It’s probably no coincidence that around the half-century anniversary of the Apollo moon landings, we’ve had a share of films about
troubled astronauts, be it First Man, the upcoming For All Mankind, and now James
Gray’s Ad Astra, starring Brad Pitt (and also sending Tommy Lee Jones into the void
like they did in Space Cowboys). The trailers promised a realistic view of a
colonized solar system, with gorgeous visuals and a harrowing personal journey.
Did it deliver, or should it be cast into the black alongside every copy of
Star Trek 5?
The first thing that’ll strike you is that Ad Astra definitely
delivers on the visuals, rivalling Interstellar and Gravity in that regard.
Gray is definitely aping 2001 in some regards, but that’s certainly no bad basis
to work from. There’s a spectacular sense of scale, a gorgeous rendering of the
gas giants of our solar system, and lots of attention to detail. Lunar dust
flies in the air, Martian surfaces all have the tint of red sand, and in the
final act, even our own sun is blending into the background as a faint
pinprick, really illustrating the soul-challenging distances involved. It’s not
as solidly realistic as the director brags—there’s some oddities in physics
that you don’t need to be a NASA cadet to notice—but it’s close enough in the
first act or so.
The plot sounds like a fairly straightforward character
piece—Brad Pitt plays Roy, a troubled astronaut who learns that his father
Cliff (Tommy Lee Jones), has, well, gone coocoo, and might well be just short
of going full Sam Neil in Event Horizon. Roy is pushed along by a slightly shady
militarized space agency from the moon to Mars and beyond, encountering the various
troubles occurring there despite man’s push into the stars. It’s not a very
optimistic view of a spacefaring future, which feels like a disappointingly ever-standard
cynical backlash in contemporary scifi.
A lot of it will depend on how much you care about Roy—who spends
a lot of time monologuing about his paternal relationship and his mental state
and this and that and the other. Besides Jones—who admittedly does make his
gravelly emoting impact even as just a face on a screen—every other character
is basically a nonentity. Most of them walk onto the screen, spout some
backstory and some feelings they might happen to be feeling, and sort of shunt
off after that. The script definitely feels like it was made by someone with
enthusiasm, but not so much the talent or experience to quite get there.
There’s also one really bizarre moment partway through that’s
as jarring as if Matt Damon in The Martian took a detour into the Nostromo. And
one that just might make you laugh instead.
Despite this, the aesthetic of the film kept me watching—and
I liked that each place had its own distinct feel, with the moon feeling appropriately
barren, concrete, and pale. The Martian environments range from the red caverns
you may expect to some weird art installation looking places. For all the trip-ups
in some of the pacing and characterization, you never feel that there wasn’t
some passion involved in creating the look and mise-en-scene.
Finally, there’s the pacing—like I said, it’s definitely
trying to touch on 2001, with a bit of Apocalypse Now. You might not mind it,
or it might numb your ass. I personally wasn’t too shook up about it, but it
would’ve been better if we used the time to flesh out some of the players
beyond Pitt and his monologuing ramblings.
Ad Astra is one that people with a fascination for space
might find interesting, but is certainly flawed. Pitt and Jones as always bring
a solid game, but I struggle to recall any of the other actors or characters present.
I suppose I’d take it over First Man, and I’ll definitely revisit some of the
more gorgeous scenes, but it’s not going to be for everyone, and even for those,
there’ll be some things that’ll mystify you like David Bowman staring into a monolith.
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