Review of Ad Astra (2019) by Hnestlyonthesly — 07 Oct 2019

Doing this review in October, two weekends late, but there’s really not much to say about this one. I’m generally pretty opposed to the genre of true-to-life, near-future space movies with a few exceptions, like Moon (2009) and Contact (1997). For the most part, they feel a little smug and self-serious like First Man and Gravity. “But what about The Martian???” everyone responds. “It was such a feel-good movie! It was so scientifically ACCURATE,” to which I say, I watch YouTube videos on picture frame hanging for scientific accuracy, I go to see movies for original storytelling. Interstellar and Arrival felt like hypebeasty films that never really delivered on their promises. Space movies feel like an excuse to use a lot of CGI and green screens, off-set by a tremendous amount of time in tiny, windowless compartments, and mildly gross shots of people squirting food directly in front of their mouths and then slurping it slowly into their food holes. If there isn’t a fear for space food consumption yet I’m coining it now: cosmophagyphobia.

These vanity projects are so common nowadays that Mekado Murphy from the NYT has a short article outlining the phenomenon of movie stars receiving their own Space Movies as a kind of rite of passage as they hit stardom. Which is all just to say, I know this is a me thing not a movie thing, but I still think the “serious science” genre of space movies has a lot to learn from their goofy younger sci-fi siblings. Also, I blame Tom Hanks for all of this **** **** One spot of joy and light in this movie’s otherwise bleak and craven existence is the fact that Polygon did a fabulous write up of this film in which they summarized the trailer as such, “Brad Astra is Sad Astra because of his Dad Astra”–that recommendation comes care of Friend from work, and I think says everything you need to know about the movie. The thing that really pissed me off every time I saw this goddamn trailer at the movie theater was how **** quickly it appears that things go to **** in this goddamn movie. You see Brad Pitt fighting in a MOONCHASE of all things, because NASA can’t have it’s act together for the 48 hours it takes for him to leave Earth’s orbit, apparently. The fact that **** goes down so quickly really made me feel like the story was putting unnecessary restraints on itself. No one is going to be able to find, neutralize, and resolve an anti-matter death ray on Saturn if they’re having trouble with their very first way station...

All that said, this movie was disappointing in so many ways. Anyone who went expecting that Ruth Negga and Liv Tyler were going to have speaking lines was sorely disappointed. Despite being what I think amounted to “Mayor of Mars,” Negga has effectively no control over any of the operations of her base, not even of the tiny little transmission room they use to let teens play their loud rock music on Mars. Also, the circumstances of her birth and her relationship to the search for extra-terrestial life mission that Sad Pitt’s father was a part of is still really murky to me. Was she conceived before the astronauts went into space and born on Mars? Or was the trip so long that the astronauts had sex in space and then gave birth… on Mars? I’m so confused by this plot point. Although the discovery at the end of this movie is quite nice, it runs into the Mowgli problem, AKA “Traveling at the Speed of Plot,” where a character can run on foot through a burning **** forest in five minutes where it takes him half of his childhood to make it there the first time. So too with Brad Astra. When I asked, “How long DOES it take to get to Saturn?” Friend responds sagely, “It depends how fast you’re going,” which is both wise and infuriating.

My major takeaway is that this movie makes Sandra Bullock look like an **** Everything that she does by the skin of her teeth and only after minutes of calculations and preparation, Brad can do in his sleep. He’s an astronaut and Mars’s most stealthy climber and a skilled nuclear technician and a feelsy ex-husband. Dad mentioned similar things when we checked notes, but he was less bothered by the Moon. He also mentioned the weirdness of not having sent a drone or probe or something to have stopped the anti-matter death ray, so at least we’re on the same page there.