What I wouldn’t give to travel again. To see someplace new. Visit someplace exotic. In The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy may say “There’s no place like home,” but she didn’t have to stay home for almost a full year during a pandemic.
That desire to travel gets even stronger around the holidays. This is the time of year we’re usually in crowded airports or highway traffic coming back after seeing our families. But not this year. This year you’ve got…home. Since you’ve got nowhere to go, we decided you might want to watch some sci-fi movies that might take you far away. Here are a few of our favourites.
The Wizard of Oz
Obviously, right? Maybe the trip was only in her head (or was it???) but along the way, a girl goes from Kansas to a magical land and then has to walk on a yellow brick road across that land. It’s kind of the ultimate sci-fi trip movie.
Contact
While Contact isn’t a movie about a trip, the whole thing leads up to one — a trip across the galaxy where a scientist becomes the first person to make contact with an intelligent alien life form. And it’s so damned good.
[referenced id=”1052170″ url=”https://gizmodo.com.au/2017/08/contact-is-more-than-a-movie-about-science-vs-religion/” thumb=”https://gizmodo.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/12/kxp0n4ckfavaqs0fcw5l-300×198.jpg” title=”Contact: The Gizmodo Retro Review” excerpt=”Jodie Foster stars in Robert Zemeckis’ Contact, which opened 20 years ago today. All Images: Warner Bros. When Contact first opened, 20 years ago, I thought it was a masterpiece. For a soon-to-be high school senior, Robert Zemeckis’ adaptation of Carl Sagan’s novel was the perfect Hollywood mix of thought-provoking…”]
2001: A Space Odyssey
Again, a classic. Though we don’t know quite exactly where Dave ends up going on his journey across the cosmos, the visuals along the way have become the signifier for sci-fi travel.
Ad Astra
One of the newest entries on the list, but this film about a man travelling out into space to find out what happened to his missing astronaut father is filled with excellent twists in a truly exciting journey.
Interstellar
Interstellar probably isn’t Christopher Nolan’s best or most original movie, but it’s a great sci-fi travel story. A man heads deep into space to help save life back on Earth, and ends up folding time and space along the journey? Mind-bending, epic, and very cool stuff.
[referenced id=”1233146″ url=”https://gizmodo.com.au/2020/07/the-films-of-christopher-nolan-ranked/” thumb=”https://gizmodo.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/23/lzwymmtx9xcjynv2cc0v-300×169.jpg” title=”The Films of Christopher Nolan, Ranked” excerpt=”These days, if you’re talking about movies, you’re probably talking about Christopher Nolan. Oh sure, some really good movies have premiered on streaming during the pandemic, but all eyes have been on the latest blockbuster from Nolan, Tenet, which many expect to usher in a return to movie theatres post-covid-19.”]
Innerspace
Not every journey has to be way out into space. Sometimes the journey can be…inside someone’s body! This Dennis Quaid-Martin Sheen-Meg Ryan comedy is about a soldier who gets miniaturized and injected into the body of a regular guy. It doesn’t get a lot of love these days, but it’s a great concept with funny execution.
Journey to the Centre of the Earth
There have been a few adaptations of this Jules Verne classic so, take your pick, but we’d probably recommend the 1959 James Mason movie over the 2008 Brendan Fraser one.
The Lord of the Rings
All of them. Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, Return of the King. Heck, even The Hobbit movies. They’re all about beings going on epic quests across faraway lands. Lots of trouble along the way but tons of outstanding visuals.
Honey, I Shrunk the Kids!
Like Innerspace, Honey takes a small, familiar place — in this case, the backyard — and makes it epic by making the travellers smaller. You’ll never look at the grass below your feet the same again.
Up
A few Pixar movies qualify here — Wall-E, Cars, Finding Nemo — but we’re just going to go with Up because, somehow, the story of an old man and a young boy flying to South America in a house with balloons is more fantastical than futuristic robots, talking cars, or fish.
The Dark Crystal
While the recent show is probably better, from a pure journey standpoint, the original 1982 film about two beings who travel across Thra to restore a crystal and save the world works wonders. Direct, simple, awesome.
Mad Max: Fury Road
I feel like Mad Max: Fury Road ends up on all of these lists because it’s just that damn good. In terms of sci-fi trips, the whole thing is literally a race from one location to another, traversing vast stretches of land. Then back again!
Children of Men
OK, not the happiest of journey movies, but this trip — featuring a man protecting and delivering the last pregnant woman on Earth — is harrowing, intense, and might make you never want to travel again. Maybe that’s more of what you need right now?
Back to the Future
Trips don’t have to be over physical distances. They can also be across time, as is the case with Back to the Future (and innumerable other time travel movies if you want). Marty goes from 1985 to 1955, back to 1985, to 2015, to an alternate 1985, back to 1955, to 1885 and then, finally, 1985 again. That’s a trip.
Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure
All three Bill & Ted movies are great travel movies, in the same way the Back to the Future franchise is, but the first one feels the most grounded. Somehow. Probably because the places and people they meet and visit actually existed.
The Goonies
The Goonies is a movie that hasn’t aged particularly well unless you loved it as a kid, but the thing I always enjoyed was the idea that just below your feet was a whole wide world of adventure. The titular Goonies find that epic adventure.
Of course, sci-fi adventures aren’t just limited to movies. TV shows like Doctor Who, Battlestar Galactica, Lost in Space, pretty much every single Star Trek, and a ton of others are all just about that one thing. So pick and choose those as well.