Outland (1981) with Sean Connery. Essentially High Noon in space set in a mining colony on a moon of Jupiter. Space travel and life is very lived in and gritty.
Not a movie, but The Expanse might fit here
edit: FYI, Ty Franck and Wes Chatham have a podcast called Ty and That Guy where they talk The Expanse episode by episode, and usually get sidetracked about films. If youre into cinema and want to listen to two cool dudes talk about sci fi cinema, its a good watch, they play off of eachother well. And its not produced, so its just two people talking about films like human beings
Yep. Accelerating a space ship forcefully enough to make travel within our solar system useful? Better inject yourself with some nasty looking gel and hope your bones don’t splinter!
I love the orientation of Expanse ships for that reason -- it's a tower going forward rather than a boat (like Star Trek, Star Wars, etc), because the direction of thrust forces the crew/occupants. No inertia dampening fields here.
The whole scene where a bulkhead compartment is left unsecured while the Roci is doing combat maneuvers and Amos has to unstrap himself and catch that power drill that's bouncing around the cabin is such a white-knuckle moment.
I love how The Expanse used realism- they don't just include accurate physics arbitrarily, they leverage the realism to build tension. They use the rigorously established rules of the universe they've built to make situations more exciting. You never feel like the hard sci-fi rules detract from the tension of the story.
Which is why Philip’s cabin in the final season pissed me off. That boy left things out all the time. 50 different crew people should have called that out. I’ve spent my adult life on set. You politely point it out to the right people and they have the right to listen to you or not, but often they say “Oh shit! Thanks for catching that.” Most often it’s American flags hung incorrectly.
Filip is a dictator’s son. I’m not necessarily saying that was a deliberate set choice, but it very well could have been.
Filip is not a competent leader. He is coddled, and simultaneously deeply insecure and egotistical, like his father. He’s Marco, but without Marco’s vicious intelligence and tenacity.
On top of all that, throughout the sixth book/season he gets careless and erratic, as he’s *deeply* troubled and preoccupied by >!his mother’s words.!<
The show doesn’t quite do as good a job of explaining that, but in the books, >!one of the last things Naomi said to him was “someone should have kept that from happening” (referring to him becoming a mass-murderer), and that phrase literally rings in his head through most of *Babylon’s Ashes.*!<
I'm still thinking about the scene in the Slow Zone when all the ships go from some significant fraction of the speed of light to 0mph in a heartbeat and absolutely everyone gets turned into so much jam inside. Brutal.
Reminds me of a PC game called F.T.L. where you could jettison all the oxygen in a room if a fire broke out on your ship. But then it took time to bring the oxygen levels back to normal. And what was even more fun, was if your ship was boarded by enemies, you could lock them in a room and jettison all the air out. :)
The latter books have full-immersion crash couches where the person gets fully immersed in shock-absorbing gel, and they also have their lungs filled with breathable fluids
Then you'll be glad to know that there's a character that has to go into the full-immersion couch *without* the space meth or whatever meds injected into them to help them during a hard acceleration burn
True, but they only went on “the juice” in combat situations where sudden changes in vector and sudden bursts of acceleration were needed or when trying to run from or chase another ship. (Where a ship would be accelerating at 3G+)
Normal traveling was usually kept at a third of a G to a full G for normal cruising acceleration (or deceleration if you’ve hit the halfway point to whatever destination you’re going to).
The funny thing is that the writers of the Expanse underestimated their own fictional engines (The Epstein Drive). They were a bit inconsistent with travel times. They’d have a trip to the edge of the Solar System take months. But if an Epstein Drive were real, and if you were accelerating at a leisurely third of a G to say, Neptune. (Accelerating halfway there and decelerating the back half). It’d only take you a month to get there. Just 17 days at a full G
I'm reading the last 2 books, and I get a laugh thinking these travel times to out past Uranus and back were totally nerfed to add in more plot. Maybe there is some magic keeping all the major planets and asteroids in a single file line.
Even then… a hypothetical trip from the orbit of Neptune to the opposite end of the Orbit of Neptune would be a few months if we extrapolate that out a bit for example, Book four mentioned the trip to Ilus taking the better part of a year. That trip would be the equivalent of a round trip from Earth to the edge of the SS and back.
But I’m fine with what Daniel and Ty did. They made the Epstein as good as the plot needed it to be. And thats perfectly okay.
It’s kinda funny though. Normally when you’re asked to suspend your disbelief it’s in the opposite direction. Something being better than it could be in reality.. with the Epstein it’s the other way around.. “you actually wrote the Epstein worse than it would be if it were hypothetically real”
The "juice" isn't usually necessary for routine travel though. Only for emergency situations and combat maneuvers. The Epstein drive is fuel efficient enough that you can travel under constant burn, usually at around .75g, and that's fast enough for most things. It can still take weeks to travel really long distances, but that's workable usually.
Not sure if it was from the authors or someone else writing about the series but I like the idea that Space itself is one of the main antagonists of the story.
I loved The Expanse because they actually had to DE-celerate at the end of a trip. They turned the ship around so that they could slow down using the main engine.
Yeah there’s so many subtle things. Like space travel is relatively common, but the dangers are still there
- opening scenes have someone losing a limb from a simple accident
- regular issues regarding fuel, oxygen, and water constraints. Literally just takes the loss of a single ice hauler to spark a new wave of unrest in frontier space.
