A friend and I have been racking our brains for good, realistic space films, and we are coming up with surprisingly few candidates.
Our criteria:[ul][li] The films must be “good”. Subjective, I know, but consider this a guideline not to mention films you didn’t like.[/li]
[li] The film’s plot must primarily concern the possibilities of space travel. Space opera may occur in space, but it’s really about princesses and evil wizards.[/li]
[li] The film must depict space travel in realistic terms. In other words, it must either describe current technology with scientific accuracy, or extrapolate current technology to depict futuristic technology in a sense that seems realistic today. For example, simply assuming FTL travel is possible without explaining the mechanics in a way that agrees with general relativity is a no-no.[/li]
[li] No documentaries.[/ul]These criteria rule out space opera (Star Wars, The Fifth Element) as well as most action/adventure films (Armageddon, Alien).[/li]
The films we have come up with so far:[ul][li] 2001: A Space Odyssey[/li][li] 2010[/li][li] The Right Stuff[/li][li] Apollo 13[/li][li] From the Earth to the Moon (HBO miniseries)[/li][li] Solaris (US)[/li][li] Solaris (RU)[/li][li] Tintin’s Moon Adventure (seriously)[/ul] Personally I am ruling out Space Cowboys, Mission to Mars and Red Planet purely based on their lack of artistic merit.[/li]
Suggestions?
Don’t forget Destination Moon, with script by Robert Heinlein, art direction by Chesley Bonestell (!), and produced by George Pal.
Pal followed it up with Cnquest of Space, which deserves at least an honorable mention. It features a space station and a trip to Mars. Heinlein followed up with Operation Moonbase, which deserves a look.
The TV series Men Into Space was well-done, good SF from 1959, featuring a surprisingly realistic and restrained depiction of space travel. At least, that’s what I recall from my childhood. To my knowledge, it has never been syndicated, or made available on VHS or DVD. (Although there is a surprisingly detailed website devoted to it.) Robinson Crusoe on Mars was a wel-made SF film circa 1965. Hokey title, and some hokey stuff, but, again, surprisingly restrained (for the most part) film about an astronaut (and his monkey) marooned on Mars and struggling to survive. They even manage to throw in a Man Friday. Also notable as the very first movie I know of that featured a space ship with b a “Dstruct” feature. And it’s not ued for an explosive climax.
There’s Marooned, another sixties epic about astronauts trapped aboard a capsule that can’t get back to Earth, and the emergency rescue mission to save them. The years haven’t been kind to it, but it was realistic enough by the standards of the time.
The George Pal films Cal mentions above were pretty good, even now, although the science doesn’t quite stand up under the test of time.
One that’s not bad is Silent Running, with Bruce Dern as the caretaker of Earth’s last forests, now located in orbit. As I recall, the technology was fairly realistic - nuclear powered space ships, long communication delays, relatively simple robots.
And apparently, Pan Am is goimg to make a comeback some day - hold onto those stock certificates
burntsand, the freighters in Silent Running had American Airlines logos on them. You may be thinking of the Pan Am shuttle that took Dr. Floyd to the space station in 2001.
gentle, excellent choice on The Right Stuff, my favorite movie of all time.
If documentaries are allowed, put For All Mankind on the list. When the Apollo missions were happening, all the pictures we saw were video images that the news could get on TV quickly. but the astronauts also shot thousands of feet of film (16mm, and even 35mm, I think), that wasn’t developed until after they brough it back. Al Reinert went through all the footage in the NASA archives and edited the best shots into this film. The quality of the images is breathtaking.
Robot Arm, The Right Stuff is also one of my favourite films, and definitely my favourite “space” film.
As a minor space buff, For All Mankind sounds wonderful. My quibble with From the Earth to the Moon, the miniseries, was that focus tended to drift away from the stuff going on out in space. (A particularly egregious example is the episode about Apollo 13: it had no scenes from the Apollo 13 shuttle, and barely any scenes from the control room; instead, the plot was almost completely concerned the internal struggle between fictional reporters in a fictional TV network, with the Apollo 13 incident merely a backdrop. The story probably reflected the kinds of conflicts and changes going on in media at the time, but it wasn’t what I wanted to see in a miniseries like this.)
When From the Earth to the Moon was produced, the movie Apollo 13 was pretty recent. I think that’s why they decided to deal with stuff that hadn’t been covered in the film. Tom Hanks was involved in both projects.
I’m sorry to say, I can’t think of too many movies that really fit the criteria in the OP. I guess we can rule out Space 1999.
One warning I should have given about Silent Running - you have to remember that the film is very much a product of the era when Watergate, Vietnam, and Silent Spring had destroyed everyone’s faith in the future and trust in human institutions and governments. The environmental doomsday scenario of the film is laughable now, and the hippie environmentalist (good!) versus militaristic good-ole-boy (bad!) stereotypes of the main characters are severely dated.
If you can get past that, and some awful Joan Baez songs, it’s an enjoyable movie.
To quote Roger Ebert (who was talking about another film) I hated, hated, hated this movie. Pretty bloody awful. Slow moving as hell, with a “clever” concept (There’s another Earth! On the Other Side of the Sun! And it’s just like ours! Except Everything’s backwards!) that’s pretty obvious.
One movie that fits the criteria (but I als hate) is the incredibly obscure Countdown, starring a then little-know James Caan. The Lunar Lander looks like a Gemini capsule placed on top of a LEM base. Red Planet pretty much fits the criteria, but I hate it, too. I also pretty much hate Deep Impact and Armageddon, too. Why are so many near-future spaceflight movies so damned bad?
