For now, mankind may only look at the stars, dreaming of someday seeing distant, habitable worlds and exploring lifeless planets. No one doubts that one day we will conquer the cosmos and will be full-fledged masters of not only one Earth.
True, there are still many unsolved problems – from hostile conditions to the difficulties of the journey itself. Films about traveling to other worlds are few, but we have collected for you a small list of the best movies, in which you can feel almost always invented, but so exciting exotic exoticism of other planets.
Interstellar
- IMDB Rating – 8.7
- Genre: Fantasy, Drama, Adventure
- Production: USA, UK, Canada / 2014
- Budget: $165,000,000
- Worldwide Box Office: $774,136,705
- Director: Christopher Nolan
- Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Mackenzie Foy, Michael Caine, David Jesi, Wes Bentley, Casey Affleck, John Lithgow, Matt Damon
A profound, multilayered and impressive movie that weaves together drama, sci-fi and adventure, reproducing with rather strict scientific accuracy the possible travel to other planets and the effects that a person might encounter on such journeys. The action begins in the not-too-distant future.
Joseph Cooper, a retired NASA pilot, lives on a farm with his children, growing corn, almost the only crop still able to grow on a dying Earth. But he has to leave his children behind and travel down the mole hole to other planets to find a new home for humanity.
The U.S. Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has named “Interstellar” the best movie of the 2nd decade of the 21st century.
Avatar
- IMDB Rating – 7.9
- Genre: Fantasy, Action, Drama, Adventure
- Production: USA / 2009
- Budget: $237,000,000
- Worldwide Box Office: $2,923,905,528
- Director: James Cameron
- Starring: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Michelle Rodriguez, Giovanni Ribisi, Joel Moore, C.C. Pounder, Wes Studi, Las Alonso
The planet Pandora is James Cameron’s perfect fantasy. It is a world rich in resources and nature, which the earthlings of the future, looking for prospects of development for their devastated planet, discovered somewhere in the infinite universe, and, as usual, divided into two camps.
The military are eager to enslave the local savages and take over the bountiful planet. Scientists dream to study this world and establish good-neighborly relations with the local civilization of intelligent humanoids. This is how the project “Avatar” came about, when a person’s consciousness is transferred into a specially grown body of an aborigine, who can now communicate with the locals on an equal footing.
A sequel, Avatar: Path of Water, came out in 2022, but Cameron plans to create at least three more Pandora stories.
The Martian
- IMDB Rating – 8.0
- Genre: Fantastic, Adventure
- Production: USA, UK, Hungary, Jordan / 2015
- Budget: $108,000,000
- Worldwide Box Office: $630,161,890
- Director: Ridley Scott
- Starring: Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Kristen Wiig, Jeff Daniels, Michael Peña, Sean Bean, Kate Mara, Sebastian Stan, Axel Henney
A movie directed by Ridley Scott, in which the scientific component is very thoroughly worked out. Of course, everything is far from perfect, and the plot includes many unproven hypotheses, but this is not a documentary, but a story about survival on an alien planet. The movie is based on Weiner’s best-selling novel, and it’s very hard to say which is better here, the book or the movie.
Actor Matt Damon plays the role of Mark Watney, an astronaut who, during the expedition’s hasty evacuation, is presumed dead and left on Mars along with the station’s unreliable dome and extremely scarce supplies. Mark seems doomed to a slow death, but decides to try to survive, fighting every second against conditions in which survival is impossible.
This movie is Ridley Scott’s most financially successful work, becoming a box office hit and earning numerous awards.
Dune: Part One
- IMDB Rating – 8.0
- Genre: Fantasy, Action, Drama, Adventure
- Production: USA, Canada, Hungary / 2021
- Budget: $165,000,000
- Worldwide Box Office: $402,027,830
- Director: Denis Villeneuve
- Starring: Timothee Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin, Jason Momoa, Zendaya, Stellan Skarsgard, Javier Bardem, Dave Batista, Charlotte Rampling.