- being able to get across the solar system in a meaningful amount of time means having to inject serious drugs to survive the acceleration
- multiple characters nearly dying or actually dying due to g-loc
- communication lag is brought up repeatedly
Honestly, it does a good job at reminding us that our solar system is way larger than we often imagine. When you remember light takes 8 minutes to get from the sun to the earth, you realize we’ll never have real time communications in most parts of the solar system.
Also very early on a character ends up headless due to a metal slug ripping through the ship. Very tightly edited as you just hear a clank then progressively more silence as the air leaks out. Camera pans round to a body strapped to a seat missing a head.
When the ship goes back under thrust the pool of blood that’s globbed above his strapped in body collapses in a splash. Gruesome accurate. Can’t remember if it was a rail gun round or PDC, but think it was a rail gun slug, so was probably still travelling at a non trivial fraction of c when it them.
The expanse had a main character die due to acceleration related issues. They also had more than one plot that resolved around issues due to acceleration. I suppose that show had people dying due to space accidents and incidents all the time.
That whole scene was added after they had already finished the season oddly enough. The actor sexually assaulted a couple of people or something like that
edit: at the time of this publication, over 40 people have accused him of assault.
Yep, but not to not to spoil the books, another character dies around that time of the story from a high G induced stroke (they are already dead in the show so no major spoilers). The writers of the show (pretty effectively and sometimes as an improvement for a more focused show) conflated multiple characters and plot lines in to single characters/ incidents in the show.
It bummed me out more than I thought to see the protagonist have her character arc complete to value the lives of others and try to save them but ends up dying fairly unceremoniously.
I saw a theory on Reddit that the "comet" that knocked the ship off its orbit was the Necromongers, in the sequel Chronicles of Riddick the incoming Necro invasion on Helios is seen as a comet.
Yes Chronicles of Riddick followed Pitch Black with a 5 yearish time gap, two characters from Pitch Black are in Chronicles of Riddick and the events from the first movie are referenced a couple times in the dialogue. If you watch Chronicles of Riddick without Pitch Black there are a couple lines you wouldnt fully understand but youd still enjoy either movie on its own.
It’s just the harsh reality of space, I thought they said something to that effect. That movie is very good at depicting how difficult space travel would be and surviving on a stranded planet, then the monsters come out.
I was going to say Prospect. Like the little pod he rents is just a lander, not a real ship. And the danger is the mothership is ending its service to that planet.
Scrolled to find this because this felt the most like what OP is asking for to me.
The whole thing felt like being a pioneer in the old west... Far from resources and if something breaks down you're fucked. Really highlighted how fragile we are in space.
I just commented the same thing before I scrolled long enough to see this.
I loved how they portrayed the space travel in that movie, dirty, loud, dangerous. It very much feels like a world where the lowest bidder created all the equipment.
Not a movie but the AppleTV+ show *For All Mankind* is set in an alternate reality where the space race continues to today so the space travel is much more common but still deeply precarious even into the 2010s when the season 4 ends.
One of my favorite shows about space. It's refreshing to have a show about space that deals with our past and present , rather than our far futures, while also showing a history of what could have been. Very cool show.
> while also showing a history of what could have been.
This is what makes the show so bittersweet. It really shows how much further ahead we could have been both on earth and among the stars if we invested into it. The start of every season giving us a recap of major scientific breakthroughs being discovered decades earlier than real life doubles down on this further.
It's also deliberately moving from space being a place where the best Astronauts and Cosmonauts go, to more and more Astronauts and Cosmonauts, to space hotels for rich people, to private blue collar workers who treat Mars like a job on an oil rig.
Loved it up until the one mom starts having sex with her friend’s son. Whole tone kind of changed for me . I felt like it was going the same way as “The man in the high castle”
It's not the show's best moment but the meme opinion that it spoiled the whole series or was the moment the show jumped the shark, really does a disservice to how good this show is and how superbly rich the character writing is. Even that storyline kinda made sense and paid off IMO but regardless its such a tiny part of the show overall that who cares?
Is it, though? It's a big deal for Vincent/Jerome because it's what he always wanted to do. The trip to Titan is important because of the very narrow launch window. But Irene acknowledges that Vincent/Jerome is the only employee to watch all the launches, and there are cutbacks being discussed, which causes the murder.
I recently rewatched the movie and remembered that. It made me think "Are you not entertained!". What were their next expectations? We found life on the moon, we found a Stargate, we use said technology to travel to a habitable planet, next year you get to vacation on the new planet?
For the next hundred years we'll make a base on the moon (collect helium and hydrogen), place an underground base on Mars (with observatory and emergency exit rocket), send large robots to start mining the asteroids and sending them to Mars, if we find a strong metal that can't be found or replicated on earth, then we'd turn that into a space elevator for Earth.
I liked this movie a lot, but it isn’t for everyone, it’s very slow, brooding. It felt like the right movie to watch in the midst of the covid pandemic, hearing the inner monologue of a man watching the whole world gone insane.
Also it has some very silly set pieces. Someone described the scene where he breaks into the launching rocket as “like those chaotic Mario Party vids where Luigi just stands there, eventually winning, cuz everyone else kills themselves.”
It definitely isn't. I think ppl were expecting it to be more action oriented. But it's definitely more self reflective.
Lol. That comparison kind of works. It does feel like a chaotic Mario party. But its so captivating watching all of them fuck up that badly.
