Project Hail Mary is having a great week at the box office, and the movie deserves it. Not only because Ryan Gosling is magnetic in it, but because it does something that most movies about space don’t: It takes science seriously. Like, very seriously. Space has been Hollywood’s playground for decades, and for the most part, filmmakers have treated it like one. Explosions that shouldn’t exist, sounds that travel through nothing, and gravity that only works when the plot needs it to. I mean, it’s fine. Nobody watched Armageddon (or Star Wars) for orbital mechanics. We watched it because it was fun.
But every so often, a movie comes along that proves someone has done their homework and understands the real truth about space and how the crushing distances, the silences, and the physics can actually kill you if you don’t pay attention. Sure, it’s a dramatic way to look at things, but when the science holds up, the story hits even harder. While Project Hail Mary achieves this, other movies with different budgets and released during different eras have, too.
‘Prospect’ (2018)
Prospect trusts you to keep up with whatever’s happening on screen. Made for around $3.5 million, it follows a teenage girl named Cee and her father as they land on a forested moon to harvest valuable organic gems. But then, everything goes sideways. Pedro Pascal plays Ezra, a smooth-talking mercenary whom they cross paths with. The dynamic between him and Sophie Thatcher’s Cee is central to the plot.
Directors Zeina Durra and Chris Caldwell borrowed heavily from the visual language of practical, unglamorous space work, and the result is a movie that feels like it lives in space. The suits are patched, the equipment is finicky, and the writers thought about economics. Even small details, like how characters manage oxygen or handle contamination, matter because, in space, there is both scarcity and consequences. While it’s not a flashy film, it’s a believable one.
‘Stowaway’ (2021)
Stowaway sets up its central problem in the first 20 minutes. The plot revolves around a three-person crew (Anna Kendrick, Tony Collette, and Daniel Dae Kim) that discovers an accidental stowaway aboard their cycler spacecraft bound for Mars. Now, there are four people, not enough oxygen, and no way to turn back. Sounds uncomfortable, doesn’t it? Director Joe Penna wasn’t interested in miracles or last-minute engineering breakthroughs. He tried to show what happens to decent people when the numbers don’t add up.
The movie’s cycler spacecraft design was inspired directly by the real proposed Mars mission architecture. Since it’s a vessel that continuously loops between Earth and Mars, turning back isn’t an option. That single detail sets up the entire movie’s tension. Then there is oxygen generation failure, which is basic chemistry. The EVA sequence in the third act, where the characters climb the exterior of the ship during a solar storm, is also accurate, visceral, and terrifying.
‘The Martian’ (2015)
Ridley Scott spent the 2010s delivering a couple of misfires. He snapped back into focus with The Martian. Based on Andy Weir’s novel, it’s a survival story starring Matt Damon as Mark Watney, a botanist stranded alone on Mars after his crew evacuated during a storm. Screenwriter Drew Goddard stayed true to the source material and turned Watney’s narration into something so specific and so funny that we never forget that survival is as much a chemistry problem as a human one.
In one scene, Watney calculates his caloric deficit, and in another, he improvises life-support systems. NASA consulted closely on the production, which is evident in the texture of the Martian habitat, the suit design, and the orbital mechanics of the rescue mission. Jim Green, NASA’s director of planetary science at the time, called it the most realistic depiction of Mars ever. Sure, the opening dust storm and the suit-puncture-as-thruster ending are pure Hollywood. Otherwise, the movie holds the line with impressive detail and discipline.
‘Moon’ (2009)
Duncan Jones made Moon on a $5 million budget, but if you watch the movie, it feels like it must have cost 10 times that. Sam Rockwell plays Sam Bell, a Helium-3 miner nearing the end of a three-year solo contract on the lunar surface. The movie opens with a repetitive rhythm of a man who has been alone too long, and then turns into something more devastating and unsettling.
