Which superhero film has the best space aesthetic?

[Tacit Ronin]

Which film do you think has the best space/alien designs and overall aesthetic?

GOTG is the easy answer here. But I loved Snyder's Giger-esque Krypton future tech.

 

[Keehar]

Guardians. That movie made me want to live in space.

 

[KRYPTON INC.]

Guardians was I suppose no less derivative than Snyder's aesthetic but... Sorry, everything in Guardians, and I do mean EVERYTHING in Guardians, felt flat and "been there, done that" to me. Nothing outside of the idea for their version of "Knowhere" felt well thought out or well designed particularly. Nothing feels fleshed out, neither is anything "mysterious". Where as in MOS I felt that what was accomplished was a great modern version of the sort of aesthetic of the classic 1950's/early 1960's whiz-bang "space age" styled sci fi like WAR OF THE WORLDS, THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL or FORBIDDEN PLANET, films that started life as B-Movies, conceptually, but in execution and impact, are definitely A-List. Guardians was frankly, BLAKE'S SEVEN, FARSCAPE, STAR WARS and a few other rag tag band of misfits in space, movie, only with modern SFX and a writing for the characters that went out of it's way to be ingratiating.

What was in GL, looks wise (yeah, I know I am in the minority here) wasn't bad to me... But there is so little of it in the film that it has almost no impact on the viewer.

In the Thor films it's more in the wheelhouse of the Marvel "cosmic" stories which has sci fi, but also a touch of fantasy/sword and sorcery only... in space. It's always been a funky mix and one, I am not sure the Thor films have pulled off too successfully, though in Thor1 they do a better job of it than in Thor2, which was just a mess.

 

[Spider-Aziz]

Guardians space aesthetics was mostly Earth aesthetics.
I voted for Green Lantern, it showed different looking species (I don't mean the ones you can ride their back for travel), and different architectural design.

 

[KevanG]

GL was pretty good about it and made it look neat.

GotG made it look like we were backwoods hicks a bajillion miles in the middle of nowhere who hadn't figure out how to move out of our backyard. It still looked pretty awesome. Thor:TDW was the same idea.

MoS had a good aesthetic for the whole sterile super science thing Kryton went for.

I'd have to flip a coin over GL and GotG.

 

[Mjölnir]

I voted for TDW since the combination of a Star Wars and a LotR feel was great and felt like a fresh take on it. Mixing fantasy in sci fi allows greater room for ideas thanks to the difference in genre conventions.

GotG was very well made space opera. It wasn't trying to do anything really new but what it did use was executed very well. Easily among the top in it's movie genre.

GL was a bit below that but if you take away that I don't think the effects in that movie looked good the design had some interesting parts. I really hope they dare to use Hal Jordan and other elements in the reboot and don't feel like they have to distance themselves as much as possible.

I did not care for Krypton's design in MoS. Depressing and sterile (looks like everyone should have been sure Krypton was doomed) and it had the old 'advanced technology that seems to work worse' thing going. I admit that I might be negatively influenced about the aesthetic from my opinion that Krypton was one big logical error though.

 

[The Joker]

GOTG. Some really gorgeous space visuals there. The best I've seen in a movie in a long time. That exterior shot of Knowhere was my favorite.

 

[CyclopsWasRight]

Hmm. Very unique question.

I like all of the looks of them but the architecture and cinematography of THOR and Man of Steel were better than the others imo.

Guardians as great as it was was mostly on ships and Kyln and Xandar wasn't visually memorable.

Guardians wins for space ships and GL for alien races

 

[Flint Marko]

Guardians, no question.

I did not care for Krypton's design in MoS. Depressing and sterile (looks like everyone should have been sure Krypton was doomed) and it had the old 'advanced technology that seems to work worse' thing going. I admit that I might be negatively influenced about the aesthetic from my opinion that Krypton was one big logical error though.

I agree, Krypton was the ugliest part of an otherwise beautiful looking movie.

 

[R_Hythlodeus]

GotG by far.
Asgard, especially in TDW, was a beautiful mixture of art deco, viking culture and Jack Kirby but the other realms shown in the Thor movies didn't impress me that much.
Krypton in MoS was depressing and sterile.
GL was just a bunch of exploding colours everywhere

 

[Flint Marko]

GotG by far.
Asgard, especially in TDW, was a beautiful mixture of art deco, viking culture and Jack Kirby but the other realms shown in the Thor movies didn't impress me that much.
Krypton in MoS was depressing and sterile.
GL was just a bunch of exploding colours everywhere

Agreed on all points, I think TDW missed a great opportunity to give some interesting texture and depth to the other nine realms. I like the look of Jottunheim but that's about it.
And yeah, describing GL as "exploding colors" is a pretty apt description. It looked like it would make an interesting video game at best.

 

[First Avenger]

GOTG
TDW
MOS
Thor
GL

 

[DA_Champion]

Honestly I don't think any of them has a great space aesthetic.

Interstellar, Gravity, Prometheus, Oblivion, District 9, Avatar, Empire Strikes Back, et cetera each completely demolish Guardians of the Galaxy, Thor, MoS, et cetera.

