Six Movies Featuring Lonely Astronauts

SCREEN > THE SIX PACK

By Matt Prigge

Add Comment | Comments: 0 | Posted Jun. 30, 2009

First Man Into Space (1959): Movies set in space tend to feature large groups of characters, and with good reason: Space is a lonely place. Two years before Yuri Gagarin’s innagural trip, this British B-picture depicted a rebel Navy test pilot who disobeys orders and steers an experimental rocket outside the Earth’s orbit. His reward? Being turned into a vampiric monster who prowls the countryside, tearing at necks. 

Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964): Filmed in Death Valley, this cheerful desecration of Daniel Defoe features a stranded astronaut who discovers that Mars has a) slightly breathable oxygen, b) water, c) [wonderfully ludicrous spoiler]. 

Countdown (1968): Robert Altman helmed this timely space drama in which civilian James Caan heads off for a lonely moon mission, with only books to keep him company for the many months. Consider it the inverse of that year’s 2001 , stressing people over machines. 

Solaris (1972): No, Donatas Banionis—nor George Clooney in the snail-paced remake—is not alone on the space station in Andrei Tarkovsky’s meditative sci-fi. But he might as well be. The crewmates are two kinds of shy, while the woman who suddenly appears is a replicant of Banionis’ dead wife. 

Silent Running (1972): 2001 special effects dude Douglas Trumbull directed this eco-drama, in which a temperamental botanist (Bruce Dern) on a greenhouse spaceship kills his crewmates after they’re ordered to destroy their ship. To keep himself company, he creates robots he names Huey, Dewey and Louie. Ignore the Joan Baez soundtrack; this movie’s deranged. 

Moon (2009): What were the odds that David Bowie’s son would make a movie about a lonely astronaut possibly going insane? Next, Duncan Jones should do up “TVC 15.”