James Gray's "inward-looking" sci-fi film AD ASTRA starring Brad Pitt

think this would have been more interesting if was from the perspective of TLJ’s character. If we’re gonna dive into the emptiness of the cosmos and the need for humans to appreciate our precious, fleeting existence and learn to live with one another (or whatever this movie thinks it’s saying), then make the story about a character who would actually care about this one way or another.

You missed the point of the movie

No, I understood what the movie itself was doing. It’s not exactly rocket science*

It’s just that I found Pitt’s character’s journey less interesting than the implied backstory of his father. In other words I freely admit I just wish it was a different kind of movie entirely.

I’ll give Ad Asta this though: it made me care enough to be mad at it. These days that’s gotta count for something.

*i make no apologies for this :D

but I disagree with your point about Pitt learning to live with stranded Liv Tyler. If anything, Gray's editing and framing decisions are more devastating: he returns to her because "eh fuck it."

I'm not crazy about the film because Sad Space movies are so not my genre.

I also want to praise the effects work in this. Other than the baboon (which looked fine but was obviously CGI) the visuals were nearly seamless.

From what I've read, I'd watch the James Grey version.

I loved this and found it very exciting. The fall from the space antenna opening is soooo good. It was weird though that Ruth Negga is all dressed up like some Pheobe Philo era Céline model on Mars.

The Lost Space Station Z

As someone who love love loved Gravity and The Martian, I found this underwhelming.

Pacing-wise it felt disjointed, like they'd wanted to go the noble route of creating a scientifically-sound, brooding take on the modern space opera genre but later got told to liven it up with some pointless action sequences which got punched-in at 20-30 minute intervals.

Everything to do with Sutherland and the space pirates felt very pointless. The space baboons sequence was from some other movie. Both those sequences were far-fetched and thrillery.

The film spent a long time taking me down detours and dead-ends, all the while alluding to some great reveal that never really happened. The entire denouement and final sequence was anticlimactic, predictable and ultimately no different to what we've seen on other recent 'lost in space' flicks.

A big part of the problem for me was not being able to connect with Pitt's character, nor bringing myself to care all that much about his relationship with his father, which seemed to be the emotional crux the film was trying to ply on me.

Meanwhile the rather major plotpoint of the power surges was reduced to a MacGuffin, brought up in only the most offhand way by TLJ's character at the end. How the hell was a relatively small spacecraft generating enough power to cause such catastrophic damage on Earth? And why was this happening? And (forgive me, maybe I had a lapse) was this something TLJ was doing on purpose? He seemed to be trying to stop it, but who knows, the film seemed more interested in getting me to care about Liv Tyler's 10 seconds of screentime than the actual science or motive of the mission.

On the other hand, everyone should stop discussing this film and go see Aniara, another space epic with lots of 'A's in the title, and which really did give me that true sense of space vertigo-madness this was hinting at.

I admired the Transformers/G.I. Joe-level science insisting that an explosion would "power" the journey back to Earth.

There's a plotline in Cixin Liu's (very 'hard' sci-fi) Death's End that proposes you could power a very small craft big enough to hold a housecat (or in the book, a human brain) by daisy chaining a series of nuclear bombs along its path and setting them off behind it at regular intervals. So this is a gross simplification of the same method, although clearly it would never work.

I realise this is Hollywood, but when the makers said they set-out to do a proper science-based space film and you end up with this kind of transparently Deus Ex ending, it stops being sci-fi and starts operating purely on a metaphorical level, the whole 'lost-in-space' device becoming a clothes horse to drape a lightweight sheet of human-interest onto it. But when the main character is a stoic mumbler, the lost father and the work-widowed wife barely present in the story, it's very hard to make the emotional investment the film so dearly beggars.

I didn't mind the stoic mumbling because middle aged Brad Pitt is a pretty stoic mumbler.

Natasha Lyonne was weird... Like, 'hey let's have a full minute where Russian Doll lady does some dull admin work and asks people to sign stuff while dressed in a red boiler suit'

The unintended downside of having a recognizable actor play a bit role is the projection of prior work on to the present character.

also that she was doing nothing especially entertaining or plot-driven save for getting people to sign-in

Regarding Alfred's questioning of the explosion: a rocket is really a controlled, directly explosion while a bomb is an uncontrolled, undirected one. As long as you're lined up perpendicular to it, and your craft not overly damaged, a bomb is an effective source of thrust. Obviously it's not very efficient, but in the case of a nuclear explosion, you're talking about quite a bit of undirected thrust.