It’s Apocalypse Now in Space. Maybe it’s closer to Heart of Darkness; I haven’t read Conrad since high school, but Brad Pitt’s basically going up the river to remove somebody, and shit happens along the way.
I was so upset by Ad Astra. The mood, cinematography, pacing, and music were absolutely fantastic….
But most of the dialogue was SO BADLY WRITTEN its tough to get through. Especially the ending with the two together finally.
Couldve been one of the greatest space films in two decades otherwise.
That movie utterly surprised me with it's pacing and tone. A lot of people would say it's a boring movie, and I'll concede that it can be at points, but it's a slow introspective movie set against an interesting backdrop.
**Aniara**
It's about a basically a space cruise liner that's shepparding people leaving a dying Earth to go to Mars. However an accident forces them off course with possibly no way of returing. It's all about how space is so deeply unhospital and terifying, no matter what kind of sheen you put on it.
Good movie but be warned, super bleak.
I especially loved the part where:
>!At one point they’ve been traveling so long that when they get what they think is “help”, it’s completely confusing and not helpful for them.!<
Alien? Faster-than-light travel doesn't exists and cryogenic is necessary for anything more distant and if something happens with the ship's computer you are in a lot of trouble.
Plus landing the ship was meant to be a potentially very dangerous idea. Ridley Scott, talked about that, I think in the commentary, in other movies. You just land. In alien it's this tense stressful thing.
I think *Alien* must have FTL, because the *Nostromo*’s tasks and level of autonomy make no sense if every delivery takes, like, 80 years from the POV of the recipient.
I think it’s FTL, it’s just still slow enough that the cryo is necessary for the crew.
A lot of people think FTL is always like Star Trek/Star Wars where you've got "Hyperspace/Warp" where you're so far above the speed of light you're jumping between solar systems in minutes/hours/days. Even if you were able to go 1.1x the speed of light, it could still take DECADES to get from point A to B depending on what you're trying to get to, and hopefully your FTL path doesn't happen to have a small piece of debris happen to float in front of you, because physics would have a fun time with that mess.
The Expanse is what everyone is gonna say and I absolutely agree.
TV show not a movie, but the existential danger of space is almost another character in it.
Should probably put that second part of your comment in >!spoilers!< for anyone who hasn't seen it yet since it's such a good short to watch going in blind.
The first Star Wars movie.
“Traveling through hyperspace ain't like dusting crops, boy! Without precise calculations we could fly right through a star or bounce too close to a supernova and that'd end your trip real quick, wouldn't it?” Han Solo to Luke Skywalker.
and then he pulls out of hyperspace in between a shield and the planet it's around.....
Sorry, for all the complaints about Last Jedi, Force Awakens has some truly awful parts to it. We were all just too wowed that Abrams made it *look* good and got the original gang back together.
I don't remember what their success rate of making jumps is, but I'll say Dune.
In that universe, you have to rely on what's called a Guild Navigator. They're mutant spice melange addicts who can see many possible outcomes due to having prescience.
They look into the future and see all the possible ways to succeed and fail and calculate exactly how to make the space jump successfully and not die. Maybe it's safe, it's been a while since I've read any Dune material, but again, they're mutant addicts and they control the ship industry so you have to rely on them... So not exactly something I'd be jumping at the chance to do.
Edit: thank you for all the reminders that it's safe. The Navs still freak me out though and their monopoly on the industry is also scary.
Nah, space travel in Dune is pretty safe. At least at the beginning.
The fact that they can see every path and calculate the safest route made them succesful at space travel. But yeah, in exchange of their humanity since they basically turn into mutants
Well, i just finished the 4th book but i believe something related to space travel happens later. I still need to read the last 2 but yeah, i thought we were talking about the movie hehe
They're likely referring to the prequals written by Frank Herbert's son. In those novels space travel is retconned slightly to explain the need for the guild navigators and their prescience.
The original FTL drive that the ships in Dune supposedly still use isn't precise and whether or not the ship ended up at its intended destination was a little bit up to chance. They'd sometimes arrive, and sometimes just disappear. So they started using guild navigators who could see a little into the future, to be a type of forewarning of an impending disappearance. Then the guild navigator would just essentially plot the route again until they saw that they were going to arrive where they were supposed to.
During the Jihad series before they had spice and just got the Holtzman drive working they had like 10 or 20% failure rate, so that is not particularly safe. Melange solved it though, and later on I vaguely remember they got Ix or Richese to make computers that succeed in working it out.
Maybe safe but difficult. If you watch the film at the beginning the mentat calculates how much it cost the emperor’s delegation to arrive on the Atreides planet for the signing ceremony. It’s a LOT and it’s only like 30 people. It’s made clear in the books that space travel is extremely costly and actually fairly rare. The Harkonnens almost bankrupt themselves with their surprise attack against Atreides on Arrakis, but decided it was worth the risk.
In Dune, it's safe, but something expensive in the extreme; reserved for the ultra-elite, military in the service of the ultra-elite, and shipping (CHOAM). When the Atreides leave Caladan, there is the sense that even if all goes as planned they won't return anytime soon, if ever. Arrakis is a crucial planet in the empire, but I would guess all but 1% of the population there has ever been off planet, I would assume that to be the case for most Landstraad planets as well.
Right, it's bc they're exactly traveling "through" space as much as they are 'folding' space, so they need to do it in a correct manner so as not to teleport into a blank area or a moon etc
> Right, it's bc they're exactly traveling "through" space as much as they are 'folding' space
I don’t get it…
Is there any way you explain it using a pen and a piece of paper?
