Watching in Wonder Trivia Quiz

Answer: Gargantua

Starring Matthew McConaughey as 'Coop', one of the astronauts who joins an expedition looking for new planets capable of saving humanity from an ongoing blight that threatens the destruction of Earth, this 2014 Christopher Nolan film featured extensive scenes in the cosmos beyond our understanding. After transporting themselves through a wormhole next to Saturn, the crew stops at a handful of potential host planets, each one potentially more dangerous than the last, in an effort to prevent the end of mankind.

In addition to crafting a complex narrative to suit, the director/screenwriter duo of Christopher and Jonathan Nolan employed theoretical physicist Kip Thorne to help depict highly conceptual space phenomena and time dilation, especially as they pertained to wormholes, black holes, and unseen planets. These unique circumstances, especially against the backdrop of vast interstellar space, provided a theatrical experience unlike most, even within the sci-fi genre.

Answer: Tommy Lee Jones

Directed by then-four-time Palme d'Or nominee James Gray, "Ad Astra" took place more than a hundred years in the future, and started with surges of anti-matter emanating from beyond Neptune. Astronaut Roy McBride, whose father vanished years ago in a mission to deep space, was instructed to lead the mission to contact his father and determine the fate of an earlier project, found himself inevitably alone on a trip to the far planets of the solar system, still unsure of what he might find. His missing father, played by Tommy Lee Jones, would be his hopeful end goal.

Although considered by some to be a space opera, "Ad Astra" is a more subdued film than others with that label. Showcasing beautiful visuals against a gripping dramatic story, it may be considered an example of a worthwhile future sleeper classic.

Answer: Jupiter

A highly-conceptual work, the likes of which most filmgoers had never seen before its 1968 release, "2001: A Space Odyssey" depicted a futuristic idea of space that was equal parts ambitious, compelling, and terrifying. Based on a work by Arthur C. Clarke written explicitly for the film release, the movie began with the appearance of a mysterious, black monolith back in the prehistoric era and then followed a space crew on a doomed mission to Jupiter in the future. After the Discovery One was hijacked by artificial intelligence HAL 9000, Bowman came across the monolith, part of his mission, and transcended.

Kubrick's movie depicts space in a terrifying and dark way, showcasing its vast unknowability with a booming orchestral soundtrack or, else, nothing at all. All of this would be a decade before "Star Wars", which allowed space battles to take liberties as to how sound actually works in a vacuum. Even today, "2001" feels experimental; it's an ambitious vision of outer space in all ways.

Answer: Gravity drive

Even with space coming across as a new frontier, the idea of something deeper and darker beyond our understanding persists, and "Event Horizon" takes a turn towards the Lovecraftian in that regard. In this 1997 film directed by Paul W. S. Anderson, a crew heads to Neptune to retrieve the Event Horizon, a ship lost on a trip to Proxima Centauri that has mysteriously reappeared with no sign of human life onboard. What they find is that the ship's gravity drive, allowing the craft to punch a hole in space and time to navigate the cosmos, has opened a portal to an evil infinity and let the ineffable spill into its corridors.

"Event Horizon" turned out to be a box office flop, but it brought the mystery back into space in a way that no one really had outside the "Alien" franchise. With the works of H. P. Lovecraft leaning into cosmic horrors, it would seem almost too obvious to draw the inspiration, and yet...

Answer: SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence)

Jodie Foster is Dr. Ellie Arroway in this Robert Zemeckis sci-fi drama which sees the scientists at SETI receiving a transmission from lightyears away. As the story unfolds, the research develops, and a number of dramatic turns occur, Arroway is selected to be the sole astronaut sent into deep space in a unique machine. What results is a journey, for her, that treads the line between faith and science and forces her to reckon with her past.

While it may be that "Contact" doesn't (or does it?) bring the viewer as far into space as it may seem, it's the wonder and the supposed journey that makes it the most compelling. As Arroway hurtles through space, it shows an almost miraculous-- and certainly adventurous-- way of sending an audience to a new and unknown place.

