Movies that Show the True Size of the Universe

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About this video essay:
Examining the varying ways in which space movies try to capture and understand the unfathomable scale of the universe, and exploring the existential dread and wonder that arise from the effort.

0:00 Prologue
0:15 The Problem of Scale
2:38 How Movies Convey Size
5:14 Where Movies Fall Short
7:31 The Weight of Infinity
10:25 Overwhelming Time and Space
13:17 A Dialogue with the Cosmos
16:36 The Journey Home
19:46 The Space Game Paradox

Media included:
2001: A Space Odyssey; Ad Astra; Interstellar; Sunshine; The Tree of Life; Star Trek; Star Wars; Event Horizon; First Man; Prometheus; Alien: Covenant; Eternals; Dune; Godzilla; Gravity; Passengers; Rogue One; Voyage of Time; The Martian

Listen to my podcast, Cinema of Meaning:

Further Reading:

Music:
Piotr Hummel - Spectacular
Dexter Britain - The Time to Run
Dexter Britain - Your Own World
Slow Meadow - On a Bed of Green Blades
Slow Meadow - Crown of Amber Canopy pt. 2
Ryan Taubet - Starfall
David Morton - Eclipse
Oliver Michael - Taken From a Void

[StewartFletcher]

Ad Astra, Interstellar, Sunshine, and First Man are all powerfully moving movies for me. Their grand, melancholic examination of existence just hits me so dang hard.

[swankk]

this is the very reason as to why I will always have Interstellar as my favorite of all time. the emotion and stakes of the movie rely a lot on making you feel the incredible grandeur of the journey, it’s the only way for the movie to truly work.

[Rolling]

Hence why, regarding modern books I love The Expanse. Specially the early ones and without getting into spoilers. Feels so grounded and on point that instead of basing sci-fi on an entire universe canvas they "limit" themselves to "just" the Solar System, as the books progress the sense of scale in them feels very rewarding as they narrate the bigger lingering threats in the endgame.

[SacredDaturaa]

Dune Part 1 has a reverse example of this in one of its early scenes.

You see the planet Caladan, and then a tiny highliner cuts across the foreground, and then an even tinier shuttle flies out from its chasms. And then as it lands in a plaza with the assembled Atriedes forces you see how truly massive even that apparently tiny shuttle is compared to our human perspective. It's masterfully efficient filmmaking that, along with the sparse narration, makes you understand so much about the universe of Dune in a sequence that's less than a minute.

[RoamingAdhocrat]

It irritates me when a series (cough star wars cough) oscillates between "space travel is complex, navigating space is a highly specialised skill, you need to charter a ship" and "this can cross the galaxy solo in a single-seat craft"

[filipsperl]

I think Sunshine does something similar to Rogue one in terms of conveying the scale in one shot. In the first shot, we see what we presume is the Sun, but after traveling to it for quite a while, we notice that it is actually just the reflection of it in the ship's shield. Then the camera turns around and the ship is miniscule compared to the star. It was pretty powerful when I first saw it

[robmildon]

Always going to remember those last scenes of Sunshine in the cinema, tears of awe streaming down my face at our tiny works contrasted against the colossal annihilating majesty of the Sun.

[meraggelm]

This is my absolute favorite YouTube channel in English! Your video essays are so deep and so beautifully done! Keep amazing us, and keep up with your astounding work!

[dr.lionhunter]

This video was truly outstanding. I have a deep appreciation for Sunshine, and I believe your video brilliantly captures why it remains a mesmerizing and profoundly moving cinematic experience that few other films have managed to emulate to this day. It certainly warrants greater recognition and admiration. During my PhD, I had the privilege of working for Buzz Aldrin's son for four years, and I never missed a chance to reference Sunshine whenever we delved into discussions about how films portray the vastness of the universe and the existential depths of human existence.

[ikemeitz]

The Tree of Life is unlike anything I have ever seen. I am so glad you brought it in here. It is, just a little bit, actually life-changing.

