Ad Astra – 3.5/5 Stars
To The Stars…
Ad Astra, directed by James Gray, follows Roy McBride (Brad Pitt), an astronaut who followed in his father’s footsteps. His father, Clifford McBride (Tommy Lee Jones), was presumed missing and dead after leaving on a mission 30 years before to the edge of the solar system in search of other intelligent life. After finding out that his father may still be alive, Roy is recruited on a secret mission to travel to Neptune and find out the truth about what happened.
Overall, this movie was just OK. I’d give it 3 ½ out of 5 stars. It had a great vision about the future of space travel, with everything from commercial flights to the Moon, a Lunar base farming for resources and competing with pirates, and an underground military Mars base. There was even a ginormous antenna on Earth that went all the way into the exosphere looking for communication from other intelligent life.
Apart from all this, however, the story moved along really slowly. I went in expecting another Interstellar and got, well, Ad Astra. There aren’t really any other space movies comparable to it. It wasn’t bad by any means. It was still entertaining, but the pacing of the movie felt off to me. It did have a good message at the end about appreciating life for what you have and not constantly looking for what you don’t, but it was confusing how they reached that conclusion. And the story with Roy’s father didn’t do much for me.
(Spoilers) My highlights of the movie included the Moon battle, the MayDay call and Neptune’s portrayal. I thought the Moon battle, when Roy was being transported to his Mars rocket and ambushed by pirates, was really well done. The concept of pirates on the Moon with their own lunar rovers is awesome. This was honestly my favorite part of the movie because it was like Mad Max on the Moon. When the pirates rammed into Roy’s rover and pushed him into a crater, his rover spun like a frisbee in slow motion, due to the lessened gravity. For the MayDay call, I’m not really sure how this added to the story except to take the competent pilot out of the picture, but the suspense of two blood-thirsty baboons added a nice kick to the movie. Lastly, I thought Neptune was stunning. I feel like it’s so far away that it isn’t usually portrayed in space movies. We’ve seen the Moon, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn countless times, so it was refreshing to see a “new” planet up close and personal.
I’d recommend this movie if you enjoy space movies or are just looking for something to go see. The cinematography was beautiful but the story was mediocre. If you’re on the fence about going to see it, go see it. No matter what I, the critics, or anyone says, you should still form your own opinion about it.