#28: Ad Astra

What was the last Brad Pitt movie I saw?
Probably "12 Years A Slave" in 2013. But my god, I was not going to miss the opportunity to miss a space movie on the big screen.

 Especially one with Ruth Negga! What was the last movie with her I saw? Probably "Warcraft".

Ooh.

Last year, I caught "2001: A Space Odyssey" In IMAX by myself and it was glorious. This is no "2001", of course, but that doesn't mean it's not good!

It's just a little...unemotional? Extremely conventional?

Despite having such a strong storyline that's purely set up to be emotional. Then again, this is a culture where men are just now being re-allowed to air their feelings out in nonviolent ways, so maybe this will be the film to encourage them to do that. Hell, one of Roy's (The lead, Brad Pitt) big hang ups is that he's so great and accomplished and so much like his father but can't connect to people or, basically, function as a human being, not out of arrogance, but out of deep-seated issues. He's even trained himself with a mantra to not be emotional.

That sounds like a mighty big portion of our population, huh. Except that bit of the population usually leans heavily on the arrogance.

The film looks gorgeous, but it's 2019. That doesn't mean shit anymore. It's the cinematography choices that really stand out, that and the score.

It's such a loaded year on the award front that I think this will even fall flat with Academy voters outside of (well deserved) technicals. Though the sound mixing at points was pretty one-sided toward the ambience and not towards the dialogue.

Spoilers follow.


I know audiences are not thrilled with this movie because it's not a big bombastic, action-y space movie, but the bits of action that are in here feel very out of nowhere.

There are moon pirates who ambush our lead character. What country are they from? How do they sustain up here without government help?

A distress call comes en route to Mars from a Norwegian ship - An ape escaped, got through a helmet, and killed a man and was eating his face. Why are there apes in space? What are they doing?

The kicker of "I didn't care about you or your mother or earth, I wanted to travel space, and here I am," is not wholly unexpected, especially after you find that the senior McBride killed everyone else onboard because they never found aliens, were homesick, and mutinied. It's a bit of a letdown, but sometimes there's no big blowup, just "Fuck you I'm not coming back, I'm going to look for aliens!" and "Okay dad 😢." No "Why did you do it?"

This needed way less cliches:

• Wife leaves
• Someone dies and leaves behind a wife and child
• "I can't let you continue,"
• "I'm stoic and rational and reasonable and everyone loves me"

You can keep "Paternal abandonment" if you let the lead show a bit more emotion. I went into this knowing it wouldn't be "Interstellar" action-y, but I had hoped for half of "2001"'s poignancy. I didn't hate it, but I'm just...yep, that's a cliche movie but now with a sad man, who, admittedly, admits that he doesn't want to be like his father if he's like that. That's growth.

But if this encourages men to have a decent emotion, then by all means, I hope people love it.