#vast poll

Gravity (2013) It's a movie about being stuck in space, so far away from home that most people can't even really comprehend the distance, and trying to get back down to Earth despite all odds. The main character has to cross extreme distances on very slim chances while constantly under threat of running out of oxygen. At least one character does just drift away into the distance, never to be seen again, except in a hypoxia induced hallucination. It's one of those movies where it really knows how to make space feel huge and empty and terrifying.

Project Hail Mary (2026) Four words: being alone in space. But aside from being flung lightyears from home, our protagonist starts out with amnesia, adrift in every sense of the word. Another Vast motif represented is the "multitude of smaller creatures combining into something else" one: here, a swarm of microorganisms forms a strange channel in space, connecting to the Sun and more or less eating it, threatening the Earth with an ice age.

It's in space, it's cold, it's disorienting, it's full of self-doubt - it's Vast.

The Black Hole (1979) The Black Hole is a 1979 science fiction movie directed by Gary Nelson. It stars Maximilian Schell, Robert Forster, Joseph Bottoms, Yvette Mimieux, Anthony Perkins, and Ernest Borgnine. The voices of the main robot characters in the film are provided by Roddy McDowall and Slim Pickens (both uncredited). The music for the movie was composed by John Barry. Alan Dean Foster novelized the screenplay.

An Earth exploratory ship, the USS Palomino, discovers an impressively massive black hole with a missing Earth vessel, the USS Cygnus parked just outside its event horizon, somehow defying its gravity. Setting off to solve the mystery of the Cygnus are: the Palomino's Captain, Dan Holland (Forster); his First Officer, Lieutenant Charlie Pizer (Bottoms); journalist Harry Booth (Borgnine); ESP-sensitive scientist Dr. Kate McCrae (Mimieux); Dr. Alex Durant (Perkins), the expedition's civilian leader; and the robot V.I.N.CENT ("Vital Information Necessary CENTralized"). The Palomino attempts a dangerous fly-by of the ship, which is dark and apparently derelict. As they come within close range of it, the buffeting they experience due to the black hole's gravity suddenly ceases. They complete their fly-by with tantalizing signs that someone may still be aboard, but do not realize the gravity-free zone is artificial and limited; slipping outside it, they are almost drawn into the black hole.

As the crew repairs the Palomino, they discover that the Cygnus is not only functional but inhabited by a crew of faceless robots and their human commander, Dr. Hans Reinhardt, who intends to take the Cygnus into the black hole to see what awaits him on the other side. Trivial matters like what happened to the original human crew or that Earth tried to recall his mission years ago do not concern him.

Project Hail Mary (2026) Four words: being alone in space. But aside from being flung lightyears from home, our protagonist starts out with amnesia, adrift in every sense of the word. Another Vast motif represented is the "multitude of smaller creatures combining into something else" one: here, a swarm of microorganisms forms a strange channel in space, connecting to the Sun and more or less eating it, threatening the Earth with an ice age.

It's in space, it's cold, it's disorienting, it's full of self-doubt - it's Vast.

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) 2001: A Space Odyssey is a 1968 Science Fiction film, written and directed by Stanley Kubrick, with help from Arthur C. Clarke (who also wrote a novel version in tandem with the film's production), and inspired in part by Clarke's 1951 short story "The Sentinel". It is regarded as one of the most influential sci-fi films ever made.

The film opens tracking long-term human evolution as it is influenced by unseen aliens. The unearthing of one of their artifacts on the moon leads to an ill-fated expedition being dispatched to Jupiter, which culminates in a famously incomprehensible climax.

It's been said that no other scene in cinema history captures the existential horror of realizing just how small and insignificant humanity is in the grand scheme of the universe as thoroughly as Dave's journey across space — and possibly also across time. The images of bizarre cosmological phenomena and the strange alien landscapes full of unusual colors are very Vast (and trippy).

Patema Inverted (2013) Patema Inverted (サカサマのパテマ, Sakasama no Patema) is a 2013 science fiction anime film written and directed by Yasuhiro Yoshiura. In 2067, scientists attempt an experiment intended to harness energy from Earth's gravity. However, the experiment fails and gravity reverses, causing nearly everyone and everything to start flying away from Earth.

Years later, Patema is a plucky young girl from an underground civilization boasting an incredible network of tunnels. Inspired by a friend that mysteriously went missing, she is often reprimanded due to her constant excursions of these tunnels due to her royal status. After she enters what is known as the "forbidden zone," she accidentally falls into a giant bottomless pit after being startled by a strange creature.

Finding herself on the surface, a world literally turned upside down, she begins falling towards the sky only to be saved by Age, a discontented student of the totalitarian nation known as Aiga. The people of Aiga are taught to believe that "Inverts," like Patema, are sinners that will be "swallowed by the sky," but Age has resisted this propaganda and decides to protect his new friend.

If Patema is not careful, she can fall off of the planet and into the stratosphere.

The full list of submissions for the Vast Films bracket. Bold titles are ones which were accepted to appear in the bracket.

