Ad Astra (2019)

[AimingforYoko]

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Astronaut Roy McBride undertakes a mission across an unforgiving solar system to uncover the truth about his missing father and his doomed expedition that now, 30 years later, threatens the universe.

AV Club in their review said, "...Ad Astra—the biggest and most expensive production of Gray’s nearly 25 years as a director, filled with spectacular effects executed with a sense of scale and speed—is in some ways one of his most minimalist films."

The movie is less about space, although they contribute awesome visuals, and more about the connections between humans, or lack thereof. It's a grounded space flick. I suppose the best thing I can say about it is it's better than Interstellar.

[tres bien]

So slow.  I was bored.

[Notwisconsin]

Better than interesteller? No. It was terrible. Great visuals, though.

[Proclone]

4 hours ago, Notwisconsin said:

Better than interesteller? No. It was terrible. Great visuals, though.

I agree, and I'm not a huge fan of Interstellar, but this was just dreadful.  It was a really hard sit to be honest.

I just got back from seeing it, the cast was good, and I'm a sucker for a drama set in space, so I thought it would be a decent matinee.  Boy was I wrong.

This was boring, preachy and pretentious.  It think's it's being super deep, but isn't really and unlike Interstellar (which I could also argue is preachy and pretentious) it didn't at least have cohesive message.  Interstellar was trying to tell a story about love and sacrifice.  This jumped all over the place, humans are the problem (that's sure groundbreaking)...the sins of the father are visited on the son...don't close yourself off to your emotions...Jesus movie, pick a message and a theme and go with it, stop jumping around.

 And despite having good visuals, it had serious pacing issues and there fundamental problems with plotting and payoff.  For example you have McBride take control of the ship when landing on Mars because the captain freezes.  He then says that he won't tell command about the incident.  One would assume that would payoff in someway.  The captain helps later to return the favor, or something, but that character just really anticlimactically dies later.

It was filled with really unnatural stilted dialogue.  And the narration...don't get me started on the narration.  I was this close to screaming, "Shut the fuck up," at the screen after the 47th episode of unnecessary narration.

I'm honestly not someone who is bothered by narration (I know some people are).  But this was excessive to the nth degree.  Dear film makers, this a visual medium, you really need to live by the axiom "show don't tell."  Especially don't tell what felt like the character's every fleeting thought.  At one point McBride says, "he's scared," in reference to the co-pilot of the ship he's on.  You don't need a voice over for that!  Tell the actor he's supposed to be scared and let him act it.  That is what you paid him for.  I felt more like I was listening to an audio book (and not in a good way) then watching a movie.

[stealinghome]

Yeah, I just got back from this and thought it was a big fat MEH. I echo the comments here—the movie thinks it is much...much...MUCH deeper and more profound than it actually is. And more groundbreaking. A white guy with daddy issues...boy, we’ve never seen THAT before! It was really slow and nothing happens except Roy gets some people killed unnecessarily. Great?

Gravity did it much, much better. I haven’t seen Interstellar so can’t comment on that except to say it’s hard to imagine anyone doing it worse.

I did like the acting—Brad Pitt wrung every last drop he could out of the role and Ruth Negga, Donald Sutherland, and Natasha Lyonne were delightful in their bit parts. Pitt and TLJ also do totally look like they could be son and father. But that’s pretty much all it’s got going for it. I want 2 hours of my Thursday night back.

[Steph J]

Spoiler

Thanks dad...

I liked the movie during the first half and that sequences with the monkeys was a nice little WTF moment.  When I realized that it was going to end up just being another "sad person has to go into outer space to learn how to have feelings" movie, I kind of lost interest.

On 9/26/2019 at 7:10 PM, stealinghome said:

Gravity did it much, much better. I haven’t seen Interstellar so can’t comment on that except to say it’s hard to imagine anyone doing it worse.

Gravity did it so much better.  I hated Intersteller, so I think this one is better.  At least this one isn't 3 hours.

On 9/22/2019 at 5:17 PM, Proclone said:

I'm honestly not someone who is bothered by narration (I know some people are).  But this was excessive to the nth degree.  Dear film makers, this a visual medium, you really need to live by the axiom "show don't tell."  Especially don't tell what felt like the character's every fleeting thought.  At one point McBride says, "he's scared," in reference to the co-pilot of the ship he's on.  You don't need a voice over for that!  Tell the actor he's supposed to be scared and let him act it.  That is what you paid him for.  I felt more like I was listening to an audio book (and not in a good way) then watching a movie.

It apparently underwent some fairly extensive reshoots; I'm wondering if maybe the excessive narration is an offshoot of that, particularly since the director reportedly didn't want to do reshoots but was forced to by the studio.  The movie definitely has the feeling of being steered by conflicting creative visions.

