Space movies: Stars shine in film (and so do actors)
The idea of using outer space as a setting for movies is practically as old as the medium itself. The first space flick was a 14-minute silent drama, Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon), made in 1902 by French director Georges Méliès. He used trick photography and other special effects to depict a lunar mission.
In the 1930s and '40s, movie audiences thrilled to serials featuring the interplanetary adventures of Flash Gordon, and in the 1950s, they watched humans venture into the cosmos in Rocketship X-M and Forbidden Planet. But 1968's 2001: A Space Odyssey ushered in an era in which space was the setting for more complex films about human conflict and existential explorations, enhanced by increasingly sophisticated special effects.
Here are some of the best examples of the genre.
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Stanley Kubrick's film puzzled many viewers when it was released, because it wasn't so much a drama set in space as a mind-bending psychedelic meditation on how man's consciousness might expand and become one with the universe. The film segues from apes learning to use bones as weapons to human astronauts in a spaceship and the conflict that develops between them and a computer with artificial intelligence — the chilling HAL 9000. The film's depiction of an interdimensional wormhole, in which an astronaut ventures into an alternative reality where he is an elderly man, captures the weirdness of cutting-edge theoretical physics.
Silent Running (1972)
Director Douglas Trumbull's drama envisions a dystopian future where climate change and pollution have defoliated Earth and giant space freighters cruise the outer solar system to preserve remnants of vanished plant life. When an order comes to discard the botanical treasure trove and return home to a world that has lost all hope, a rebellious botanist (portrayed by Bruce Dern) and three robots seize one of the ships and flee into space in a desperate battle to stave off the inevitable.
Star Wars (1977)
Director George Lucas' exuberant homage to the science fiction and fantasy adventure films he'd seen as a boy became a monster hit that spawned two sequels and three prequels (with a seventh film to premiere in late 2015). We probably don't need to recount the plot or the elaborate mythology that evolved from the battle between the evil Sith and the good Jedi, except to note that it turned Luke Skywalker, Obi-wan Kenobi and Darth Vader into pop-culture icons.
Alien (1979)
The true genius of Ridley Scott's sequel-spawning classic is that it turned outer space from a limitless void into a dark, claustrophobic trap in which humans were reduced from bold cosmic explorers to the frightened, desperate prey of an extraterrestrial predator.
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)
In the second installment of the film franchise based on the original Star Trek TV series, Khan, a genetically engineered space exile portrayed by Ricardo Montalban, is out to exact long-overdue revenge against the once dashing and virile Captain Kirk (William Shatner). But our hero Kirk, who's been relegated to a desk job and now wears reading glasses, needs Mr. Spock's counsel to help him come to terms with his own mortality as he prepares for the fight.
The Right Stuff (1983)
Director Philip Kaufman's screen version of Tom Wolfe's nonfiction book is ostensibly about the Mercury Seven of the 1960s, America's first astronauts. But a parallel narrative also looks at test pilot Chuck Yeager and his effort to break the sound barrier in 1947 — a feat that set the standard for the astronauts' mix of skill and daring — and to push himself to the edge of space. This might be the first movie in which astronauts are portrayed as human beings with realistic fears and flaws.
Apollo 13 (1995)
Like The Right Stuff, director Ron Howard's drama tells a true story — that of the ill-fated 1970 lunar mission from which three astronauts nearly didn't return. The film that made "Houston, we have a problem" into a pop-culture catchphrase might be the first to accurately portray the real dangers of space travel, and the amount of bravery and ingenuity it takes to confront the unexpected in a place where there is precious little margin for error.
Armageddon (1998)
This is one of two films from the same year — Deep Impact is the other — that looked at an unsettlingly plausible question: What would we do if a massive object from space were hurtling toward our planet? Although critics didn't exactly regard the film as the Citizen Kane of space epics, there was something irresistibly thrilling about the notion of a team of oilfield roughnecks compelled to save Earth by landing a spacecraft on a Texas-size asteroid, drilling a hole in it and planting a nuclear bomb to eliminate the threat.
Avatar (2009)
Director James Cameron's massive, expensive epic is laden with computer-generated special effects, but what drives the film is a reversal of the usual space-movie premise in which good humans fight evil aliens. Here, human mercenaries, who utilize telepathically controlled clones of extraterrestrials, are out to conquer another world for its mineral wealth — even if that means subjugating a race of giant blue-skinned creatures who, unlike us, know how to live in harmony with nature.
Gravity (2013)
This one is a thriller about two astronauts, played by Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, who experience a nightmarish catastrophe: Their spacecraft is destroyed while they're outside on a spacewalk, leaving them to try to return to Earth while dodging orbiting debris. Director Alfonso Cuarón won best director at the Academy Awards for Gravity, one of seven Oscars bestowed on the film.