1950s

Vertigo 1958

1960s

2001: A Space Odyssey 1968

1970s

Fantastic Planet 1973 Black Hole 1979

1980s

Enlightenment (Doctor Who) 1983 The Abyss 1989

1990s

Event Horizon 1997

2000s

Out of Gas (Firefly) 2002 Below 2002 Open Water 2003 The Forgotten 2004 The Wild Blue Yonder 2005 Sunshine 2007 Cloverfield 2008 Pandorum 2009

2010s

Frozen 2010 Melancholia 2011 Gravity 2013 Patema Inverted 2013 All Is Lost 2013 Sortie En Mer 2013 Interstellar 2014 47 Meters Down 2017 The Meg 2018 Aniara 2018 Ad Astra 2019 Skywatching (Local 58) 2019 Vast of Night 2019

2020s

Vast Music Tournament Round 1

Infinitesimal vs. Old Ocean

Your Life Doesn’t Count vs. Alone with my Thoughts

Falling Up vs. This World of Water

How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful vs. Vows of the Sea

Space Oddity vs. Float On

Perfect Water vs. The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

Europa VII vs. Space is Deep

Blood on the Risers vs. Mariana Trench

I've Got Some Falling to Do vs. Rocky Mountain High

Doctor Who theme vs. Black Eyes

Feels vs. Drowning In An Empty Sea

In All My Dreams I Drown vs. Waiting For the Drop

Dream Sweet in Sea Major vs. Antigravity

Brand New Kind of Blue vs. Blue Lips

Contact vs. Vide Noir

Vertigo (1958) From Wikipedia: Vertigo is a 1958 American psychological thriller film produced and directed by Alfred Hitchcock. The story was based on the 1954 novel D'entre les morts (From Among the Dead) by Boileau-Narcejac, with a screenplay by Alec Coppel and Samuel A. Taylor. The film stars James Stewart as a former San Francisco police detective who has retired after an incident in the line of duty caused him to develop an extreme fear of heights, accompanied by vertigo. He is hired as a private investigator to report on the strange behavior of an acquaintance's wife (Kim Novak).

…It was the first film to use the dolly zoom, an in-camera effect that distorts perspective to create disorientation, to convey Scottie's acrophobia; the technique is often referred to as "the Vertigo effect" in reference to its use in the film.

Fantastic Planet (1973) Fantastic Planet (French: La Planète Sauvage; Czech: Divoká planeta, lit. 'The Wild Planet') is a 1973 surrealist adult animated science fiction art film directed by René Laloux. Its allegorical story, about humans living on a strange planet dominated by giant humanoid aliens who consider them animals, is based on the 1957 novel Oms en série by the French writer Stefan Wul. The film was written by Laloux and Roland Topor; the latter also made the production design. It was a co-production between companies from France and Czechoslovakia and was animated at Jiří Trnka Studio in Prague.

The Vast is not just vertigo, space and deep water; to quote the wiki, it is also "huge, unfathomable creatures that are too distant and immense for humans to properly comprehend", and our own insignificance in the universe. I can't think of a better example for that aspect of the Vast than a story in which humanity is so small compared to the rest of the planet, both the dominant sapient alien race and the fauna around us treats us like we do ants.

Aniara (2018) The surface level horror comes from being lost in space with no way home, but there are themes of the meaninglessness of life and mankind’s insignificance in the face of an infinite and uncaring universe which are definitely themes of The Vast.

The plot concerns a three-week trip on a luxury space liner from a dying Earth to terraform Mars, but which is knocked off course, sending the ship drifting away into the unknown. The captain assures the passengers that they can resume the journey by slingshotting around a large object, but as the weeks turn into months and years, discontentment grows and people become desperate for an escape, including developing cults or turning to suicide as the only way out.

From Wikipedia: "In year 24 of the voyage, the Mimarobe and a few remaining survivors sit cross-legged in a dimly lit room. An unidentified woman in the group rhapsodizes about the divine power of sunlight on Earth, as the ship descends into a final darkness.

In year 5,981,407 of its voyage, the Aniara – derelict, frozen, and devoid of human life – reaches the Lyra constellation and drifts right past a planet as verdant and welcoming as Earth once was."

Vertigo (1958) From Wikipedia: Vertigo is a 1958 American psychological thriller film produced and directed by Alfred Hitchcock. The story was based on the 1954 novel D'entre les morts (From Among the Dead) by Boileau-Narcejac, with a screenplay by Alec Coppel and Samuel A. Taylor. The film stars James Stewart as a former San Francisco police detective who has retired after an incident in the line of duty caused him to develop an extreme fear of heights, accompanied by vertigo. He is hired as a private investigator to report on the strange behavior of an acquaintance's wife (Kim Novak).

…It was the first film to use the dolly zoom, an in-camera effect that distorts perspective to create disorientation, to convey Scottie's acrophobia; the technique is often referred to as "the Vertigo effect" in reference to its use in the film.