Jones was inspired by Robert Zubrin’s aerospace engineering work. When NASA employees screened the movie, they reportedly spent the Q&A quizzing him on his lunar base design choices. He gets the lunar gravity right. The habitat also feels functional, and the communication delay between the Moon and Earth is treated as a genuine logistical obstacle. Rockwell delivered an extraordinary performance, playing the same character at different psychological stages simultaneously, and Kevin Spacey voiced GERTY, the base’s AI, whose warmth reminds you of HAL 9000.
‘Europa Report’ (2013)
The plot of Europa Report goes something like this: Six astronauts travel to Jupiter’s moon, Europa, and chase the possibility of life beneath its ice. While it sounds average, it’s enough to keep you on edge for the entire runtime. Director Sebastián Cordero uses the found footage format to make everything feel achingly real. Sharlto Copley, Michael Nyqvist, and the rest of the ensemble portray people doing a job that might kill them.
The movie sticks with you because it’s a thoughtful representation of both the science and the psychology of the mission. Since JPL scientists and actual astronauts weighed in here, we see the authenticity in the cramped interiors, the communication blackouts, and the way the crew fills dead time with small, mundane rituals. Most of all, it never feels overly dramatic, but the horror in the third act is still painstakingly plausible.
‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ (1968)
Before space movies figured out how to get space right, 2001: A Space Odyssey proved it was at least possible. Stanley Kubrick made the movie even before humans had walked on the Moon. Based on Arthur C. Clarke’s story and developed in close collaboration with him, it begins with humanity’s first contact with a mysterious monolith. Then, the film evolves into a journey to Jupiter, guided by astronauts and the unnervingly calm HAL 9000.
The plot isn’t the point. It’s the experience. The long, patient shots of spacecraft moving through silence. The bone, which becomes a weapon and then a satellite in a single cut. HAL 9000 refusing to open the pod bay doors in an almost sinister voice. Considering that it was made in 1968, the accuracy is staggering. You can appreciate details like the rotating space station, the zero-gravity toilet, and the way sound disappears the moment you’re outside the ship. 2001 remains a benchmark for filmmakers, and it continues to influence modern sci-fi and artificial intelligence.
‘For All Mankind’ (1989)
While For All Mankind doesn’t qualify as a movie in the traditional sense, that’s okay. Al Reinert spent 10 years and had access to over six million feet of NASA footage and stitched together the definitive cinematic document of the Apollo missions. There are no actors or dramatization. Just the actual astronauts, the actual spacecraft, and the actual Moon. Brian Eno’s score is the crowning glory and makes the movie feel poetic.
Everything is real in the Sundance prize-winning and Oscar-nominated documentary. There are even audio interviews of 13 Apollo crew members. In his essay for the Criterion edition, Reinert wrote that the movie:
“is the product of my journey. How well it captures the actual journey is not for me to say—it’s only a movie—but I can say the moon seems friendlier now than it did forty years ago. I think it’s because we sent music and laughter there.”
‘Project Hail Mary’ (2026)
Right now, Project Hail Mary is the space movie everyone is talking about. It opened to $80 million domestically, which is a record for Amazon MGM. However, the conversation isn’t really about the numbers. It’s about the fact that audiences are connecting this broadly with a hard sci-fi movie, one that expects you to follow biology, chemistry, and physics. Ryan Gosling plays Ryland Grace, a man who wakes up alone on a spacecraft with no memory of how he got there or where he’s going, and the movie lets that situation play out with real patience.
There are no explosions in the first 10 minutes. No villain waiting to jump in. Just a man, a ship, and a problem that might end humanity. Readers loved Weir’s novel because it’s scientifically accurate, and directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller carried that conviction in every frame. The microbiology at the center of the story is rooted in research, the propulsion systems are real, and the way Grace reasons through problems reflects how actual scientific thinking works. Gosling is extraordinary in what is largely a solo performance, and the film’s emotional core is about a friendship that’s odd but endearing. Reviews are calling Project Hail Mary the “best movie of 2026,” but it just might be one of the best sci-fi movies of the decade.
What’s the most underrated sci-fi movie you have ever seen? We’re all ears.