AD ASTRA (2019) MOVIE NEWS & REVIEW

ad astra (2019) movie

Genre           |   Science Fiction Thriller

Classification   |   M

Running time   |   123 minutes

Released         |   19 September 2019

cast

Brad Pitt ... Roy McBride
Liv Tyler ... Eve McBride
Tommy Lee Jones ... Clifford McBride
Ruth Negga ... Helen Lantos
Donald Sutherland ... Colonel Pruitt
Anne McDaniels ... Shunga Hologram
​John Ortiz ... General Rivas

director

James Gray

writer

​James Gray ... (written by) &
Ethan Gross ... (written by)

cinematographer

Hoyte Van Hoytema ​

music

​​Max Richter

film editor

​John Axelrad
Lee Haugen

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box office result

Worldwide             $​TBA

Australia                 $​TBA

North America       $TBA

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movie minutiae

​Director James Gray has said it will feature "the most realistic depiction of space travel that's been put in a movie." He's also described it as "Sorta like, if you got 'Apocalypse Now' and '2001' in a giant mash-up and you put a little [Joseph] Conrad in there."

​The title means "to the stars" in Latin. It is often used as a shorthand for "Ad Astra per Aspera" (To the stars through difficulties).

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related movies

THE MARTIAN (2015)

AD ASTRA (2019) MOVIE IMAGES

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AD ASTRA (2019) STORY SYNOPSIS

​Astronaut Roy McBride (Brad Pitt) travels to the outer edges of the solar system to find his missing father and unravel a mystery that threatens the survival of our planet. His journey will uncover secrets that challenge the nature of human existence and our place in the cosmos.

AD ASTRA (2019) MOVIE REVIEW

Reviewed by Mark Geraghty   |   Review date 19 September 2019

​​Pop Movee Rating

​On the back of his great work in ONCE UPON A TIME…. IN HOLLYWOOD, Brad Pitt delivers another noteworthy performance that will guarantee some Awards Season consideration, but not even his “Star wattage” can spark James Gray’s AD ASTRA into something more than the sum of its plot-driven parts… And, by the way, if you’re a cinephile, don’t be surprised if, when you see AD ASTRA, you find yourself wondering why the film feels like APOCALYPSE NOW (1979) in outer space. I’ll get to that...

In AD ASTRA, Brad Pitt plays Roy McBride, a career Astronaut who has spent an entire lifetime suppressing his emotions in pursuit of a greater cause. It’s a cause inspired by his own legendary father, Dr. Clifford McBride (Tommy Lee Jones), a pioneering Astronaut who disappeared years before on an expedition to Neptune.

Roy is the model of cool, calm and collected. No matter how perilous the circumstance, his pulse never gets above eighty beats per minute…

That’s a good thing because the film’s opening set-piece puts Roy in maximum danger, testing his ability to free-fall back to the Earth’s surface after a major mishap on a huge space telescope designed to maximise humanity’s ability to search for other life in the universe.

No sooner is Roy up and about from his low orbit Halo episode, the powers-that-be bring him into their plan to get to the bottom of what caused caused the huge, planet-wide power surge that created the film’s opening disaster.

As contrivance would have it, a huge cosmic surge emanated from Neptune, the last known location of Roy’s father’s spaceship...

Gray, who wrote the film in conjunction with Ethan Gross, never really nails the details of how or why the cosmic surge is connected to Roy’s father. The story flip-flops a bit on this matter and, as a result, Tommy Lee Jones’ Clifford is never defined.

Is he good? 
Maybe...

Is he bad? 
Maybe...

Is he crazy? 
Maybe…

Tommy Lee Jones is such a good actor, but in AD ASTRA, he seems wasted. He’s not a real character; he’s a plot device designed to evoke maximum emotional output from Pitt’s character based on the sketchiest of details about a man he hardly remembers knowing in the first place.

Donald Sutherland is also wasted, as Colonel Pruitt, in a role that has barley a few minutes of screen time. 

Initially, Sutherland’s character seems like he’s going to be central to Roy’s journey and, for the duration of the film’s second, big set-piece - a space buggy chase on the Moon - things go to plan. All of a sudden, he’s gone. Suffering from something akin to a heart attack, Pruitt gets written out and the last the audience hears is that he’s been put into surgery!

Jones and Sutherland are such great performers, it’s hard to fathom why their roles in this film are so thin.

Time and again, Gray & Gross trade-off secondary characters right at the moment when their contribution is starting to become interesting.

Ruth Negga, as Mars Administrator Helen Lantos, suffers exactly the same fate...

Fortunately, AD ASTRA is well and truly anchored by Brad Pitt.

He can’t help overcome every narrative problem the film has, but he sure makes it a hell of a lot better to watch because of his presence.

