A friend of mine, who saw it a couple weeks ago with the class she was teaching at SpaceX, roundly panned it to me. Jeff Foust says don’t bother seeing it, either.
Hollywood seems to have a hard time getting space movies right.
29 thoughts on “Ad Astra”
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Saw it yesterday, it was crap.
Numerous inconsistencies with reality and boring till the anticlimactic end.
I won’t be seeing it, and I’m thankful that I won’t be.
I like very, very few modern movies, because it has beecome endemic that they focus on characters and character dynamics overwhelmingly.
I much prefer movies where the focus is on the story, not the characters. Especially sci-fi.
I did halfway like Gravity (which is about the best I can say for any halfway recent movie) because it was indeed visually stunning, which helped make up somewhat for the poor physics and overdone characterization.
I liked “Moon”, although I watched it on Netflix not in the theatrical release. Seemed like an unnecessary plot stretch tho.
“The Martian” wasn’t bad either. But that was a movie made from the book, which I haven’t read yet. I have read Artemis, and that would not make a half bad movie, if done right.
Speaking of Martians, a movie that went underrated IMO was “The Space Between Us”. I also caught that one on Netflix cause it’s theatrical release was short. Even though most of the action takes place on Earth, it had a unique theme. Yeah maybe it was just a sappy teen romance and I had figured out the “big reveal” after only the first five minutes, but I liked it nevertheless. And the science was interesting and maybe pressing and perhaps not that far off.
“Interstellar” was interesting from a science perspective but too plot contrived to be really believable. It could have used an intermission it was very long.
It it still hard to best 2001: A Space Odyssey. Because of the sweep of the film, but also for the focus on life in space. Or at least on an interplanetary spaceship.
I’m reserving judgement on “Solaris” since I’ve never seen it. I hear one should skip the remake and go straight to the 1976 original in Russian with subtitles. It looks very good and got very high scores.
I’m purposely excluding Star Wars and Star Trek movies. Which are essentially westerns set in space. Not ABOUT space as such or the mysteries of space.
In addition to those, Alien (1979) shows what a deep space vessel would probably look like, as opposed to how we wished one would look. It’s sort of an “as-built” version of the Enterprise, grimy, not that well thought out, and with everything critical packed together so the crew isn’t hollering at each other across a big empty bridge.
I like the newer version of Solaris. Its not a remake of the first movie but a different adaptation of the novel.
Noted. Thanks.
This one is worth a watch, https://m.imdb.com/title/tt7946422/
I saw Ad Astra.
There were a few space-related oddities throughout the movie – most of which I’m willing to ignore.
But there were two at the end which were simply ridiculous. Inane.
The movie is an exploration of feelings….not a space adventure.
The trailers certainly were underwhelming. Now it’s becoming confirmed by actual feedback.
What do we want from a good space movie? A reasonable effort at technical and scientific versimilitude. And a movie that stands up as great art.
As David says, 2001 remains a difficult to top gold standard in both respects, and it’s aged remarkably well. No disrespect to Metropolis or Alphaville, it was the movie that made science fiction into a serious art form.
Interstellar remains for me the space movie that has tried the hardest to to use 2001 as a touchstone, and while it is not without its flaws (absurd premise, excessive length, casting of Matt Damon), it succeeds well enough to join the library. And while none are perfect, The Martian, Apollo 13, The Right Stuff, Alien, Moon, Salyut 7, Arrival…and I might even throw in Silent Running and Marooned despite the fact that their effects haven’t aged quite so well.
Some of these are even fairly recent. In the age of unoriginal Hollywood tentpole retreads, it *is* still possible to make a good space movie. Ad Astra just isn’t it, apparently. Strange, since they were clearly aiming for the Interstellar/Gravity/Arrival market niche.
I thought about mentioning Silent Running, even though it’s almost more of a 1970’s environmentalist Earth Day vibe.
But heck, how hard can this be with a ton of reasonably accurate science fiction books spanning more than half a century?
For a quick pass, just take O’Neill colonies, along with the associated industrial infrastructure, and use it as the setting for a Magnum P.I. reboot. Venturing further out, try some riff on Outland (1981 with Sean Connery).
You could try remaking The Revenant or Castaway in space but The Martian already did that.
Or think up something entirely new. Here’s on off the top of my head that came to me as I wrote this.
