Galaxy Quest

Galaxy Quest landed on Christmas Day 1999 with a premise built for the rerun generation: the cast of a cheesy, long-canceled sci-fi series scrapes by on convention appearances until the Thermians — earnest aliens who intercepted the broadcasts and believed them to be "historical documents" — show up to recruit their heroes for a real interstellar war. Tim Allen plays the Shatner-shaped ego in the captain's chair, Sigourney Weaver the actress whose entire role was repeating the computer, Sam Rockwell the one-episode redshirt convinced he'll die first, Tony Shalhoub the unflappable engineer — and Alan Rickman, magnificently miserable as the Shakespearean actor entombed in alien headgear, forced to repeat "by Grabthar's hammer" for autograph lines.

It very nearly wasn't this movie. Harold Ramis was hired to direct in late 1998 and walked months later over casting (his picks passed, DreamWorks pushed Tim Allen, and Kevin Kline and Steve Martin were among the names considered along the way); Dean Parisot took over and calibrated the film's miracle tone — a parody with no contempt in it, from David Howard and Robert Gordon's script. The movie loves the actors, loves the fans (a kid's obsessive blueprint knowledge saves the ship), and understands exactly why people memorize deck plans of ships that don't exist. It did solid rather than spectacular business — about $90 million worldwide on a $45 million budget — and won the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation plus a Nebula for its script.

Then the legacy outgrew the box office. Galaxy Quest became the comfort-rewatch of the DVD era and an honorary member of the franchise it spoofed: at a 2013 Star Trek convention, fans famously ranked it the seventh-best Star Trek film — ahead of several actual ones. A sequel circled for years and never escaped development, a hope that dimmed for good with Alan Rickman's death in 2016. What remains is close to the platonic 90s rewatchable: never give up, never surrender.