I am all for deep and literary sci-fi. There have been many examples of such sprinkled throughout the canon. This latest offering from Brad Pitt falls far short of the mark. It takes what could be an engaging tour of a near future and digests it into a paint by numbers sci-fi journey that felt longer than it was and somehow shorter at the same time.
Ad Astra is Latin phrase that translates best as ‘to the stars’ actually the entire phrase goes something like per aspera ad astra or through hardship to the stars. I have always taken it to be a philosophical statement about grit, but the literal translation takes lead here. The use of Latin should’ve been a warning. This was going to be heavy. As my partner put it, “As long as it is not like Gravity…” No, heavier.
I thought this was based on a literary novel. Well, sort of. The director, James Gray, noted in Collider that he wanted to make a movie similar to Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. He didn’t. I am being harsh because I am feeling cheated. There was so much promise in this film. From a beautiful opening scene that does little more than be beautiful and show us the bad energy out there killing the world to wasted opportunities on planets and the moon, I was met with disappointment after disappointment. The situation on the moon alone promised a lot more than it delivered. Mars, a colony ripe for interpretation and engagement devolved into what looked like two shots: One of a train station from various angles and one of a sound studio. There was filler in between, but it felt like the in between was all filler. The journey was not nearly as important as the destination, and for me that is the opposite of what a film should be.
We learn about our characters on the journey. We learned about this character through flashback and narration. In a movie he told instead of showed. The more I consider it, the more it feels like a crime to waste so much talent and set design on what is surely to be widely panned as a failed experiment.
I did like moments. There were beautiful shots. However, the film as a whole is not worth seeing. Catch the clips on youtube.