Pitt does an awesome job at playing “blank” in the opening half hour of the film. His performance is reminiscent of Keir Dullea in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968), displaying a facade that makes him the Poster Boy for Astronaut recruitment. Deep down however, there’s brewing emotional turbulence and the thought of encountering/confronting his Father starts to break down Roy’s psychological walls.

Now, let’s talk about the similarities between AD ASTRA and Francis Ford Coppola’s Vietnam War Magnum Opus APOCALYPSE NOW… And, while I’m at it, Joseph Conrad’s HEART OF DARKNESS, upon which both films borrow from heavily.

AD ASTRA and APOCALYPSE NOW are both built around one man’s existential crisis as he embarks upon a long journey to confront a mythical “Father” figure. In AD ASTRA, James Gray opts to make the “Father” figure the literal Father of his principal character, Roy. This adds additional weight to Roy’s journey as he is now - quite literally - on a quest to save the soul of his creator.

In APOCALYPSE NOW, Martin Sheen’s Willard comes to understand why Marlon Brando’s Colonel Kurtz has adopted the erratic, unconventional approach to waging war in the jungles of Vietnam. Kurtz never becomes a “Father” figure in the literal sense, but Willard understands and admires the way Kurtz has decided to operate. In the end, his termination of Kurtz’s command has nothing to do with the Colonel’s actions, but as a mark of respect to “go out like a soldier”. By the time Willard assassinates Kurtz, the audience already knows it’s fitting that someone who has a deep understanding of Kurtz is the one to relieve him of his burdens.

Both Tommy Lee Jones, as Clifford McBride, and Marlon Brando, as Kurtz, are men of great intellect, but have an almost messianic zeal in the prosecution of their beliefs. In McBride Snr’s case, it's his pursuit of extraterrestrial life, while Kurtz is determined to understand the perfection of man’s ability to commit atrocities upon one another.

AD ASTRA sees Brad Pitt’s Roy endure a series of trials, none of which seem likely for him to be harmed in any way, but, create an unrelenting sense of near-and-present danger for those around him. He, like Willard in APOCALYPSE NOW, at first, remains detached from the humans around him; focussed entirely upon “the mission”. Only toward the end of their respective journeys does each man reveal a little more of his humanity.

Up until these Third Act reveals, both movies employ a first-person narration in the form of an inner monologue that enlightens the viewer as to what both Roy McBride and Willard really think. In Roy’s case it’s the duplicity of the inner and outer self. What he projects (both in word and action) is not what he really thinks. In Willard’s case, his narration provides a mixture of background exposition to “fill in the blanks” about Kurtz and, despite his orders, illustrate his growing admiration for what Kurtz is doing.

James Gray also manages to get his “Ride of the Valkyrie” homage into AD ASTRA…

Journeying to the Moon, Roy McBride and Donald Sutherland’s Pruitt must traverse a section of the lunar landscape that is like the “Wild West”, with non-aligned mercenaries out to commandeer whatever assets they can. While it’s nothing like what Francis Coppola conjured for APOCALYPSE NOW, the exchange between the US military and these mercenaries is reminiscent of what the “Valkyrie” sequence in APOCALYPSE NOW symbolised…

A larger, better-resourced military force is not always the answer to winning a war. If you want to win, you need to know how to beat the enemy on their own terms.

AD ASTRA also has its own “never get out of the boat” sequence…

In APOCALYPSE NOW, Willard and Frederic Forrest’s “Chef” are, at one point, pursued through the jungle by a tiger. They make it back to the Patrol Boat, but “Chef” all but suffers a nervous breakdown at the thought of being killed by the tiger. In his narration, Willard muses, “Never get out of the boat… Absolutely - goddamn  - right. Unless you were going all the way.”

In AD ASTRA, Roy catches a ride with a high speed rocket from the Moon to Mars, however, the ship encounters a distress signal enroute from a Norwegian research space station. Responding, McBride accompanies Captain Tanner (Donnie Keshawarz) to investigate. What they find is terrifying and echoes the scene from APOCALYPSE NOW… “Never get out of the boat”.

James Gray has stated that Joseph Conrad’s novel HEART OF DARKNESS was an inspiration for AD ASTRA, but the parallels between his film and Coppola’s are much easier to draw than Conrad’s original novel, due, in no large part, to the cinematic medium the two films share. Both are surreal journeys where the protagonist is as much on a mission of self-discovery as they are a mission with a defined, tangible objective.

AD ASTRA is no APOCALYPSE NOW, but, at a time when science fiction tends to focus on “saving the galaxy”, it’s refreshing that an equally plot-driven film (despite all its efforts to be a character study) has taken a more mature, low-key approach to how humanity’s journey into the stars might progress in the future.

AD ASTRA MOVIE (2019) USEFUL LINKS

Ad Astra (film) - Wikipedia
​Ad Astra (2019) - IMDb
Ad Astra (2019) - Rotten Tomatoes

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