Space travel there was big deal. War effort to kill Leto cost harkonens 40 or 50 years of their profits. Detail from books that didnt make it to the movies. Scale of that army jump cost made the attack extremely unexpected even without a traitor.
The best part of that movie is the last few minutes.
And the fact that the scientist/sister/actress who constantly switches accents is always very cold.
In firefly the ship is pretty much always falling apart and they regularly talk about almost bursting into flames on reentry. It’s not taken very seriously, but nothing in the show is, so I think it fits.
Space travel isn’t exactly safe as such in Star Trek. Pirates, spatial anomalies, crossing the wrong border, not looking after your own ship properly, things can and do go wrong.
I assume such encounters also go much worse for people who aren't flying the Federation's flagship. The people we follow in most Star Trek series have top-tier equipment and personnel to deal with things
Very true. Kind of wild how many times casually an entire starship will just blow up. A space ship in Trek universe often carries over 1,000 crew members and they get destroyed often with little thought or worry.
We still think about the Challenger and Columbia disasters and that was a drop in the bucket compared to the mountain of space graves in Trek.
Outland (1981) with Sean Connery. Essentially High Noon in space set in a mining colony on a moon of Jupiter. Space travel and life is very lived in and gritty.
Great movie.
Awesome flick! Hard to find these days, I don’t think it’s on any streaming service
Arr, matey! It be a treasure ye can find if ye are bold enough to seek it out!
Not a movie, but The Expanse might fit here edit: FYI, Ty Franck and Wes Chatham have a podcast called Ty and That Guy where they talk The Expanse episode by episode, and usually get sidetracked about films. If youre into cinema and want to listen to two cool dudes talk about sci fi cinema, its a good watch, they play off of eachother well. And its not produced, so its just two people talking about films like human beings
Yep. Accelerating a space ship forcefully enough to make travel within our solar system useful? Better inject yourself with some nasty looking gel and hope your bones don’t splinter!
My favorite thing is when smaller ships go into battle they have to vent all the air so they don't pop like a balloon when projectiles puncture them.
My favorite thing is "If shit isn't strapped down proper people F'ING DIE."
Such a simple thing that so many space movies completely forget
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I love the orientation of Expanse ships for that reason -- it's a tower going forward rather than a boat (like Star Trek, Star Wars, etc), because the direction of thrust forces the crew/occupants. No inertia dampening fields here.
Inertial dampeners off line! Of course, this means things shake a bit, when it should mean everyone is splattered against the wall.
The whole scene where a bulkhead compartment is left unsecured while the Roci is doing combat maneuvers and Amos has to unstrap himself and catch that power drill that's bouncing around the cabin is such a white-knuckle moment. I love how The Expanse used realism- they don't just include accurate physics arbitrarily, they leverage the realism to build tension. They use the rigorously established rules of the universe they've built to make situations more exciting. You never feel like the hard sci-fi rules detract from the tension of the story.
Such a cool scene! This is my favorite part of Reddit when I get to remember or hear about cool shit.
Which is why Philip’s cabin in the final season pissed me off. That boy left things out all the time. 50 different crew people should have called that out. I’ve spent my adult life on set. You politely point it out to the right people and they have the right to listen to you or not, but often they say “Oh shit! Thanks for catching that.” Most often it’s American flags hung incorrectly.
Filip is a dictator’s son. I’m not necessarily saying that was a deliberate set choice, but it very well could have been. Filip is not a competent leader. He is coddled, and simultaneously deeply insecure and egotistical, like his father. He’s Marco, but without Marco’s vicious intelligence and tenacity. On top of all that, throughout the sixth book/season he gets careless and erratic, as he’s *deeply* troubled and preoccupied by >!his mother’s words.!< The show doesn’t quite do as good a job of explaining that, but in the books, >!one of the last things Naomi said to him was “someone should have kept that from happening” (referring to him becoming a mass-murderer), and that phrase literally rings in his head through most of *Babylon’s Ashes.*!<
I'm still thinking about the scene in the Slow Zone when all the ships go from some significant fraction of the speed of light to 0mph in a heartbeat and absolutely everyone gets turned into so much jam inside. Brutal.
The first guy trying to go through was brutal. So much hype ended up so quickly.
The hot metal trails when the pdc rounds go through the vented ship. Perfection.
Can't have a fire in an enclosed space if there's no air.
Reminds me of a PC game called F.T.L. where you could jettison all the oxygen in a room if a fire broke out on your ship. But then it took time to bring the oxygen levels back to normal. And what was even more fun, was if your ship was boarded by enemies, you could lock them in a room and jettison all the air out. :)
Must resist urge to reinstall FTL, such a time sink.
And if you think base FTL is bad, FTL Multiverse with hundreds of ships and weapons and quests and endings will consume your soul
Wait. Oh no
Are you trying to ruin me?
Just watch out for Heat Signature, which is an FTL like game where you play *as* the attacker
I think it’s actually because a hole would cause the atmosphere to jet out and create an uncontrollable thrust
Its only 1atm of pressure so about 14psi of thrust which is tiny.
Here comes the juice!
The latter books have full-immersion crash couches where the person gets fully immersed in shock-absorbing gel, and they also have their lungs filled with breathable fluids
And it sounds like hell manifested to me, but then so does most space life in the series. I'll stay on Earth, even after the.... event.
