By Joshua Tyler
| Published 1 hour ago
When most people think science fiction, they first think of outer space. But space movies are hard to make, and most SF filmmakers instead opt for something easier and more budget-friendly, like time travel or robots.
When a creator takes a risk and gets space sci-fi right, they become a legend. It’s why names like Kubrick, Lucas, Cameron, and Scott will live on long after the men who made them famous are gone.
I’ve spent my entire life watching, reading, and writing about space science fiction. That lifetime of love and obsession is paying off, for all of you, right now in one perfect, as unbiased as possible, ranking of space movies.
For the purposes of this list, I’m defining space movies as any movie that is not primarily set on Earth. So, for example, even though Avatar is largely set on one alien planet and very little of it takes place in outer space, it’s eligible for this list. Will Avatar make the cut? Stick around and find out.
Full power to engines, these are the best space movies of all time.
25. 2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984)
2001: A Space Odyssey is one of the most groundbreaking movies of all time. How do you follow that up? If you’re MGM, you wait 16 years and then release a sequel that’s the exact opposite.
That sequel is 2010: The Year We Make Contact, and while the script was written by Arthur C. Clark, the sci-fi master behind the books, Stanley Kubrick, the auteur who made 2001, wanted nothing to do with it. So 2010 leans hard into over-explaining its plot as a way to compensate for the vague approach of 2001. That hampers what is otherwise a fascinating story of exploration and mystery against the backdrop of worsening political tensions between the USA and USSR.
The cast is one of the best ever assembled, with Roy Schneider and John Lithgow hitchhiking with a crew of Russians led by Helen Mirren. The production design leans into the gritty 80s space aesthetic, and while it’s not as impressive as 2001’s look, it establishes its own distinct style while also revisiting Hal 9000 and the abandoned Discovery.
24. Pitch Black (2000)
Director David Twohy’s little indie movie about a transport ship crashed on an alien planet is probably best remembered now as the thing that launched the career of Vin Diesel. With all due respect to the Fast and Furious movies, Pitch Black is so much better than anything Diesel has done since.
Diesel’s character anchors it, but a one-of-a-kind premise involving hordes of killer aliens that emerge when it’s dark. And oh by the way, the planet is headed for a total eclipse. Pitch Black is a wild ride and a ton of fun, effective both as horror and sci-fi all at once. And that’s something few other movies can pull off.
23. Star Trek: First Contact (1996)
There’s no denying that Star Trek: First Contact is heavily inspired by the movie Alien, but if it’s a ripoff, it’s a really good one. Many have tried to copy what Ridley did with his space-horror movie, but none have done it better than First Contact.
Captain Picard and the Enterprise must chase his old foes The Borg back in time to prevent them from changing Earth’s history. Along the way, they meet the inventor of Warp drive, a drunken weirdo living in the woods of Montana, and engage in a life-or-death struggle as the Borg terrorize and murder everyone aboard their ship.
22. Event Horizon (1997)
Event Horizon recently topped our list of the most extremely graphic space movies, and it earned that spot. In addition to being super gory and crazy scary, it’s also just a really good space movie.
It begins when the crew of a search-and-rescue vessel finds a missing ship adrift in space. Her name is the Event Horizon, and her mission was to test humanity’s first faster-than-light drive.
The interior of the ship is the stuff of nightmares. What they find inside the Event Horizon will make them question everything. And in the end, it all goes straight to hell… literally.
21. The Martian (2015)
The Martian, based on an acclaimed novel by Andy Weir, strands astronaut Mark Watney on Mars after a storm forces his crew to bail out without him.
NASA thinks he’s dead, but he wakes up and immediately starts solving problems using math, swearing, and improvised plumbing. He grows potatoes in Martian dirt, hacks a way to talk to Earth, and turns survival into an engineering marathon.
Meanwhile, NASA scrambles to mount a rescue that won’t get anyone else killed. The movie becomes a tribute to stubbornness and human ingenuity: one man refusing to let Mars make him a casualty.
20. The Fifth Element (1997)
In The Fifth Element, Parisian writer/director Luc Besson took us into the future and beyond, following the story of a girl wrapped in white straps and destiny.
Like some brilliant Blade Runner meets Galaxy Quest mashup, the movie starts with Bruce Willis as a futuristic flying taxi driver embroiled in some mystery surrounding a priest and a half-naked girl. Before long, he’s launched into space alongside squeaky-voiced Chris Tucker, fighting alien bounty hunters and protecting the girl, Leeloo (Milla Jovovich), as she’s drawn inexorably to her destiny.
