‘The Martian’ and Other Space Exploration Films You Must Watch

Here are five modern space exploration films including Ridley Scott’s ‘The Martian’ that you must watch

Had enough of talking about Interstellar and Gravity? Here’s our pick of five modern space exploration films that are much superior in both story and thematic value.

1. The Martian

Ridley Scott comes back to blazing form with The Martian (2015), a very smart and very entertaining story of an astronaut (Matt Damon) marooned on Mars. What makes this film interesting is that despite the seemingly depressing plot, the narrative is quite funny. When life gives the astronaut nimbu, he makes nimbu paani, because he’s such a wiseass. Being left alone on Mars with no food and oxygen is pretty much the end of the road – but keep up your sense of humor, you could find solutions to the problems at hand, and there might be a way to get back home. While Scott is the visual master at his best, it’s Cabin in the Woods’ Drew Godard whose script (based on Andy Weir’s book) that keeps you laughing and clapping.

Highlight: The marooned astronaut’s biggest source of annoyance isn’t the lack of oxygen, but the 80’s disco songs left behind on Mars by his colleague.

2. Event Horizon

Before he made the horrendous Resident Evil movies, director Paul WS Anderson made two amazing films – the campy classic Mortal Kombat and the truly scary Event Horizon (1997). The latter has a plot that makes the skin crawl – what if a space ship went through a wormhole, and the other side turns out to be hell. Anderson juggles big screen sci-fi thrills with hair raising horrific imagery of hell, some of which was so graphic the studio had to chop 90% of it off. The plot and the extreme imagery went on to inspire various video games like 2003’s Doom. Those adventurous souls looking for the deleted scenes can venture out to Google search.

Highlight: Doctor Weir explaining to the crew what a wormhole is by driving a pen through a folded piece of paper – a scene that was ripped off completely by Chris Nolan in Interstellar.

3. Pandorum

Another great horror entry to the space adventure genre, Christian Alvart’s Pandorum (2009) is quite reminiscent of the video game Dead Space. An astronaut wakes up from hyper sleep on a space ship with no memory of who and where he is, and discovers that the only other inhabitants of the ship are strange cannibalistic mutant humanoids. The tight claustrophobic atmosphere of the film is nicely balanced by Ben Foster’s performance of an astronaut whose slowly regenerating memory only leads to more horrific discoveries.

Highlight: The big twist that reveals the purpose of the space ship and the meaning of the word ‘Pandorum’ is as scary as it is thought provoking.

4. Sunshine

Danny Boyle’s visual artistry meets Alex Garland’s thought provoking storytelling in Sunshine (2007), a film about a space mission to save the sun from dying. The third act of the film is often mistaken as a slasher episode but if you look closely enough you’ll realize there is a psychological thriller at play. And despite its gorgeous space visuals and music there are some interesting themes at play - What if you’re given the keys to restart the planet? Does that mean you become a surrogate God to humanity? Are you ready to take on such a responsibility without corrupting yourself? Does humanity deserve a restart anyway? And is your mind strong enough to handle all this responsibility while running a whole space ship?

Highlight: A scientist looks through the window to admire the dying sun, with a craving to turn off the darkening filter just to experience how intense the radiations would actually be.

5. Moon

Director Duncan Jones has been given the keys to direct Warcraft based on his success in Source Code and Moon (2009) – both films which contain a layer of smart genre mashing on top of the big screen popcorn thrills. The debut Moon in particular is noteworthy because not often does one find existentialism discussed in a movie at such a simple level in such a complex scenario. With Sam Rockwell playing an astronaut working alone on the moon as a miner but is actually a puppet in a space exploration conglomerate, Moon combines the statements made in Silent Running, Solaris and 2001 A Space Odyssey.

Highlight: Every conversation that Rockwell’s character has with Gerty – his ship’s Artificial Intelligence with a screen that displays emoticons.

(Mihir Fadnavis is not only a film critic and journalist but also a certified film geek who has consumed more movies than meals.)