Project Hail Mary & The 8 Wildest Movie Missions To Save Humanity, Ranked
The release of Project Hail Mary has got us all gazing up at the stars and pondering our place in the universe once more. It’s a concept that has been woven into the art of cinema since the very beginning, when Georges Méliès offered us A Trip to the Moon.
Exploring the depths of space through film is a nice idea, but more often than not, that journey is laced with peril and high stakes. Science fiction cinema and dangerous missions to save mankind go hand in hand, and we’ll keep lapping up these stories until the end of time.
Here, we’ve assembled eight of the most extraordinary and crazy missions we’ve seen in the movies, where brave heroes have ventured into space to save humanity from certain doom, and entertained us along the way. The following films are ranked, not in terms of overall quality, but for how wild their to save humanity missions are.
Technically, the salvation mission in The Core is not about going into space, but it does involve a highly technical spaceship-like vessel which travels to the centre of the Earth to kickstart the planet’s core using nuclear devices. As you may have guessed, the big problem at the heart of this film is that the inner core has stopped rotating, which leads to all kinds of planetary disasters impacting animals and humans alike.
The Core may be a fairly generic – even bordering on guilty pleasure territory – disaster movie from the 2000s, but it’s got one hell of a cast, including Aaron Eckhart, Hilary Swank, Delroy Lindo (of recent Sinners fame), and Alfre Woodard, who are all a delight to watch. And, while it’s totally cheesy, it’s also a very self-aware picture that leans into its silliness and popcorn movie vibes. It’s free with ads on YouTube right now, and could just be the ideal so-bad-it ’s-good pick for your next movie night.
We are ramping up the stakes and the scale with this next pick – the animated flick Titan A.E.. Set in the year 3028, mankind is an endangered species living in colonies in space thanks to our near-destruction at the hands of the Drej, an alien race hellbent on wiping us out entirely. Only one man can save humanity, and he needs to go on an epic voyage to find a mysterious spaceship to do so.
It has a wonderful blend of 2D and 3D animation, which is particularly effective in bringing the Drej to life on-screen, and the action in this film, albeit animated, is hard-hitting and thoroughly exciting. If you’re into films such as Lost In Space and Treasure Planet, you’ll have a lot of fun with this one. Check it out on Disney+ now.
I will preface this entry by saying that Armageddon is so wildly inaccurate in its science that it’s been the subject of much ridicule over the years – even from star Ben Affleck, as per his now legendary DVD commentary. But hey, when an asteroid is on a collision course with Earth, the only logical solution is to hire a team of drillers to dig to the core of the asteroid and blow it up with a nuclear bomb, right? Personally, I think Michael Bay was onto something here.
Jokes aside, there is actually a solid emotional story underpinning the disaster movie, and you can’t grumble when you’ve got the likes of Affleck, Bruce Willis, and Billy Bob Thornton bringing a charming and playful edge to proceedings. As you’d expect from Bay, there’s also a heavy dose of bombastic action sequences, making this an unforgettable blockbuster movie. You can find Armageddon on Disney+, or you can rent it for just £3.49 on Rakuten.
Sunshine is a far more nuanced and accomplished piece of work than the other entries thus far. Danny Boyle’s sci-fi tale takes us to a not-so-distant future where the sun is dying, leaving Earth in the midst of a crippling and permanent winter. It’s down to the crew of the Icarus II – including superstars like Cillian Murphy, Chris Evans, and Rose Byrne – to head into space and reignite the sun using a stellar bomb.
Not only is this a captivating story in itself, but it’s wrapped up in some truly stunning cinematography from Alwin Küchler, who captures the claustrophobia of the spaceship setting, contrasted with the wonder of the solar system. At just 108 minutes, this is a great choice if you’ve got a couple of hours to spare and want something to really blow your mind. Check it out on Prime Video.
It’s the blockbuster movie everyone is talking about right now, and it’s yet another story of a failing sun, but Project Hail Mary is slightly wilder than the previous entry simply for the fact that it features an alien lifeform made out of rocks. Yes, Rocky and Ryland Grace have captured our hearts, but while their mission to stop Astrophage from eating the sun is mesmerising and imaginative, it’s also about as hazardous as it gets – for Grace, it’s quite literally a suicide mission.
The film includes several incredible set-pieces, from fishing for micro-organisms while standing on a spaceship to spinning around wildly as the ship’s centrifuge creates artificial gravity. It’s safe to say Grace and Rocky are put through their paces, but the film is so delightful and exciting that it’s all worth it in the end.
Interstellar is one of the finest and most mind-bending sci-fi movies of the 21st century, and it’s quite possibly the most ambitious work of visionary director Christopher Nolan to date. The science behind this movie genuinely hurts my brain, with black holes, time dilation, and wormholes all at play. Matthew McConaughey’s Cooper leads the mission to find a new home for humanity here, and it’s both achingly emotional and absolutely engrossing at the same time.
I could wax lyrical about this movie for days. The technical elements are out of this world (pun intended), with mind-blowing cinematography and a soul-shaking score from Hans Zimmer, while the complex story, which lasts close to three hours, is relentless, in the best possible way. Interstellar can make you cry, make you smile, stir your brain, and give you hope for mankind. It’s essential viewing for anyone reading this list, so get on over to Now TV Cinema and hit play right now.
We likely wouldn’t have any of the films on this list, were it not for Stanley Kubrick’s pioneering work on 2001: A Space Odyssey. This is the blueprint for all modern sci-fi films; an ambitious and high-concept journey from the dawn of man through to the deepest depths of space, both technically astounding and thematically rich. How Kubrick pulled this off almost 60 years ago is beyond me, but I’m so glad he did.
While the film starts with monkeys discovering tools and weapons, and mankind visiting the moon, the most interesting segment of this space-age epic, and most relevant for this list, is the mission entrusted to astronauts Dave Bowman and Frank Poole on board the Discovery One spacecraft. They don’t know it, but they are investigating a mysterious radio signal from an unknown alien source close to Jupiter.
This movie gives us one of the greatest villains of all time in HAL 9000, the creepy computer intent on completing the mission at all costs, and sends viewers on the ultimate trip through time and space. You can hitch a ride via HBO Max UK.
I never thought I’d see the day that Moonfall would top any kind of list, but here we are. It’s without a doubt the worst movie on this list, but you simply have to appreciate the balls-to-the-wall nature of its core concept. When the moon changes its orbit, a retired astronaut and a conspiracy theorist join forces to investigate before our planet is destroyed in its path. Then they discover that the moon is actually an artificial megastructure built by an ancient alien race… I wish I were joking.
Unfortunately, Moonfall is just not quite in the so-bad-it’s-good bracket for me, but it’s close. If you like Roland Emmerich’s brand of senseless disaster movie, you might just get on board with it. There are a few solid jokes, some fairly decent action set-pieces, and it’s so bewildering and bizarre that you kind of just have to see it to believe it. With a rental cost of only £2.49 on Google Play, it might just be worth it.
