15 Movies Like Interstellar to Watch Next

It has almost been a decade since Interstellar hit theaters. The sci-fi epic has been remembered as one of director Christopher Nolan’s best works, amongst an impressive filmography that includes The Dark Knight and Oppenheimer. Much like Inception and Tenet, Interstellar explored the concept of time, which Nolan has described as “the most fundamental part of our human experience.”

Interstellar has remained the only Christopher Nolan film to feature space travel. Set in the not-so-distant future, farmer and NASA pilot Joseph Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) traveled through a wormhole in search of a new home. Cooper’s journey was thought-provoking, intense, and emotional, transporting audiences to another world and showcasing the power of film.

If you enjoyed Interstellar, here are 15 movies to add to your watch list.

15 Moon (2009)

2009’s Moon used the backdrop of outer space to explore themes of isolation and identity. It was a hidden gem that made the most of its modest budget, presenting the audience with many twists and turns. Sam Rockwell starred as Sam Bell, a man nearing completion of a contract that had him work alone on a space station for three years. Unfortunately for Sam, he experienced sudden health issues before he could return home to his wife.

A hidden gem, Moon deserved more attention than it got. It was never going to be a blockbuster, but it was destined for low-budget sci-fi greatness. Director Duncan Jones went on to later direct Source Code, Warcraft, and Mute.

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14 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

2001: A Space Odyssey

Release Date

April 2, 1968

Director

Stanley Kubrick

Cast

Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, William Sylvester, Daniel Richter, Leonard Rossiter, Margaret Tyzack

Rating

G

Main Genre

Adventure

This list would not be complete without 2001: A Space Odyssey. The 1968 film was Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece and has been hailed as one of the greatest films of all time. Despite being released in the late-60s, the film had plenty to say about A.I., technology, extraterrestrial life, and human evolution. 2001: A Space Odyssey was a visual marvel, masterfully using color, featuring groundbreaking visual effects, and utilizing many incredible camera techniques.

Kubrick commissioned a score for the film, but ultimately abandoned it in favor of classical music by composers Richard Strauss, Johann Strauss II, György Ligeti, and Aram Khachaturian. One of the standout scenes in 2001: A Space Odyssey was the “floating pen” scene, which featured no dialogue and was set to Strauss’ “The Blue Danube.”

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13 The Martian (2015)

The Martian

Release Date

September 30, 2015

Director

Ridley Scott

Cast

Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Kristen Wiig, Jeff Daniels, Michael Pena, Sean Bean

Rating

PG-13

Main Genre

Sci-Fi

The Martian was released a year after Interstellar and, like Nolan’s film, featured Matt Damon and Jessica Chastain in key roles. Set in the year 2035, The Martian followed astronaut Mark Watney (Damon) after surviving a dust storm on Mars. Mark, however, was presumed dead and left behind by his crew. Upon learning of his survival, NASA launched a mission to bring him back home.

The 2015 film was a survival story focused on perseverance and the need for connection. It also established itself as one of the more scientifically accurate sci-fi films in Hollywood. While they are two different films, if a space version of Tom Hanks’ Cast Away interests you, then The Martian might be what you’re looking for.

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12 Arrival (2016)

Arrival

Release Date

November 10, 2016

Director

Denis Villeneuve

Cast

Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker, Michael Stuhlbarg, Mark O’Brien, Tzi Ma

Rating

PG-13

Main Genre

Sci-Fi

Before Dune and Blade Runner 2049, Denis Villeneuve directed the fantastic sci-fi drama Arrival. Amy Adams starred as Louise Banks, a linguistics expert tasked with finding a way to communicate with a mysterious alien race. She was given limited time to work with as the threat of global war loomed in the background. The mission saw Louise join forces with physicist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner) and remain in close contact with U.S. Army Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker).

Arrival moved away from the conventions of the standard alien invasion film, attracting a different audience than that of a film such as Independence Day: Resurgence. Arrival and Interstellar shared thematic similarities in their exploration of the human concept of time. Like Villeneuve’s other films, this one asked deeper questions and left audiences with much to think about following the end of its two-hour runtime.

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11 Looper (2012)

Looper

Release Date

September 26, 2012

Director

Rian Johnson

Cast

Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis, Emily Blunt, Paul Dano, Noah Segan, Piper Perabo

Rating

R

Main Genre

Action

A sci-fi action thriller, Looper was directed by Rian Johnson before he worked on Star Wars and the Knives Out franchise. In the 2070s, crime syndicates sent people into the past, where they would be killed by “Loopers.” This allowed the syndicates to avoid being traced and get someone else to do their dirty work. A young Looper named Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) executed his targets without hesitation until his latest target became a future version of himself (Bruce Willis).

Looper was not a space-based film like Interstellar, but it was driven by its examination of the relationship between past, present, and future. An intriguing premise, strong performances from Levitt, Willis, and Emily Blunt, and stylish action sequences made Looper a film to remember.