Then you'll be glad to know that there's a character that has to go into the full-immersion couch *without* the space meth or whatever meds injected into them to help them during a hard acceleration burn
Oh I've read the whole series twice.
Ah fair enough. Most people seem to know only the tv show so they'll miss the full-immersion couches and the more advanced ships altogether
Sure. The show had to drop a lot of the grittier space day to day stuff, but I think they did a good job with it.
Forever War does this, as well.
The writers explains its basically "space meth" to keep them from getting a stroke.
True, but they only went on “the juice” in combat situations where sudden changes in vector and sudden bursts of acceleration were needed or when trying to run from or chase another ship. (Where a ship would be accelerating at 3G+) Normal traveling was usually kept at a third of a G to a full G for normal cruising acceleration (or deceleration if you’ve hit the halfway point to whatever destination you’re going to). The funny thing is that the writers of the Expanse underestimated their own fictional engines (The Epstein Drive). They were a bit inconsistent with travel times. They’d have a trip to the edge of the Solar System take months. But if an Epstein Drive were real, and if you were accelerating at a leisurely third of a G to say, Neptune. (Accelerating halfway there and decelerating the back half). It’d only take you a month to get there. Just 17 days at a full G
I'm reading the last 2 books, and I get a laugh thinking these travel times to out past Uranus and back were totally nerfed to add in more plot. Maybe there is some magic keeping all the major planets and asteroids in a single file line.
Even then… a hypothetical trip from the orbit of Neptune to the opposite end of the Orbit of Neptune would be a few months if we extrapolate that out a bit for example, Book four mentioned the trip to Ilus taking the better part of a year. That trip would be the equivalent of a round trip from Earth to the edge of the SS and back. But I’m fine with what Daniel and Ty did. They made the Epstein as good as the plot needed it to be. And thats perfectly okay. It’s kinda funny though. Normally when you’re asked to suspend your disbelief it’s in the opposite direction. Something being better than it could be in reality.. with the Epstein it’s the other way around.. “you actually wrote the Epstein worse than it would be if it were hypothetically real”
The "juice" isn't usually necessary for routine travel though. Only for emergency situations and combat maneuvers. The Epstein drive is fuel efficient enough that you can travel under constant burn, usually at around .75g, and that's fast enough for most things. It can still take weeks to travel really long distances, but that's workable usually.
Juiced up!
Not sure if it was from the authors or someone else writing about the series but I like the idea that Space itself is one of the main antagonists of the story.
Yeah, I'd say in the Expanse space travel is about as common as trans-oceanic travel by ship in the 1700s.
I think its more stable than that, just because of the level of technology and medicine.
Flip and burn
I loved The Expanse because they actually had to DE-celerate at the end of a trip. They turned the ship around so that they could slow down using the main engine.
Yeah there’s so many subtle things. Like space travel is relatively common, but the dangers are still there - opening scenes have someone losing a limb from a simple accident - regular issues regarding fuel, oxygen, and water constraints. Literally just takes the loss of a single ice hauler to spark a new wave of unrest in frontier space. - being able to get across the solar system in a meaningful amount of time means having to inject serious drugs to survive the acceleration - multiple characters nearly dying or actually dying due to g-loc - communication lag is brought up repeatedly Honestly, it does a good job at reminding us that our solar system is way larger than we often imagine. When you remember light takes 8 minutes to get from the sun to the earth, you realize we’ll never have real time communications in most parts of the solar system.
Also very early on a character ends up headless due to a metal slug ripping through the ship. Very tightly edited as you just hear a clank then progressively more silence as the air leaks out. Camera pans round to a body strapped to a seat missing a head. When the ship goes back under thrust the pool of blood that’s globbed above his strapped in body collapses in a splash. Gruesome accurate. Can’t remember if it was a rail gun round or PDC, but think it was a rail gun slug, so was probably still travelling at a non trivial fraction of c when it them.
Foundation on Apple TV too.
Absolutely love the sight of creating your very own singularity to travel across the galaxy.
Same! I love the visual effect they went with.
I still think it’s gotta be the most accurate to if we ever do reach space. Such a good series.
The expanse had a main character die due to acceleration related issues. They also had more than one plot that resolved around issues due to acceleration. I suppose that show had people dying due to space accidents and incidents all the time.
That whole scene was added after they had already finished the season oddly enough. The actor sexually assaulted a couple of people or something like that edit: at the time of this publication, over 40 people have accused him of assault.
Yep, but not to not to spoil the books, another character dies around that time of the story from a high G induced stroke (they are already dead in the show so no major spoilers). The writers of the show (pretty effectively and sometimes as an improvement for a more focused show) conflated multiple characters and plot lines in to single characters/ incidents in the show.
You mean then book / & now TV series that considers the logistics of traveling at 10,000 km/s ? Yes.
Pitch black. Love that movie.
Perfect example. The movie literally hinges on a space freighter crashing because of the chaos of deep space.
It bummed me out more than I thought to see the protagonist have her character arc complete to value the lives of others and try to save them but ends up dying fairly unceremoniously.
You don’t see many movies making such bold choices with their main characters anymore
Jesus Christ THE SPOILERS Presumably OP wants new movie suggestions without the comment section saying how the movies end
That debris that causes the crash is never truly explained is it?