[shlck]

Sunshine is one of the most underrated films ever. A very powerful film.

[concept]

LSOO, this is my first comment on any of your videos even though I have watched most of them. I think it's finally time to say, you have actually impacted my life with your work here on YouTube. There is a feeling I have after watching a profound film that I am neither capable of expressing in words, nor have I come across anyone who is...except for you. There is something your channel offers that no other film analysis/video essay channel does and that is, along with a succinct summary of the film, you are able to convey how it made us, the viewers, feel. This is no easy task and is worthy of commendation. Furthermore, the way you extract a common theme from several different films and convey it as one coherent thesis, is remarkable.

I know I echo many of your viewers when I say, please continue doing what you're doing as it's not falling on deaf ears. You are doing more than entertaining us, you're allowing us to reconnect with that visceral feeling that we experience immediately after engaging with profound content. 

Thank you for your work.

[phipsn]

Ad Astra has been my favorite movie ever since I've seen it the first time in theaters, back in 2019. Since then I saw barely anyone talk about it or even mention it, so I am more than happy to find it here in, once again, one of your incredible essays!

[Daemonworks]

A closely related peeve of mine is that when writers just keep pushing the "bigger stakes are higher stakes" button, despite it being incredibly well known that past a certain point going bigger stops working because we stop really relating to the inflate scale of things. We can all relate to a threat to a person, their family, their friends, their neighbourhood, but keep scaling up to city, region, state, etc and somewhere along the lines, unless the large threat is handled exceptionally well (mostly by ensuring that the larger scale is tied down to also be very personal), it shifts from a threat the audience feels into one they can only get as an academic concept.
But often they'll "raise" the stakes /only/ by going larger, and the second you cross that invisible line, you haven't raised the stakes, you've dropped them onto the floor.

[thomashiggins]

I think The Expanse addresses the issue of vastness about as well as any science fiction has, in the past few decades.

The fact that it takes place in the Solar System -- and presents how long it takes to simply communicate, much less travel (even with improbably efficient engines) even within those boundaries -- allows one to truly appreciate that one moment at the end of Season 3.

The thing is, that moment took more than *30 episodes* to set up.

[amazingkris]

I feel that Alien really nailed it in realistic human terms, but obviously not on the wild cosmic scale. A massive cargo vessel chugging along in the vastness of space, seven tiny creatures sleeping in their cryobeds, waiting to be brought out to perform their task, then back to the fridges again. Meanwhile, it passes quietly by a massive ringed planet like a dot. You get an almost devastating sense of insignificance without it being comical, which almost automatically goes away when you realize you were standing on a planet all along.

[dudeabides]

Sunshine really did leave a lasting impression on me. Many Sci-Fi dipictions of the vastness of Space often feel sterile, the vacuum punctuated by wonderous imagery with nothing else inbetween. Somehow Sunshine managed to create a presence within the nothingness that truely shows how insignificant our lifeforms are, in relation to the true nature of the universe.

[JLM]

For me, due to it's combination of human spirit breaking restriction and how they never actually show the voyage, "GATTACA" has always felt like it deserves a place among the greatest sci-fi space films. The beauty of sacrifice and how the Jude Law 'Jerome' is also embarking on a journey to the unknown is so infinitely ;) beautiful.

[moonsofix]

This is what I love about your channel. Your appreciation of the abstract and unknowable, the strange and the mystic. Great vid!

[WormholeJim]

the blockbuster hit "The Long Sleep", ever saw that? It's an 65 hour marathon odyssey about an astronaut travelling in 600 years in cryosleep. When he wakes up and gets near his mission area, there's a technical failure causing him to leak most of his available oxygen and short-circuit the oxygen-renewer. he radios for spare parts and upon realizing his message won't reach home for next 50 years or so, with the reply being another 50 years returning, and never mind when the spare part might arrive, he has a nervous breakdown and then he dies. It's pretty awesome with a lot of good points about why warpdrives and teleporters are way more practical.