Did you want to be an astronaut when you grew up? We never did, and we’re actually surprised any kid could have such a dream given the way spacemen are portrayed in the movies. Sure, there are some heroes here and there, but generally filmmakers tend to show us astronauts who are lonely, depressed, confused, self-doubting, jealous, guilt-ridden or otherwise miserable (not to mention they often wind up dead).

Sam Rockwell plays the latest of these unhappy astronauts in Moon, fittingly directed by Duncan Jones, whose father, David Bowie, gave us a somewhat sad song about a man potentially lost in space (“Space Oddity”). As the sole (human) resident of a station on the dark side of the moon, able to communicate with his family only through taped video correspondence, it’s not surprising that Rockwell’s character isn’t a happy camper.

But his mood actually has less to do with his situation than it has to do with film tradition. As much as Moon is garnering rave reviews it is also being lightly criticized for being derivative. And the unhappy astronaut convention is one of the overly familiar elements Jones and screenwriter Nathan Parker employs. To illustrate some of the convention’s history, we’ve selected ten of the unhappiest astronauts ever put on the big screen.
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That’s Jude Law in the image to the right, dressed up for his role in Sally Potter’s new film, Rage, which debuts at the Berlin International Film Festival this weekend. So far the masquerade is a big hit on the internet, but will this photo actually help the movie to be as popular? The last time movie bloggers got this excited over a transvestite, we were looking at a femmified Cillian Murphy from Breakfast on Pluto. And that film only grossed $829,000 in the U.S. Of course, Potter’s famous gender-bending film Orlando did six times that much, so perhaps she’ll deliver another arthouse success. For now, let’s see what people are saying about that photo:

• Defamer’s got jokes: “Jude Law, whose new look suddenly precludes him from playing nanny to his children, lest he be moved to have an affair with himself.”
• Film Experience has got jokes: “It somehow escaped me that Jude & Judi had made a film together for auteur Sally Potter. I love it when name actors do one for their art. Well played, ladies.”
• Cinematical’s got joke headlines: “Jude Looks Like a Lady.” They’ve also got a gallery of the rest of the film’s stars.
• I Watch Stuff smells Oscar-bait: “It’s amazing how much eyeliner some guys will pile on to plead for an Oscar nomination.”
• The following intolerant sites are creeped out by or scared or terrified of the image: IESB.net; Filmonic; FilmDrunk
• Because they’re totally insane for the Blingee, Best Week Ever invites you to Blingee your own pretty Jude Law image.
• Jeff Wells finds the new image less interesting than Potter’s discussion on her own blog of Rage’s cutting style. He does, however, also quote her on the subject of Law’s appearance and performance: “Law, whose beauty has sometimes been held against him as an actor, made the courageous decision to accept the role of Minx — a ‘celebrity super-model’ — and took on a kind of hyper-beauty for this persona…a ‘female’ beauty which gradually unravels as the story unfolds. Strangely, the more he became a ’she’, coiffed and made-up, the more naked was his performance. There was great strength in his willingness to make himself vulnerable. It was an extraordinarily intense part of the shoot.”