But as the sun sets and the planet plunges into total darkness, other inhabitants emerge, including a fiendish murderer with a nose for blood, they must rely on murderer Riddick to get them to safety.
Despite being made on a small budget Pitch Black is one of the best science fiction that has graced the big screen this decade. The movie plays on human's fear of the dark as filmmaker David Twohy turns out the lights.
- Alien
Of course you can't look at movies set in space without giving Ridley Scott's Alien a little mention.
Despite spawning three sequels and two collaborations with the Predator series the original Lien is still one of sci-fi's most iconic movies, with the infant creature bursting out of John Hurt's chest as one of the most memorable moments in cinema history.
The film was a commercial and critical smash hit giving life to a huge media franchise that included video games and books. The film went on to win the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects at the 1979 ceremony.
But it is Sigourney Weaver's role as Ripley that has become one of science fiction's most popular characters.
It was very un-Hollywood to cast a strong heroine in an action movie, a role usually reserved for an actor, and in the beginning Ripley was a man.
The character of Ellen Ripley became the core thread of the movies that followed: Aliens in 1986, Alien 3 in 1992 and Alien Resurrection in 1997.
- Armageddon
When the space shuttle is destroyed in outer space, astronomers at NASA discover that a meteor shower is pelting away at earth and that a huge asteroid, capable of destroying the planet is headed for a direct hit with the planet.
With all options taking to long to implement before collision, NASA decides to recruit the world's best oil drillers to land on the asteroid, drill a hole, drop a nuclear bomb into the hole, then take off and remotely detonate the bomb.
For the drill team, they select Harry Stamper and his crew of misfit drillers. It's a race against time to get the drillers trained, land them on the asteroid and get the hole drilled before earth is destroyed.
Ok so the plot is a little outrageous, this is Michael Bay that we are talking about, but it is a very exciting movie as everything that goes wrong does.
Landing on the asteroid the team loses one of the shuttles and during the drill more members of the team lose their life for the cause. How many make it back alive.
Other movies were a little trip into space didn't go quite to plan include Solaris, Lost In Space, Dante 01, Ghosts of Mars, Mission to Mars and The Andromeda Strain.
Pandorum is released 2nd October
femaleFirst Helen Earnshaw
Tagged in Sunshine