Ad Astra

I should caution before you go any further that this review is full of spoilers.

To the Stars, Alice! (Zoom! Pow!)
or
In Space, No One Should Hear You Voice-Over
or
Ameliorating With Extreme Prejudice

Science Fiction is a fascinating genre. At its best, it is mind-expanding, forcing you to ponder the imponderable and think the unthinkable...to look at things in new ways and never see them again as you once did, or even think about why things are, and how they managed to get there in the first place...and why not another.

That's "science fiction," the concept. It is rarely science fiction, the reality. As one of it's practitioners, Theodore Sturgeon, once opined "90% of science fiction is crap...but then, 90% of everything is crap." 

With the exception of science fiction movies, where the percentage is upwards of 95%.* And if you think I'm being too harsh, then consider one of the hallmarks of science fiction movies is The Planet of the Apes. Frankly, really good science fiction is above the heads of casual movie-goers—you throw two or three advanced concepts out of their comfort zone and it'll turn into a giggle-fest. In movies, a "successful" science fiction movie is, by and large, another reliable story or concept that is set in the future or in space. The familiar off-sets the strange and, as a bonus, keeps the familiar hidden in plain sight.

So, James Gray is a good director. His last movie, an adaptation of the daunting book The Lost City of Z was very good and too little seen. It was backed by Brad Pitt's Plan B company (and, at one point, Pitt was going to star). Whatever returns the movie made, Pitt is one of the folks behind Gray's new film Ad Astra—Latin for "To the Stars"—about an Earth in "the near future," at which time four things seem to be occurring: 1) Earth has expanded colonizing other planets; 2) we commercialize those colonies to the hilt—there's a Pioneer Hotel and Casino on the Moon, judging by the "Vegas Vic" neon sign**; 3) humans are spending an inordinate amount of time searching for intelligent life...with at least two major projects—an Earth-based antenna array that extends from the Earth's surface into space and a deep-space manned mission called the Lima Project sent to do exactly the same thing on the outer rim of the solar system***; and 4) the Earth is being buffeted by something called "The Surge" which acts like a high altitude nuclear weapon disrupting and shutting down power grids across the Earth...and the Moon.

It's that last one that gets the narrative ball rolling—Pitt plays astronaut Major Roy McBride, considered top-notch in his field because he's emotionally stable (despite being something of an space-"orphan"—more on that in a moment) who stays cool under any circumstance proven by the fact that his heart-rate has never risen above 80 BPM—not even when, during one of these "surge" events, he's knocked off the Earth-based antenna seeking extraterrestrial signals from space. He survives the high-altitude fall despite having his parachute slightly damaged on the way down and he's called on by U.S. Space Command (SpaceCom) to undertake a top secret mission.

It seems those "surge" blasts have been tracked originating from the planet Neptune. That particular planet is where The Lima Project, commanded by McBride's father, H. Clifford McBride (Tommy Lee Jones), was sent to search for E.T. signals at the outer reaches of the solar system. His father is considered dead, as nothing has been heard from the Lima probe for sixteen years, but, those surge blasts are coming from Neptune...and there's some techno-babble about it having to do with anti-matter, and the power source for Lima did have an element of anti-matter to it. They put "2" and "-2" together and came up with a Neptune-sized "0". McBride is asked to go to Mars, which has an underground facility not affected by the "surge" to relay a message to the Lima Project—and, hopefully, his father—to find out what the heck Dad is doing out there. If he truly is "Out There."

But, first, they have to go to the Moon. Commercial flights are available (on Virgin) and McBride is joined by an old colleague of his father's, Col. Pruitt (Donald Sutherland, sure, because he and Jones were in Space Cowboys together), who has been brought out of retirement to keep an eye on McBride and has his own ideas about what happened "out there." Seems the older McBride was upset that Pruitt quit SpaceCom, calling him "a traitor," and, given his father's nature, "a voyage of exploration can be used for escape. We think your father is hiding."

The trip to the Moon is uneventful, if still based on the rather wasteful first stage/second stage way of going into space now. The lunar colony is now a tourist destination, which Roy says—in his ever-present narration****—is "covered with drink stands and T-shirt vendors—just a recreation of what they were running away from on Earth—if my Dad saw this, he'd tear it all down." Well, he just might be doing that, sonny-boy. Better head for the next leg of the journey—from Moon to Mars. Trouble is, there's a little territoriality going on, Moon-side. Seems mining interests (maybe led by Sam Rockwell—or Rockwells) are in dispute, and there have been incidences of violence and theft by pirates.

