Ad Astra Review - No Plot Spoilers

I’m having trouble putting into words just how James Grey’s Ad Astra made me feel. I don’t mean that in a bad way, just in a reticent one.

This shot in particular feels very Blade Runner. But the way this movie utilizes its allusions feels more like worldbuilding rather than a distraction

When I first saw the trailers for this film several months ago, I was ecstatic. As a great lover of science-fiction and slow, intellectual think-pieces, Ad Astra seemed right up my alley. Still, the presence of moon buggy shoot-outs and similar imagery were worrisome – would this be the next Interstellar, or crumble into hokey Hollywood-isms? I waited with bated breath for the initial critical response, praying that this would not fall in the lines of Valerian, a visually wondrous movie I so badly hoped would be good, but wound up being bland and uninspired. To my surprise, the initial response to Ad Astra was glowing. Critics loved it. Film twitter raved about it. And now, I was unapologetically excited too, and many of my friends can surely attest to my eager anticipation. Before you know, however, the Internet had seen the movie, and there Ad Astra received a much more lukewarm response. Some enjoyed it, but found it plodding, or found the third act weak, or were displeased with Brad Pitt’s running narration. A few hated it entirely.

Brad Pitt Stares Intently Into the Unknown: The Movie

As usual, I fall somewhere between the critic and audience responses.

My tradition is to not spoil movies in these reviews, but Ad Astra falls into a weird category. I won’t spoil any plot points, but Ad Astra really isn’t about any of those plot points. It’s all about the theme, the feeling, the experience. And those are all things I need to talk about in order to describe my thoughts on this movie. Because I had expectations for this movie, and this movie utilized those expectations in a delightful way (I hereby solemnly swear to not use the word ‘subvert’ in this blog). As such, this is my warning for this review – if you desire to go in entirely blind, I would probably turn back. But if you want to hear a glossy discussion of theme and emotion, without any specific spoilers, join me.

Moon Rover fights are surprisingly intense and I want more.

To start, Ad Astra is by no means Interstellar. When I talk about my expectations for this movie, you need to understand that Ad Astra enters into a genre filled with suspense, intellectual twists and turns, and big reveals. And this movie celebrates its influences freely, with elements that remind me of Blade Runner, First Man, Gravity, and so on, with space-Apocalypse Now thrown into the mix. And yet while you spend this movie expecting big reveals, Ad Astra isn’t really interested in anything like that. It’s not a movie interested in the intellectual journey of the protagonist, rather, it’s interested in the psychological and the emotional. This is where I think a lot of audiences, including myself, are getting tripped up. Because as long as you watch Ad Astra with the lens of Interstellar or The Martian, you’re going to be disappointed. One of the friends I watched this movie with, as we were stepping into the theater, said he was hoping for a ‘more grounded take on Interstellar.’ Ad Astra isn’t that, in fact, the mainline science of Ad Astra is generally more fanciful than that in Interstellar (excluding the time travel aspects of the latter film). Yet, while Ad Astra presents almost a dream-like exploration of our future of space travel, everything in its world feels familiar. Again, there are shades of Blade Runner and Gattaca all over the place. But it works. All of the world-building is immersive and stunning and builds well to the points Ad Astra intends on making. But those points aren’t related to any sort of revelation as you might expect from such influences. You’re not going to walk out of Ad Astra talking about ‘x reveal’ or anything like that. To an extent that in itself could be considered a spoiler, but I think it’s an important talking point with this movie. And it’s why I have a hard time discussing this movie without ‘spoiling’ it; because I think that disappointment of expectations is sort of the entire point.

Not going to lie, I was very captivated by the geometry of the wall in this scene. Not that the dialogue was bad - it was incredible. But so was that wall.

Ad Astra is, at its core, a movie about humanity. Sure, it’s about Brad Pitt’s Roy McBride looking for his stranded father. But only on the surface. It’s a movie about McBride’s growing understanding of himself, and of his father, and of what we, as people, put our value in. Every aspect of this movie, from its sparse but poignant worldbuilding, to its limited and yet impassioned character building, speaks to humanity’s eternal dissatisfaction. It paints glorious vistas of worlds just out of reach, and then swiftly points to the way our destructive greed has blinded us to what we already have. Ad Astra’s world shows us that, even in a starry-eyed future, we really don’t change very much. It asks us to take stock in what we have now, and address what our priorities are. And it does all of this without ever really talking about it. Everything in the movie points to it, and yet it’s all kind of subliminal, to the point where as the credits initially rolled I had a sensation of missing something. The plot is simple. The character growth is pretty direct. The canvas is beautiful and the performances are stellar, but if you take Ad Astra at surface level, it doesn’t seem to have much to offer. And yet, once you start to dig below the surface, Ad Astra seems to have an infinite amount of things to say.

I went this far without an 'Ocean's 11 in space' joke so I feel obligated to make one here.

Which is why I have such a hard time coming to a solid point about it. It was a truly beautiful movie. Every shot was filled with a sense of wonder and awe. The opening scene of the film features some of the most immersive cinematography I’ve felt in a theatre. Brad Pitt is impeccable, and will almost certainly be in the Oscar running in a few months. The score is mesmerizing. But the content of this movie sits in this impossible paradox of being both surprisingly simplistic and understatedly deep. It’s no Interstellar, no 2001. A lot of people are going to dismiss it and move on – and that’s fine. It certainly is not a movie for everyone. But Ad Astra also offers a wonderful discussion of humanity, and through the methodically slow build, delivers a gorgeous story of the effects of our constant reach outwards. It’s a purely psychological movie, not a thriller, but an exploration. In a genre full of stunning imagery and amazing effects, Ad Astra looks from a different perspective and encourages us to rethink what exactly it means for us to look to the stars.