The special effects are glitzy and eye-popping, and the movie was a career-maker for Jovovich and Tucker. And Luc Besson, if he knows anything, it’s how to shoot action.
19. The Last Starfighter (1984)
In the 80s, it seemed like video games were only a step or two away from reality, giving birth to movies like Tron and, in this case, The Last Starfighter. A video game-addicted teen beats his local coin-op, only to discover the machine is actually a recruitment program for an alien defense force. Whisked up into the stars and teamed up with an alien pilot named Grig (Dan O’Herlihy), he’s the galaxy’s last hope to save us all from a malevolent invading force.
The film’s special effects are dated, but the plot is universal, hero stuff, and that’s the kind of thing space operas do better than almost anything else. It’s all the little details that make this one so special: Beta Alex, the earthly robot replacement for our hero, the strange background of Grig’s family, and most of all, Robert Preston as the enigmatic Centauri.
Ok, The Last Starfighter is not perfect. That whole Death Blossom thing is kind of a copout. But even that seems pretty cool in the moment.
18. Thor: Ragnarok (2017)
I know what you’re thinking: Isn’t this a superhero movie? Sure, technically, Thor: Ragnarok is one of Marvel’s superhero movies. All the Thor solo movies contain some element of taking place in a fantasy version of outer space, though, and this one is not only the best Thor movie, it’s the spaciest.
Where the other Thor movies are largely confined to one planet besides Earth, Thor: Ragnarok is a Galaxy-hopping tale. It sees both Thor and Hulk leaping through space on a wild and incredibly funny adventure.
17. Passengers (2016)
In Passengers, Chris Pratt plays a mechanic who wakes up 90 years too early on the spaceship Avalon. He’s alone.
After a year, he stumbles across the sleeping pod of Aurora Lane, played by Jennifer Lawrence. He contemplates suicide, and he resists the temptation to wake her for months, until one day he snaps, and he wakes her up. So now Aurora’s stuck on a gigantic, empty ship with no one to spend time with, except the guy who ruined her life, only she has no idea what he’s done.
The ship on which it happens is a triumph of set design, and the story is risky, complex, and thought-provoking in the best traditions of great sci-fi. Passengers deserves more credit.
16. Starship Troopers (1997)
In theory, Starship Troopers is based on the brilliant Robert A. Heinlein book of the same name, but in practice, you’ll enjoy Paul Verhoeven’s film a lot more if you ignore the fact that Heinlein’s novel exists. Veerhoven’s vision of this world is completely different from Heinlein’s, and even if it’s not quite as good, it’s still really, really good.
Starship Troopers follows a group of soldiers in a far-off future where humanity is at war with a vicious group of alien insectoids. Violent and completely messed up at every turn, Veerhoven was trying to make a complex social commentary. Along the way, he ended up with a viciously R-rated, completely crazed, and a little ridiculous, in a good way, space-faring war movie.
15. Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
It’d be easy to dismiss the Guardians films as just another entry in the Marvel universe, but since they don’t take place on Earth, they’re more of a galaxy-spanning adventure. The movie follows Peter Quill, a human boy taken into space by aliens and raised there. He’s grown up to become a space-faring Indiana Jones-style character, and this first Guardians movie follows his adventures to save the galaxy and build a family with his crew.
The banter between the film’s characters carries the story, and the movie’s stunning visual effects turn its fantasy version of outer space into a feast for the eyes. Guardians of the Galaxy, even more than its also good sequel, is the most absolute fun you’ll have with any movie on this list.
14. Dune (2020)
There have been many attempts to turn Frank Herbert’s classic Dune novels into a movie. It wasn’t until 2021 that filmmaker Denis Villeneuve got it right.
His movies capture the essence of Frank Herbert’s novels and distill them into a stunning, creative, visual feast unlike anything else seen on screen. He does it with virtually no dialogue. A necessity when adapting a book in which much of the narrative is propelled by characters’ thoughts.
There’s a sequel, which is really part two of the same story, and so I’m lumping both of them together as one entry.
13. Stargate (1994)
Stargate is now best known as a multi-media science fiction franchise, but the movie that started it all was always great, original science fiction.
Humans uncover an ancient piece of alien tech buried in Egypt that, when activated, opens a gateway to another world. Kurt Russell leads a team of explorers through that Stargate and discovers an alien planet where humans are kept as slave laborers in service of an alien masquerading as an ancient Egyptian God.
