I was curious about this film largely because of the vagueness of the marketing. I’ve been seeing trailers for this for quite some time now and I still had no idea what it was about as I headed into the theater. I knew it was a science fiction film starring Brad Pitt and that’s it. Now that I’ve seen it, I can understand why I didn’t know much because the movie doesn’t seem to care much about its own plot. This is a great example of style over substance; Ad Astra is a beautiful-looking film that has very little to offer in terms of story. It is not a bad film, but the cinematography is really the only reason to see it.
Ad Astra (Latin translation: to the stars) is, by the director’s own admission, basically Apocalypse Now in space. Tommy Lee Jones is the most accomplished astronaut in the world and went on a mission to Neptune in the furthest expedition from earth ever attempted to try to contact aliens. However, NASA suspects that he went rogue and potentially as mad as a hatter. That’s an embarrassing development, so NASA asks his son (Brad Pitt) to travel to Mars and send him a message in an attempt to reestablish contact with him.
As I mentioned, this movie looks amazing. I’m not familiar with the director (James Gray), but cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema also shot Interstellar, Spectre and Dunkirk. Interstellar seems like the obvious comparison, but I’m actually going to go with Dunkirk because both that and Ad Astra are beautifully-shot films that fall short in terms of plot and character. Outer space looks absolutely epic in this film. This movie also drives home a point that is oddly lacking in a lot of science fiction movies: space is fucking terrifying. The cinematography here effectively conveys the dread of being in outer space, the incredible vastness of it and the fact that you are truly screwed if you get stranded in it.
If only a plot could unfold in outer space. This feels like the filmmakers were really psyched about filming some gorgeous space scenes and didn’t realize until about halfway through production that they should probably include a story of some sort. The plot summary that I gave earlier is literally all that there is. Nothing particularly interesting happens during Brad Pitt’s journey; we are seemingly just watching it so that the movie could reach a feature length running time. The problem is that the damn movie far exceeds that minimum and is a bit over 2 hours long. You could easily chop 40 minutes out of this movie. You would lose nothing and the film would still feel padded. I have no idea why the entire section on the moon was even filmed, let alone left in the movie. It doesn’t really even build to much of anything. It would be like if Marlon Brando was just tired and generally disinterested at the end of Apocalypse Now. It just ends without any kind of conflict or twist or anything. I don’t know why this is a movie.
Brad Pitt and Tommy Lee Jones are both great actors, but there just isn’t much to work with here. I’m guessing that there is some sort of message about the bond of family or something that I’m missing, but the flat script just doesn’t give these guys much to convey. The performances are serviceable, but I was at least hoping that Tommy Lee Jones could give us some solid craziness at the end of the film. Instead he just seems bored. Disappointing all around given the talent involved.
The only way that this movie should be seen is on the big screen because of the quality and scope of the visuals, but it isn’t really worth the trip to the theater either. If you’re bored and catch it on Netflix or something a year from now, you won’t be angry at it. But there is a good chance that you won’t still be awake at the end.
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