The Top Ten Sci-Fi Movie Planets
by SciFiMovieZone | created - 15 Jun 2013 | updated - 13 Dec 2017 | PublicSci-fi films featuring alien worlds is a common and popular vehicle for their imaginary tale, though only a few truly explore their fictional universe to any extensive degree.
Some sci-fi movie planets capture the movie-goer's hearts with various aspects such as environment, indigenous species, social structure, and more (often inspired or adapted from literature). What is the best sci-fi movie planet, planetoid, moon of the lot? Join SFMZ's Planet Hopper Express and we will explore the top ten planets.
Please keep in mind this list is judging the planet, not the quality of the movie.
For a more detailed presentation of this list, how the planets were selected, and highlights of several other sci-fi movie planets, go to [link]http://scifimoviezone.com/toptenscifiplanets.shtml[/link]
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1. Solaris (1972)
PG | 167 min | Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi
A psychologist is sent to a station orbiting a distant planet in order to discover what has caused the crew to go insane.
Director: Andrei Tarkovsky | Stars: Natalya Bondarchuk, Donatas Banionis, Jüri Järvet, Vladislav Dvorzhetskiy
Votes: 98,289
The planet, called Solaris, is covered with a so-called "ocean" that is really a single organism covering the entire surface. The ocean shows signs of a vast but strange intelligence, which can create physical phenomena in a way that science has difficulty explaining. The alien mind of Solaris is so inconceivably different from human consciousness that all attempts at communication are doomed.
#10: SOLARIS
2. Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999)
PG | 136 min | Action, Adventure, Fantasy
Two Jedi escape a hostile blockade to find allies and come across a young boy who may bring balance to the Force, but the long dormant Sith resurface to claim their original glory.
Director: George Lucas | Stars: Ewan McGregor, Liam Neeson, Natalie Portman, Jake Lloyd
Votes: 856,684 | Gross: $474.54M
(from Star Wars I, II, III, and VI) Naboo is a fictitious planet in the fictional Star Wars universe with a mostly green terrain and which is the homeworld of two societies: the Gungans who dwell in underwater cities and the humans who live in colonies on the surface.
#9: NABOO
The main city and capital of Naboo is Theed. The planet Naboo is described as having a porous, plasma-rich interior without a molten core, a rare phenomenon among the planets in the Star Wars universe.
3. Star Trek (2009)
PG-13 | 127 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
The brash James T. Kirk tries to live up to his father's legacy with Mr. Spock keeping him in check as a vengeful Romulan from the future creates black holes to destroy the Federation one planet at a time.
Director: J.J. Abrams | Stars: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Simon Pegg, Leonard Nimoy
Votes: 620,346 | Gross: $257.73M
A dry, hostile planet in the 40 Eridani A system that is the homeworld of the Vulcan people, who are also known as Vulcanians. In the episode "Return to Tomorrow", Spock theorized that the Vulcans might be the descendants of a colony from Sargon's planet.
#8: VULCAN
On April 5, 2063, Vulcans and Humans made official first contact following the successful test of Earth's first warp-powered starship, as depicted in Star Trek: First Contact.
4. Forbidden Planet (1956)
G | 98 min | Adventure, Sci-Fi
A starship crew in the 23rd century goes to investigate the silence of a distant planet's colony, only to find just two survivors, a powerful robot, and the deadly secret of a lost civilization.
Director: Fred M. Wilcox | Stars: Walter Pidgeon, Anne Francis, Leslie Nielsen, Warren Stevens
Votes: 53,226 | Gross: $3.00M
During the early 23rd century, the United Planets Cruiser C-57D has been sent to the planet Altair IV, 16 light-years from Earth, to investigate the fate of a colony expedition sent 20 years earlier.
#7: Altair IV
Dr. Edward Morbius explains that he has been studying the Krell, the natives of Altair IV who, despite being far more advanced than humanity, had all mysteriously died in a single night 200,000 years before, just as they had achieved their greatest triumph.
5. Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977)
PG | 121 min | Action, Adventure, Fantasy
Luke Skywalker joins forces with a Jedi Knight, a cocky pilot, a Wookiee and two droids to save the galaxy from the Empire's world-destroying battle station, while also attempting to rescue Princess Leia from the mysterious Darth Vader.
