Ed Asner Per Aspirin

Ad Astra (2019) is another movie Ms. Spenser saw on a plane and wanted to see on the bigger screen. I wanted to see it too, even against mixed reviews.

It starts with a great set piece: a group of astronauts working on a large structure in low Earth orbit - or so it seems. Something happens and all hell breaks lows - sparks, explosions and chunks falling off. One of them knocks star Brad Pitt off his perch and sends him spinning towards Earth. Here we see that the structure isn’t in orbit: It’s a beanstalk, a space antenna anchored on Earth. And although Brad Pitt is going to have a rough trip down, he also has a parachute, and lands safely. SPOILER for first 10 minutes.

Now we get to meet Pitt with his suit off. He is offered a new mission. First, they talk about what a cool and competent astronaut he is, which is too bad, because I sort of saw him as a blue-collar worker up on the tower - a space lineman. But anyway, it turns out that the power surge that caused the antenna accident is part of a series, originating from around Neptune. They think it is caused by the antimatter drive of the ship that went out there years ago - under the command of Pitt’s father, Tommy Lee Jones.

Throughout the movie, we learn that Pitt’s father was always away on missions, and cared more about the search for extraterrestrial intelligence than his own family. But Pitt is a stone-cold astronaut, who got divorced from Liv Tyler for similar reasons. He has no emotional response.

So it’s off the moon on a Virgin Galactic flight. This seems to be a cute ref to 2001. On the moon, they fight off moon buggy pirates, in a scene that is well-filmed, exciting and pretty much useless to the story. Form the moon, they take off for Mars, stopping on the way to answer a distress call for a research ship. This winds up with them having to fight killer space monkeys (shades of Venom and Rampage). This scene is also redundant.

When Pitt gets to Mars, he sends a message to his father, but gets too emotional. He is pulled off the mission. Project leader Ruth Negga tells him confidentially that the crew off the Neptune mission mutinied in order to get home, and Jones killed them all - including Negga’s parents. So she will help him stowaway on the Neptune flight. This goes spectacularly wrong.

I’ll just mention that this is another case where one side kills their own team, like in DeepStar Six or Ready or Not. This is a handy way for script writers to include a lot of mayhem without making the main character a monster.

This takes us up to the last act, which I’ll pretty much skip, except to say that papa Jones is an unrepentant monster who learns nothing. Pitt doesn’t do that great either, but does better. And there’s a great scene with him surfing a panel through Neptune’s rings like the guy at the end of Dark Star.

I’m not sure that’s an actual homage, but I did say to Ms. Spenser that this was like a mix of 2001 and Apocalypse Now. This is apparently exactly what director James Gray was going for, so point all around.