Worst of all, now that they’re through the stargate, they have no way of getting back, unless they can crack the code to gate travel and defeat an alien god in a flying pyramid.
12. Aliens (1986)
Directed by James Cameron, Aliens takes the terrifying premise of Alien and amps it up into a full-on space marine action movie. The ensemble cast, led by Sigourney Weaver, Michael Biehn, and Bill Paxton, is brilliant, and the Xenomorphs are both more plentiful and much bigger.
It’s this movie that cemented Ripley as a total badass, and that proved the concept of Alien could be an entire universe, not just a one-off horror film.
11. Star Trek III: The Search For Spock (1984)
Unfairly maligned in its time for being the middle in one of the all-time great movie trilogies, The Search for Spock has aged like fine Romulan Ale. It gets better with every viewing.
The first half is a perfect heist movie, with Kirk and the crew plotting to steal their own ship. Starfleet’s finest officer goes against them to save his friend, and our space friends are all on board. Watch Shatner’s reaction to the death of Kirk’s son if you’re looking for proof of his acting talent.
The death of the Enterprise is incredible and wrenching; it fits perfectly into the movie’s theme of life, death, and rebirth. McCoy sums it up best as the crew stands there on the surface of a dying planet, watching the hulk of the Enterprise blaze a trail of fire across the sky.
There, McCoy tells Kirk it was, “What you had to do, what you always do. Turned death into a fighting chance to live.”
10. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
In 2001: A Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick invented the modern space sci-fi genre. Based on Arthur C. Clarke’s work, it starts with apes learning murder from a black monolith and ends with an astronaut drifting into a psychedelic extradimensional waiting room designed by something that absolutely isn’t human.
The plot is minimal, relying on imagery, geometry, silence, and the uncomfortable suggestion that humanity only advances when something smarter shoves us forward.
Its special effects haven’t aged at all, but the movie’s pacing has, which means it may not be as enjoyable to watch for modern audiences as it once was. If this were a list of the most important space movies, I’d have it higher, but being the best must be about more than that, so 2001 sits comfortably right here.
9. WALL-E (2008)
WALL-E isn’t Pixar’s best movie, but with all due respect to Titan A.E., it’s the only animated movie outside of anime to get space opera right. It starts in a garbage heap, the humblest of beginnings, and ends up in a massive journey to bring mankind back home from the stars.
It’s incredible that a story this big centers entirely around a tiny robot who can’t even talk. WALL-E doesn’t need words to connect with the audience, and the story of a little robot who refuses to give up is a universal way to connect with anyone.
I’ve never found WALL-E’s vision of the future in which all people ride around in floaty chairs getting fat as terrifying as it’s supposed to be. It seems relaxing. Maybe WALL-E should have left humanity out there, hanging around in space. Making them get up may not have been the right move. The ship’s captain sure doesn’t seem to be having much fun.
8. Dark City (1998)
Putting Dark City on this list at all is an automatic spoiler, but if you haven’t seen it, click away and go watch now. Dark City has to be on here.
Dark City is the ultimate in sci-fi noir. It’s a mystery, sort of, and the story of a man without a memory looking for clues to explain what’s happened to him.
It takes place in a city where it’s always night, and strange beings with psychokinetic powers stalk the streets between slinky music sets performed by peak Jennifer Connelly. It’s not until the end that our main character, John Murdock, learns he’s actually in outer space, and once he discovers the truth sets to work on re-creating a world he only thinks he remembers.
7. Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991)
As an allegory for the Cold War, The Undiscovered Country felt edgy and topical, being released shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1991. Today, it’s only a great story well told, with elements of relevance woven in as beloved characters grapple with their own personal prejudice in the face of a new world.
Star Trek VI follows Captain Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise on their last mission before retirement, tasked with leading hated rivals to a peace conference. There’s a murder, a mystery to solve it, and a race against the clock to engage an enemy starship with a secret weapon before it can destroy the last, best hope for peace.
6. Apollo 13 (1995)
If you believe in the moon landing, then Apollo 13 is meticulously based on the true story of what happened to the Apollo 13 astronauts as they tried to orbit the moon. If you think the landing was faked, then Apollo 13 is a great piece of fiction. Either way, it belongs high on this list of movies set off planet.
Directed by Ron Howard and starring Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, and Bill Paxton, the film recounts the harrowing story of NASA’s third planned lunar landing, as it turned into a desperate survival mission after an oxygen tank explosion crippled the spacecraft.
