APRIL 19, 2020 SCREENING: AD ASTRA
Ah, Ad Astra. (The film’s title is Latin for “To the stars”. A similar phrase can be found as the motto of Starfleet Academy in the Star Trek universe – “Ex astris, scientia”, which means “From the stars, Knowledge”). Critics loved this movie; audiences apparently hated it (if the Rotten Tomatoes scores are anything to go by, at least). I’m in the middle here, having a love-hate relationship with the movie.
Critics heaping praise on the film thought it was stunning and beautiful, a film that one day be seen as some kind of “deep”, moving look at humanity, and saw Brad Pitt’s performance in the film as extremely layered and Oscar-worthy. Casual moviegoers thought the film was extremely boring and pointless, pretty to look at but a chore to sit thru, and a wannabe 2001: A Space Odyssey pretender.
As I said, I’m sort of in the middle between those two extremes. Visually, yes, the film looks amazing, though I would not put in the category of “Visually looks great but is an otherwise empty pointless snoozefest”, as films like Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland deserve to be.) Considering Brad Pitt is generally known for doing popular action films and crowd pleasers, I enjoyed seeing him a more grounded, quiet role. It also required some heavy acting on his part because there is very little dialogue in various portions of the movie, and much of the character’s journey requires the audience to sense his internal thoughts and feelings.
The premise of the film is compelling but quite simple: Astronaut Roy McBride (Brad Pitt) is sent on an assignment to find his long lost father, Clifford McBride (Tommy Lee Jones) when the latter disappeared mysterious 16 years ago on a mission exploring Neptune. Evidence surfaces that McBride is in fact still alive but refusing to contact Mission Control for whatever reason, and naturally it is thought that Pitt’s character is the only one who will be able to contact him personally out there and get him to respond.
For me, at least, this resulting in 2/3rds of a great movie, that was very fun and interesting until the film’s final act. The last 40 minutes (after Pitt’s character finally reaches Neptune, having overcome numerous obstacles and plot twists along the way) simply amounted to much ado about nothing. The weak climax of the film’s third act ruined the film for me just a bit, although it was nowhere near as disastrous as my review of A Cure for Wellness (2016) (where the first half of the film was a brilliant masterpiece and the second half of the film completely fell apart and played like a completely ridiculous parody). Ad Astra’s disappointing finale was more akin to the weak, predictable ending of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, where an otherwise solid and compelling movie went down in the overall score because the final scene was shallow and simply didn’t deliver the potential of the rest of the movie.
For those complaining the film overall was slow and extremely boring, I have to disagree. While it is a hard science fiction and tries to stick to “realism” and avoid crazy stuff, it never-the-less lives up to its marketing as a space thriller as has a number of great moments (you gotta see the scene where the baboon gets lose in space!) and is a terrific psychological character study. The only problem is the filming bland empty ending just left me with “That’s it? Why?”
A few years ago, audiences had a similar polarized reaction to a couple of blockbuster space exploration epics that were grounded in “hard science”: Gravity (2013) and Interstellar (2014). For me, at least, Gravity was overrated – its stunning visuals and claustrophobic feel were amazing at first glance but the film failed to impress on repeat viewings, and the enthusiasm for the film was almost entirely because it was a must see on IMAX 3D on the big screen, but lost 90% of that effectiveness on home video. Interstellar was the opposite experience for me: many of the Nolanites who worshiped his “grounded” take on Batman and loved anything and everything Nolan did with his throat cancer Batman were disappointed by Interstellar, considering it to be overlong, boring, and his weakest film. I had the opposite reaction: I got bored with throat cancer Batman when Nolan started recycling Batman villains we had seen before. Interstellar, on the other hand, is my favorite Nolan movie and an incredible example of “hard” science fiction in my eyes. Again, Ad Astra is kind of the middle child between Gravity and Interstellar. I wanted to love it. I sort of liked it.
** ½ out of ****