10 Best Exploration Movies, From 2001: A Space Odyssey to The Lost City of Z

The best exploration movies are 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Interstellar (2014), The Lost City of Z (2016), Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972), The Martian (2015), Apollo 13 (1995), Kon-Tiki (2012), The Abyss (1989) and Jurassic Park (1993). In the UK, Interstellar streams on Sky, NOW Cinema and the HBO Max channel on Prime Video. The Abyss isn’t on any UK streaming service, and most of the others can be rented or bought digitally.

The urge to see what lies beyond the map has driven some of cinema’s greatest stories, from jungle expeditions and ocean crossings to the far side of the galaxy. This list began in 2017 to mark the UK home release of James Gray’s The Lost City of Z, and we’ve now expanded it to ten. We ranked the films on their sense of wonder, how well they capture the danger of the journey and how much they have influenced the films that followed.

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, MGM)

Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, written with science-fiction author Arthur C. Clarke, is the most ambitious exploration film ever made. It follows humanity from its earliest ancestors to a mission to Jupiter, as astronauts Dave Bowman and Frank Poole find themselves at the mercy of the ship’s calm, polite computer, HAL 9000.

Made a year before the real Moon landing, its visions of space travel still look astonishing, and they won Kubrick his only Oscar, for special visual effects. Its final act, a journey “beyond the infinite”, remains one of the most debated endings in film.

2. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981, Paramount)

Our first meeting with Indiana Jones comes as he steals a golden idol from a booby-trapped temple in the South American jungle, then outruns a giant boulder. From there, Steven Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark sends him around the world, from Nepal to Egypt, racing the Nazis to find the Ark of the Covenant.

It is the perfect adventure film, and it has a direct link to number four on this list: Percy Fawcett, the real explorer whose story is told in The Lost City of Z, is often cited as one of the inspirations for Indy.

3. Interstellar (2014, Paramount / Warner Bros.)

Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar imagines a dying Earth and a team of astronauts, led by Matthew McConaughey’s former pilot Cooper, who travel through a wormhole near Saturn to search for a new home for humanity. Theoretical physicist Kip Thorne advised on the science, and the film’s depiction of a black hole was praised by scientists.

Its real power is emotional: time moves differently on each planet, and the scenes of Cooper watching years of messages from the children he left behind are devastating. It won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects and streams on Sky and NOW Cinema in the UK.

4. The Lost City of Z (2016, Amazon Studios / StudioCanal)

James Gray’s adaptation of David Grann’s book tells the true story of British explorer Percy Fawcett (Charlie Hunnam), who made several expeditions into the Amazon in the early 20th century, convinced that the ruins of an advanced lost civilisation lay hidden in the jungle. Robert Pattinson plays his loyal aide-de-camp, Henry Costin, and Sienna Miller his wife, Nina.

Fawcett disappeared in the Amazon with his son Jack in 1925, and the film’s haunting final stretch captures the obsession that drove him. It is a patient, old-fashioned epic that rewards a big screen and a quiet evening.

5. Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972, Werner Herzog Filmproduktion)

Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God follows a 16th-century Spanish expedition down the Amazon in search of the legendary golden city of El Dorado. As the river carries them deeper into the jungle, the conquistador Lope de Aguirre, played with frightening intensity by Klaus Kinski, takes control and leads the group towards madness.

Shot on location in the Peruvian rainforest in famously difficult conditions, it is the dark mirror of every heroic exploration film: a story about what happens when the hunger for discovery becomes greed.

6. The Martian (2015, 20th Century Fox)

Ridley Scott’s adaptation of Andy Weir’s novel stars Matt Damon as Mark Watney, an astronaut left for dead on Mars after a storm forces his crew to abandon their mission. With limited supplies and no way of contacting Earth, he has to use every bit of his scientific know-how to survive, growing potatoes and rigging equipment to survive until rescue is possible.

The Martian is the most optimistic film on this list: a celebration of problem-solving, teamwork and humour in the face of impossible odds.

7. Apollo 13 (1995, Universal)

Ron Howard’s Apollo 13 tells the true story of NASA’s 1970 Moon mission, which turned into a fight for survival when an oxygen tank exploded on the way. Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon and Bill Paxton play the stranded crew, with Ed Harris as flight director Gene Kranz and Gary Sinise as the astronaut who helps solve the problem from the ground.

Even knowing the outcome, it is gripping, and its scenes of engineers on Earth making a carbon dioxide filter from whatever the astronauts have on board are a perfect lesson in how exploration really works. It won Oscars for film editing and sound.

8. Kon-Tiki (2012, Nordisk Film)

In 1947, Norwegian adventurer Thor Heyerdahl and a small crew sailed a balsa-wood raft about 8,000 kilometres across the Pacific from Peru to Polynesia, to prove that ancient South Americans could have made the same journey. Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg’s Kon-Tiki dramatises the voyage, complete with storms, sharks and the crew’s growing doubts.

It was nominated for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film and is a handsome, old-fashioned adventure that deserves a wider UK audience.

9. The Abyss (1989, 20th Century Fox)

Before Titanic and Avatar, James Cameron took audiences to the bottom of the ocean. In The Abyss, the crew of an underwater drilling platform are sent to help with the search for a lost nuclear submarine and discover something unexplained in the deep trench nearby.

Much of it was filmed underwater in huge tanks, and its water “pseudopod” was a landmark in computer-generated effects that won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects. Sadly for UK viewers, it isn’t on any streaming service here at the moment, after Disney+ removed it over a scene with a real rat that the BBFC had previously cut on animal-cruelty grounds.

10. Jurassic Park (1993, Universal)

Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park turns a tour of a theme park into an expedition into a lost world, as palaeontologists Alan Grant and Ellie Sattler (Sam Neill and Laura Dern) and mathematician Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) discover living dinosaurs on Isla Nublar.

The moment they first see the brachiosaurus, set to John Williams’ score, captures the wonder of discovery better than almost any scene in film. Then, of course, it all goes wrong. It won three Oscars, including Best Visual Effects.

Honourable Mentions

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (2006), which appeared on the original version of this list, is a fun, swashbuckling treasure hunt. Fitzcarraldo (1982), Herzog’s other Amazon epic, Everest (2015) and Arrival (2016) are also well worth your time.

The Bottom Line on the Best Exploration Movies

From Kubrick’s journey to Jupiter to Percy Fawcett’s last expedition, the best exploration films capture both the wonder of the unknown and the cost of chasing it. If you only watch one, make it 2001: A Space Odyssey; if you want a true story, start with The Lost City of Z.

Sources: JustWatch UK (streaming availability, checked 4 October 2026); JustWatch UK: Interstellar; JustWatch UK: The Abyss; Film Stories: Disney+ pulls The Abyss in the UK; Academy Awards database.

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