a
high point for the Kirk–McCoy–Spock Freudian Trio, punctuated by Spock sacrificing his
own life to save the ship — an act born on its face out of simple logic, but executed out of
profound love and foreshadowed in Spock’s birthday gift of A Tale of Two Cities. It’s OK
to cry. I won’t tell anyone. — Michael Baumann
8. Apollo 13 (1995)
Apollo 13 is the least existential space movie ever made, and that’s probably why it’s the
most rewatchable one. It is a love letter to American ingenuity and a testament to the
charms of Tom Hanks, Bill Paxton, and Kevin Bacon being trapped in a flying thimble
together. It also features one of the great exhale crescendos in blockbuster history. It’s
easy to tell a story where everything that can go wrong does go wrong, but this is a
movie where everything goes right. The quiet moments are tender (Kathleen Quinlan’s
Marilyn Lovell listening to the radio as her husband goes around the dark side of the
moon); the funny moments are hilarious (“I think old Swigert gave me the clap. Been
pissin’ in my relief tube.”); and the scary moments are terrifying (“Houston, we have a
problem.”).
Most space movies are about things that are out of our control and beyond our
comprehension — whether it’s ideas (like the search for the meaning of life) or technology
(like jumping to hyperspace) — but not Apollo 13. Every button gets pushed, every dial
gets turned, guys have to ballet dance around headphone jacks, and air filters need to
be built out of tube socks and duct tape. It’s a practical, human movie about a time when
humans looked at something as impractical as landing on the moon and attacked the
problem practically. Work the problem, people. —Chris Ryan
MGM
7. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Space is glorious and space is terrifying; it follows that a great space movie should
induce in its viewer both wonder and horror. With all due respect to Jack Torrance, I truly
believe that 2001: A Space Odyssey is Stanley Kubrick’s scariest movie. There’s such an
elegance and simplicity to its dread. Studios have wasted the equivalent of small nations’
GDPs trying to craft intricately creepy CGI villains — and they will never surpass a bone-
chillingly indifferent red dot named HAL. Alfonso Cuarón spent $100 million trying to get
a single shot as existentially panic-inducing as that silent moment when Frank realizes
his line has been cut and he’s going to spend the rest of his short life hurtling through
space. Filmmakers have been trying to top this movie for almost 50 years now, and no
one (not even Christopher Nolan) has succeeded. Sure, Hollywood’s monkey-suit
technology has come a long way since 1968, and none of the human performances in
2001 are particularly memorable (I will mail you a dollar if you can name the lead actor in
this film without Googling), but these feel like small flaws when taken against the
monolithic greatness of this film. Imagine making a space movie a year before the
goddamn moon landing and it still looking fresh five decades later. Even 16 years after
its once-futuristic-sounding namesake, to watch 2001 is to open the pod bay doors… of
your mind. — Lindsay Zoladz
6. Aliens (1986)
Of all the installments in the Alien film franchise, this one holds up the best. If Alien is a
horror film in space, Aliens would be a war thriller, also in space. The film’s writer and
director, James Cameron, does a masterful job expanding upon what little we previously
knew about Ellen Ripley, the Weyland-Yutani Corp, and the terrifying and murderous
xenomorphs to tell a tense story about survival, empowerment, and corporate greed.
Also, the answer to the question posed early in the film — “So who’s laying these eggs?”
— is one of the best big reveals in film. Period. — Zach Mack
Warner Bros.
5. The Right Stuff (1983)
This is one of my favorite movies ever in any genre. It pulls off the fine balancing act of
recognizing the absurdity of the early Cold War — it’s hard not to laugh at the
hypermasculinity and jingoism of the Space Race — while also embracing it. Is it

