In an age of big sci-fi blockbusters like the Marvel Cinematic Universe or Star Wars, auteur directors have frequently proven that there is still a dedicated market for smaller space films that match big ideas with unparalleled spectacle. The trend of the semi-realistic space movie can be seen all over the last few years - Alfonso Cuaron's 2013 thriller Gravity, Christopher Nolan's Interstellar in 2014, Damien Chazelle's First Man in 2018, even Ridley Scott's 2015 survival piece The Martian which, while certainly more mainstream and crowd-pleasing than the other films I've just mentioned, contains an air of scientific truth about it that, however nonsense it might be, managed to fool my non-scientific brain. Many have theorised that no idea is truly original; sometimes you have to take lots of preexisting ideas and put them together to create something original.
In Ad Astra, director James Gray and his co-writer Ethan Gross (in his second ever feature film writing credit) have taken many elements of the films previously mentioned; the spectacle of Gravity, the big ideas of Interstellar, the character study of First Man, the loneliness glimpsed in The Martian, and paired them with even more elements from films that predate those ones; 2001: A Space Odyssey, even Alien. This process isn't restrictive to sci-fi; in fact, the film Ad Astra reminded me most of while watching it was Apocalypse Now, in both style and narrative.
So let's talk about the narrative. It's the 'near future' (classic sci-fi vagueness) and the human race has expanded out into the solar system, having set up airport-like terminals on the moon and Mars in a manner reminiscent of 2001. It is in this world that we meet Roy McBride (Brad Pitt), who is conducting a check of a (pretty awesome) space station that extends from the surface of the Earth into the atmosphere when a massive power surge almost kills him. To describe it anymore would be to do a disservice to the film's breathtaking opening scene. Back on Earth, he's informed that the U.S. Space Command believes that the surge had something to do with the work McBride's father, H. Clifford (Tommy Lee Jones), was doing before he disappeared several years before. SpaceComm concludes that Clifford is still alive and is conducting research around Neptune, so they decide to send Roy to investigate his father's project, and destroy it if necessary.
Although I just spent a whole paragraph explaining the premise, Ad Astra is not a very plot-driven film. It's more interested in exploring McBride's character, which it does through an always-subjective viewpoint and a lot of Apocalypse Now-esque voiceover. The voiceover has become a sticking point for some viewers but it didn't bother me that much. McBride is a very introverted and emotionally distant (we're told early on that his heart rate never rises above around 80 BPM, even in dangerous situations such as the opening scene) character, so voiceover was probably the way to go, allowing us to see his introspective side. I think it's realistic to be quiet on the outside but constantly cross-examining everything internally - it's something I can relate to.
The film is very devoted to this character study, so much so that all the other people in the film seem more like set dressing. Kind of like Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, this is a movie that shuffles big names in and out of the story faster than you can say 'wonder how much they got paid for that?'. Donald Sutherland gets a handful of scenes. Liv Tyler gets a handful of lines. With so little support, it was up to the leading man to carry the film completely, and I'm happy to report that Brad Pitt was more than up to the task. While I wasn't as blown away by his performance as some others were (I'd still much prefer to see him win an Oscar for Cliff Booth than this role), he does do a very good job.
As you can probably tell from the still above, all of the technical elements are brilliant. Hoyte van Hoytema's (that's a fun name to say) cinematography is absolutely breathtaking, capturing the emptiness of space with a diverse colour palette that changes as the film continues so that each sequence of events is almost colour-coded. Hoytema also shot Interstellar so he's no stranger to science fiction. Additionally, Max Richter's score is subtle and beautiful. Many audience members have taken issue with the film's slow pace but I thought it suited the story it was trying to tell. You definitely notice the slow-burn but it's far from boring.
Gray does throw in a couple of action scenes - probably around three or four over the 124-minute runtime, though your mileage may vary. They were probably put into the script to make it more marketable for a studio, but most of them were so well-done that it didn't bother me, with the exception being one involving a baboon that felt completely out-of-place and the film spends the next scene bending over backwards to justify its existence. It really didn't add to the story and it's thematic relevance felt overly manufactured. You could say it's no different to Apocalypse Now's various side quests but it felt like way too much of a diversion from the plot for me.
The film does stumble a bit in the third act. It's a shame that, after taking a lot of inspiration from Apocalypse Now, it didn't take one more leaf out of Coppola's book and have an ambiguous ending, because it really is hard to wrap up a cerebral story like this. In the end, the climax feels very messy and illogical, with not enough conflict to be satisfying. Ultimately, it felt a bit lazy and in need of another draft. It also went around in circles in kind of a stupid way.
Ultimately, I can't stay mad at Ad Astra for the ending because I'd love to see more films like it; sci-fi with philosophical intentions, good acting, great cinematography and perhaps a slightly better script next time. The film is well worth your time on its own merits, and as an added bonus you get to be privy to the discussion surrounding it (the film was the Letterboxd Talking Point for a couple of weeks before Joker came along and stole its thunder). As far as the 'awards season sci-fi' film I was talking about before, Letterboxd tells me that there have been seven of them since 2013 and I've seen six. As far as my preferences, Ad Astra is better than Gravity and The Martian but not as good as Arrival, First Man or Blade Runner 2049. I've still yet to see Interstellar.
Score: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ (B+)
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