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Contact

Release Date

July 11, 1997

Director

Robert Zemeckis

Cast

Jodie Foster, Matthew McConaughey, Tom Skerritt, John Hurt, Jena Malone, David Morse, William Fichtner

Rating

PG

Main Genre

Drama

Contact was based on a novel by Carl Sagan and directed by Back to the Future co-creator Rob Zemeckis. Matthew McConaughey starred in the film 17 years before the release of Interstellar. In the film, a brilliant scientist (Jodie Foster) found evidence of extraterrestrial life and was chosen to make first contact. Contact did not portray the discovery as having a warm reception, suggesting that such an event would dramatically heighten conflicts between religion and science.

While some critics have considered Contact to be “anti-religion,” others have viewed the film as a story about finding faith. However, Zemeckis revealed in the DVD commentary that the intended message was that science and religion can coexist. Contact has been one of the few films to explore both the relationship between science and religion as well as the social implications of discovering extraterrestrial life.

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9 Gravity (2013)

Gravity

Release Date

October 3, 2013

Director

Alfonso Cuarón

Cast

Sandra Bullock, George Clooney, Ed Harris, Orto Ignatiussen, Paul Sharma, Amy Warren

Rating

PG-13

Main Genre

Drama

No modern film has captured the vast, isolating emptiness of deep space as well as 2013’s Gravity. With their shuttle destroyed, Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) and Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) were left stranded in space with no chance for rescue. The odds were definitely not in her favor, but Stone summoned all her inner strength to find a way back to Earth.

Although there were some scientific inaccuracies, Gravity received critical acclaim for its direction, score, cinematography, and Bullock’s performance. The film was released before Interstellar and strengthened audiences’ appetite for space-based films. It was amazing what the film achieved with a single character during most of its runtime.

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8 Inception (2010)

Inception

Release Date

July 15, 2010

Director

Christopher Nolan

Cast

Leonardo DiCaprio, Ken Watanabe, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Elliot Page, Tom Hardy

Rating

PG-13

Main Genre

Action

Aside from The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises, and Oppenheimer, Inception was Nolan’s most popular film. Inception obviously did not center on a group of astronauts, but like Interstellar, featured time as one of its central themes. The main difference was in Interstellar focusing on the bond between father and daughter, whereas Inception put the spotlight on dreams.

Leonardo DiCaprio played Dom Cobb, a thief with the ability to infiltrate people’s dreams and obtain secrets from their subconscious. Cobb is given the seemingly impossible challenge of planting an idea in someone’s mind. From the breathtaking visuals to the music by Hans Zimmer, Inception succeeded on virtually every front. The film further proved that modern action movies can be smart and tell a compelling story.

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7 Ad Astra (2019)

Ad Astra

Release Date

September 17, 2019

Director

James Gray

Cast

Brad Pitt, Kimmy Shields, Ruth Negga, Tommy Lee Jones, Donald Sutherland, Greg Bryk

Rating

PG-13

Main Genre

Sci-Fi

In Ad Astra, Clifford McBride (Tommy Lee Jones) ventured into deep space and went missing during his search for extraterrestrial life. His son Roy (Brad Pitt) grew up to become an astronaut, tasked with investigating mysterious power surges linked to Clifford’s crew. The investigation took Roy to Neptune, where Roy learned secrets that had been kept from him for 30 years.

Space was depicted in Ad Astra as a hostile environment that wreaked havoc on the human psyche. However, as an audience member and not a character in the film, the cinematography of Ad Astra was something to admire. Ad Astra featured cinematography from Hoyte van Hoytema, who collaborated with Nolan on Interstellar, Dunkirk, Tenet, and Oppenheimer.

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6 First Man (2018)

First Man

Release Date

October 11, 2018

Director

Damien Chazelle

Cast

Ryan Gosling, Claire Foy, Pablo Schreiber, Christopher Abbott, Ciarán Hinds, Kyle Chandler

Runtime

138

Main Genre

Drama

From the director of Whiplash and La La Land came First Man, a biopic that showed how Neil Armstrong came to be the first man to walk on the moon. The film began in the early-60s, covering the astronaut’s test flights, family life, and intensive astronaut training. Ryan Gosling starred as Armstrong in his last theatrical film role before playing Ken in Barbie.

Armstrong’s story was a natural fit for the big screen, with the film building toward an incredible moon landing sequence. Gosling brought a quiet stoicism to Armstrong and delivered one of the finest performances in his entire career. First Man underperformed at the box office, but, of course, its commercial performance was not indicative of the film’s quality.

