The first jump to lightspeed in the Millennium Falcon. Everyone in the theater was pushed four inches into their seatbacks.
“…and up went the Horn-cry of Buckland, shaking the air.”
Goose-bumps, every time I read it.
The original Star Wars was full of moments of wonder… on the big screen… in 1977. For that matter, it was pretty good in 1987. By 1997, though…
…by then, we were getting to the point where we could put any damn thing on the screen. Hell, I remember the scenes on Tattooine where they had a double sun. THAT as much as anything hammered down the “alien planet” idea more than anything else did.
Nowadays, you try to do a scene with this enormous honkin’ spaceship roaring across the screen, you’d have the critics on you howling, “Get on with it!”
The OP is asking about points in movie where the protagonist experiences a sense of wonder along with the audience. Not just neat special effects sequences. So the initial Star Destroyer flyby doesnt count, all the characters had already seen a SD.
Agree with the one in Forbidden Planet, and the Star Destroyer and jump to light speed in Star Wars. And I’ll add the cantina scene - that was the moment where we got how alien this world was.
In 2001 there were two - the first when the bone changed to a spaceship, and the second when the Stargate opened and we left the realistic universe.
And let’s not forget in ET where the bicycle takes off.
I also nominate Jurassic Park but for a slightly different reason. For me, the sense of wonder moment was when the creator of the park held up his walking stick with the mosquito frozen in amber and the amazement of mllion-year old DNA being extracted from a mosquito to create the dinosaurs dropped my jaw to the floor. It was at once so blindingly logical and so utterly illustrative of the magic of science.
The end of Close Encounters, from the initial communication with the ship via synthesized keyboard, to the craft landing and the aliens walking out.
When the Neo-Gorillas chose the Thennanin as their patrons in the Uplift War by Brin.
The fist time I heard a dolphin speak in The Day of The Dolphin.
The first time I saw a Shadow vessel.
So many choices so little time.
I’m gonna go old-school for my answer: When Dorothy first steps into the Technicolor land of Oz.
In Ursula Vernon’s novel Castle Hangnail, when Molly realizes how much more powerful her shadow spell is than she had thought
In Susan Cooper’s novel The Grey King when Will plays the harp.
In Alexander Key’s novel Escape to Witch Mountain: the jailbreak scene
In Zenna Henderson’s short story “Ararat”: when Valancy makes it rain
The climax of Terry Pratchett’s novel The Wee Free Men.
I could go on and on…
A lesser offering, perhaps, but one of my favorites. Roger Zelazny’s story “This Mortal Mountain.”
The early scenes, where Whitey is on the planet, looking up at an eleven-mile-high mountain…is eerie and wondrous and astonishing. Zelazny tells two stories here, a mountain-climbing story and a philosophy story about death. The two reinforce each other brilliantly. I’m awestruck every time I re-read it.
In Reflex, the sequel to Gould’s Jumper:
… the end of the first chapter, when Milly discovers that she, too, can teleport.
Blew me away. I actually had to go back to the beginning of the book and reread to that point again.