This movie by Denis Villeneuve is part of a huge cult media franchise based on the famous “Chronicles of Dune” cycle by American sci-fi writer Frank Herbert. Once again, the plot centers on a fictional planet. This is Arrakis, the only world where “Spice” is produced – a substance that provides interstellar flights and longevity.
The action takes place in the future, where humanity has spread across space, forming a bizarre conglomeration of diverse systems of government and commonwealths. The protagonist is Paul, heir to the Atreides family, born on the planet Kaladan, who fought a battle for possession of Arrakis against the former Harkonnen rulers on the side of the planet’s natives.
Denis Villeneuve divided the novel into 2 parts for ease of adaptation. The second movie will be released in March 2024.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
- IMDB Rating – 6.7
- Genre: Fantastic, comedy, adventure
- Production: UK, USA / 2005
- Budget: $50,000,000
- Worldwide Box Office: $104,478,416
- Director: Garth Jennings
- Starring: Martin Freeman, Yasiin Bey, Sam Rockwell, Zooey Deschanel, Bill Nye, John Malkovich, Alan Rickman, Warwick Davis, Anna Chancellor, Helen Mirren.
The screen adaptation of Douglas Adams’ endlessly charming ironic fiction is another film in the list of travels to other planets, and their civilizations – a wonderful fiction of the writer. The plot of these adventures is desperately bleak, though. The Earth perishes, entirely and completely, along with the entire population.
There are only two survivors. Arthur Dent, who is rescued by a friend who is having fun on Earth at the moment of its destruction, and Trillian, an Earth girl who a little earlier was kidnapped to forcibly become the wife of the head of the Galactic Businessmen’s Club. Oh yes, also mice who have gained (or rather, never lost, but pretended to) intelligence. All of them together will have to find out the reasons for the death of their home planet and answer the Most Important Question.
Douglas Adams himself began writing the screenplay, and after his death in 2001, American Cary Kirkpatrick and Brit Garth Jennings finished it.
Another Earth
- IMDB Rating – 6.9
- Genre: Fantastic, Drama, Melodrama
- Production: USA / 2011
- Budget: $100,000
- Worldwide Box Office: $1,938,783
- Director: Mike Cahill
- Starring: Brit Marling, William Mapother, Robin Lord Taylor, Jordan Baker, Flint Beveragh, Kumar Pallana, Meggan Lennon, Ai Diana, Diane Cisla, Luis Vega
A few years ago, scientists quite convincingly substantiated the possibility of the existence of parallel worlds. The independent movie Another Earth is about traveling to another planet identical to ours, somehow ending up in our universe, but from another dimension. It’s a fairly light-hearted fantasy, but who knows?
The plot centers on Rhoda Williams, who caused the accident where John Burroughs’ entire family died. While she was in prison for 4 years, people were studying a newly discovered planet that is rapidly approaching Earth, an exact copy of it. After entering a contest for a place on an expedition to the duplicate, Rhoda wins a ticket and gives it to John because his family may still be alive there on the Earth’s twin.
Mike Cahill shot the movie in his hometown of New Haven, where he had serious help from acquaintances, friends and just locals, which helped him save a lot of money.
Prometheus
- Rating IMDB – 7.0
- Genre: Fantastic, horror
- Production: UK, USA / 2012
- Budget: $130 000 000
- Worldwide box office: $403,354,469
- Director: Ridley Scott
- Starring: Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Charlize Theron, Idris Elba, Guy Pearce, Logan Marshall-Green, Sean Harris, Rafe Spall, Iman Elliott, Benedict Wong.
Another fascinating fantasy by director Ridley Scott about the exploration of alien planets and the mysteries of the universe. Scientists discover among the cave paintings of extinct civilizations several unrelated images of a certain star system, interpreting it as a kind of invitation from the creators of life, the “Makers”.
In search of answers to the question of the origin of life on Earth, an expedition is assembled to explore distant planets and face a threat that could end human civilization.
This movie is the first in a trilogy of prequels to the same Ridley Scott’s iconic “Alien”. The second was 2017’s “Alien: Covenant” and the third installment was seriously bogged down by studios and rewrites of the idea and script, but “Alien: Romulus” has been completed and will be released in August 2024.