Pirates? On the Moon? Arrrr, I HATE those!

As goofy and entertaining as a rove-by shooting on the Moon is, it's just there to provide "an incident bump" so that something is happening besides watching ships move in a straight line and Pitt's constant navel-gazing (no, ladies, not literally). It is not necessary to the plot. It is not necessary at all. All it does is get rid of Pruitt's character and gives McBride an opportunity to know something that Pruitt is hiding about the mission, something that would have been revealed later, anyway. Grant the sequence this, though: it's staged like one of John Ford's "we've got company" Indian attacks (on the Moon!) and it does a marvelous job of recreating the hummocky lunar landscapes familiar from the Moon landings. If only they could fake it that well in the 1960's!

So, McBride gets to go on his trip to Mars to deliver the message to his father, and it's not a commercial flight, it's more like a trucker line—McBride refers to the astronauts as "long-haulers." They basically launch from the Moon base and then point themselves at the spot where Mars is going to be when they get there in 19 days. Fast trip. But, too long for a movie unless something happens along the way. The movie needs another "bump." So, they get a "May-Day" signal from a "bio-medical" facility called Vesta IX and decide to investigate. McBride puts up a protest that he is on a top-secret mission and the pilot cannot risk screwing it up. The pilot, says, sure, but this is a "May-Day" and he has to investigate, especially since he's not getting any return hails. McBride thinks it's stupid, but ultimately agrees, even volunteering to join the pilot when he notices the co-pilot is a bit reluctant to go (which brings up the "Captain Kirk" rule—the commander should stay on the ship and let the "red-shirts" handle it, but, no, not on this ship). 

There, then begins the "Alien" episode, where McBride and the pilot split off on the Vesta, looking for the crew...bad idea, but, we're starting to get used to bad ideas on this trip...and this movie. I would like to be spoiler-free in this review, but I don't think Ad Astra is worth seeing, and, also, I can't resist using the phrase "Crazy-Killer-Baboons-From-Space." Yes. They go there. It was about this time I gave up on the movie (but stuck it out until the end).

But, one other thing about the sequence disturbed me—it's impossible. The transport is going in a straight-line (with gravity variants) to Mars (or where it will be in 19 days) and getting there pretty damn fast. Unless the Vesta facility is on the same trajectory going at the same speed, the pilot wouldn't be able to just "change course" like on "Star Trek" and sidle on over to the other ship—they don't have brakes in space, they would have to stop their momentum (which is a lot to ask) in order to rendezvous, and then, once they're done, restart the engines to regain that same speed to continue on to "where-Mars-will-be-in-19-days-plus-the-amount-of-time-wasted-on-the-'May-day' signal." This is "Star Wars"-science, meaning it's not science at all.

They make it to Mars, not easily—another "Surge" happens just as they're trying to land and McBride is welcomed to the underground Mars-base by its manager Helen Lantos (Ruth Negga), who escorts him to his destination, but she is dismissed by SpaceCom authorities as "not authorized at this level." He is escorted into a sound-proofed booth, handed a script and reads it—if you've forgotten because of the rove-by shootings and killer space baboons, that is that mission to read a message to his father, who might be alive near Neptune. McBride's script is "just the facts, ma'am" formal, and no reply is received after Roy reads it. Neptune does not respond.

But, Roy is freaking out. He spends a lot of time in "comfort-rooms" that project Earth-scenes on the walls and voice-overing about his father and him and their lack of relationship and how they're more alike than he might know and wonders what the long-form Lima Project might have done to "my Dad. Did it break him? Or was he already broken?" At that point, the H. Clifford McBride character starts to take on the mythos of Marlon Brando's Col. Kurtz in Apocalypse Now. Old messages have messianic overtones and a devotion to the search for E.T.'s that slightly creep one out. 

Next time, Roy goes in the booth to broadcast a signal, he goes off-script, appealing to his father directly, using personal details and ending with "Your loving son, Roy." He waits, and when there is more activity in the control room, he understand what it means "You heard from him, didn't you?" When he is not given an official reply to his questions, he starts to get angry. Now, it's personal and that's just what SpaceCom doesn't want. "Thank you, Major. For your service, we will return you to Earth. Your connection makes you unsuitable for the Mission."

Now, they tell him.

