10 Best Desert Movies, Ranked

The desert: a landscape so quiet and desolate that it almost seems like a blank canvas on which the filmmaker can project whatever they wish. It has been used in some of the greatest movies of all time and can adeptly highlight the human condition when placed in extreme situations: the meaningless life of a soldier dutifully waiting to fight in the Gulf War (Jarhead) or maybe oppressive child labor (Holes). Then there’s the action-packed post-apocalypse of Furiosa, whose recent release makes it a good time to reflect on films that truly embrace the desert.

It’s mostly known for road movies and Westerns, but the desert can encompass any genre. Dune is self-explanatory, but Star Wars isn’t, despite Tatooine being one of the most iconic planets in movie history. To qualify, the majority of the narrative must feel like we’re in the desert. The best desert movies also put the space to wonderful thematic and dramatic use, demonstrating how this barren landscape is vastly more fruitful than its soil. These are the best desert movies in cinematic history, triumphs of the medium that, unlike their setting, are as refreshing today as they were when they premiered.

10 ‘Downwind’ (2023)

Directed by Douglas Brian Miller and Mark Shapiro

An extremely recent and overlooked documentary, Downwind is sort of an inverse-Oppenheimer. Whereas this year’s Best Picture winner conveyed the emotional toll the atomic bomb had on its creator, Downwind details the horrible physical toll it’s had on the desert land, the Americans who live nearby, and potentially all over the country. In one scene, a man points out how a river carries radiation from an Arizona nuclear testing sight all the way into Death Valley.

Using interviews (which largely range from Las Vegas to St. George, Utah), declassified U.S. government documents, old newspaper stories, and more, Downwind illustrates the government’s attempts to keep the horrific dangers of its wildly excessive atomic testing quiet. What words to describe learning that Southern Utah’s smaller population was considered expendable in comparison to Southern California’s? Or that, out of 220 people who worked on the set for The Conqueror, about 110 died of cancer (including John Wayne)? This documentary is hard to swallow, but it aptly tells a vital part of this nation’s history.

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9 ‘127 Hours’ (2010)

Directed by Danny Boyle

Starring James Franco and practically no one else, 127 Hours tells the true story of a man whose arm got caught between a boulder and a rock wall during a hike and had to take extreme measures to free himself. Based on Aron Ralston‘s bestselling autobiography, Between a Rock and a Hard Place, this movie mostly features an immobile protagonist who tries to escape from what appears to be an inevitable death by dehydration. Since he’s hidden within a chasm in the middle of Utah’s Canyonlands National Park, the chances of being found are slim to none.

Chipping at the rock and trying to pull himself out doesn’t work, which is harrowing enough, but 127 Hours doesn’t even include Ralston’s other attempts to free himself. The hiker’s growing desperation is captured thanks to Franco’s Oscar-nominated performance and Danny Boyle‘s direction. The viewer never grows tired of the narrative’s extremely limited setting, as one constantly feels like the clock is ticking. Above all, 127 Hours conveys the dangers of the desert and the resilience of the individual.

8 ‘Blazing Saddles’ (1974)

Directed by Mel Brooks

Cows are free to roam through the courthouses and saloons of Rockridge in Mel Brooks‘s wacky Western parody, Blazing Saddles. Written by Brooks, Andrew Bergman, acclaimed comedian Richard Pryor, Norman Steinberg, and Alan Uger, it’s considered one of the most rewatchable comedies of the 70s. Gene Wilder plays a gunslinger called Jim, whose alcoholism is so intense that food makes him sick. He used to be the Wako Kid, and he hasn’t lost his touch.

Slim Pickens and Harvey Korman are perfectly cast. The bubble bath scene where Attorney General Lamarr can’t find his froggy is one of the silliest and most delightful in the movie. Cleavon Little plays the new and first black sheriff in the dry, racist town of Rockridge, where he struggles to gain acceptance. Blazing Saddles is one of Mel Brooks’s best movies, as his eccentric vaudeville style and penchant for breaking the fourth wall are on full display here. Although some parts of the film don’t hold up today, enough of it does to still be a classic.

7 ‘The Hurt Locker’ (2008)

Directed by Kathyrn Bigelow

The Hurt Locker is technically a war movie that centers on Sergeant William James (Jeremy Renner), who leads a U.S. bomb disposal team in Baghdad during the Iraq War. But it’s more about addiction than anything and not the kind where one inhales or injects something. Instead, the film opens with the following quote: “War is a drug.” This applies specifically to Sergeant James, who gets such a thrill out of defusing bombs in the sand that he would rather keep doing that than go home.

Though it had an unconventional release, it was the first movie directed by a woman (Kathyrn Bigelow) to win the Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director. However, The Hurt Locker was also heavily criticized by Iraq veterans, mostly for unrealistic depictions of what it was like to be in a bomb disposal unit. War films often exaggerate for dramatic effect, but The Hurt Locker at least achieves a level of suspense that most others don’t.