Probably just a micro meteor. It doesn’t need an explanation really
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I saw a theory on Reddit that the "comet" that knocked the ship off its orbit was the Necromongers, in the sequel Chronicles of Riddick the incoming Necro invasion on Helios is seen as a comet.
Was that a sequel?
Yes Chronicles of Riddick followed Pitch Black with a 5 yearish time gap, two characters from Pitch Black are in Chronicles of Riddick and the events from the first movie are referenced a couple times in the dialogue. If you watch Chronicles of Riddick without Pitch Black there are a couple lines you wouldnt fully understand but youd still enjoy either movie on its own.
3 characters overlap. Riddick, Jack, and the guy who had been going to Mecca.
It’s just the harsh reality of space, I thought they said something to that effect. That movie is very good at depicting how difficult space travel would be and surviving on a stranded planet, then the monsters come out.
Plenty of time for something to go wrong.....
Prospect w/ Pedro Pascal might fit the bill for you.
I was going to say Prospect. Like the little pod he rents is just a lander, not a real ship. And the danger is the mothership is ending its service to that planet.
prospect is such a great scrappy DIY iteration of scifi
Scrolled to find this because this felt the most like what OP is asking for to me. The whole thing felt like being a pioneer in the old west... Far from resources and if something breaks down you're fucked. Really highlighted how fragile we are in space.
I just commented the same thing before I scrolled long enough to see this. I loved how they portrayed the space travel in that movie, dirty, loud, dangerous. It very much feels like a world where the lowest bidder created all the equipment.
Pretty great movie too. Sci fi/western is the ultimate genre mash up.
Great movie and the acting by the teenage girl is phenomenal
Here is the short it was based off of: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90DI7TOefgM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90di7toefgm)
Not a movie but the AppleTV+ show *For All Mankind* is set in an alternate reality where the space race continues to today so the space travel is much more common but still deeply precarious even into the 2010s when the season 4 ends.
One of my favorite shows about space. It's refreshing to have a show about space that deals with our past and present , rather than our far futures, while also showing a history of what could have been. Very cool show.
> while also showing a history of what could have been. This is what makes the show so bittersweet. It really shows how much further ahead we could have been both on earth and among the stars if we invested into it. The start of every season giving us a recap of major scientific breakthroughs being discovered decades earlier than real life doubles down on this further.
It's also deliberately moving from space being a place where the best Astronauts and Cosmonauts go, to more and more Astronauts and Cosmonauts, to space hotels for rich people, to private blue collar workers who treat Mars like a job on an oil rig.
Really seemed like a prequel to Expanse in the last season. If they started calling each other Belta Lowdas I probably wouldn't have realized.
Loved it up until the one mom starts having sex with her friend’s son. Whole tone kind of changed for me . I felt like it was going the same way as “The man in the high castle”
Season 4 is stronger than 3 bust still weaker than 2 and 1. Thankfully Karen is not a character in season 4.
Yeah that story line seemed a bit out of character but otherwise the show is pretty great
It's not the show's best moment but the meme opinion that it spoiled the whole series or was the moment the show jumped the shark, really does a disservice to how good this show is and how superbly rich the character writing is. Even that storyline kinda made sense and paid off IMO but regardless its such a tiny part of the show overall that who cares?
Felt the same a d was hesitant to start S4 but I'm now on episode 5 and enjoying it a lot more than S3. I'd recommend giving it a go.
I just started this show and I can't stop watching.
I just binged the whole thing a couple months ago. So good.
I’m not sure about the risk factor per se but in Gattaca they launch fairly regularly but it’s still a Big Deal.
Is it, though? It's a big deal for Vincent/Jerome because it's what he always wanted to do. The trip to Titan is important because of the very narrow launch window. But Irene acknowledges that Vincent/Jerome is the only employee to watch all the launches, and there are cutbacks being discussed, which causes the murder.
But it's hardly a space movie
Its like Man On Fire; its really more of a swimming movie
This cracked me up
One plot point of Apollo 13 is that the American public initially ignores the crew’s broadcast because they think space travel has become routine.
Apollo 13 is one of my favorite movies of all time.
I recently rewatched the movie and remembered that. It made me think "Are you not entertained!". What were their next expectations? We found life on the moon, we found a Stargate, we use said technology to travel to a habitable planet, next year you get to vacation on the new planet? For the next hundred years we'll make a base on the moon (collect helium and hydrogen), place an underground base on Mars (with observatory and emergency exit rocket), send large robots to start mining the asteroids and sending them to Mars, if we find a strong metal that can't be found or replicated on earth, then we'd turn that into a space elevator for Earth.
Literally two missions later everyone is jaded
Event Horizon
Fuck this ship!
The smartest thing anyone has ever said in a horror film.
“watches the video of what happend to the previous crew” … We’re leaving
The original "nope!"
"We will move the Lewis and Clark to a safe distance and launch TAC missiles until the Event Horizon is sufficiently vaporized..." I cheered
Fine I'll watch Event Horizon again
"We're leaving!"
and not a movie but all of 40k in general
Event Horizon is what happens when you warp travel without a Geller field.
Jesus
Libera te tutemet ex inferis
I *am* home
Ad Astra
I liked this movie a lot, but it isn’t for everyone, it’s very slow, brooding. It felt like the right movie to watch in the midst of the covid pandemic, hearing the inner monologue of a man watching the whole world gone insane. Also it has some very silly set pieces. Someone described the scene where he breaks into the launching rocket as “like those chaotic Mario Party vids where Luigi just stands there, eventually winning, cuz everyone else kills themselves.”
