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Space Adventure

A type of adventure film which usually takes place within the realm of outer space or in an imagined galaxy far, far away. They tend to take conventions from the science fiction genre (ray-guns, alien races, rocketship flight) and combine them with the fast adrenalin-rush pacing and narrative of the action adventure movie. The origins of the space adventure can be traced back to the beginnings of cinema with Georges Melies's A Trip To The Moon. The space adventure hit its stride in the '30s with the serialized adventures of Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon, gallant space travellers who blazed across the screens of Saturday matinee theatres throughout the nation. The post-war years of the 1950s brought tales of interplanetary space travel and alien battles to a whole new generation of matinee audiences with movies like Rocketship X-M and Destination Moon, while also producing films imbued with political and psychological subtexts such as This Island Earth and Forbidden Planet. The subgenre temporarily went dormant in the 1960s, as the cerebral science fiction of 2001:A Space Odyssey hit the screens, but returned with a vengeance in the '70s as Star Wars, a throwback to the '50s matinee classics, became the highest grossing picture of all time. It spawned many sequels and imitators and whetted the appetite of audiences for such space-oriented fare as Stargate, The Fifth Element, and the revival of the Star Trek franchise in the '80s and '90s.

Major Works
Rating
Year
 Title
 
 Director
  9 Stars 1977 Star Wars   George Lucas
  9 Stars 1972 Solaris   Andrei Tarkovsky
  9 Stars 1980 The Empire Strikes Back   Irvin Kershner
  9 Stars 1968 2001: A Space Odyssey   Stanley Kubrick
  8 Stars 1956 Forbidden Planet   Fred Wilcox
  7 Stars 1991 Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country   Nicholas Meyer
  7 Stars 1986 Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home   Leonard Nimoy
  7 Stars 1982 Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan   Nicholas Meyer
  7 Stars 1983 Return of the Jedi   Richard Marquand
  6 Stars 1990 Total Recall   Paul Verhoeven
  6 Stars 1984 The Last Starfighter   Nick Castle, Jr.
  5 Stars 1999 Muppets From Space   Tim Hill
  5 Stars 1999 Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace   George Lucas
  5 Stars 1997 The Fifth Element   Luc Besson
  5 Stars 1996 Star Trek: First Contact   Jonathan Frakes
  5 Stars 1994 Stargate   Roland Emmerich
  5 Stars 1985 Explorers   Joe Dante
  5 Stars 1984 Dune   David Lynch
  5 Stars 1950 Destination Moon   Irving Pichel
  5 Stars 1979 The Black Hole   Gary Nelson
  4 Stars 1994 Star Trek Generations   David Carson
  4 Stars 1984 Star Trek III: The Search for Spock   Leonard Nimoy
  4 Stars 1979 Star Trek: The Motion Picture   Robert Wise
  4 Stars 1986 Spacecamp   Harry Winer
  4 Stars 1981 Outland   Peter Hyams
  4 Stars 1979 Moonraker   Lewis Gilbert
  4 Stars 1989 Jetsons: The Movie   Joseph Barbera
  4 Stars 1979 Battlestar Galactica   Richard A. Colla
  3 Stars 2000 Mission to Mars   Brian De Palma
  3 Stars 1984 2010   Peter Hyams
  3 Stars 1989 Star Trek V: The Final Frontier   William Shatner
  3 Stars 1980 Flash Gordon   Mike Hodges
  3 Stars 1968 Barbarella   Roger Vadim
 
 
 
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