Ad Astra (2019)

‘Ad Astra’ feels like a Terrence Malick movie in space. While that may sound cool, the film quickly turns into a combination of other space flicks like ‘Interstellar’, ‘Gravity’, and ‘The Martian’. Again, that may sound good, but ‘Ad Astra’ takes the most interesting parts of those films and makes it feel boring, with barely a drive to the film, and characters feeling stilted the whole way through.

One of the actual great parts of the film is the relationship between “Insert Brad Pitt’s forgettable character name here”, and “Insert Tommy Lee Jones’ forgettable name here” (Brad Pitt’s dad). While the performances are stilted, the screenplay (by James Grey and Ethan Gross) does a pretty good job with the emotional scenes. However, the problem with this is the plot. The plot is about saving the solar system, but the emotional core is about Brad Pitt and his Dad. Therefore, the trajectory of the plot does not fit with the main character arks, with the plot never changing enough to fit with the emotional core. This becomes worse when we only see one instance of the big solar system collapsing with characters just talking about the problem for the rest of the film.

The last truly great thing about the movie was its astonishingly beautiful cinematography by Hoyte Van Hoytema (Her, Interstellar, Spectre, and Dunkirk). It reminded me of ‘Blade Runner: 2049’, specifically when they were on Mars.

Brad Pitt’s performance in the film didn’t really work for the character. You can see some similarities to Ryan Gosling’s performance in ‘First Man’ where he plays Neil Armstrong. Both characters are written as emotionless people, who don’t really talk much and are focused on their mission. While I do think Brad Pitt does a pretty good job, I think that when he is compared to Ryan Gosling in ‘First Man’, he gives a weaker performance. He isn’t able to fully portray the character. Maybe it’s the screenplay, but I don’t think so.

The way in which the director (James Grey) directs the sequences in space is problematic. It’s obvious he wanted the sequences in space to be realistic (more or less) with the slow speed the characters move at. But, consequentially, this means that the action scenes have no drive to them whatsoever, making the characters seem weirdly calm in near death situations.

Verdict: ‘Ad Astra’ tries to bring together the best parts of the current space line of movies with a touch of ‘Terrence Malick’, with both its characters and plot, but fails with a boring plot and stilted characters.