The space movies that went where no man had been before (or since).

Valerian, the latest ultra-ambitious science-fiction film from director Mr Luc Besson, will be released at the beginning of August (21 July in the US), exactly two decades on from the mad-cap flying taxis and even more mad-cap Mr Jean Paul Gaultier costumes of The Fifth Element. It looks set to be a similarly over-the-top extravaganza, replacing the intensity of Ms Milla Jovovich with that of Ms Cara Delevingne and the striking blue-orange palette of the earlier film with a truly psychedelic selection of visuals.

When visionary filmmakers try their hand at the epic sci-fi branch of cinema, it can often go awry. Quite simply, the hugely complex undertaking of making a film combined with real-world technological limitations rarely matches up to the ideas in their creator’s mind. That’s not always the case, however, as the selection of films below show. Each one is a sci-fi epic in every sense of the word, born from prestige directors pushing their imaginations – and audience’s – into brave new worlds.

This trailblazing silent film from Mr Fritz Lang set the bar when it came to pushing the visual and conceptual possibilities of the silver screen. Mr Lang conjures up a seemingly utopian future world that harbours a sinister secret behind its gleaming facades. Drawing on the Bauhaus, Cubist and futurist movements of its time, Metropolis is still a remarkable viewing experience today, especially when you factor in the numerous rereleases, rescored by similarly pioneering figures from the music world. Our favourite audio-visual combination? While we’ll always have a soft spot for Mr Giorgio Moroder’s high-camp disco interpretation, we’re going to go with the pummelling-techno-meets-crystalline-ambience of Mr Jeff Mills – the perfect accompaniment to Mr Lang’s unsettling yet glistening imagery.

Sir Ridley Scott’s Alien was the ultimate haunted-house film, a claustrophobic, dread-filled experience that was encapsulated perfectly in Mr HR Giger’s monster. As the character Ash (Mr Ian Holm) states at one point, the titular extraterrestrial is a “perfect organism, it’s structural perfection is matched only by its hostility”. And yet, within the tight confines of that film, Mr James Cameron found a way of exploding the Alien universe into something bigger, brasher and more bombastic. On paper, Aliens, his gunfire-heavy, clichéd US marines-featuring sequel should never have worked, but somehow it does. The perfect horror movie was transformed into the perfect action movie, an expanded mythology that prospective film franchises still try to emulate today, with little success (we’re looking at you, The Matrix Reloaded).

Thanks to the unexpectedly successful re-emergence of Twin Peaks, the eulogising of Mr David Lynch has never been more prevalent. Responsible for a whole host of equally weird, arguably even more wonderful films set beyond his television show’s small town on the Canadian border, things hit a slightly awkward note with his 1984 sci-fi epic, Dune. You see, Dune is one of those films that is routinely held up as a true car crash of cinema history, a flailing, nonsensical adaptation of Mr Frank Herbert’s “un-adaptable” novel, complete with a score by pop-rock band Toto and a cast of Shakespearean actors looking as confused as those of us watching. Its shortcomings are compounded further by the what-could-have-been of Mr Alejandro Jodorowsky’s aborted, earlier attempt at an adaptation (which we wrote about here). Yet despite all this (or, perhaps, partly because of it), the film has attracted a cult following.

Nausicaä is a Japanese anime film that follows the quest of its titular character through a post-apocalyptic world as she attempts to prevent an evil kingdom from unleashing an ancient weapon. Released in the same year as Mr Lynch’s Dune, it may not have made quite the same instant splash (in the West at least) that its big-budget counterpart did, but it heralded the beginning of one of world cinema’s most wondrous legacies. The success of Nausicaä inspired its director, Mr Hayao Miyazaki (who had adapted the film from his manga series of the same name) to open the iconic Studio Ghibli, which was responsible for Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke. With its anti-war, eco-friendly messages and a strong young female protagonist, Nausicaä showed that animated, family-focused movies didn’t have to follow the Disney princess template quite so conservatively.

Sandwiched between the critical successes of Requiem For A Dream and The Wrestler in Mr Darren Aronofsky’s filmography stands this utterly divisive anomaly. It is a singular take on the sci-fi epic, as one might expect from such a singular director. It spans thousands of years and follows a romance between Tomás/Tom/Tommy (Mr Hugh Jackman) and Isabel/Izzy (Ms Rachel Weisz) that transcends space, time and just about everything else imaginable. It’s a device that explores Mayan mythologies and grandiose futurism through striking, largely CGI-free cinematography. The one aspect of the film that was universally praised was its score, which features Mogwai, from long-time Mr Aronofsky collaborator, Mr Clint Mansell.