So it's "powered" not in the way you're charging the craft's store of energy, but in the way that a large explosive hand is shoving you off toward the beyond.

Had the film been shot after Lyonne's profile increased due to the Netflix show the role might have been cast differently. As far as I can gather, Ad Astra was shot about six months before Russian Doll

for me, it's 'why have it in at all?'. her character ads so little and yet the camera spends a long time shouting 'LOOK, LOOK WHO IT IS!'. A lot could have been cut from this film and it would have been a generally better sustained and more impactful experience.

I don't know if it would work, but I'd be interested in what this film would be like with drastically reduced (or even completely without) voiceover exposition.

The character I related to the most when it comes to the idea of being trapped in space was the baboon tbh

I feel like the facial hair signifying time elapsed is all wrong in this movie.

there was a lot of facial hair close-ups in this

This was impeccably crafted but I get very annoyed when science fiction that is touted as “adult” or “thoughtful” ends up just being more warmed-over Oedipal dreariness.

― Conceptualize Wyverns (latebloomer), Saturday, September 21, 2019 10:38 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Amen. Moon chase was rad, though. Then I snoozed in and out.

god, this movie was a beautiful incoherent mess.

I did appreciate it though for confirming that I will never be as terrified by any horror movie as much as I am by films about all the things that can go wrong in space. The opening sequence + moon chase + baboon attack = A++. But the rest of it... yikes.

And I too wondered whether I would've liked it more without Brad Pitt's mumbly voiceover. So many beautiful images utterly ruined by his constant droning.

Also, poor Liv Tyler, constantly being left behind on Earth by emotionally-stunted astronauts. Can I get a Liv Tyler in space movie next?

Space is too damn big

Even if you could send a video message from Earth direct to Uranus when they're closest, it'd take over two hours to arrive.

Gray goes over his mistakes. He's such a good subject.

Spoilers (?) for Ad Astra but we watched it lol pic.twitter.com/v7ispODXZ6

— Kate Beaton (@beatonna) September 23, 2019

My bad on the above Uranus calculation -- for some reason, even watching the film, I kept thinking TLJ's character was stuck there and not Neptune. There's probably something insidiously Freudian going on with my memory.

Gray goes over his mistakes. He's such a good subject.

― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, September 25, 2019 4:26 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

That’s a great interview! I think this really hammers home why I have such a problem with what the movie is trying to do:

I think the tragedy of Tommy Lee’s character is that he never found a pleasure in the beauties that he discovered. He never found beauty in the idea that human beings are what matter. The idea of striving is what matters.

But what is there to strive for? New balls of rocks to build houses on? What we see of humanity in this movie isn’t exactly inspiring. Humans have colonized space, but we only see a continuation of the same social structures and conflicts that currently plague us.

Can you blame someone for seeking transcendence in the possibility of contact with some other form of intelligence?

Who wouldn’t go mad after dedicating their life to that search and discovering it was all for naught? And picture just how horrifying being stuck in space with a person undergoing that process of disillusionment would be.

To me, *that’s* the story. The movie borrows so much from Apocalypse Now but ignores Kurtz’s final words:

“The horror...the horror”

The character I related to the most when it comes to the idea of being trapped in space was the baboon tbh

― mh, Monday, September 23, 2019 3:10 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

OTM. The most rational being in the entire film

latebloomer did you see 'high life'?

god, this movie was a beautiful incoherent mess.

As much as I’ve criticized it, I don’t think this an incoherent film at all. It’s not difficult to follow and thematically I think it’s pretty much saying what Gray intended it to. It’s just that what he’s saying with this is mostly just kind of...bland humanist garbage?

latebloomer did you see 'high life'?

