10/07/2019
Movie Review of Ad Astra:
It has been years since I have written a review on this page...but I supposed the time has come that I pick up my phone once again to lay into the media...tonight I was rudely awoken to these feelings of disappointment.
Disappointed...disappointing...depressing I won’t go on to make up a list of words that I am left with walking out of the nearly empty theatre. But generally this movie seems to be written to disappoint.
SPOILER ALERT:
In short, this movie is about a talented space guy (Brad Pitt) that works in space. His dad (Tommy Lee Jones)...whom he hardly knew, also worked in space and is considered a hero. Being disappointed with his relationship with his father, his ex-wife and with the human race in general, our space guy hero pretty much leads a conceded, isolated existence until one day some space waves shake up the earth and he is called upon by the space government to help him contact his wayward father (who had been presumed dead) who is apparently respond for the space machine that is causing the harmful space waves. He helps them out, they get what they need and try to cast him aside so that they can go fix the problem...aka blow up everything that his father was doing because it could kill all life in the solar system(?!). A woman who’s parents were legit killed by his father decides to help him get on the search and destroy shuttle so he can proceed to confront his father in person. When he gets there he finds his father has a brief conversation with him and blows up the facility anyway while his father goes for a permanent space swim...
In this movie there are no conspiracies, no great hero, no great villains and no great imaginative ideas about space and exploration. This honestly isn’t even a movie about space exploration...its a mediocre movie about loneliness and the importance of relationships...at least that is my take-away from it. But damn...that’s not at all what I signed up for...and they wasted a perfectly good opportunity to make a film with a psych-thriller / space exploration duality. Instead we get...disappointment after disappointment.
One of the first issues I had with this movie is the technological inconsistencies. This story takes place in the “near future” and displays some pretty advanced tech at times but then seriously dials the tech back for other scenes; for example: they have control over dark matter technology, they have spaceships that can fly to Neptune in 90 days (that’s pretty damn fast), they have colonies on the moon, mars and elsewhere in the solar system. But then when we zoom in; they are flying rockets and driving moon rovers that look just like they were designed in the 60’s. Where are the cool vehicles of the future?? Almost no technology or science is explained at all.
What’s worse is the story telling mechanics: most of the plot is spoon fed to us through lame board room conversations about missions or through our space guys ritualized “psychological evaluations” where he is forced to discuss his intimate feelings, thoughts and self-observations with a computer terminal. It’s like this movie wants us to think it is a creative and complex film like 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) or maybe a psychological thriller like Apocalypse Now (1979) bit in reality it’s a disappointing movie about disappointing people dealing with disappointment.
Acting is good, colour, cutting and camera are good. No hate, just not the movie I was hoping for.
5/10 rating.