6 ‘The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly’ (1967)

Directed by Sergio Leone

It’s called The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, but the characters come across more like The Greedy, The Extremely Greedy, and The Very Greedy, respectively. Starring Clint Eastwood as “Blondie” (the good), Lee Van Cleef as Angel Eyes (the bad), and Eli Wallach as Tuco (the ugly), the movie shows these three men going after a life-changing amount of gold in the midst of the American Civil War. Director Sergio Leone had a sharpshooter’s eye for cinema and clearly adored sandy hills under a vast blue (Italian) sky.

Legendary composer Ennio Morricone wrote many remarkable scores, but this one is his best. Though the dubbing is often distracting, the plot is pretty contrived, and the bridge section is a bit tangential, Leone’s technique makes up for it and then some. As Roger Ebert put it, “Leone cares not at all about the practical or the plausible, and builds a great film on the rubbish of Western movie cliches, using style to elevate dreck into art.” It’s no surprise The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is largely considered the epitome of the Spaghetti Western.

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5 ‘Once Upon a Time in the West’ (1968)

Directed by Sergio Leone

Once Upon a Time in the West is so stylish that a few outlaws can sit around waiting for a train as the opening credits slowly appear, and the viewer is still totally captivated. Sergio Leone proves again to be a master of letting scenes slowly build without losing narrative momentum, and Once Upon a Time in the West is an exemplar of his style. The setting may be dry, but the directorial flair is anything but.

A movie like this feels so dense with detail and emotion that one might think it came from a novel, but Leone actually came up with the story with Dario Argento and Bernardo Bertolucci (two more very prominent Italian directors). The screenplay, written by Leone and Sergio Donati, values visual storytelling over dialogue. Few films allow the viewer to admire the endless beauty of the desert landscape as this one does. A few moments definitely haven’t aged well, but Once Upon a Time in the West is easily still one of the greatest Westerns of all time.

4 ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ (2015)

Directed by George Miller

The movie that made the word “mediocre” a lot more fun to say, Mad Max: Fury Road fills its desolate setting with explosions, spiky death vehicles, monstrous sandstorms, a one-man portable concert, a guy with bullets for teeth, and more. Furiosa (one of Charlize Theron’s best roles), Max (Tom Hardy), an authoritarian leader’s wives, and a war boy (Nicholas Hoult) team up to escape from a regime so evil that its leader tells his desert-dwelling people not to get addicted to water.

Fury Road takes place in a brutally hot, post-apocalyptic wasteland baked in sand and rock. That doesn’t mean there isn’t still a variety of settings, however. The Citadel is built upon a unique rock structure with platforms and cables. On the other hand, what’s left of the legendary Green Place has a uniquely eerie look. Mad Max: Fury Road displays a mastery of practical effects, imagery, and pacing, surpassing almost every other desert movie in nearly every way.

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3 ‘Thelma and Louise’ (1991)

Directed by Ridley Scott

With the help of Ridley Scott‘s immersive direction and a score filled with electric blues guitar, Thelma and Louise navigates the profound inner change that two women — Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis, both Oscar-nominated for their roles — undergo. When they suddenly find themselves outlaws due to unforeseen circumstances, the pair lets go of rules and expectations, descending into a life of freedom on the road.

The rocks and open land are gorgeous, representing the liberty these two friends find in their travels. Though the first half of this movie isn’t very outdoorsy, the second half is aggressively focused on the desert landscape. At the end of an odyssey with both dark and comic moments, Thelma and Louise eventually wind up in the Grand Canyon for one of the most epic final shots in cinema history, which helps it continue to soar over most other road movies three decades later.

2 ‘There Will Be Blood’ (2007)

Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

It’s one of the most ambitious and austere movies of the century so far, which the average viewer might predict from its rather bold title: There Will Be Blood. That fade-in to the establishing shot of the desert with Johnny Greenwood‘s score crescendoing over it is an opening that will bring a chill down the viewer’s spine. What follows are about fifteen minutes of no dialogue while Daniel Plainview, played by the mighty Daniel Day-Lewis, relentlessly digs for silver and oil in the battering heat.

Although the movie stumbles once Daniel’s brother shows up, the first half is so brilliant that it rivals the first half of any masterpiece out there. This Best Picture nominee does best when it focuses on the tension between evangelical Christianity, represented by a stunning Paul Dano at his best, and the greedy industries like the railroads and oil vying for growth. A small desert town serves as the backdrop of this parable that details America’s turn-of-the-century embrace of capitalism and intense religious fervor.

1 ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ (1962)

Directed by David Lean

One of the greatest epics of all time, Lawrence of Arabia is about T.E. Lawrence (Peter O’Toole), who is sent to Africa and collaborates with Prince Faisal (Alec Guinness) of the Turks during World War I. Lawrence would wind up uniting several Arab tribes against the Ottoman Empire, losing his moral compass along the way. Bookended by scenes that take place after the events of the main narrative, this historical desert classic announces itself as a tragedy from the get-go.

Thanks to cinematographer Freddie A. Young, Lawrence of Arabia is gorgeous merely to look at. Shot on location in Jordan, it would ironically wind up getting banned from the country because its leaders took issue with the film’s depiction of Arabs. There would also be the criticism of whitewashed characters, which obviously hasn’t aged well. Nevertheless, that literal match cut of Lawrence blowing out a flame has been one of the most iconic in movie history for over sixty years now. Despite its flaws, David Lean’s epic still embodies the pinnacle of desert films.

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