The call of the stars. These films launch us beyond Earth's atmosphere into the terror, wonder, and crushing loneliness of space.
Back to HomeMark Watney is stranded on Mars and has to "science the shit" out of survival. What makes The Martian extraordinary isn't the spectacle -- it's the tone. This is a survival film that's genuinely fun, driven by Matt Damon's infectious optimism and a screenplay that makes potato farming and orbital mechanics equally riveting. Ridley Scott's most purely entertaining film in decades, and a love letter to human ingenuity. The "Iron Man" finale is ridiculous and perfect.
"I'm going to have to science the shit out of this."
The defining cosmic voyages of 2015-2025
Brad Pitt journeys to Neptune to find his missing father, and what he finds is a meditation on toxic masculinity, abandonment, and the limits of human exploration. James Gray shoots space like Terrence Malick -- contemplative, gorgeous, emotionally devastating. The moon rover chase is a standout set piece, but it's the quiet moments that linger. Pitt's voiceover is polarizing -- either it pulls you in or pushes you away. For those it reaches, this is one of the most emotionally raw space films ever made.
Alvarez does what Covenant and Prometheus couldn't -- he makes Alien scary again. A group of young colonists break into an abandoned space station and find exactly what you'd expect, but the execution is ferocious. The zero-gravity acid blood sequence is an instant franchise highlight. It leans heavily on nostalgia (sometimes too heavily), but when it works, it's the most pulse-pounding entry since Cameron's Aliens. The third act goes to genuinely disturbing places.
Made for $80 million in an era where Marvel spends $250 million on a single film, The Creator looks better than all of them. Edwards shot on location across Southeast Asia and layered VFX over real landscapes, creating a future that feels lived-in and grounded. The story -- a soldier hunting a child-AI weapon in a war between humans and artificial intelligence -- is familiar, but the world-building is so rich it almost doesn't matter. Madeleine Yuna Voyles is a revelation. An original sci-fi epic that deserved better at the box office.