Best Space travel Movies
Ranked by how strongly each film carries the visual signature of space travel cinema — measured across 2,871 indexed frames from 36 films, against a 408,752-frame catalogue baseline. Not by box office, and not by vote.
Space travel films over-index on astronaut, flight suit and space suit — the objects that make the genre recognisable before a line is spoken.
- 1
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Stanley KubrickDP Geoffrey UnsworthIMDb 8.3TMDB 8.1See in full on FrameThrower →
"2001" is a story of evolution. Sometime in the distant past, someone or something nudged evolution by placing a monolith on Earth (presumably elsewhere throughout the universe as well). Evolution then enabled humankind to reach the moon's surface, where yet another monolith is found, one that signals the monolith placers that humankind has evolved that far. Now a race begins between computers (HAL) and human (Bowman) to reach the monolith placers. The winner will achieve the next step in evolution, whatever that may be.
- 2
Interstellar (2014)
Christopher NolanDP Hoyte van HoytemaIMDb 8.7TMDB 8.5See in full on FrameThrower →
In the near future around the American Midwest, Cooper, an ex-science engineer and pilot, is tied to his farming land with his daughter Murph and son Tom. As devastating sandstorms ravage Earth's crops, the people of Earth realize their life here is coming to an end as food begins to run out. Eventually stumbling upon a N.A.S.A. base 6 hours from Cooper's home, he is asked to go on a daring mission with a few other scientists into a wormhole because of Cooper's scientific intellect and ability to pilot aircraft unlike the other crew members. In order to find a new home while Earth decays, Cooper must decide to either stay, or risk never seeing his children again in order to save the human race by finding another habitable planet.
- 3
Moonfall (2022)
Roland EmmerichDP Robby BaumgartnerIMDb 5.2TMDB 6.3See in full on FrameThrower →
In Moonfall, a mysterious force knocks the Moon from its orbit around Earth and sends it hurtling on a collision course with life as we know it. With mere weeks before impact and the world on the brink of annihilation, NASA executive and former astronaut Jo Fowler is convinced she has the key to saving us all - but only one astronaut from her past, Brian Harper and a conspiracy theorist K.C. Houseman believe her. These unlikely heroes will mount an impossible last-ditch mission into space, leaving behind everyone they love, only to find that they just might have prepared for the wrong mission.
- 4
Event Horizon (1997)
Paul W. S. AndersonDP Adrian BiddleIMDb 6.6TMDB 6.6See in full on FrameThrower →
In the year 2047 a group of astronauts are sent to investigate and salvage the long lost starship "Event Horizon". The ship disappeared mysteriously 7 years before on its maiden voyage and with its return comes even more mystery as the crew of the "Lewis and Clark" discover the real truth behind its disappearance and something even more terrifying.
- 5
Alien (1979)
Ridley ScottDP Derek VanlintIMDb 8.5TMDB 8.2See in full on FrameThrower →
In the distant future, the commercial spaceship "Nostromo" crew is on its way home when the crew picks up a distress call from a distant moon. The crew must investigate, and the spaceship descends on the small planetoid afterwards. After a rough landing, three crew members leave the spaceship to explore the area on the planetoid. At the same time, the ship's computer deciphers the message. When the crew realizes it is not alone on the spaceship, they must deal with the consequences.
- 6
First Man (2018)
Damien ChazelleDP Linus SandgrenIMDb 7.3TMDB 7.0See in full on FrameThrower →
A Biopic on the life of the legendary American Astronaut Neil Armstrong from 1961-1969, on his journey to becoming the first human to walk the moon. Exploring the sacrifices and costs on the Nation and Neil himself, during one of the most dangerous missions in the history of space travel.
- 7
Alien: Covenant (2017)
Ridley ScottDP Dariusz WolskiIMDb 6.4TMDB 6.2See in full on FrameThrower →
In 2104, almost eleven years after the ill-fated expedition to the distant moon LV-223 in Prometheus (2012), the deep-space colonisation vessel USCSS Covenant is on course for the remote planet Origae-6. Carrying over 2,000 colonists in cryogenic hibernation, they seek to build a new world. Instead, a rogue transmission entices the crew to a nearby habitable planet that resembles Earth. But nothing can prepare the ambitious crew for another disaster in uncharted territory. As the peaceful exploratory operation turns into a frantic rescue mission, biological foes beyond human comprehension threaten the future before it has even begun. In the depths of space, terror reveals its hideous face. Has anyone ever set foot on the mysterious planet and lived to tell the tale?
- 8
The Midnight Sky (2020)
George ClooneyDP Martin RuheIMDb 5.7TMDB 5.7See in full on FrameThrower →
A scientist is working alone at a remote Arctic research station when he learns of a mysterious global disaster. At the same time, he meets a strange girl in the Arctic, with whom he must stop the return to Earth of the crew of the spaceship "Aether".
- 9
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Gareth EdwardsDP Greig FraserIMDb 7.8TMDB 7.5See in full on FrameThrower →
All looks lost for the Rebellion against the Empire as they learn of the existence of a new super weapon, the Death Star. Once a possible weakness in its construction is uncovered, the Rebel Alliance must set out on a desperate mission to steal the plans for the Death Star. The future of the entire galaxy now rests upon its success.
- 10
Silent Running (1972)
Douglas TrumbullDP Charles F. WheelerIMDb 6.6TMDB 6.4See in full on FrameThrower →
In a future Earth barren of all flora and fauna, the planet's ecosystems exist only in large pods attached to spacecraft. When word comes in that the pods are to be jettisoned into space and destroyed, most of the crew of the Valley Forge rejoice at the prospect of going home. Not so for botanist Freeman Lowell, who loves the forest and its creatures. He kills his colleagues taking the ship deep into space. Alone on the craft with his only companions being three small robots, Lowell revels in joys of nature. When colleagues appear to "rescue" him, he realizes he has only one option available to him.
What space travel films are made of
How much more often each element appears in a space travel frame than in an average frame from the catalogue. A ratio, not a share — astronaut is not in most frames, it is simply far more common here than anywhere else.
- astronaut40.5×
- flight suit35.9×
- space suit33.0×
- spacecraft31.2×
- planet28.6×
- control console19.0×
- control panel17.0×
- visor14.1×
How space travel films are shot
Weaker signals than the objects above, and worth saying so: most dramatic genres skew dark and night-heavy, so these numbers separate space travel from the catalogue far more than they separate it from its neighbours.
- 13%interior indeterminatevs 7% baseline
- 23%dayvs 42% baseline
- 30%naturalvs 43% baseline
- 52%low keyvs 40% baseline
What breaks the pattern
Fantastic Planet (1973) is the least typical film here — it carries the least of what the rest of this list is made of. Which is either a failure of the genre label, or the most interesting film on the page.
Method
Every frame in the FrameThrower catalogue is tagged for shot size, lighting, time of day, camera angle, colour and the objects visible in it. This page aggregates those tags across 2,871 frames from 36 films carrying the space travel label, and compares each figure to the same measurement across the whole catalogue (408,752 frames). Films are ranked by how closely they match the theme’s over-indexed elements, weighted by how distinctive each element is; one film per series. Only films with at least 20 indexed frames and 500 TMDB votes are listed.
Machine-readable: /api/list/space-travel
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