[revbfc]

I had no problem until the baboon attack.  After that it was a mess of actions that made no sense.

Seriously, that crew would still be alive if not for Brad Pitt.

Also, how is it that Tommy Lee Jones’ character looked younger after more than 27 years in space?

Edited September 29, 2019 by revbfc

[Lilac2000]

Well acted, great visuals. Overall super boring.

[Proclone]

22 hours ago, revbfc said:

I had no problem until the baboon attack.  After that it was a mess of actions that made no sense.

Seriously, that crew would still be alive if not for Brad Pitt.

I agree the the baboon attack had a WTF quality.  It also didn't really work with Pitt's rant about it being filled with rage and how he understood that rage.  They were animals, it wasn't rage it was fear.  I more fitting action set piece that would have worked better with the themes of the movie would have been a crew member of that ship who flipped (maybe after the stress in being in space so long) and killed the rest of the crew and then the captain of Roy's ship.

Then Roy's rant about recognizing that rage in himself and his father would have made a heck of a lot more sense.

And the death of the crew was pretty pointless, they were going to do the exact same thing Roy was going to do, blow up his father's ship.  Him sneaking on board and getting them killed in no way changed the end result and it was apparently his intention at this point to blow up the ship so why did he care who did it?  Why did we spend so much time with them if they were going to die in such an anticlimactic way to begin with?  Like I said in my other post there was obviously a set up to something between Roy and the Co-Pilot, but it's never paid off.  And the staging of that entire sequence was odd.

[stealinghome]

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I agree the the baboon attack had a WTF quality.  It also didn't really work with Pitt's rant about it being filled with rage and how he understood that rage.  They were animals, it wasn't rage it was fear.  I more fitting action set piece that would have worked better with the themes of the movie would have been a crew member of that ship who flipped (maybe after the stress in being in space so long) and killed the rest of the crew and then the captain of Roy's ship.

I feel like the random baboon attack was one place you could SEE the studio being like "we need some action in this movie dammit!!" And the voiceover was the director's attempt to try to tie it into the movie somehow. I saw the movie with friends and on the way out we were all remarking on how out of place it seemed.

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Why did we spend so much time with them if they were going to die in such an anticlimactic way to begin with?  Like I said in my other post there was obviously a set up to something between Roy and the Co-Pilot, but it's never paid off.  And the staging of that entire sequence was odd.

Yeah, the movie pretty clearly seemed to be priming the pump for something that never happened with the co-pilot. If (as someone said above) the studio did demand big reshoots, I suspect that whatever was supposed to happen with the co-pilot was a victim of the reshoots.

Edited October 1, 2019 by stealinghome

[ElectricBoogaloo]

Critics' Choice Award nominations:

Best Visual Effects

Best Sci-Fi or Horror Movie

[SmithW6079]

On 9/22/2019 at 3:36 PM, Notwisconsin said:

Better than interesteller? No. It was terrible. Great visuals, though.

Agreed. Pretty to look at, but otherwise, this movie suuuuuucked. It was all so pointless. 

[shrewd.buddha]

Finally got around to streaming this.  It had been on and off my watchlist for a couple of years until I came across a couple of YouTube reviews that convinced me it might not be a completely pretentious snooze-fest.
It was definitely a slow - slow - burn movie, but not frustrating to watch from the comfort of your own couch. 

I also thought it was very much a "guy's" movie, as  opposed to what might be called a chick-flick.  All of Brad Pitt's inner-monologue thoughts were so very working-class guy/ self-isolated loner / estranged husband, etc. 

On 9/29/2019 at 12:26 AM, Steph J said:

It apparently underwent some fairly extensive reshoots

It really felt disjoined and somewhat "off".  It was difficult to tell which weirdness was intentional and what was not.
It had great visuals, reminding me of Blade Runner: 2049, which I could have "looked at" for hours and hours. 

On 9/22/2019 at 8:17 PM, Proclone said:

It was filled with really unnatural stilted dialogue. 

All of dialogue - from every character - was so robotic , that it was jarring. Like something from a chat-bot. 

On 10/1/2019 at 8:22 AM, Proclone said:

And the death of the crew was pretty pointless

All the deaths felt pointless and anti-climatic, especially his father's.  It seemed as if everyone had to die so the main character would be alone and isolated.  They were all standing in the way of the protagonist's journey to discover that he no longer wanted to be alone and isolated.  Irony, much? 
 I did find the constant psych evaluations to be oddly amusing.

Bottom line: it felt long, it was weird, but I don't regret spending the time to watch it (at home). 

Edited February 26, 2023 by shrewd.buddha
grammar