****
A crew of American asteroid miners is out doing their mining thing while a rival power (China) has used Starship-like launch capabilities to start to dominate orbital infrastructure, on a weight basis. Soon enough they get word that China has pulled an orbital Pearl Harbor and taken out US military and commercial assets in orbit, and has declared themselves sole possessor of the orbital high ground and asserted the right to either inspect any payload prior to launch and to destroy or de-orbit any non-approved payload.
This of course upsets the crew, so they stage their own deaths (some emergency messages about a rupture in a high pressure tank and massive electrical failures, then a loss of signal, etc). What they’re planning is to use what they have on hand as a massive wave of inbound projectiles, hitting LEO from out of nowhere at asteroid speed, and from multiple directions for a simultaneous strike one all the hostile orbital platforms.
So it’s a bit of an old Western (with a small band of scrappy miners cut off and on their own), Midway (using orbital mechanics to carefully plot an attack on a larger force), some daring-do, tense waiting as they ride in behind the attack wave, and some biting one-liners at the end.
****
It’s pretty short, linear, and builds to a climactic conclusion. Of course China would never let Hollywood make it. ^_^
I would prefer to see the rocks pound China.
I would go the other way and do an alternate history space movie. In this one Bobby Kennedy survives the assassination attempt on his life in the presidential primaries and goes on to win the presidency in 1968. Quickly realizing that the Vietnam war is a lost cause and desperate to save face and looking for a way out of what is considered a surrender by the conservatives of his day, Bobby realizes, after an emotional call to Neil and Buzz on the moon in ’69, that was heart rending for everyone, that continued space missions would be a way to project a successful Kennedy legacy rather than the war. Bobby authorizes construction of five more Saturn V’s to continue the moon exploration program well into his second term (he loses re- election in 72 due to a recession in 71 and the Mideast oil crises). But the Apollo program has enough momentum to carry forward. NASA takes a critical examination of Apollo and since new lunar modules will need to be constructed decides to enhance them into a block 2 to allow more automation and extend the surface stay by an additional 3 days. At about the time of Apollo 15, questions in the popular press and the science community begin to circulate about the scientific relevancy of Apollo. Is this really lunar science or just political ‘space opera’ for the masses? This triggers the eventful decision to try for high inclination polar orbits of the moon with the goal of exploring the polar regions in search of water. Jump ahead to 1975, Apollo 20 is the first such mission to land at the lunar south pole. Water is discovered, water has a little something extra in it*. That something extra kills the crew, but not before the good ol’ *contaminated* block 2 lunar ascent module is returned to lunar orbit by the last delirious astronaut who sends it off via its self automation, unoccupied, to prevent the temptation of a rescue that would endanger the third crewman. A follow on mission, Apollo 21 is sent without a lunar module but a specially built biological laboratory to dock with the orbiting Apollo 20 lunar ascent module and one doctor to try to figure out what happened. The two man crew (to extend the mission) has a man in the command module who has (secret, but known to both) orders to eject the lab and its occupant (should he fall ill) and return to Earth alone.
The only problem is that I wanted to use real historical characters. The CM pilot would be good ol Deke Slayton. The doctor? Well (plot gimmick alert) the only space qualified surgeon in NASA at the time, the same doctor that grounded Deke in the first place, just to add a little plot tension. Deke, still denied a moonwalk, is now on this lunar orbital research mission, to find out what about moon water is killing astronauts and possibly save the space program altogether.
*********
Or we could have the actual timeline, Apollo-Soyuz. Meh…
Dave
*Spoiler Alert
Andromedra Strain meets Apollo. I always thought our biological mitigation steps taken for Apollo 11 could have used more thought rather than afterthought. Esp. in the way the capsule was handled in the open sea. We got lucky, but on the other hand, a calculated risk worth taking. In the epilog we find out that it turns out was this water originated from Earth but was ejected during the Chicxulub Event. A really old virus for which we no longer have immunity tags along for the ride, gets frozen, swept up and preserved at the lunar poles. A vaccine is developed for moon bound astronauts.
In Return to Earth, Buzz Aldrin discusses the extended quarantine in the Lunar Receiving Lab at the Manned (now Johnson) Spaceflight Center.
“All of the precautions were explained to us so that we wouldn’t think that it was just a bunch of Mickey Mouse thinking, but whenever the opportunity arose, one or the other of us would poke fun at the NASA engineers who supervised the quarantine. They met their sealed-off Waterloo several days later when a stream of red ants appeared in the kitchen and proceeded to grow steadily in numbers. We happily kept them well informed about our visitors.”