Director: George Lucas | Stars: Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Alec Guinness
Votes: 1,450,010 | Gross: $322.74M
(from Star Wars I - IV, VI ) Tatooine is a desert planet in a binary star system. It once had large oceans and a world-spanning jungle, but this biosphere was destroyed when the myopic Rakata razed the planet, drying up its riverbeds and boiling away its oceans.
#6: TATOOINE
Tatooine has two suns, as it is in a binary star system. Tatooine’s G-type and K-type twin suns heat its surface, making water and shade hard to come by.
6. Blade Runner (1982)
R | 117 min | Action, Drama, Sci-Fi
A blade runner must pursue and terminate four replicants who stole a ship in space and have returned to Earth to find their creator.
Director: Ridley Scott | Stars: Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, Edward James Olmos
Votes: 823,305 | Gross: $32.87M
(from Blade Runner) Blade Runner became one of the most accurate predictions of a future city of any film to the extent that in the documentary made in 2000, a flight over Los Angeles was so like the film, some casual viewers even thought it was an excerpt from the movie itself!
#5: FUTURE EARTH
Amusingly, another very distinctive spacecraft also found its way into this part of the cityscape - the Millennium Falcon, Han Solo's ship from the Star Wars movie, which was converted to a building.
7. Alien (1979)
R | 117 min | Horror, Sci-Fi
The crew of a commercial spacecraft encounters a deadly lifeform after investigating a mysterious transmission of unknown origin.
Director: Ridley Scott | Stars: Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, John Hurt, Veronica Cartwright
Votes: 951,193 | Gross: $78.90M
(from Alien and Aliens) In Alien, Dan O'Bannon had written a script entitled Memory comprising what would become the film's opening scenes: a crew of astronauts awaken to find that their voyage has been interrupted because they are receiving a signal from a mysterious planetoid.
#4: LV-426 PLANETOID
Art Director Les Dilley created miniatures of the planetoid's surface based on H.R. Giger's designs to sculpt a desert landscape surface.
8. Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005)
PG-13 | 140 min | Action, Adventure, Fantasy
Three years into the Clone Wars, Obi-Wan Kenobi pursues a new threat, while Anakin Skywalker is lured by Chancellor Palpatine into a sinister plot to rule the galaxy.
Director: George Lucas | Stars: Hayden Christensen, Natalie Portman, Ewan McGregor, Samuel L. Jackson
Votes: 845,659 | Gross: $380.26M
(from Star Wars I - III, VI) Coruscant, an ecumenopolis, was renamed Imperial Center during the reign of the Galactic Empire. The adjective form of the planet name is Coruscanti. Coruscant was the capital of the Old Republic, the Galactic Empire, the New Republic, the Yuuzhan Vong Empire and the Galactic Alliance at various times.
#3: CORUSCANT
Coruscant is the actual center of the galaxy, given that its hyperspace coordinates are (0,0,0).
9. Avatar (2009)
PG-13 | 162 min | Action, Adventure, Fantasy
A paraplegic Marine dispatched to the moon Pandora on a unique mission becomes torn between following his orders and protecting the world he feels is his home.
Director: James Cameron | Stars: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Michelle Rodriguez
Votes: 1,386,754 | Gross: $760.51M
(from Avatar) The Pandoran biosphere teems with a diverse variety of bioluminescent species ranging from hexapodal animals to exotic fauna and flora. The Pandoran ecology forms a vast neural network spanning the entire planetary surface into which the Na'vi and other creatures can connect.
#2: PANDORA MOON
Cameron utilized a team of expert advisors in order to make the various examples of fauna and flora as scientifically feasible as possible.
10. Dune (1984)
PG-13 | 137 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
A Duke's son leads desert warriors against the galactic emperor and his father's evil nemesis to free their desert world from the emperor's rule.
Director: David Lynch | Stars: Kyle MacLachlan, Virginia Madsen, Francesca Annis, Leonardo Cimino
Votes: 179,594 | Gross: $30.93M
AND THE NUMBER ONE SCI-FI MOVIE PLANET IS . . . . .
(from Dune)
Arrakis, "the dancer", originally a star-name for Mu Draconis) later Rakis (known colloquially throughout as Dune), is a desert planet home to the Fremen (Zensunni wanderers) and later, the Imperial Capital under Paul "Muad'Dib" Atreides.
#1: ARRAKIS
Arrakis is the third planet orbiting the star Canopus, and it in turn is orbited by two moons, one of which has the image of the desert kangaroo-rat, Muad'Dib, on it; the other possesses the image of a human fist.
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