SETI, the actual Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, described the film in the decades to follow as one of the most accurate representations of their work and technologies in movie history.

Answer: Yes

In a harrowing series of evens, Stone finds herself fighting for her life as space debris strikes the Hubble Space Telescope, and forces her and her fellow astronaut, Matt Kowalski (played by George Clooney) to fight for their survival against increasingly-more-strenuous odds. Stone does all of this in orbit, striving to avoid being cast adrift with no chance of rescue, in an effort to find a way back to Earth without dying on reentry.

Directed and co-written by Alfonso Cuarón, "Gravity" was regarded by critics as one of the best films of the 2010s, and while nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars, it instead took home seven statuettes (including one for Cuarón himself), losing the big one to "12 Years a Slave". It did manage to snag both Best Cinematography and Best Visual Effects, however, due in part to the majority of the film-- 80% of it-- being rendered in CGI.

Answer: Icarus II

A movie that takes on two genres-- science-fiction in its first half and horror-thriller in its second-- "Sunshine" released in 2007 to poor box office returns, but quite modest critical reception as it provided a particularly unique take on an apocalyptic thriller. As the Icarus II heads towards the sun with a massive payload of explosives to kick-start it, they come across the Icarus I and make a near-fatal choice to investigate and acquire its contents.

Starring an all-star cast including Cillian Murphy, Chris Evans, Rose Byrne, Michelle Yeoh, and Benedict Wong (amongst others), "Sunshine" magnified the awe that even the sun could convey in an unfamiliar vantage point and from a unique, new state. "Sunshine" would grow to be a sleeper sci-fi classic, one that would highlight a certain bleakness and claustrophobia in space travel despite the magnitude of it all.

Answer: Alien

After the "Alien" franchise had gone dormant with "Alien: Resurrection" in the 1990s (save for the "Alien vs. Predator" series), Ridley Scott returned to sci-fi with "Prometheus", a movie that sent a group of astro-archaeologists to a unique celestial body to discover the origins of the human race. What they found, however, was that not only did their forebears, a race of alien engineers, leave behind complex structures, biologies, and spacecrafts, but what remained had the potential to create something new entirely.

Though polarizing for its new approach to what would become connective tissue to the "Alien" franchise, "Prometheus" did so against a cold and alien backdrop-- one where curious people opened the door to a Pandora's box of threats. The film turned out to be massively successful in the box office and Scott returned to the series five years later with a sequel, "Alien: Covenant". The next sequel, Fede Álvarez's "Alien: Romulus", would spin off from these entirely.

Answer: The City of a Thousand Planets

While director Luc Besson had previously explored the galaxies of the future to some degree in the hyper-futuristic 1997 film "The Fifth Element", he returned to a new vision of distant space in the graphic novel adaptation, "Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets", which presented itself as a sprawling space opera when it released to IMAX theatres in 2017, twenty years after his earlier sci-fi adventure.

In this movie, Valerian (played by Dane DeHaan) and Laureline (played by Cara Delevingne) acted as agents for the forces of the United Human Federation many centuries into the future. Tasked with collecting a Mül converter, they're subsequently asked to bring what they find to the city of Alpha, a massive interstellar destination housing countless races and species of space creatures. And what follows is a deadly trip through the city in an effort to save the universe.

A visual feast, the movie was praised for creating eye-candy settings and unique encounters within them, but the film lost money at the box office and was panned for its wooden acting. It is, however, worth seeing for all of its spectacle.

Answer: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" finally received big-screen treatment in 2005 and what resulted was an absurdist, comedic take on the end of Earth (as we knew it) and Arthur Dent's escape from total annihilation, putting him on a unique ship with the ability to go to improbable locations anywhere in the universe. As it turns out, he's a small piece of a much bigger puzzle that has him seeking the true meaning of life, the universe, and everything.

Somehow, the movie manages to explore a wide universe while also throwing itself back to Earth on occasion because, as it turns out, Earth was just a bespoke planet created by the beings on Magrathea in an effort to find that elusive 'big answer'. As the film closes out, the crew of the Heart of Gold flies off to find the Restaurant at the End of the Universe.