by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls
*Spoilers*
Ad Astra is a good movie, not a great movie. The closest movie I can compare it to in spirit is Ex Machina. Both movies linger in the mind after you watch them. But Ex Machina is a far better movie.
I get the vision of the movie intended by this Brad Pitt vanity project. It’s supposed to be a melancholy rumination on the human condition and a man’s relationship with his distant father. Ok, I get it. And I get why they kept talking about aliens only for there to be no aliens.
And, yet, the movie is a little too subtle for its own good. It might benefit from the very thing didn’t want to have — aliens. I say this because the movie is obviously inspired by 2001: A Space Odyssey. Though the more astute of you will notice an homage to the campy space classic Dark Star. (In Dark Star an astronaut rides a piece of his ship into a planet’s atmosphere like a surfboard. Pitt does something a little similar at one point.)
In a sense, I think the lack of aliens is kind of a cop-out. Much of the rest of the movie was serviceable adult-oriented entertainment. It wasn’t hackish at all. It’s just the whole thing could have been a whole lot more…profound. The whole thing was so slight, so subtle that it felt lacking.
I have to be a nerd and point out the producers of the movie apparently are completely oblivious to the difference in the gravity on the moon and Mars compared to earth. But you can’t have everything, I guess.
But I did honestly like the movie. It’s going to be a great on-air entertainment for people flying to Walla Walla.