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
- IMDB Rating – 6.4
- Genre: Fantastic, Fantasy, Action, Adventure
- Production: France, China, Belgium, Germany, UAE, USA, Canada / 2017
- Budget: $177,200,000
- Worldwide Box Office: $225,874,228
- Director: Luc Besson
- Starring: Dane DeHaan, Cara Delevingne, Clive Owen, Rihanna, Ethan Hawke, Herbie Hancock, Chris Wu, Sam Sprewell, Alain Chaba, Rutger Hauer
Another space movie by Luc Besson, which was not a hit like “The Fifth Element”, but deservedly received good ratings and looks very nice as a journey through the planets of the future, populated by various intelligent races.
The plot centers on Valerian, a space-time agent of “Alpha”, a huge Earthling space station that has become home to a multitude of humans and aliens who inhabit it. Valerian receives a delayed telepathic signal from the distant peaceful planet Mule, which was destroyed 30 years ago, and later, together with his partner Lorelin, goes on another mission, which unexpectedly turns out to be connected with the same planet Mule.
The movie is based on the hugely popular French comic book “Valerian and Laureline” in Europe, which ran from 1967 to 2010.
John Carter
- IMDB Rating – 6.6
- Genre: Fantasy, Action, Adventure
- Production: USA / 2012
- Budget: $250,000,000
- Worldwide Box Office: $284,139,100
- Director: Andrew Stanton
- Starring: Taylor Kitsch, Lynn Collins, Samantha Morton, Willem Defoe, Thomas Haden Church, Mark Strong, Kieran Hyndes, Dominic West, James Purefoy, Bryan Cranston.
Martian stories are classics of the sci-fi genre. The plot of Andrew Stanton’s adventure movie is based on the first book of “The Martian Cycle” by Burroughs, the author of “Tarzan”. By the way, the writer also has the “Venusian Cycle”.
John Carter is a former Confederate officer who, in 1867, finds a strange medallion that takes him to the perishing planet Barsoom, known to earthlings as Mars, from a terrible war. Here dangerous adventures, impressive feats, and, of course, the love of the beautiful princess of Mars await him.
Funny, but it was because of the box office failure of this movie that the head of Disney, Rich Ross, left his post in 2012, but the movie was a hit in Russia, grossing $33 million.
Riddick
- IMDB Rating – 6.4
- Genre: Fantasy, Action, Thriller, Adventure
- Production: Canada, USA / 2013
- Budget: $38,000,000
- Worldwide Box Office: $98,337,295
- Director: David Tuohy
- Starring: Vin Diesel, Jordi Moglia, Matthew Nable, Katee Sackhoff, Dave Batista, Bokim Woodbine, Raul Max Trujillo, Conrad Pla, Danny Blanco, Karl Urban
Created in the 90s by screenwriting duo Whitted, the character Riddick has been the protagonist of several motion pictures, games, and animated films. He is a fugitive criminal who is constantly pursued by bounty hunters, one of the surviving humans from the devastated planet Furya. Movies about Riddick, played by Vin Diesel, are great fun for fans of interplanetary travel and sci-fi action movies.
Five years after the events described in “The Chronicles of Riddick” he leaves the necromongers and goes to his home planet, but it is not where he thought it would be. The uninhabited world, where Riddick is delivered by deception, turns out to be very cruel. The hero will again have to fight for his survival and freedom with mercenaries and dangers of the alien world.
Due to funding delays, the film’s production was in jeopardy and Vin Diesel spent his own money to save the project.
The Space Between Us
- IMDB Rating – 6.4
- Genre: Fantasy, Drama, Melodrama
- Production: USA, China / 2016
- Budget: $30,000,000
- Worldwide Box Office: $16,080,475
- Director: Peter Chelsom
- Starring: Britt Robertson, Ace Butterfield, Gary Oldman, Carla Guccino, Janet Montgomery, Trey Tucker, Scott Takeda, Sarah Minnick, Ryan Jason Cook, B.D. Wong
A cute romantic drama about the love of two young people from different planets. Mankind is just beginning to explore Mars. 16-year-old Gardner Elliot, born and raised on the Red Planet, meets Earthling Tulsa on the Internet and falls in love with her.