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Related: Why Interstellar is More About Family Than Space

5 Oblivion (2013)

Oblivion

Release Date

April 10, 2013

Director

Joseph Kosinski

Cast

Tom Cruise, Morgan Freeman, Olga Kurylenko, Andrea Riseborough, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Melissa Leo

Rating

PG-13

Main Genre

Action

Oblivion was the first film collaboration between Tom Cruise and Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski. In the world of Oblivion, Earth was left devastated following decades of war between humans and a mysterious group of scavengers. The planet was mostly abandoned, leaving Jack (Cruise) to repair combat drones for five years. As he approached the end of his work term, Jack uncovered the secret truth behind his mission.

The 2013 sci-fi adventure film shared Interstellar‘s themes of love, exploration, and sacrifice. Oblivion, like Kosinski’s Tron: Legacy and Top Gun: Maverick, was beautifully shot and constantly kept viewers on the edge of their seat. The film has relatively been overlooked despite being one of the best sci-fi films of the early-2010s.

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4 Annihilation (2018)

Annihilation

Release Date

February 22, 2018

Director

Alex Garland

Cast

Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tessa Thompson, Oscar Isaac, Gina Rodriguez, Sonoya Mizuno

Rating

R

Main Genre

Sci-Fi

“The Shimmer” in Annihilation was a mysterious, quarantined zone that only Kane (Oscar Isaac) entered and came back from. Kane’s time there dramatically changed him, returning home to his wife Lena (Natalie Portman) a very different man. Lena, a cellular biology professor and former soldier, joined a scientific expedition to discover the Shimmer’s secrets and what happened to her husband.

Annihilation crafted an unsettling atmosphere that firmly planted the film in the genre of psychological horror. The visual imagery and synth-based score were designed to convey a sense of dread in addition to something distinctly alien. It has always been difficult to discuss Annihilation without veering into spoiler territory, but the film provided a thoughtful reflection on the human capacity for self-destruction.

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Related: Cillian Murphy Wishes He Had Starred in Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar

3 Aniara (2018)

aniara

Release Date

February 1, 2019

Director

Pella Kagerman, Hugo Lilja

Cast

Emilie Jonsson, Bianca Cruzeiro, Arvin Kananian, Anneli Martini, Jennie Silfverhjelm, Emma Broomé

Rating

R

Main Genre

Sci-Fi

Aniara is a late-2010s Swedish-Danish film that had its premiere at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival. Set in a dystopian future where humans fled an uninhabitable Earth, Aniara centered on a large spacecraft headed for Mars. The interior of the spacecraft (which shared its name with the film’s title) was designed to resemble a cruise ship. An incident knocked the Aniara off-course, leaving the passengers stranded in space with no fuel.

The straightforward premise of Aniara made it fairly accessible to viewers usually alienated by complex sci-fi. With that being said, the film had plenty for audiences to chew on, encouraging them to ponder humanity’s place in the universe. Aniara is strongly recommended for those gravitating toward the more existential aspects of space-based films.

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2 Tenet (2020)

Tenet

Release Date

August 22, 2020

Director

Christopher Nolan

Cast

Elizabeth Debicki, Robert Pattinson, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Kenneth Branagh, Michael Caine, Clemence Poesy

Main Genre

Action

Nolan made another film exploring the concept of time with Tenet, which has arguably been his most confusing film to date. John David Washington portrayed a CIA agent known as the “Protagonist,” becoming involved with the mysterious phenomenon of time inversion. Armed with the word “Tenet,” the Protagonist joined forces with Neil (Robert Pattinson) to save the entire world.

Tenet was an ambitious film that refrained from leaning into traditional time travel. The time inversion in the film positioned it as arguably the most confusing Nolan film to date. In fact, both Washington and Pattinson have said that even they do not fully understand the film (per IndieWire). As such, Tenet did not work for everyone, considered to be needlessly convoluted by many critics. Others, however, were pleased with the multilayered plot and Nolan’s creative time-bending.

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Read Our Review

1 Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

Edge of Tomorrow

Release Date

May 27, 2014

Director

Doug Liman

Cast

Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt, Brendan Gleeson, Bill Paxton, Jonas Armstrong, Tony Way

Rating

PG-13

Main Genre

Action

Somewhat forgotten and still woefully underrated, Edge of Tomorrow was the perfect summer action blockbuster. The generic title failed to sell the film, resulting in the film being listed under “Live Die Repeat: Edge of Tomorrow” on some digital storefronts. A mix of Groundhog Day and an alien invasion film, William Cage (Tom Cruise) restarted his day each time he died.

Cruise has been known for playing courageous characters throughout his career, but his Edge of Tomorrow character, William Cage, was of a different mold. William began as a coward and was transformed by the time loop into an efficient leader. The time loop united him with war hero Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt), giving him a fighting chance of defeating his alien enemies.

To the surprise of many viewers, Edge of Tomorrow found a balance between world-ending stakes and humor. The humor never stopped the film in its tracks to dip into the meta-comedy that has been commonplace in modern superhero films. Edge of Tomorrow succeeded in conveying the importance of holding on to hope in a world where all hope was seemingly lost.

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