Green Lantern is probably the worst. It's ugly. The other ones are mostly derivative.

I did like the ice planet in the first Thor, but in and of itself that's not enough.

I did not care for Krypton's design in MoS. Depressing and sterile

That's probably exactly what they were going for. Krypton was a dead world, it was an evolutionary dead end, perfect in all of the wrong ways.
They could have gone further, actually.

 

[Rowsdower!]

Interesting. I'd definitely give it to Guardians though, since it was the only one of these movies that was set almost entirely in space or on other planets and it all looked fantastic. MOS had great stuff too, but it was primarily an earthbound movie, other than the intro. Krypton and Zod's ship were f***ing awesome though. Thor: TDW had some cool ship designs, but so much of it just felt so blah to me. The "dark world" (not going to bother to look up the name) reminded me of Centralia, Pennsylvania. And GL... I actually though Oa looked pretty good but overall, it didn't have enough alien/space stuff for it to work as well as they wanted it to.

 

[Victarion]

Man of Steel: I loved the end-world look of Krypton

The Dark World: Science fantasy is one of my favorite genres. I was disappointed that such a great aesthetic was wasted on a boring, flat and emotionally cold movie.

Guardians: I liked the gritty, grungy feel of the prison and Knowhere. The planet with the Nova place was a bit too generic looking for my liking.

 

[Quasimod0]

The only thing I didn't like about Guardians was the alien designs. Too many aliens who just looked like painted humans. Star Wars still has the best alien race designs, with Mass Effect close behind.

 

[Doc Ock]

GOTG was the best looking aesthetic I have seen in a while. Asgard looks fantastic in the Thor films but is more fantasy than spacey. The Krypton design/opening was one of the few positives about Man of Steel, but I suppose I had mixed feelings about the designs anyways.

 

[Snow Queen]

I can't say any of them were particularly good. I'd go with Man of Steel though, of the options.

 

[Soapy]

Man of Steel.

Krypton was "alien" in a way that most alien worlds in media aren't.

 

[Greens]

Honestly I don't think any of them has a great space aesthetic.

Interstellar, Gravity, Prometheus, Oblivion, District 9, Avatar, Empire Strikes Back, et cetera each completely demolish Guardians of the Galaxy, Thor, MoS, et cetera.

I agree. I don't think any CBM particularly stands out in the space department. If I had to choose it would be MoS.

 

[TheComicbookKid]

GOTG looked like a less imaginative version of Farscape so no.

MOS I guess wins by default just for looking lived in though none of them really built a well-developed space aesthetic.

 

[The_Manhunter]

I surprised myself and went with Green Lantern. While it's not even my favorite film of the bunch, the space stuff is something I thought the designers did very well.

 

[Doctor Octopus]

Guardians of the Galaxy.

 

[Batmannerism]

Big ups to the OP, good thread idea !

Anyway, I found it hard to choose one of the above.

Thor TDW: while I find the big pipe organ palace a bit silly, the rest of Asgard started to take on a bit more shape, but the best and most aesthetically interesting aspects of the film were the Dark Elves and their technology.
Perhaps not completely original, but I liked the look of Malekith and co, their tech just looked evil.

Man of Steel: I loved the organic tech look. I think I would probably rate this one above TDW, just for the reason that Krypton was a refreshing change from previous films - if you go frame by frame through the Krypton flight sequences you see the incredible level of detail they put into Krypton, which is not surprising (I know a guy who works at Weta, and they did that part of the film, and they are nothing if not meticulous).

Guardians of the Galaxy: Has to win, as they covered several different culture-specific aesthetics (the bright-shiny look of Xandar, the strange segmented appearance of Kree tech, the cowboy feel of the Ravagers and of course the junkyard look of Nowhere ). All in all, it was nicely done - and I believe a reasonable rival to Lucas' work on Star Wars - for some reason the locations in the prequel films never looked believable to me, whereas GOTG actually looked much more tangible (maybe they invested more in sets ?)

Regardless, I enjoyed GOTG for its action and humour and those were nicely set against strong background visuals. The image of the Milano entering the giant floating celestial skull to the tune of David Bowie, is not one I'm likely to forget anytime soon. It really did create a sense of wonder -something that's been sorely lacking in Sci-fi movies for a long time.

Yeah, Interstellar was great, but the tone of the film was such a downer - although I did like Nolan's representation of 4th dimensional space !

So GOTG wins, for me, in the end. GL , well I try to forget as much as possible about that film, but I will say that the 2013 animated series did a better job of creating an overall aesthetic and interesting alien environments.

 

[Jochimus]

For me, GOTG, easily. It was all over the place. Neither of the Thor movies did anything for me on that front, and nothing I've seen of GL catches my fancy either.

As for MOS, while I understand and admire what the designers of all the Krypton stuff were going for, the end result still felt off to me.
(Of course, to be brutally honest, I've reached the point where I kind of don't care for pretty much every live-action version of Krypton that's ever been realized...and at this point I personally would be too inclined to envision it as a throwback to the Silver Age anyway if it were my call).