However, Gardner, accustomed to Martian gravity, cannot live on Earth. The scientists and doctors around him try their best to solve this problem and help the guy, and even organize a short excursion to Earth, where he meets Tulsa and together with her escapes from care to find his father, risking his own life.
The Earthbound scene was filmed at a spaceport in New Mexico.
Chaos Walking
- IMDB Rating – 5.7
- Genre: Fantastic, Fantasy, Action, Adventure
- Production: USA, Canada, Hong Kong, Luxembourg / 2021
- Budget: $125,000,000
- Worldwide Box Office: $26,508,132
- Director: Doug Lyman
- Starring: Tom Holland, Daisy Ridley, Demián Bichir, David Oyelowo, Kurt Sutter, Cynthia Erivo, Bethany Ann Lind, Mads Mikkelsen, Nick Jonas, Ray McKinnon
In the year 2257 AD, on a planet called New World, in the small town of Prentisstown lives the main character of this story, young Todd Hewitt. The humans who colonized this planet faced two problems. The first is a race of natives who were more than displeased with the new settlers, and they were the ones who killed all the women in Prentisstown. The second trouble was the mental noise arising from everyone hearing everyone else’s thoughts.
And then one day Todd finds a crashed spaceship and the girl who survived on it not far from the town, which becomes the beginning of his adventures.
The movie was not released for 4 years, as most of it was already after the completion of the first version, they decided to reshoot it.
Predators
- IMDB Rating – 6.4
- Genre: Fantasy, Action, Thriller, Adventure
- Production: USA / 2010
- Budget: $40,000,000
- Worldwide Box Office: $127,233,108
- Director: Nimrod Antal
- Starring: Adrien Brody, Topher Grace, Alice Braga, Walton Goggins, Oleg Taktarov, Laurence Fishburne, Danny Trejo, Luis Ozawa, Mahershala Ali, Cary Jones.
Several people, each of whom was a mercenary, a gangster, a convicted criminal or a military man, come to their senses among the jungles of another planet. They gradually find more and more members and make their way out of the forest to an elevated area where they realize that they have found themselves on another planet.
The unwilling leader of the group becomes the former military man Royce. The cruel human predators, who have unwittingly become comrades-in-arms, will have to fight with aliens living on this planet, who consider all living things as their legitimate hunting prey.
This is the third movie in the Predator universe to be successful at the box office and was filmed in Hawaii and Texas.
Europa Report
- IMDB Rating – 6.4
- Genre: Fantasy, Thriller, Drama, Detective, Adventure
- Production: USA / 2012
- US box office receipts: $125,687
- Director: Sebastian Cordero
- Starring: Christian Camargo, Anamaria Marinka, Mikael Nyquist, Daniel Wu, Caroline Otter, Sharlto Copley, Embeth Davidz, Isaiah Whitlock Jr.
A curious movie created in the genre of pre-documentary and “found footage” format. A large private corporation organizes an expedition to the sixth satellite of Jupiter, checking scientists’ claims about the possibility of life on the ice-covered Europa.
Due to a serious solar storm, two crew members are forced into outer space to repair the ship, and one of them dies. Upon reaching the site, the crew begins an exploration that will be as impressive as it is fatal for humans.
Europa is of real interest to scientists because of its atmosphere, consisting of sparse oxygen, and its ice-covered surface, under which, presumably, there could be a large ocean. The automatic Europa Clipper station, which will test the habitability of Europa, will go there in October 2024.
Prospect
- IMDB Rating – 6.3
- Genre: Fantasy, Thriller, Drama
- Production: USA, Canada / 2018
- Budget: $4,000,000
- Worldwide Box Office: $22,777
- Director: Christopher Caldwell, Zeke Earle
- Starring: Sophie Thatcher, Pedro Pascal, Jay Duplass, Luke Pitzrick, Arthur Deranleau, Andre Royo, Alex McCauley, Doug Dawson, Krista Johnson, Brian Gunther
Damon and Si are father and daughter, treasure hunters from other planets. Having concluded a contract for the delivery of precious Orelaks – stones growing inside the underground animals of one of the wild planets, they set off on their journey.
