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No. 1 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

This film elevated sci-fi movies from rubber-suit monster flicks to credible portrayals of the unknowns of space exploration and existence. The plot of the movie and of the concurrently released novel follows a mission to Jupiter and its discovery of an ancient monolith that may hold the key to human evolution. "2001 is painstakingly realistic, doing its best to actually depict a plausible lunar colony and manned expedition to Jupiter," says Anders Sandberg, a research fellow at Oxford University's Future of Humanity Institute. "When I first saw it, as a teenager, I already knew the outline, but I was more fascinated the longer I watched." The impression lasted. "I always try to have a cosmic perspective: What would the Monolith do?" The movie's depiction of the hardware and living conditions of space is regarded as the best representation of spaceflight and how we might survive off the planet. Director Stanley Kubrick "got so much right, it's amazing," says Leroy Chiao, who flew three NASA shuttle flights and spent seven months on the International Space Station. But the trippy, mind-bending closing sequence—when mission commander Dave Bowman enters the Monolith—confused Chiao at first. "I was puzzled and intrigued, because I had not read the book," he says. "It made a lot more sense afterward."