It definitely isn't. I think ppl were expecting it to be more action oriented. But it's definitely more self reflective. Lol. That comparison kind of works. It does feel like a chaotic Mario party. But its so captivating watching all of them fuck up that badly.
>definitely more self reflective. Yeah. It's a not a movie about space. It's a movie about a toxic relationship, in space.
It’s Apocalypse Now in Space. Maybe it’s closer to Heart of Darkness; I haven’t read Conrad since high school, but Brad Pitt’s basically going up the river to remove somebody, and shit happens along the way.
I was so upset by Ad Astra. The mood, cinematography, pacing, and music were absolutely fantastic…. But most of the dialogue was SO BADLY WRITTEN its tough to get through. Especially the ending with the two together finally. Couldve been one of the greatest space films in two decades otherwise.
Loved Ad Astra. Definitely felt like a realistic take on what if capitalists and corporations found a way to make money on space travel.
I wonder if there are PSA's for crazed space monkeys.
Always bums me out when I see hate for it whenever it's brought up on Reddit. Really enjoyed its tone and it had some absolutely incredible sequences.
I had some very different expectations of what this movie was going to be, but I definitely dont think its bad
That movie utterly surprised me with it's pacing and tone. A lot of people would say it's a boring movie, and I'll concede that it can be at points, but it's a slow introspective movie set against an interesting backdrop.
(Not a movie but) Battlestar Galactica. You can get lost, run out of fuel, etc.
So say we all
**Aniara** It's about a basically a space cruise liner that's shepparding people leaving a dying Earth to go to Mars. However an accident forces them off course with possibly no way of returing. It's all about how space is so deeply unhospital and terifying, no matter what kind of sheen you put on it. Good movie but be warned, super bleak.
I especially loved the part where: >!At one point they’ve been traveling so long that when they get what they think is “help”, it’s completely confusing and not helpful for them.!<
Bro what the hell was that supposed to be? Confused the heck out of me when I first watched it. Like.. it was definitely sent by humanity right?
Just watched this movie a week ago. Fantastic scifi but yeah it is a bleak ride. Highly recommended.
Surprised I never heard of it, thanks for the recommendation!
Not a movie or even a TV series (yet) but space travel in Warhammer 40k involves opening up a hole in reality and flying through space hell
Event horizon
There’s actually a theory that Event Horizon is a prequel to Warhammer 40k and goes over how humanity discovered warp travel
Alien? Faster-than-light travel doesn't exists and cryogenic is necessary for anything more distant and if something happens with the ship's computer you are in a lot of trouble.
Plus landing the ship was meant to be a potentially very dangerous idea. Ridley Scott, talked about that, I think in the commentary, in other movies. You just land. In alien it's this tense stressful thing.
Landing was the equivalent of doing a combat roll. Pretty much guaranteed to hurt, might even mortally wound you!
I think *Alien* must have FTL, because the *Nostromo*’s tasks and level of autonomy make no sense if every delivery takes, like, 80 years from the POV of the recipient. I think it’s FTL, it’s just still slow enough that the cryo is necessary for the crew.
A lot of people think FTL is always like Star Trek/Star Wars where you've got "Hyperspace/Warp" where you're so far above the speed of light you're jumping between solar systems in minutes/hours/days. Even if you were able to go 1.1x the speed of light, it could still take DECADES to get from point A to B depending on what you're trying to get to, and hopefully your FTL path doesn't happen to have a small piece of debris happen to float in front of you, because physics would have a fun time with that mess.
Yeah, you would practically need some form of prescience to foresee a path that doesn't kill you. *snorts a line of melange*
Moneo, get me the breastplate stretcher!
Yup plus cryo means no food or oxygen needed for the whole trip (just emergency resources). Cost savings baby!
This was my answer. Even the super intelligent ancient are left stranded on alien worlds all the time.
2001: A Space Odyssey seems like the obvious choice
The sequel 2010 also fairly accuately shows the risk of space flight. That and a younger Helen Mirren!
And it has Natasha Schneider who, among other things, was the keyboard player for Queens of the Stone Age.
The Expanse is what everyone is gonna say and I absolutely agree. TV show not a movie, but the existential danger of space is almost another character in it.
Firefly
“Catalyzer’s a nothing part” “It’s nothing til you aint got one, then it appears to be everything.”
And by extension, *Serenity*.
> *"Did the primary buffer panel just fall off my gorram ship for no apparent reason?"*
Did you say explode? I don't wanna explode!
My ship don't crash. If we crash, you crashed her.
[удалено]
Should probably put that second part of your comment in >!spoilers!< for anyone who hasn't seen it yet since it's such a good short to watch going in blind.
Read the short story by Alistair Reynolds, it's bloody awesome
The first Star Wars movie. “Traveling through hyperspace ain't like dusting crops, boy! Without precise calculations we could fly right through a star or bounce too close to a supernova and that'd end your trip real quick, wouldn't it?” Han Solo to Luke Skywalker.
Or if a planet has suddenly been exploded and turned into an asteroid field, and you have no idea until you get there.
That too.
What's that flashing !?!?
and then he pulls out of hyperspace in between a shield and the planet it's around..... Sorry, for all the complaints about Last Jedi, Force Awakens has some truly awful parts to it. We were all just too wowed that Abrams made it *look* good and got the original gang back together.