― cheese canopy (map), Wednesday, September 25, 2019 8:41 PM (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Not yet! Definitely going to though.

it's not great imo but it's definitely a different kind of space movie

It's a much better space movie for starters!

kind of sad that James Gray and Brad Pitt weren’t present for (admittedly not great) audience questions after my viewing of this one, because I had that for High Life

the most boring SPACE MADNESS movie ever

I don't for a minute think there was a space madness aspect. I've tried to create a narrative, but I'm going to go with disconnected thoughts here:

the entire mindset/personality that is needed or desired for space exploration is very emotionally flat, but the movie explores whether we can really have that. the pilot who falters, the characters who are sublimating their emotional needs for the mission, all are revealed. maybe there are people who can remain very calm and complete missions, but our experience is still relatively limited in that we've had months in general, at most around a year of occupation in space

also the element of fixation on a goal, finding extraterrestrial life, adhering to a mission, when it means ignoring base humanity or burying past failures to relate under a veil of purity and purpose

the baboon scene is a callback to space horror, but also a question because we never see what became of the human crew. rotting in the corridor around the corner, or jettisoned out into the vacuum. it's the baser animal metaphor, just anger at being trapped in this tube going nowhere

the father, having decided his crew is at fault for what he views as mutiny, never buries them after so many years. I understand the idea, like latebloomer says, that it's all for naught -- but that's the thing, it's not that life isn't out there, it's that he has removed the possibility of finding it. it's the inability to recognize that they looked into space to the best of their abilities and found great beauty but nothing indicating other intelligent life. likely all the tools at their disposal.. nothing else is going to come of it. maybe a greater expedition with better tools, but TLJ's character has inadvertently broken then best tools they have by removing his crew, and in his arrogance has possibly doomed earth by not letting go

there's also a possibly unintended indictment of the mindset that deems "logic" over emotion as a positive aspect

the death of the crew over neptune framed as their inability to stick to a mission could be seen as a question of command and mission, but it's completely illogical -- the mission ended, they did what they could with the tools, but that premise is rejected on what are really emotional grounds. but it's stated to us as a panic, a need to go home, which is in reality the obvious conclusion. good rejoinder for anyone who makes a "logical" argument without noticing that they're absolutely destroying their natural peers by their actions

It's a much better space movie for starters!

― SQUIRREL MEAT!! (Capitaine Jay Vee)

As one of several ILXors who consider Claire Denis to be the absolute best there is.... I don't think it's much better. High Life is kind of a bad mess as well although it's a more singular mess.

highly trained emotionally distant astronaut vs. a bunch of convicts with a fuck box

Highly trained emotionally distant astronaut character that never really comes across as such due to poor directorial choices, cliched flashback moments galore (example ottomh: sad wife stopping to look at him *one last time* before she walks out door) and exciting yet incongruous action sequences vs. arid and unique "space jail" story - that, yes, includes a wondrous fuck box - that's carried by intense performances and direction from a masterful filmmaker who is obviously not in her element, genre-wise, but revels in it. I'll go with the fuck box one!

I liked both

This really did feel like a Lost City of Z sequel in many ways

As much as I’ve criticized it, I don’t think this an incoherent film at all. It’s not difficult to follow and thematically I think it’s pretty much saying what Gray intended it to. It’s just that what he’s saying with this is mostly just kind of...bland humanist garbage?

I mostly meant incoherent in the sense of strands being introduced that had little to no follow through e.g. Donald Sutherland's character or Ruth Negga saying that she'll likely be punished for letting him board the shuttle (but McBride himself was spared any kind of blowback??). Or just things that took me out of the movie completely (that bit where he's floating through the rings of Neptune was major lols).

And while I understand what Gray was trying to do with the action sequences (i.e. Brad Pitt mirroring his father's journey by causing the deaths of everyone unlucky enough to be part of his futile quest), it was kind of clumsily done and made those sequences seem like parts of a totally different movie.

I need to watch High Life, I think.

I quite liked liked the scene with Brad Pitt swiftly, accidentally dispatching of the crew taking off from Mars, as a bit of (accidental?) slapstick.

I'm inclined to agree with latebloomer, tho mb my view isn't quite as strong. What you say about the 'same social structures and conflicts that currently plague us' struck me too - maybe it's my issue rather than an issue with the film as such, but it felt like with some small narrative changes it could have abandoned the 'near future' space exploration theme entirely. It didn't seem to take advantage of anything that could be interesting about that specific setting.

This movie sucked because Brad Pitt wasn't nude in it.

they at least gave us some shirtless-and-pierced-with-a-feeding-tube action.

I kept being reminded of Apocalypse Now by Brad Pitt's quest and the Steven Soderbergh version of Solaris cos of the use of convenient location real stairs and basements and things.
Is Pitt a little old to be a major astronaut?

Wasn't overly impressed but it did look pretty good in places.

Rotten Tomatoes appears to have the critics really liking it and the viewing public not.