Pandorum
Space is still a very fascinating topic that is regularly explored on the big screen, and yet is always portrayed as an incredibly dangerous place.
That idea is cemented this week with the release of Pandorum, which stars Dennis Quaid and Ben Foster.
A pair of crew members aboard a spaceship wake up with no knowledge of their mission or their identities. So to celebrate the release of the movie we take a look at films where space travel goes horribly wrong.
- Apollo 13
After the success of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landing on the moon Apollo 13 was finally Jim Lovell's chance to follow in their footsteps.
But after just three days in space Lovell, Fred Haise, and Jack Swigert finally approach their long-cherished destination, when suddenly their spacecraft's power and guidance systems go down--and the supply of oxygen begins to dwindle.
The trio now face a grim reality: their crippled capsule, stranded 205,000 miles in space, might never return to earth.
With time running out, the crew and thousands of others, including flight director Gene Kranz, brave near-impossible odds in a daring attempt to guide the capsule earthward.
Released back in 1995 Apollo 13 is the amazing true story of how these three guys fought to survive and the NASA team battled to get them home.
And while the crew aren't being attacked by aliens the movie is just as exciting and tense as Tom Hanks leads an all star cast of Kevin Bacon, Gary Sinise, Ed Harris and Bill Paxton.
- Sunshine
Released back in 2007 Sunshine was the last movie released by Danny Boyle before the massive success of Slumdog Millionaire, but was a movie largely missed at the cinema.
A team of astronauts are on a mission to re-ignite the sun, which is dying, causing the earth to slowly freeze. The Icarus 2 mission is the second attempt to re-ignite the sun after Icarus 1 disappeared seven years before.
As they fly past Mercury they discover Icarus 1 still in orbit. So the crew weigh up the pros and cons of changing their course of their mission to reach the stricken vessel.
The decision to change course is left to scientist Capa (Murphy), who is the only crew member who can deploy the package (the bomb which will ignite the sun). He chooses to help Icarus 1 and discover if their package will still work, arguing that two chances of igniting the sun is better than their one.
However a string of accidents, happening as a result of the change of course, leaves Icarus 2 with barely enough oxygen to reach the sun and deploy the bomb let alone make the return trip home. There's also a stranger on board the ship hell bent on stopping their mission.
This is not a movie with actors dressed up in silly alien costumes to scare the kids this is intelligent adult sci-fi which takes a good look at what would happen should the star which provides life on this planet die. It very subtly highlights the environmental problems that the planet is currently facing without rubbing it in the face of the audience.
It's not just a sci-fi movie it's an intensely claustrophobic, psychological thriller where the crew have no where to run and no where to hide.
What started out as a movie about saving the planet and mankind becomes a film about saving themselves.
- Pitch Black
Pitch Black is almost ten years old and was the movie that shot Vin Diesel to stardom, as well as introducing us to the character of Riddick, a role he reprised in The Chronicles of Riddick in 2004.
A transport vessel's, which is carrying forty people, trip across space goes horribly wrong when debris from a comet's tail pierces the ship, waking the crew from cryo-sleep and killing the captain.
Docking pilot Carolyn Fry (Radha Mitchell) tries to control the descent, but the rear-heavy craft will not stabilize. She begins jettisoning aft sections sequentially, and navigator Greg Owens realizes she intends to jettison the passenger cabin.
He stops her by blocking the airlock, but in the sliding crash landing he is impaled by a metal shaft. And she is forced to crash land the vessel on an unknown planet.
As the survivors explore the uncomfortably hot planet, they must band together. The planet is eerie, arid, and lifeless.
But as the sun sets and the planet plunges into total darkness, other inhabitants emerge, including a fiendish murderer with a nose for blood, they must rely on murderer Riddick to get them to safety.
Despite being made on a small budget Pitch Black is one of the best science fiction that has graced the big screen this decade. The movie plays on human's fear of the dark as filmmaker David Twohy turns out the lights.
- Alien
Of course you can't look at movies set in space without giving Ridley Scott's Alien a little mention.
Despite spawning three sequels and two collaborations with the Predator series the original Lien is still one of sci-fi's most iconic movies, with the infant creature bursting out of John Hurt's chest as one of the most memorable moments in cinema history.
The film was a commercial and critical smash hit giving life to a huge media franchise that included video games and books. The film went on to win the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects at the 1979 ceremony.
But it is Sigourney Weaver's role as Ripley that has become one of science fiction's most popular characters.
It was very un-Hollywood to cast a strong heroine in an action movie, a role usually reserved for an actor, and in the beginning Ripley was a man.
The character of Ellen Ripley became the core thread of the movies that followed: Aliens in 1986, Alien 3 in 1992 and Alien Resurrection in 1997.