ridiculous to look at test pilots as the last cowboys, as Sam Shepard literally rides his
horse to Pancho’s Happy Bottom Riding Club? Sure, but those guys were also really
cool. This film lives in the moment before liftoff, buoyed by one of the greatest movie
soundtracks ever and incredible performances from top to bottom: Shepard’s gunslinger
Chuck Yeager, Levon Helm’s resourceful Jack Ridley, Fred Ward’s aggro Gus Grissom,
Ed Harris’s manic boy scout John Glenn, Dennis Quaid’s class clown Gordo Cooper, and
Pamela Reed as his wife Trudy, whose struggle to “maintain an even strain” breaks your
heart more and more each time you watch it. But the performance that characterizes the
movie best is Donald Moffat’s outrageous LBJ. It’s broad, it’s preposterous, it’s
hyperbolic, but it’s also a major historical figure going berserk over issues of colossal
geopolitical importance. This movie is beautiful, hilarious, sad, dramatic, and hysterical.
— Michael Baumann
4. Star Wars: Episode VI — Return of the Jedi (1983)
An anonymous member of The Ringer’s staff counts Return of the Jedi as their favorite
Star Wars movie, an opinion so misguided that I’m withholding their name to protect their
reputation. Jedi is worse in almost every way than the two films that came before it. It’s a
true tonal bridge between the original trilogy and the prequels, one that rejects the
riveting darkness of The Empire Strikes Back in favor of cuddly Ewoks, clumsy
retconning, superweapon recycling, and a virtually consequence-free climax. The too-
long Tatooine sequence, bogged down by “Lapti Nek” (or way worse, “Jedi Rocks”), feels
like it belongs to a different movie than the three-pronged climax, and Boba Fett’s
sarlacc encounter was so lame that the expanded universe had to undo his death.
Yet to paraphrase Luke, there is still good in Jedi, including Luke’s entrance at Jabba’s
palace, the speeder-bike chase, and everything in the throne-room scenes, one of which
features maybe my favorite minute-or-so snippet on any Star Wars soundtrack. The
movie is still incredibly quotable, from “You’re gonna die here, you know” to “The
Emperor is not as forgiving as I am.” Most of all, it’s just satisfying to spend more time
with these characters, whose chemistry is intact even though Harrison Ford barely
wanted to be back.
Jedi is clearly riding the coattails of its predecessors (and the Google-results inflation of
its successors) to its elite placement on this list. But man, they’re amazing coattails. —
Ben Lindbergh
20th Century Fox
3. Alien (1979)
It’s the silence in Alien that’s worse than anything. The way the music fades out as the
alien egg cracks open, moments before the fleshy monstrosity latches onto Kane’s
spacesuit. The bizarre tranquility of him resting in the medical ward while a human-
incubated nightmare is strapped to his face in a mating ritual from hell. The suffocating
stillness — punctuated only by the clinking of chains — just before the fully-grown alien
makes its debut to devour Brett. Now 38 years old, Alien continues to horrify because of
the quiet that orbits the loud, graphic moment at the heart of the film, when the titular
beast erupts from Kane’s stomach. There’s dread of the unknown before the alien birth
and fear that something more disturbing will happen afterward. The second shoe never
drops, and Alien morphs into an action-thriller as Ripley scrambles to escape. But it’s
those eerie, empty moments that make this one of the best space movies of all time. —
Victor Luckerson
2. Star Wars: Episode V — The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
This is the best Star Wars movie. It gave us, in the span of a few minutes, both the “I
love you.” / “I know.” exchange and “I am your father.” It gave us the most dramatic
lightsaber battle of any of the seven movies — after Darth Vader and Obi-Wan just sort of
poked at each other in a hallway for a couple minutes at the end of A New Hope, Vader
chases an increasingly terrified Luke across Cloud City, pummeling him with pipes and
boxes, literally beating the arrogance and optimism out of our hero. That sense of “Oh
wow, this really isn’t going to be that easy, and that’s horrifying,” pervades the story, as
Luke, Leia, and Han suffer an onslaught of defeats and unexpected obstacles to rival the
ti fl k b k th ’d k t d b i th l
https://www.theringer.com/2017/9/11/16285932/25-best-space-movies-ranked t i Th t k t h 21/22
string of lucky breaks they’d skated by on in the last movie. That makes a two-hour
movie with five or six distinct acts fly by. — Michael Baumann
20th Century Fox
1. Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope (1977)
The one that started it all. George Lucas changed science fiction, and the movie industry
in general, with the first Star Wars movie. Forty years later, Disney is making billions off
the universe Lucas created. Lucas was a master synthesizer, liberally borrowing from
sources as varied as Flash Gordon and Akira Kurosawa, but he owed his greatest debt
to Joseph Campbell, the writer who popularized the idea of “the hero’s journey,” the
archetypal story at the heart of mythological tales in every human society. The young
man from humble beginnings receives a call to adventure then waffles on whether to
leave home until he meets a mentor who sets him on his path, where he finds new allies
who help him triumph over his ultimate fear. Once you set that story in space, it pretty
much writes itself. Most of the movies inspired by A New Hope, including the prequels,
copied the surface-level stuff — special effects, epic space battles, and witty banter from
an attractive young cast — without understanding the underlying framework. Star Wars
works because it speaks to a deep desire in the human heart; watching it without rooting
for the main characters is like trying to keep your leg in place when someone taps your
kneecap. The Star Wars universe continues to expand, but people will always watch and
love this movie. — Jonathan Tjarks
Click here for the full ranking of 55 space movies. ■

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12/7/2018 The 25 Best Space Movies Ever - The Ringer

MOVIES POP CULTURE

The 25 Best Space Movies, Ranked

Disney/Warner Bros./20th Century Fox/Ringer illo

Let’s take this one acronym at a time.

Just Missed the Cut

Total Recall (1990)

Directed by Paul Verhoeven and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Total Recall is a

The Fifth Element (1997)

Hidden Figures (2016)

24. Gattaca (1997)

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

intergalactic travel does?) There’s a creepy CGI reincarnation. And — spoiler alert — you

22. The Martian (2015)

abandoned on a planet whose entire environment is antithetical to his existence. There

21. Contact (1997)

20. Wall-E (2008)

19. Space Jam (1996)

18. Star Trek (2009)

20th Century Fox

17. Independence Day (1996)

16. Predator (1987)

15. Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)

14. Planet of the Apes (1968)

13. Gravity (2013)

12. Spaceballs (1987)

11. Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

Chris Pratt is excellent as intergalactic cool-jerk Peter “Starlord” Quill — the perfect

10. Avatar (2009)

9. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)

7. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

5. The Right Stuff (1983)

hypermasculinity and jingoism of the Space Race — while also embracing it. Is it

4. Star Wars: Episode VI — Return of the Jedi (1983)

20th Century Fox

2. Star Wars: Episode V — The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

20th Century Fox

1. Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope (1977)

Click here for the full ranking of 55 space movies. ■

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