Every malfunction, every improvised solution, from repurposing CO₂ scrubbers to calculating burn times manually, builds in tension. Apollo 13 proves that you don’t need aliens or lasers, just math, duct tape, and calm under pressure to make space terrifyingly compelling
5. Serenity (2005)
It’s amazing that this movie managed to get made at all and that it’s also really good, which makes Serenity an achievement of an entirely different level. Based on the canceled television series Firefly, the movie works by creating an entire world to play around in and populating it with fantastically well-drawn and performed characters.
Writer/director Joss Whedon’s sharp, witty banter quickly develops a sort of group personality for them, and best of all, he does it in the midst of the action. There’s no mood-killing stop-down for a moment of character development. Han kissed Leia for the first time in the middle of trying not to get blown up, not while taking a break to ride a cow, and that’s the sort of perfect character development you’ll see in Serenity. We get to know these people intimately while on the run, as it should be in anything resembling a good adventure movie.
Serenity’s so good, consistently, through and through, that picking out any one great moment seems impossible. Is it Chiwetel Ejiofor as one of the best villains on screen since Khan, that’s worth remembering most? Are you in love with Mal Reynolds (who isn’t)? Wash’s heart-wrenching death scene? It’s all perfect. Re-watch Serenity right now. I aim to misbehave.
4. Interstellar (2014)
Writer/director Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar is not a perfect movie, but it’s so ambitious you can forgive its minor missteps. The movie takes place in a near future where Earth has been blighted, and man needs to escape the planet. Efforts to construct a ship that could take us somewhere else are underway, but first, we need a place to go. Interstellar follows the crew sent to find our new home.
What they find along the way is both more and less than they expected. Wrapped around the event horizon of a black hole, it’ll test the very limits of human endurance and nature.
Capped by epic performances, incredible cinematography, and one of the best scores of all time, Interstellar is a work of art. There’s nothing else quite like it, and I hope you saw it on the big screen. Because, like all grand space stories, that’s where it thrives most.
3. Alien (1979)
I’d always preferred James Cameron’s sequel Aliens to Ridley Scott’s original movie… until I finally saw Alien in an actual movie theater, during the movie’s re-release a few years ago. Wow. The inky depths of space don’t feel as big or as terrifying stuck at home on your couch.
Most of the film takes place aboard a starship, with a group of humans struggling to survive while being stalked by an alien creature of malevolence beyond their comprehension. More than the sheer scare factor of it, Scott creates an entire universe in his film, one which ended up being so much fun to run around in that we’re still making movies set it in now. None of those subsequent movies captures the deep, dark of space the way Scott’s did.
What’s more terrifying than being stuck in space with a creature bent on your destruction? A creature bent on your destruction through creative pro-creation:
2. Star Wars: Original Trilogy (1977 – 1983)
Look up the definition of what a space opera is, and you’ll see the original Star Wars trilogy. All three original movies, of course, belong on this list. Everyone has their own way of ranking them. Personally, I’d single out Return of the Jedi as my favorite, Ewoks and all. Most people seem to lean towards Empire. It doesn’t matter.
Star Wars has to be here because it’s Star Wars. Modern space operas wouldn’t exist without it. That doesn’t, however, mean it has to be number one.
1. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)
Not just the greatest space movie ever produced, but also the greatest submarine movie ever made, Wrath of Khan substitutes the dark of space for the watery deep in telling the tale of two ship commanders locked in a battle to the death.
In Khan Noonien Singh, actor Ricardo Montalbán creates one of the greatest villains ever to appear on the screen. His presence echoes throughout every movie that’s followed. Even now, you’ll hear filmmakers talk about wanting to make the villain of their new movie equal to Montalbán’s. But Khan has no equal.
With or without him, Wrath of Khan would deserve its place at the top of this list, with gripping performances from everyone in the cast and one of the most wrenching, unforgettable deaths in movie history. The words “I have been, and always shall be, your friend” still echo in my head, and that moment at the end of the film when Kirk starts to fall apart at Spock’s funeral as he pronounces him “human” is utterly heartbreaking.
For decades now, Star Trek has defined what it is to be a space franchise, leaving its mark on our culture in a way unmatched by almost anything else.
Hey, why’d you leave off my favorite space movie?
If you’ve stuck with this list til the end, congratulations, you win a tribble.
If I could change anything about this list, I’d put Galaxy Quest on it. But the copyright gods demonetize our videos whenever we show Galaxy Quest footage, so I left it off.
If I were adding one more entry, it’d probably be Total Recall. Or maybe Forbidden Planet.