- Armageddon
When the space shuttle is destroyed in outer space, astronomers at NASA discover that a meteor shower is pelting away at earth and that a huge asteroid, capable of destroying the planet is headed for a direct hit with the planet.
With all options taking to long to implement before collision, NASA decides to recruit the world's best oil drillers to land on the asteroid, drill a hole, drop a nuclear bomb into the hole, then take off and remotely detonate the bomb.
For the drill team, they select Harry Stamper and his crew of misfit drillers. It's a race against time to get the drillers trained, land them on the asteroid and get the hole drilled before earth is destroyed.
Ok so the plot is a little outrageous, this is Michael Bay that we are talking about, but it is a very exciting movie as everything that goes wrong does.
Landing on the asteroid the team loses one of the shuttles and during the drill more members of the team lose their life for the cause. How many make it back alive.
Other movies were a little trip into space didn't go quite to plan include Solaris, Lost In Space, Dante 01, Ghosts of Mars, Mission to Mars and The Andromeda Strain.
Pandorum is released 2nd October
femaleFirst Helen Earnshaw
Space is still a very fascinating topic that is regularly explored on the big screen, and yet is always portrayed as an incredibly dangerous place.
That idea is cemented this week with the release of Pandorum, which stars Dennis Quaid and Ben Foster.
A pair of crew members aboard a spaceship wake up with no knowledge of their mission or their identities. So to celebrate the release of the movie we take a look at films where space travel goes horribly wrong.
- Apollo 13
After the success of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landing on the moon Apollo 13 was finally Jim Lovell's chance to follow in their footsteps.
But after just three days in space Lovell, Fred Haise, and Jack Swigert finally approach their long-cherished destination, when suddenly their spacecraft's power and guidance systems go down--and the supply of oxygen begins to dwindle.
The trio now face a grim reality: their crippled capsule, stranded 205,000 miles in space, might never return to earth.
With time running out, the crew and thousands of others, including flight director Gene Kranz, brave near-impossible odds in a daring attempt to guide the capsule earthward.
Released back in 1995 Apollo 13 is the amazing true story of how these three guys fought to survive and the NASA team battled to get them home.
And while the crew aren't being attacked by aliens the movie is just as exciting and tense as Tom Hanks leads an all star cast of Kevin Bacon, Gary Sinise, Ed Harris and Bill Paxton.
- Sunshine
Released back in 2007 Sunshine was the last movie released by Danny Boyle before the massive success of Slumdog Millionaire, but was a movie largely missed at the cinema.
A team of astronauts are on a mission to re-ignite the sun, which is dying, causing the earth to slowly freeze. The Icarus 2 mission is the second attempt to re-ignite the sun after Icarus 1 disappeared seven years before.
As they fly past Mercury they discover Icarus 1 still in orbit. So the crew weigh up the pros and cons of changing their course of their mission to reach the stricken vessel.
The decision to change course is left to scientist Capa (Murphy), who is the only crew member who can deploy the package (the bomb which will ignite the sun). He chooses to help Icarus 1 and discover if their package will still work, arguing that two chances of igniting the sun is better than their one.
However a string of accidents, happening as a result of the change of course, leaves Icarus 2 with barely enough oxygen to reach the sun and deploy the bomb let alone make the return trip home. There's also a stranger on board the ship hell bent on stopping their mission.
This is not a movie with actors dressed up in silly alien costumes to scare the kids this is intelligent adult sci-fi which takes a good look at what would happen should the star which provides life on this planet die. It very subtly highlights the environmental problems that the planet is currently facing without rubbing it in the face of the audience.
It's not just a sci-fi movie it's an intensely claustrophobic, psychological thriller where the crew have no where to run and no where to hide.
What started out as a movie about saving the planet and mankind becomes a film about saving themselves.
- Pitch Black
Pitch Black is almost ten years old and was the movie that shot Vin Diesel to stardom, as well as introducing us to the character of Riddick, a role he reprised in The Chronicles of Riddick in 2004.
A transport vessel's, which is carrying forty people, trip across space goes horribly wrong when debris from a comet's tail pierces the ship, waking the crew from cryo-sleep and killing the captain.
Docking pilot Carolyn Fry (Radha Mitchell) tries to control the descent, but the rear-heavy craft will not stabilize. She begins jettisoning aft sections sequentially, and navigator Greg Owens realizes she intends to jettison the passenger cabin.
He stops her by blocking the airlock, but in the sliding crash landing he is impaled by a metal shaft. And she is forced to crash land the vessel on an unknown planet.
As the survivors explore the uncomfortably hot planet, they must band together. The planet is eerie, arid, and lifeless.
Tagged in Sunshine