JORDAN'S HOLLYWOOD DESERT
Why Filmmakers Keep Turning Wadi Rum Into Mars
From Lawrence of Arabia to The Martian, Dune and Star Wars, Wadi Rum's red sandstone has doubled as desert planets and distant worlds for over sixty years.
See Wadi Rum tour dates on GetYourGuide ↗Lawrence of Arabia (1962) started it
David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia was the film that put Wadi Rum on the map for international audiences, using the valley's sweeping scale to stand in for the wider Arabian desert of the Arab Revolt. It's a fitting location rather than a purely cinematic choice — Lawrence himself passed through the real Wadi Rum during the campaign the film depicts, so the landscape and the story share genuine history, even where the film takes dramatic licence. More than sixty years on, it's still the reference point every later production gets compared to, and the reason Wadi Rum was already known to film location scouts long before Mars and Arrakis entered the picture.
The Martian (2015) — growing potatoes on Mars
Ridley Scott's The Martian used Wadi Rum's red sand and rock as the surface of Mars where Matt Damon's stranded astronaut has to survive alone, and the film leaned hard into the resemblance — wide, empty, rust-coloured terrain with none of the greenery or haze that would give away Earth. It's one of the clearest examples of why Wadi Rum works so well for alien-planet scenes: the iron oxide that colours the sandstone red is chemically close to what gives Mars its own colour, so relatively little digital enhancement is needed to sell the illusion. The production also used the wider Jordanian desert around Wadi Rum, not just the protected core area, for some of its shots.
Star Wars and Dune's desert planets
The Star Wars franchise has used Wadi Rum twice for fictional desert worlds — Rogue One (2016) filmed scenes set on the planet Jedha there, and The Rise of Skywalker (2019) used it for the planet Pasaana. Denis Villeneuve's Dune (2021) went further, using Wadi Rum as one of its main stand-ins for Arrakis, the desert planet at the centre of the story — a natural fit, since Frank Herbert's novel describes a landscape of towering rock and endless sand not far from what the valley actually looks like. Between the two franchises, Wadi Rum has now played at least three separate fictional planets, on top of standing in for Mars.
Aladdin, Transformers and beyond
Beyond the science-fiction epics, Wadi Rum has turned up across a wide range of other productions: a rock arch in the valley features in Disney's 2019 live-action Aladdin, and Michael Bay's Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009) filmed action sequences among its jebels. Jordan more broadly has become a favoured filming destination over the past two decades, and Wadi Rum's protected status, dramatic scenery and relative accessibility from Aqaba's airport make it a repeat choice for productions needing striking desert or alien-world footage without leaving a populated, well-connected country. Local Bedouin crews are often hired as extras, drivers and location support, so the tourism economy and the film industry overlap more than visitors might expect.
Why the desert works so well on screen
Wadi Rum's appeal to filmmakers comes down to a few things landscapes rarely combine: genuinely alien-looking rock formations rather than ordinary desert dunes, a colour palette — deep red, orange and pink sandstone — that reads as otherworldly on camera without much grading, huge open spaces with no roads, power lines or buildings to hide, and a climate reliable enough to plan a shoot around. It also helps that the protected area is large enough to find a different-looking corner for each production, so Mars, Jedha, Pasaana and Arrakis don't end up looking like the same few square kilometres reused. For visitors, it means a jeep tour often passes near a spot you may recognise from a film without your driver necessarily pointing it out.
More things to do nearby
Still deciding how long a tour, or whether to camp overnight?
Leave your email and roughly when you're travelling — we'll send a short rundown of how the 2-hour, half-day and full-day jeep tours compare, what each one reaches, and whether an overnight camp is worth it.