Ad Astra is a 2019 science fiction movie starring Brad Pitt, Tommy Lee Jones, Ruth Negga, Donald Sutherland, Liv Tyler, and many others.
Ad Astra = to the stars…
I didn’t see this movie in the theater, but I did see it on HBO. I thought the film was really good and Brad Pitt gave a great performance in it. He played Astronaut Roy McBride who is convinced by his superiors to undertakes a mission through the unforgiving expanse of space to uncover the truth about his missing father and his doomed expedition that now, 30 years later, threatens the universe and the very essence of life as well.
At the stat of the mission, McBride questions whether his father is alive at all.
Through this mission, McBride has to constantly take a battery of psych evals to keep him on track with his objective, find his father. He is also so noted for being very calm, a point that a Brigadier General made when he talked about his low pulse rate when in precarious situations.
This is a science fiction film, but not in the traditional sense. Those who are looking for a high paced, Star Trek or Star Wars style action movie, need to look elsewhere. This is a film about psychological self discovery with science fiction thrown in.
Personally, I think that if you want to enjoy a movie like Ad Astra you would have to suspend parts of your imagination. I’m not a science major, and I don’t need everything to be too adherent to exact science, if that were the case I’d be watching a documentary not a movie. I do need to have some sibilance of reality.
There were some parts of the movie that I had to pause and say, hmmm. Even though I thought that the moon buggies lunar battle was kind of awesome, it did occur to me that they were using Apollo era Lunar Rovers and wondered why didn’t they have more advanced vehicles in the not distant future and not revert to tech from 50 years. But that’s just a minor technicality.
Pitt’s character was bad luck to too many people whom he had come in contact with along the harried journey to find his Dad. From the lunar buggy battle, the attack of the crazy monkeys that were onboard a derelict Norwegian research craft, and the whole crew of another space flight, made me want to question who was safe to fly with this man.
My finals thoughts on this film is that Pitt and other cast members preformed well. I enjoyed watching it as worthy science fiction and wanted to know more about their world of the future.
Ad Astra is available on HBO, HBO Now and Prime streaming services.
Rod is a blogger, writer, filmmaker, photographer, daydreamer who likes to cook. Rod produces and directs the web series, CUPIC: Diary of an Investigator. He is also the editor, producer and administrator of STM Daily News, a part of the TNC Network.
