Ever since George Melies shot a rocket into the eye of the Man in the Moon or when Protazanov entertained the possibility of a proletarian uprising on Mars, and Fritz Lang spellbindingly dramatized the space travel, cinema has started gazing into the outer space and speculating about the mysteries lying beyond the reaches of Earth. Subsequently, the space race between the 1950 and 1970s encouraged the craving for space-set sci-fi narratives. Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) might not be the greatest blockbuster hit like the later-era space operas like Star Wars and Star Trek franchise. Yet, it was one of the earlier films to offer a deeply perceptive look at humans’ existence in the universe.

The more we learned about the cosmos, our feelings of wonderment were mixed with feelings of dread. The question of what’s out there continues to haunt these creators. But the problem with most...