No stars (turkey). Rated PG-13, for violence, brief dramatic intensity and fleeting profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.20.19
Put the ballots away; the contest for 2019’s worst big-budget Hollywood production has concluded.
Doesn’t matter what emerges between now and Dec. 31; nothing will be poorer than Ad Astra.
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| Having reached the Mars outpost, Major Roy McBride (Brad Pitt) is warned by Helen Lantos (Ruth Negga), superintendent of the American sector, that his military superiors have been less than candid with him. |
This portentous, deadly dull and hopelessly self-indulgent train wreck is the most outrageously overblown sci-fi misfire since 2000’s Battlefield Earth. And that’s woeful company to keep.
Ad Astra is what happens when directors get too full of themselves. History is littered with similar studio miscalculations: Michael Cimino, and Heaven’s Gate; Steven Spielberg, and 1941; Warren Beatty, and Ishtar; Barry Levinson, and Toys. Mega-budget stinkers, every one of them.
James Gray — who co-scripted with Ethan Gross — and star/co-producer Brad Pitt have topped them all.
As I’ve observed before, when science-fiction goes bad, it goes very bad.
Rarely have 122 minutes passed with such agonizing sluggishness. This is the film for folks who thought 1968’s 2001: A Space Odyssey wasn’t slow enough.
It’s also the film to watch, for those who can’t get enough of Pitt. You’ll never again see so many tight close-ups and relentlessly slow takes on his face; cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema lingers on every dimple, blemish and wrinkle with the adoration of a reverential acolyte.
Nor is it a happy face. Ever. Pitt spends the entire film in mostly silent remorse and (supposedly) thoughtful brooding. His line deliveries are quiet, flat and emotionless: completely in contrast to his character’s hilariously overblown off-camera narration, where each sentence is separated by pauses so pregnant they could deliver. You’d think Gray and Gross believed their text had been lifted from Moses’ stone tablets.
I despise preachy, pompous science fiction. It’s the first refuge of so-called storytellers who believe that a futuristic setting is the only way they can impart Wisdom Relevant To Our Contemporary Lives. The result is invariably condescending and insufferably patronizing.
Beyond all that — aside from the relentless pomposity — Gray and Gross fail on the most primary level: They don’t tell a good story. The journey isn’t interesting, and the “resolution” leaves far too many key questions and issues unresolved … after which, we get a bewildering epilog that feels as though it has been yanked in from some other film.
The plot, such as it is:
At some point in the future, Earth is beset by a series of increasingly destructive electrical surges; they’re traced to radioactive bursts believed to emanate from a long-dormant U.S. space mission dubbed the Lima Project. That ship disappeared upon reaching Neptune, 16 years after launching. (You’ll wait in vain, hoping to eventually discover the actual cause — or creation — of these bursts.)
The situation has grown critical; Earth itself is in jeopardy. Astronaut Roy McBride (Pitt) is tagged to travel to Mars, in the hopes of establishing a “clean” communications link with whoever might be left on Lima. (The bursts have destroyed any means of establishing such contact from Earth or the Moon.)
Roy is chosen because Lima was headed by his father, H. Clifford McBride (Tommy Lee Jones), the space agency’s most-decorated astronaut and space explorer. We get an early hint that something is not … quite … right about Clifford, and that Roy therefore might have the best chance of getting a response.
Roy, however, is Deeply Conflicted (as Pitt repeatedly reminds us, during those inane voice-overs). He hasn’t seen Clifford since childhood, and the man was a distant father and husband; his neglect contributed to Roy’s having grown up remote and emotionally withdrawn, unable to sustain any sort of relationship (including with his wife, played fleetingly by Liv Tyler, and glimpsed only occasionally in the sort of arty-farty, dream-like memory flashbacks beloved by irritating movies of this sort).
This remoteness justifies the fact that Pitt spends the entire film in what appears to be a somnambulistic trance. Or maybe he’s on Quaaludes.
And, so, Roy embarks on a mission that Gray and Gross structure in distinct acts that are an obvious nod to 2001: A Space Odyssey. He heads first to the Moon, from which he’ll be able to join a rocket crew heading from there to Mars. This first segment generates mild tension, due to the fact that the Moon has been colonized by various nations and factions that prey on each other.
(“World peace” seems not to exist as a concept in this saga. Not that this is ever explained.)
Mars represents the second chapter, during which Roy — and we viewers — learn that the mystery has deepened. Circumstances then lead to the third chapter, with its subsequent trip to Neptune; this feels precisely like Discovery One’s journey to Jupiter’s moons, in 2001. What occurs after Roy’s arrival is laden with the same vaguely metaphysical nonsense.
He even finds a monolith, albeit one standing on two legs.
Supporting characters are defined so poorly as to be little more than decoration, like wallpaper in one’s living quarters. Indeed, they’re so insubstantial that if they turned sideways, they’d vanish. Some “look worried.” Others “refuse to share what they know.” Many are the equivalent of the original Star Trek red-shirted engineering guys: granted one or two pointless lines, and then offed rather stupidly.
Donald Sutherland gets the only supporting role of (minor) substance, as a veteran astronaut who knew Roy’s father back in the day. Sutherland adequately milks his signature “mildly sinister” aura, further suggesting that Things Are Not As They Seem, but his presence is too fleeting to resonate.
In an apparent effort to inject some tension into this flaccid flick, Gray and Gross add a weird sidebar during the Moon-to-Mars transit, involving a distress call from (one assumes) some sort of research/medical deep-space station. The aftermath of this diversion also remains unexplained.
The banal human element aside, this film definitely looks spectacular; visual effects supervisor Allen Maris and production designer Kevin Thompson definitely put us in space. The verisimilitude is stunning, and we get a persuasive sense of the disparate environments of Earth, Moon, Mars and Neptune.
The film’s opening sequence, which introduces Roy as part of the team assembling a massive Earth-bound antenna, is absolutely awesome.
Alas, that’s hardly sufficient. This is a terrific visual environment in which to pour a potentially thought-provoking sci-fi drama. Too bad Gray and Gross couldn’t find one.
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