Best Space Opera Movies on MGM+

Project Hail Mary (2026)

IMDb 8.5 🍅 95% Letterboxd 4.3 2h 37m

Directed by Phil Lord

✦ MovieMuse AI takeLone scientist-versus-cosmos survival mirrors space opera's essential isolation, elevated by genuine wonder at cosmic mysteries rather than spectacle.

Science teacher Ryland Grace wakes up on a spaceship light years from home with no recollection of who he is or how he got there. As his memory returns, he begins to uncover his mission: solve the riddle of the mysterious substance causing the sun to die out. He must call on his scientific knowledge and unorthodox ideas to save everything on Earth from extinction… but an unexpected friendship means he may not have to do it alone.

Spaceballs (1987)

IMDb 7.1 🍅 52% Letterboxd 3.4 1h 36m

Directed by Mel Brooks

✦ MovieMuse AI takeMel Brooks deconstructs space opera tropes with surgical precision—the Princess Vespa rescue spoofs yet affirms the genre's foundational heroic impulse.

When the nefarious Dark Helmet hatches a plan to snatch Princess Vespa and steal her planet's air, space-bum-for-hire Lone Starr and his clueless sidekick fly to the rescue. Along the way, they meet Yogurt, who puts Lone Starr wise to the power of "The Schwartz." Can he master it in time to save the day?

Thunderbirds Are GO (1966)

IMDb 6.4 🍅 57% Letterboxd 3.2 1h 33m

Directed by David Lane

✦ MovieMuse AI takeThunderbirds' rescue-mission formula crystallizes space opera's core: humanity collaborating across nations to conquer impossible technological challenges.

When the launch of a mission to Mars goes awry due to sabotage, International Rescue is requested to assist in the mission's second attempt.

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984)

IMDb 6.2 🍅 67% Letterboxd 3.2 1h 43m

Directed by W.D. Richter

✦ MovieMuse AI takeGenre-blending rock-scientist adventurer challenges space opera's militaristic conventions, proving idealism and artistic vision can defeat alien empires.

Adventurer/surgeon/rock musician Buckaroo Banzai and his band of men, the Hong Kong Cavaliers, take on evil alien invaders from the 8th dimension.

Barbarella (1968)

IMDb 5.9 🍅 65% Letterboxd 3.2 1h 38m

Directed by Roger Vadim

✦ MovieMuse AI takeBarbarella's campy sensuality reframes space opera as playgrounds for transgression, where style and erotic freedom matter as much as cosmic stakes.

In the far future, a highly sexual woman is tasked with finding and stopping the evil Durand-Durand. Along the way she encounters various unusual people.

Master of the World (1961)

IMDb 5.9 Letterboxd 2.9 1h 42m

Directed by William Witney

✦ MovieMuse AI takeRetro-futuristic Venus expedition epitomizes early space opera's earnest scientism, where colonization represents humanity's rational dominion over cosmos.

A mad genius tries to bomb the world into peace.

Robot Jox (1990)

IMDb 5.5 🍅 40% Letterboxd 2.9 1h 25m

Directed by Stuart Gordon

✦ MovieMuse AI takeGiant robot gladiator combat replaces interstellar warfare, shrinking space opera's scope to intimate hand-to-hand brutality between superpowers.

50 years after a nuclear war, the two superpowers handle territorial disputes in a different way. Each fields a giant robot to fight one-on-one battles in official matches, each piloted by a man inside, known as robot jockeys or jox. The contest for possession of Alaska will be fought by two of the best. The conscientious Achilles fights for the Americans. Opposing him is a Russian, Alexander.

The People That Time Forgot (1977)

IMDb 5.4 🍅 63% Letterboxd 2.7 1h 30m

Directed by Kevin Connor

✦ MovieMuse AI takeAntarctic expedition echoes space opera's exploration imperative, proving the genre's DNA survives in any frontier where civilization ends.

Major Ben McBride organizes a mission to the Antarctic wastes to search for his friend who has been missing in the region for several years. McBride's party find themselves in a world populated by primitive warriors and terrifying prehistoric creatures, all of whom they must evade in order to get back safely

At the Earth's Core (1976)

IMDb 5.1 🍅 40% Letterboxd 2.6 1h 30m

Directed by Kevin Connor

✦ MovieMuse AI takeEarth-core society mirrors alien planets: space opera's exoticism found within, suggesting the genre documents humanity's eternal discovery of the unknown.

A huge burrowing machine tunnels out of control at ferocious speed, cutting clean through to the center of the earth, to the twilight world of pellucidar. Once there, Dr. Perry and David Innes are threatened by half human creatures, lizard-like birds, and man-eating plants.

Solarbabies (1986)

IMDb 4.8 Letterboxd 2.6 1h 34m

Directed by Alan Johnson

✦ MovieMuse AI takePost-apocalyptic orphans wielding mystical orbs against tyranny compress space opera's liberation struggle into intimate youth-rebellion melodrama.

In a future in which most water has disappeared from the Earth, we find a group of children, mostly teenagers, who are living at an orphanage, run by the despotic rulers of the new Earth. The group in question plays a hockey based game on roller skates and is quite good. It has given them a unity that transcends the attempts to bring them to heel by the government. Finding an orb of special power, they find it has unusual effects on them. They escape from the orphanage (on skates) and try to cross the wasteland looking for a place they can live free as the storm-troopers search for them and the orb.

Journey to the Seventh Planet (1962)

IMDb 4.7 Letterboxd 2.7 1h 17m

Directed by Sidney W. Pink

✦ MovieMuse AI takeCosmic brain manufacturing false realities weaponizes perception itself—space opera's ultimate threat isn't conquest but the collapse of shared reality.

A space expedition to Uranus is menaced by a giant brain that can make illusions come true.

Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet (1965)

IMDb 3.8 Letterboxd 2.5 1h 18m

Directed by Curtis Harrington

In 2020, after the colonization of the moon, the spaceships Vega, Sirius and Capella are launched from Lunar Station 7. They are to explore Venus under the command of Professor Hartman, but an asteroid collides and explodes Capella. The leader ship Vega stays orbiting and sends the astronauts Kern and Sherman with the robot John to the surface of Venus, but they have problems with communication with Dr. Marsha Evans in Vega. The Sirius lands in Venus and Commander Brendan Lockhart, Andre Ferneau and Hans Walter explore the planet and are attacked by prehistoric animals. They use a vehicle to seek Kern and Sherman while collecting samples from the planet. Meanwhile John helps the two cosmonauts to survive in the hostile land. Re-edited version of Soviet sci-fi Planet of Storms (1962) by Pavel Klushantsev, dubbed into English with additional scenes.

Alien from L.A. (1988)

IMDb 3.3 🍅 22% Letterboxd 2.5 1h 27m

Directed by Albert Pyun

✦ MovieMuse AI takeUnderground alien civilization subverts space opera's skyward gaze, proving the genre's wonder-mongering thrives equally in subterranean forbidden worlds.

When her archaeologist father disappears on an expedition, Wanda sets out to look for him. What she finds is a secret underground world, where no one believes in life on the surface and where she and her father are taken for spies.