On the planet, the heroes encounter a bunch of problems, up to the breakdown of their shuttle, and then a couple of competitors. After the conflict, only Si and the alien Ezra are left alive, who will have to cooperate to survive on the poisonous planet and return home with the loot.
Director Zeke Earle and his partner Christopher Caldwell made this movie based on their own 2014 short film, and this is their feature debut.
Solaris
- IMDB Rating – 6.2
- Genre: Fantasy, Drama, Melodrama, Detective
- Production: USA / 2002
- Budget: $47,000,000
- Worldwide Box Office: $30,002,758
- Director: Steven Soderbergh
- Starring: George Clooney, Natasha McElhone, Viola Davis, Jeremy Davies, Ulrich Tukur, John Cho, Morgan Rusler, Shane Skelton, Donna Kimball, Michael Insane.
“Solaris” is an iconic work by Stanislav Lem, which had a huge influence on the science fiction genre. The presented film is the second film adaptation of the book, after Tarkovsky’s 1972 film. This time, Soderbergh took on the job.
So, in the future, in the Alpha Aquarius system, people have discovered a marvelous planet inhabited by a single creature – an intelligent ocean, with which no contact can be established. It is studied from afar, from a space station circling the planet. The protagonist Chris Kelvin arrives here and discovers the desolation on the station. All members of the expedition have committed suicide, except for the two remaining members, who give the impression of madness….
Stanislav Lem, still alive at the time of the movie’s release, had this to say about it: “I thought Tarkovsky’s adaptation was the worst version of my book until I saw Soderbergh’s movie”.
After Earth
- IMDB Rating – 4.8
- Genre: Fantastic, Adventure, Action Movie
- Production: USA / 2013
- Budget: $130,000,000
- Worldwide Box Office: $243,611,982
- Director: M. Knight Shyamalan
- Starring: Jaden Smith, Will Smith, Sophie Okonedo, Zoe Kravitz, Glenn Morshower, Christopher Heavey, Sasha Dhawan, Chris Geere, Diego Klattenhoff, David Denman
A movie directed by M. Night Shyamalan with Will Smith and his son Jaden in the main roles, the story is that in the distant future for mankind, Earth has become an alien planet on which it is almost impossible to survive.
Father Cypher and son China are traveling through space and crash land on an Earth abandoned by humans a thousand years ago. The planet has become a wild jungle populated by fearsome predators, and the father and son’s ship has fallen apart. Cypher broke both legs in a hard landing, and now his young son must travel alone across a hundred kilometers of hostile land to reach the wreckage of their ship, which contains an emergency beacon.
This movie, like Shyamalan’s other works, progressed, but with negative results. It was included in all the lists of the worst films of the year and was nominated for the Golden Raspberry anti award in 6 categories.
Sumuru
- IMDB Rating – 3.6
- Genre: Fantastic, Fantasy, Adventure
- Production: South Africa, Canada, Great Britain, Germany / 2003
- Director: Darrell Roodt
- Starring: Alexandra Kamp-Grönefeld, Michael Shanks, Simone Levine, Terence Bridgett, David Lazarus, Casey B. Dolan, Nadia Kretschmer, Petra Roche.
South African film about the distant planet Antar, which was colonized by humans during the active space expansion. For the first 40 years the colony actively exchanged messages with the nearest base on Sirius, but then the connection simply disappeared. And for the next 900 years, no one was interested in the fate of the settlers.
Earthlings Adam and Jake are two scouts who plan to discover the fate of the colony on Antar. They find out that civilization there has taken a tortuous path, and everything is run by women. Men are few in number and are used only for slave labor. And the planet itself has only two months to live…
The plot of the movie is based on Shadow of Sumuru, a series of short stories written by British-born Sax Rohmer that aired on BBC radio in the 1940s.