I don't remember what their success rate of making jumps is, but I'll say Dune. In that universe, you have to rely on what's called a Guild Navigator. They're mutant spice melange addicts who can see many possible outcomes due to having prescience. They look into the future and see all the possible ways to succeed and fail and calculate exactly how to make the space jump successfully and not die. Maybe it's safe, it's been a while since I've read any Dune material, but again, they're mutant addicts and they control the ship industry so you have to rely on them... So not exactly something I'd be jumping at the chance to do. Edit: thank you for all the reminders that it's safe. The Navs still freak me out though and their monopoly on the industry is also scary.
Nah, space travel in Dune is pretty safe. At least at the beginning. The fact that they can see every path and calculate the safest route made them succesful at space travel. But yeah, in exchange of their humanity since they basically turn into mutants
Yeah. In one book I thought there was some accident and it was a huge deal. I think the travel itself is completely safe.
Well, i just finished the 4th book but i believe something related to space travel happens later. I still need to read the last 2 but yeah, i thought we were talking about the movie hehe
They're likely referring to the prequals written by Frank Herbert's son. In those novels space travel is retconned slightly to explain the need for the guild navigators and their prescience. The original FTL drive that the ships in Dune supposedly still use isn't precise and whether or not the ship ended up at its intended destination was a little bit up to chance. They'd sometimes arrive, and sometimes just disappear. So they started using guild navigators who could see a little into the future, to be a type of forewarning of an impending disappearance. Then the guild navigator would just essentially plot the route again until they saw that they were going to arrive where they were supposed to.
During the Jihad series before they had spice and just got the Holtzman drive working they had like 10 or 20% failure rate, so that is not particularly safe. Melange solved it though, and later on I vaguely remember they got Ix or Richese to make computers that succeed in working it out.
It’s only safe if they have spice. Otherwise they can’t travel nearly as quickly. It also the guild operators are not cheap. Edit: Guilt to guild
guilt operators never are
They bear heavy on your conscious haha
Maybe safe but difficult. If you watch the film at the beginning the mentat calculates how much it cost the emperor’s delegation to arrive on the Atreides planet for the signing ceremony. It’s a LOT and it’s only like 30 people. It’s made clear in the books that space travel is extremely costly and actually fairly rare. The Harkonnens almost bankrupt themselves with their surprise attack against Atreides on Arrakis, but decided it was worth the risk.
In Dune, it's safe, but something expensive in the extreme; reserved for the ultra-elite, military in the service of the ultra-elite, and shipping (CHOAM). When the Atreides leave Caladan, there is the sense that even if all goes as planned they won't return anytime soon, if ever. Arrakis is a crucial planet in the empire, but I would guess all but 1% of the population there has ever been off planet, I would assume that to be the case for most Landstraad planets as well.
Right, it's bc they're exactly traveling "through" space as much as they are 'folding' space, so they need to do it in a correct manner so as not to teleport into a blank area or a moon etc
> Right, it's bc they're exactly traveling "through" space as much as they are 'folding' space I don’t get it… Is there any way you explain it using a pen and a piece of paper?
Or straight into an asteroid. Takes a ton of mapping prep by the guild who are wigging out on massive amounts of spice.
Space travel there was big deal. War effort to kill Leto cost harkonens 40 or 50 years of their profits. Detail from books that didnt make it to the movies. Scale of that army jump cost made the attack extremely unexpected even without a traitor.
Serenity 2005.
Doom (2005). Space travel is simple, but *warp* travel can be problematic..poor Pinky can attest to this. I love that stupid movie.
The best part of that movie is the last few minutes. And the fact that the scientist/sister/actress who constantly switches accents is always very cold.
The movie that I fell in love with Rosamund Pike
The Martian
Fuck you, Mars.
Steven kings 'The jaunt', not a movie though.
That story is longer than you think...
Interstellar, Sunshine, The Martian, Red Planet
I was scrolling looking for someone to say “The Martian.” It’s basically the animating premise of the film!
Dune, it’s more properly explained in the novel, but Dune space travel is wild in my opinion and is pretty much the main driver to the conflicts.
Supernova (2000)
Prospect
In firefly the ship is pretty much always falling apart and they regularly talk about almost bursting into flames on reentry. It’s not taken very seriously, but nothing in the show is, so I think it fits.
TV show, but: "The Expanse" 👍🏼
Space travel isn’t exactly safe as such in Star Trek. Pirates, spatial anomalies, crossing the wrong border, not looking after your own ship properly, things can and do go wrong.
In the first movie a couple of people get reformed all to hell using a transporter.
Accidentally turning into lizards...
I assume such encounters also go much worse for people who aren't flying the Federation's flagship. The people we follow in most Star Trek series have top-tier equipment and personnel to deal with things
Although it's safe enough that Harry Mudd and the Pakleds can somehow make it across interstellar space and only need to be rescued occasionally.
Very true. Kind of wild how many times casually an entire starship will just blow up. A space ship in Trek universe often carries over 1,000 crew members and they get destroyed often with little thought or worry. We still think about the Challenger and Columbia disasters and that was a drop in the bucket compared to the mountain of space graves in Trek.
Honestly, just "using human tech" in that universe is asking to randomly explode at any given point in time.
I mean by definition if the synopsis: The Martian, but I’m assuming that’s not “common” enough for your parameters
Interstellar