Movies like Apollo 11: First Steps on the Moon (1996)
The best movies like Apollo 11: First Steps on the Moon (1996) are First Man (2018), Apollo 13 (1995) and Destination Moon (1950). If Apollo 11: First Steps on the Moon hooked you with its drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedThirteen Lives (2022)7.8/10 from 1,625 votes
- NewestBaby Udon (2026)Released 2026
First Man (2018)
A look at the life of the astronaut, Neil Armstrong, and the legendary space mission that led him to become the first man to walk on the Moon on July 20, 1969.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisApollo 13 (1995)
The true story of technical troubles that scuttle the Apollo 13 lunar mission in 1970, risking the lives of astronaut Jim Lovell and his crew, with the failed journey turning into a thrilling saga of heroism. Drifting more than 200,000 miles from Earth, the astronauts work furiously with the ground crew to avert tragedy.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisDestination Moon (1950)
A team composed of an aerospace scientist, an ex-Air Force general, and an industrialist conceives an ambitious plan to land Americans on the moon. From their base in the Mojave Desert, they construct and successfully launch a spacecraft named "Luna" that contains a cargo of four astronauts. But a critical miscalculation of needed power to escape the moon's gravitational pull may put the astronauts' lives in danger.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisMoon (2009)
With only three weeks left in his three-year contract, Sam Bell is eager to return to Earth. Stationed alone at a Moon-based facility with his computer assistant GERTY, an unexpected accident sets off a series of unsettling events that shake his isolation.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisApollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood (2022)
A man narrates stories of his life as a 10-year-old boy in 1969 Houston, weaving tales of nostalgia with a fantastical account of a journey to the moon.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisDeep Impact (1998)
A seven-mile-wide space rock is hurtling toward Earth, threatening to obliterate the planet. Now, it's up to the president of the United States to save the world. He appoints a tough-as-nails veteran astronaut to lead a joint American-Russian crew into space to destroy the comet before impact. Meanwhile, an enterprising reporter uses her smarts to uncover the scoop of the century.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisCave Rescue (2019)
When a youth football team of 12 boys, aged 11-16, and their 25-year-old coach is trapped deep inside a cave in Northern Thailand, thousands of volunteers and soldiers from around the world unite in a race against time to find them.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisRush (2013)
In the 1970s, a rivalry propels race car drivers Niki Lauda and James Hunt to fame and glory — until a horrible accident threatens to end it all.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisLast Breath (2025)
Seasoned deep-sea divers battle the raging elements to rescue their crewmate trapped hundreds of feet below the ocean's surface.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisDeepwater Horizon (2016)
A story set on the offshore drilling rig Deepwater Horizon, which exploded during April 2010 and created the worst oil spill in U.S. history.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisWorth (2021)
Kenneth Feinberg, a powerful D.C. lawyer appointed Special Master of the 9/11 Fund, fights off the cynicism, bureaucracy, and politics associated with administering government funds and, in doing so, discovers what life is worth.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisOn a Wing and a Prayer (2023)
After their pilot dies unexpectedly mid-flight, passenger Doug White must safely land a plane and save his entire family from insurmountable danger.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisUnited 93 (2006)
A real-time account of the events on United Flight 93, one of the planes hijacked on 9/11 that crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania when passengers foiled the terrorist plot.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Martian (2015)
During a manned mission to Mars, Astronaut Mark Watney is presumed dead after a fierce storm and left behind by his crew. But Watney has survived and finds himself stranded and alone on the hostile planet. With only meager supplies, he must draw upon his ingenuity, wit and spirit to subsist and find a way to signal to Earth that he is alive.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Right Stuff (1983)
At the dawn of the Space Race, seven test pilots set out to become the first American astronauts to enter space. However, the road to making history brings momentous challenges.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMeltdown: Days of Destruction (2006)
Despite scientist Nathan's warnings, his boss continues an experiment meant as publicity for his satellite firm: exploding an asteroid. Instead it splits, and the major piece, the size of Iceland, changes course to earth. It is deflected but so close that it shift our course closer to the sun, causing rapid extreme heating, hopefully only mid-term. Nathan warns his sister, TV journalist Carly, and she her lover, police detective Tom. He brings his unruly daughter Kim, her ex-con lover C.J. and her mother, nurse Bonnie, when Nathan offers a flight to a friend's Arctic weather station. Tom takes charge of a dangerous trip to the airport, as everywhere on earth things catch fire and people fight for water, transport and sheer looting.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisStowaway (2021)
A three-person crew on a mission to Mars faces an impossible choice when an unplanned passenger jeopardizes the lives of everyone on board.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisA Million Miles Away (2023)
The life of engineer and former NASA astronaut José M. Hernández, the first migrant farmworker to go to space.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisHeaven Is for Real (2014)
After their young son, Colton, undergoes emergency surgery, small-town parents Todd and Sonja Burpo are overjoyed at the child's miraculous recovery. However, the Burpos are unprepared for what happens next... Colton says that during his surgery he went to heaven and back, and tells his parents things that he couldn't possibly know. Can Todd find the courage and conviction to share his son's extraordinary, life-changing experience with the world?
