The Ultimate ‘Sad Man in Space’ Movie Ranking
10 Spaceman (2024) Netflix An obvious contender for the last spot, the Swedish director Johan Renck’s cast is absolutely stacked–Carey Mulligan! Paul Dano! Isabella Rossellini!–but even they can’t make its puzzler of a premise work. A spider-shaped telepathic alien (voice by Dano) accompanies Adam Sandler’s mournful rendition of a Czech cosmonaut out to space, kindly
10
Spaceman (2024)
An obvious contender for the last spot, the Swedish director Johan Renck’s cast is absolutely stacked–Carey Mulligan! Paul Dano! Isabella Rossellini!–but even they can’t make its puzzler of a premise work. A spider-shaped telepathic alien (voice by Dano) accompanies Adam Sandler’s mournful rendition of a Czech cosmonaut out to space, kindly offering him some free therapy along the way to work through his inner turmoil over abandoning his pregnant wife, played with a caustic rage by Mulligan.
9
Ad Astra (2019)
Thanks to Brad Pitt‘s sullen voiceover, the subtext to James Gray’s brooding space thriller is no great mystery. Roy Richard McBride (Pitt) has serious daddy issues after H. Clifford McBride (Tommy Lee Jones), a revered space commander (the “best in the galaxy”), ditches him and his mum in the pursuit of discovering alien life. Roy follows in his father’s orbit, tracking him down near Neptune. While Pitt offers one of his more nuanced performances–appearing, impressively, to be constantly on the brink of tears the whole way through—the unsubtle clunkiness of the script lets Ad Astra down. It often feels more silly than serious.
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8
Interstellar (2014)
Though Anne Hathaway does have Matthew McConaughey’s back in Christopher Nolan’s galaxy-spanning epic (so he’s not a sad man going totally solo), this formerly retired, now back-in-action NASA pilot is so full of seething regret at leaving his children behind it’d be remiss of us not to mention him here. Typical for Nolan, the concepts are far-fetched, but even if it oversteps the metaphysical mark, it still makes for a compelling watch.
7
The Martian (2015)
Technically, the space traveller at the heart of this movie is not particularly sad—though the fact that Mark Watney (Matt Damon) has such a tough time being stranded on an alien planet makes Ridley Scott’s dramedy a worthy addition to this list. It wryly flips a lot of tropes on their head. “He thinks he’s totally alone, and that we all gave up on him. What kind of effect does that have on a man’s psychology?” NASA’s director of Mars missions (Chiwetel Ejiofor) asks, before Scott cuts to Watney complaining about having nothing to listen to but bad disco music. Despite its bantering tone, though, there a few too many corny moments for the movie to make it to the top of our list.
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6
Mickey 17 (2025)
Up next is another brief intermission from the customary woe of the lonely man in space, courtesy of the legendary Bong Joon-ho— despite the fact that the film’s entire plot revolves around one man dying repeatedly. Robert Pattinson excels in a rare comedic role in this cheerful satire of corporate insanity.
5
First Man (2018)
Damien Chazelle’s entry into the “sad man in space” canon is the only one to be rooted in reality. First Man opens with the immense stress of the celebrated American astronaut Neil Armstrong (Ryan Gosling) nearly floating out to space by accident after bouncing off the Earth’s atmosphere; the rest of the movie contains a real and fascinating awareness of the terrifying fragility of spacecrafts, often lacking in the other movies on this list. Gosling seems to have the weight of the world on his shoulders as a grieving father, while Claire Foy is a commanding presence as his wife, Janet.
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4
High Life (2018)
In the first of Robert Pattinson’s two depressed astronaut roles to date, he is miserable for very good reason: Monte, along with the rest of his miscreant crew, has been exiled to space after committing crimes on Earth. Everyone else is now dead, leaving him nearly entirely alone to crack on with spaceship repairs. Claire Denis’s film is the most twisted take on the subgenre by far, with an onboard “fuckbox” and Juliette Binoche’s Medea-esque character (who murdered her own children) sinisterly seeking to impregnate the female crew while they sleep.
3
Moon (2009)
Before Mickey 17, there was Moon, a movie which ticks off all the “sad man in space” tropes: an astronaut (Sam Rockwell) in complete isolation, who deserted his wife back on Earth and who also happens to be the father of a small child. Plus, comms are down with ground control, which doesn’t bode well when it turns out the ship contains cloning technology and his smiley chatbot GERTY (Kevin Spacey) might not be as well-meaning as it seems. Moon is a brilliantly moody debut from Duncan Jones.
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2
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Critics have argued over whether Stanley Kubrick’s iconic sci-fi or the movie which takes our number one spot provided the prototype for the “sad man in space.” There’s no debating its incorrigible influence on all the space movies that followed, however, with Dr Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea) eventually becoming one of the most melancholy men to ever float in space.
1
Solaris (1972)
Well-deserving of its place right at the top of this list, Andrei Tarkovsky’s uncanny voyage into the universe of “solaristics” was lightyears ahead of its time. Anticipating the “sad man in space” genre’s flaws before the groundwork was even laid, Tarkovsky looks critically at the chasing of “knowledge at any price” and goes so far as to call the discipline of space research “irresponsible fancy-mongering.” Most interestingly of all, the Russian maverick captures the otherworldliness of Earth itself.
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