Roy's security clearance is revoked, and all he can do is go to a comfort room and stare at the fish. Then, Lantos makes a visit and asks "They never told you what happened to him out there, did they?" Well, no, they didn't, and it's surprising that she knows as she'd previously been told she was "not cleared at this level." Lantos reveals to McBride that her parents were also part of Lima and that his father killed everybody else on the project to quell an apparent mutiny—something Pruitt was aware of. She shows him a classified tape of the older McBride reporting the incident to Earth: "I'm disclosing a tragedy...I have killed the innocent and the guilty."

Then, she drops a bomb on him. The ship he came in on is being re-purposed with nuclear weapons to go out to Neptune and destroy Lima. All Roy can think about is that he has to get back on that ship and get to Neptune.

I've dropped so many spoilers, I'm not compounding any damage to say that he does. But, how he does it is eye-rollingly stupid, and once he gets there, things go downhill just as the ship is launching, because apparently there are no such things as G-forces during a launch. What then happens is a contrivance that just ensures that Roy is the only one to make the long, lonely trek to confront his Father and...as the SpaceCom boys say "ameliorate the situation."

And with that, the film plays out more for the sake of convenience than any sort of Big Theme about the nature of man or his place in the Universe, other than the notion that to be obsessed with life off the Earth and ignore it at home is crazy and crazy-making. What good is proving we're not alone in the Universe, when we're isolating ourselves on Earth?

Well, the quest for knowledge, for one thing. If human beings don't have all the answers, it would be nice to get a second opinion. But, the movie is too involved with self-involvement to ponder that. But, one should go into space with more goals than merely to solve "Daddy Issues."

So, (the movie says) astronauts are cold and distant...because their destinations are. And the farther we go, the more distant, physically and emotionally, they're going to become. Not a big revelation or a revolutionary statement. That's why there are no space-romance movies unless they throw out the physics book, and when they don't, you get creepy things like...Passengers (shudder). All you had to do was take a look at astronaut divorce statistics: all that training, all that time away from families...and that's for trips that took up to a week. With the ISIS and extended-stay missions, the toll on families must be enormous. The toll on families must be irrevocable.

But, James Gray obviously didn't know that. I've known it since Frank Poole's birthday party...and you know something? David Bowie and Elton John, who are not film-makers or involved in space-programs, knew it, too, some 40+ years ago. And it should be obvious—explorers do not make good partners...because they will not value others above their personal goals. They are selfish, self-involved, and frequently obsessed. They have a singular vision, and "singular" doesn't involve sharing. Gray's The Lost City of Z had that as a sub-text. Putting the story in space doesn't change the point. We're merely repeating ourselves somewhere else.

And that's not science fiction, not if we're trying to expand things, or think new thoughts. It's not much of anything, really.

Ad Astra is a waste of time...and space.

* No, I haven't forgotten about 2001: A Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick's "proverbial GOOD science fiction movie" ("You new here?"). In fact, I've written about it so often, that I avoid mentioning it whenever I can. It's part of the 10% that isn't crap, and actually achieves what I proposed as the mission of science fiction—"to go (boldly) where no mind has gone before."

** Someone should tell the director or art director or CGI-ist's that the Pioneer Club shut down in 1995 "in the near past" and became a souvenir shop. The sign remains in Vegas  for nostalgic reasons. And because...Vegas.

*** Neil deGrasse Tyson will have a field day with this one: why off of God's green Earth would you send a manned probe to search for messages from outer space to Neptune when those messages will arrive at Earth 4 hours and 2 minutes later? What's the hurry? If somebody wants to come up with some woo-woo explanation like "because of the Van Allen belts" I would reply...then set 'em up away from them on the Moon, dummy! Why go to Neptune...except to gin up false drama?

**** This continuous narration is annoying. Maybe it was a nod to Willard's narration in Apocalypse Now (which the movie resembles—I kept thinking over some of the montages "Space transit. Shi-iit. I'm still in Space transit"), but it's closer to the "hit-you-over-the- head" narration of the theater version of Blade Runner. It would have been a far gutsier—albeit riskier—move to just eliminate it, even if it left some of the audience in the lunar dust. Pitt's performance is internalized and well-done and one can tell that his McBride is dealing with a lack of engagement to counter-act his separation anxiety issues without having to tell us.. I'm not sure that the narration provides anything that Gray doesn't already provide visually and it feels like the voice-over was put in at the studio's insistence...due to cold corporate feet. I'm thinking there'll be a non-narration director's cut "in the near future."