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThirteen Lives (2022)
Based on the true nail-biting mission that captivated the world. Twelve boys and the coach of a Thai soccer team explore the Tham Luang cave when an unexpected rainstorm traps them in a chamber inside the mountain. Entombed behind a maze of flooded cave tunnels, they face impossible odds. A team of world-class divers navigate through miles of dangerous cave networks to discover that finding the boys is only the beginning.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Girl with the Needle (2024)
Struggling to survive in post-WWI Copenhagen, a newly unemployed and pregnant young woman is taken in by a charismatic elder to help run an underground adoption agency. The two form an unexpected bond, until a sudden discovery changes everything.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBaby Udon (2026)
Fanny Kondoh, a young Indonesian woman, falls in love with Hajime Kondoh, a Japanese man who comes to Indonesia for work. After getting married, Fanny and Hajime begin building a life together, embracing both its joys and challenges. As they struggle to fulfill their dream of having a child, they are faced with one heartbreaking trial after another, testing the strength of their love, especially when Hajime is diagnosed with cancer.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Girl, Interrupted (1999)
Set in the changing world of the late 1960s, Susanna Kaysen's prescribed "short rest" from a psychiatrist she had met only once becomes a strange, unknown journey into Alice's Wonderland, where she struggles with the thin line between normal and crazy. Susanna soon realizes how hard it is to get out once she has been committed, and she ultimately has to choose between the world of people who belong inside or the difficult world of reality outside.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBlow (2001)
The story of how George Jung, together with the Medellín Cartel led by Pablo Escobar, established the billion-dollar cocaine empire in the United States in the 1970s.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBreach (2007)
Eric O'Neill, a low-level surveillance expert with the FBI, believes he is accomplishing his dream of becoming a full-fledged agent, with his unexpected promotion and assignment to clerk for Robert Hanssen, a renowned senior agent with 25 years in the FBI. However, he soon learns the reason for his promotion is to gain Hanssen's trust and find proof that he is a traitor to the country. Determined to draw the suspected double-agent out of deep cover, O'Neill finds himself in a lethal game of spy vs. spy, where nothing is as it seems.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBloody Sunday (2002)
The dramatised story of the Irish civil rights protest march on January 30 1972 which ended in a massacre by British troops.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisChangeling (2008)
Los Angeles, 1928. When single mother Christine Collins leaves for work, her son vanishes without a trace. Five months later, the police reunite mother and son. But when Christine suspects that the boy returned to her isn't her child, her quest for truth exposes a world of corruption.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisFrances (1982)
The true story of Frances Farmer's meteoric rise to fame in Hollywood and the tragic turn her life took when she was blacklisted.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisCrimes of Diogo Alves (1909)
Diogo Alves is a Spanish fugitive that comes to the Portuguese capital terrorizing the inhabitants by his cut-throat methods against rich and poor people alike. He attacks the women launderers on the Lisbon Aqueduct and throws the bodies over the high wall, and assaults homes with his large band of criminals. Eventually arrested, he, his female companion and his henchmen are condemned to death by the court.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Badlands (1973)
An impressionable teenage girl from a dead-end town and her older greaser boyfriend embark on a killing spree in the South Dakota badlands.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like this
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Apollo 11: First Steps on the Moon?
The closest matches to Apollo 11: First Steps on the Moon are First Man (2018), Apollo 13 (1995) and Destination Moon (1950). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Apollo 11: First Steps on the Moon?
Start with First Man (2018), the closest match to Apollo 11: First Steps on the Moon.
What is the highest-rated movie like Apollo 11: First Steps on the Moon?
Thirteen Lives (2022), rated 7.8/10 by 1,625 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Apollo 11: First Steps on the Moon?
Baby Udon (2026) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like Apollo 11: First Steps on the Moon?
Yes: First Man (2018), Apollo 13 (1995) and Destination Moon (1950).
How are movies similar to Apollo 11: First Steps on the Moon chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Apollo 11: First Steps on the Moon, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.