films about exploring space and living grand adventures on mysterious planets ever since Georges Méliès’s A Trip to the Moon. Like all grand narrative genres, sci-fi also has the versatility needed to be declined in hundreds of different subgenres that explore this side or the other of the genre’s most beloved tropes and settings.

One of these subgenres is the space Western. At first, it might seem that the two genres, both foundational pillars of cinema, have very little common ground, with one being set in space and the other generally featuring trigger-happy cowboys galloping around. A key element of Western stories, however, is the idea of the frontier—and there’s no frontier quite like space, to quote the genre-defining television series Star Trek.

10 John Carter (2012)

Directed By Andrew Stanton

John Carter is the second of only two screen adaptations of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom book series, first published all the way back at the beginning of the 20th century. Even though John Carter wasn’t exactly a critical darling or a box office success, its atmosphere perfectly captures the spirit that every sci-fi and western combo should have.

That’s because the Barsoom series is one of the very first examples of a story taking together elements that are typical of cowboy stories and putting them in remote space or far-off planets. John Carter is the story of a Confederate soldier who is mysteriously transported to the planet Barsoom—a fictional version of Mars—where he finds another civil war happening that is much similar to the one he was fighting on Earth. Few things are as Western-inspired as a lone hero facing down a massive war in a mostly desert landscape.

9 Cowboys & Aliens (2011)

Directed By Jon Favreau

Space Westerns don’t get much more literal than Cowboys & Aliens, based on the graphic novel of the same name by Scott Mitchell Rosenberg. The story is set in the second half of the 19th century in the Southwestern United States, and it begins with Jake Lonergan, a man who wakes up with no memories at all and a peculiar-looking bracelet attached to his arm. Things quickly take a futuristic turn when an alien ship attacks the town Lonergan was dragged to, where he was meant to stand trial after being recognized as an outlaw.

Cowboys & Aliens is a fun action flick that is quite unique in the wider space Western genre, with sci-fi elements landing in the middle of what would be a perfectly regular Western story rather than the more common opposite, which sees Western tropes being applied to a sci-fi story. Incredible performances by Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, and Sam Rockwell complete the picture.

8 Guardians Of The Galaxy (2014)

Directed By James Gunn

Guardians of the Galaxy was quite the leap for the Marvel Cinematic Universe when it was released in 2014. While Phase One and the first half of Phase Two had already had stories set in space, Guardians of the Galaxy was a complete tonal shift—and one that proved incredibly successful, becoming one of the highest-grossing movies of that year and also one of the most beloved of the entire Marvel canon.

Guardians of the Galaxy is a perfect example of how Western-typical tropes can be blended into a sci-fi story to make something that is still undeniably sci-fi but has that same gritty feeling that most Westerns have. In this case, it’s all about the movie’s ragtag group of anti-heroes main characters, who would do equally well—and spread chaos and destruction—on horseback in some half-forgotten frontier town as they do in space.

7 Fallout (2024-Present)

Created By Graham Wagner And Geneva Robertson-Dworet

Having your story set in some sort of wasteland—be that wasteland natural or man-made—is the perfect way to make sure your audience’s minds immediately think about space Westerns, even when the rest of said story’s elements aren’t necessarily Western-like. That’s exactly what happens in Fallout, Prime Video’s 2024 critical darling based on the video game franchise of the same name.

Most of the story of Fallout takes place in the retro-futuristic wasteland that emerged after humanity almost decimated itself in a series of resource wars. The main character Lucy leaves the safety of her Vault, the bunkers where humanity has survived, to travel through the wasteland that once was Los Angeles in search of her father—and that’s when she meets the Ghoul, played by Walton Goggins, another particularly Western-like character who makes a living as a gunslinger and bounty hunter.

6 Space Sweepers (2021)

Directed By Jo Sung-hee

Widely considered the first true South Korean space blockbuster, Space Sweepers is a textbook space western movie filled with Western-like tropes and plot points set in a not-so-distant future where ships, robots, and looming megacorporations are the norm. The story follows the titular crew of space sweepers, who are led by Captain Jang and ebb out a meager living around a space station orbiting a dying Earth.