Silent Running?
What is there not to like? A musical score by Peter Shickele of PDQ Bach fame, Joan Baez may be a Leftie but she sings beautifully, a sappy tree-hugging story line, and a cameo appearance by my dad’s forgotten AMF Versatran robot?
“Gather your children to your side in the sun
Tell them what they love will die
Tell them why in the sun”
I still have a soft spot for it.
Damon was perfectly cast. He is annoying, which fit his character. IRL, he is a climate fanatic, so it fit he played a scientist named Mann who altered his data for personal gain and to the detriment of humanity.
Not denying your points. But part of the problem is that Matt Damon is so well known of an A List actor that dropping him in as a late cameo (without any effort to radically alter his physical appearance or manner) has you saying: “Oh, it’s Matt Damon.” And you’re taken right out of the movie. (Or at least, I was.)
The other problem is that while it’s possible to buy Matt Damon as a rogue government black ops agent or even a smart*ss NASA engineer, it’s a stretch to accept him as NASA’s most brilliant scientist.
The biggest problem with Ad Astra as I see it (way beyond outright errors with regard to the way space really works) is that there’s really nothing of “Ad Astra” about it — as that term has long been wielded and understood in science fiction circles: as the effort to get Man out among the stars. Instead it’s sort of about getting to Neptune, and not really much about that.
I watched Apollo 11 as inflight entertainment. I thought CNN did a good job with the news footage making a good movie. The effects were awesome primarily because they weren’t special or CGI, but real practical effects that worked to put people on the moon.
On a flight earlier this year, I finally saw First Man. I guess it is a good movie for showing that Neil Armstrong lived a depressing life with his daughter and friends dying all over the place. It did show a side of the man most hadn’t seen. But most of all, I was glad I didn’t actually purchase a ticket to see the movie or bought a copy. It offered little to me other than to make a great accomplishment seem depressing.
You take the text of a great story. Dip it in acid a few times until the paper turns yellow and brittle and the ink begins to run, then make that into a screenplay. That seems to be the Hollywood recipe these days…
Apollo 13, with Tom Hanks, or Apollo 11, which was the recent project that just ran the real mission footage?
I wonder if kids today would hear about Apollo 13 and say “The original movie had 12 sequels?!”
Apollo 11; I thought that would be clear by the CNN part, since they produced it. I’ll give them props when it is deserved, which is rare. I do agree with David that it is just another remake with a tag of “new footage never before seen”, which is like believing Blair Witch was found footage.
I still laugh at the notion that kids didn’t realize Titanic was a real event (if not necessarily a real dramatic love story).
Saw Apollo 11 on IMAX at the Smithsonian earlier this year. (They ran an abridged version again for the Apollo 11 anniversary weekend.) And frankly, I was blown away. The restored footage was just breathtaking. You will learn more from Moon Machines, In the Shadow of the Moon, or Last Man on the Moon,, but no other documentary will confront you with the sheer spectacle and awe of Apollo like Apollo 11 does.
Of course, that’s a documentary (albeit a very artistically produced one), not a dramatic presentation.
I saw it on the screen on the back of an airline seat. But now that you mention it… Went to Vudu and bought the UHD version. Vudu is just who I buy digital movies, but with Movie Anywhere; the purchase works with Amazon and YouTube. I can then put on my VR system and watch Apollo 11 via YouTube VR. That should be like seeing the whole film in IMAX.
I’d love to see a GOOD movie made from “The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress”
Yes. Definitely overdue eh Manny?
Time Minear wrote a fantastic screenplay for it some years ago that actually found a good way around the “only one computer in Luna” problem. It may still be blowing about on the Internet. Pity it’ll never be made.
You could have Mike manifest in people’s mobiles, then, at the end, reveal he was an emergent property of the Amazon Lunar Server Farm that the rebels bomb to get their freedom. You could have the last scene be Manny dialing Mike on his mobile and getting an error message.
The core problem with SF movies is an extension of the core problem with gatekept SF: The gatekeepers and their followers believe the audience is stupid and ignorant, and won’t notice anything wrong. And I will tell you, back in the 1990s, when I was arguing cases, I was flat out told this by several SF editors and publishers.
There are four elements of “story,” those being background, characters, ambience, and plot. It’s my position the four are co-equal.