In short: Ad Astra (2019)

A relatively near future where everyone is heavily tranquilized (or all actors are drugged, who knows for sure?). Energy surges apparently coming from Neptune blast through our solar system. Astronaut Roy McBride (Brad Pitt) and his daddy issues very slowly make their way towards the planet to perhaps do something about the situation as well as said issues.

I’m not one to blame a science fiction movie for not being a colourful adventure full of talking trees and raccoons with PTSD (though, actually…), but if you want to make a less adventuresome science fiction movie, please don’t end up like James Gray’s po-faced epic here, telling a tiny, clichéd story over two hours that feel more like years.

The film’s main problem is that it is desperately trying to be a movie about human psychology but clearly has no clue how to go about it. So we get stuff like the ridiculous scene in which Pitt’s character is attacked by a monkey (in space, nobody can hear you fling poo), quickly followed by another one of his endless “psych evaluations” in which he talks about his unexpressed anger. It’s as if the monkey is some kind of…metaphor!? Whoa. This is symptomatic for a film that clearly can’t imagine an audience that has Pitt’s character arc from the white middle-aged dude who is repressing his feelings to the white middle-aged dude who isn’t anymore because he wrestled his father (in space!) figured out after the first ten minutes or so, and so dooms us to twiddle our thumbs watching Pitt not express feelings until the film gets up to speed too. And if you still don’t get it, let’s add a mumbled, pointless, and monotone monologue by Pitt that tells us exclusively things we either already understand or that the film should show us instead of mumble at us, as per the cinematic rule of “show, don’t mumble!”.


All of which is a particular problem since that’s all there is to the film: its world building is perfunctory and vague, the acting is bland and impersonal (with Pitt, usually a guy who works well within the parameters of his limited abilities, clearly out of his depth), and it consciously rejects all visionary elements and concepts of science fiction (what I’d call the good and important stuff), aiming for a philosophy of tending one’s own garden instead, perhaps mumbling of awe and wonder but certainly never showing them.