Their lives change completely when they meet a child robot, Dorothy, who carries a weapon of mass destruction inside her and who predictably soon has the whole of the Solar System after them. Anti-heroes have always been some of the Western genre's favorite protagonists, begrudgingly working together as a group to achieve a common goal while also dealing with their personal demons that have inevitably led them to hide away at the very limit of the frontier.

5 Outland (1981)

Directed By Peter Hyams

Another favorite protagonist of Western stories everywhere is the lone lawman, alone in a hostile environment and with nothing but his wits, his weapon of choice, and his sense of justice to bring said environment back to order. That’s exactly what happens in Outland, one of the very first space westerns to be produced in the history of cinema and still a staple of the genre more than forty years after its release.

The story follows Federal Marshall Willian O’Niel, played by Sean Connery, who is sent to work at a mining facility on Jupiter’s moon Io. The situation on Io is difficult and O’Niel’s family profoundly hates their new home, but O’Niel himself soon becomes embroiled in a dark secret that people will do anything to keep hidden. It’s a good thing O’Neil has his trusty shotgun with which to take on the bad guys, just as it would happen if he were the new sheriff of a frontier town in a more classic-looking Western.

4 The Mandalorian (2019-2023)

Created By Jon Favreau

The galaxy far, far away that is the home of all Star Wars stories is no stranger to space Westerns. The Mandalorian, however, the first live-action series in the franchise, really took that label to heart and dived deep into the genre—particularly in its first season, when the story was less concerned about drawing connections to the larger Star Wars canon. The result is that The Mandalorian is a textbook example of what a classic space Western should be.

The story follows the titular character, Pedro Pascal’s Din Djarin, once an orphan raised by Mandalorians and now a faithful follower of the Way. His tranquil but lonesome routine as a bounty hunter gets disrupted when he gets assigned a peculiar job; retrieving a child named Grogu, which audiences immediately recognize as belonging to the same species as Master Yoda. Just like Master Yoda, the child soon reveals himself to be Force-sensitive, just as he and Djarin begin to form a father-son bond.

3 Cowboy Bebop (1998)

Created By Hajime Yatate

Space Western spans a wide variety of mediums and that includes anime, where nothing has ever embodied the spirit of this particular genre as much as Cowboy Bebop. Often considered one of the best anime of all time and ascended by now to a cult classic status, Cowboy Bebop incorporates elements of Western and noir movies into a space setting—all to the tune of some of the most amazing jazz music ever heard in an anime.

The story follows the bounty-hunting duo Spike Spiegel and Jet Black, who travel through space aboard their ship, the Bebop. Their crew is soon ed by Faye Valentine, an excellent con artist, and Edward Wong, a genius child hacker, as well as Ein, a Corgi who was genetically engineered to have human-like intelligence. They each have their demons to fight and their past to face, like all Western anti-heroes do, as they travel from mission to mission.

2 Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977)

Directed By George Lucas

While Star Wars is mostly classified as a space opera, the Original Trilogy—and A New Hope in particular—borrows plenty of elements from classic Western movies, whose hype was just beginning to die down when Star Wars was first released. Some of these elements are more immediately noticeable, like the first part of the movie being set on the desert planet Tatooine, which evokes a very Western-like atmosphere with its isolated farms on the frontier and its shady cantinas filled with gunslinging, trigger-happy smugglers.

Han Solo and Chewbacca are also incredibly Western-like characters, savvy in the ways of the world and experts at evading the law, apparently cynical but ultimately willing to fight for the greater good. Luke might seem less Western-inspired than other characters around him, but several classics of the genre feature a young, naive protagonist who sets out on a mission that will turn him into a wise, experienced warrior—there’s a reason the hero’s journey has shaped stories for millennia, after all.

1 Firefly (2002)

Created By Joss Whedon

Firefly is undoubtedly the best example of space Western out there, with its characters being quite literally pioneers in the frontier of space, living their lives on the sides of a wider society dominated by the two superpowers of the United States and China. The show is a cult classic of the genre, with an incredibly dedicated following even despite its abrupt cancelation which resulted in Firefly having only fourteen episodes—and a concluding movie titled Serenity.

The story follows the nine-person crew of the ship Serenity, led by Captain Mal Reynolds, as they go on a series of odd jobs that mostly consist of smuggling cargo to and from different corners of the galaxy while dealing with their own past and the mistakes that haunt them—another great example of the Western-like anti-hero protagonists developing their character beats in a more sci-fi setting.