Quote Originally Posted by Hal Incandenza View Post
Finally got around to seeing it. Definitely a good movie, but not the greatest movie about / in space for me personally. Why? Imo the movie deals with a father/son relationship mostly. in a way this relationship is portrayed via the road movie concept, only in this case the participants are not traveling together. these are the reasons I think this movie could have been situated in any region (anywhere on planet earth, for example), with a long trip in it. as a space enthusiast I was very mildly let down by this.

Pitt is as good in this as he is in 'once upon a time in hollywood', only here he rightfully goes for the less is more approach that suits this movie. it's hard to discuss tommy lee jones' acting here without revealing anything about the plot. he did well imo.

Other things I liked about it : for a space movie it's quite a small movie in its proportions, kind of like an art house movie. due to its theme? on the other hand, that vibe kind of jars with some of the action scenes to me. after I watched the movie I read interviews with both Pitt and director James Gray. Gray says it took him and others a year and a half to streamline the movie after it was shot (scoring, montage etc). I can see why. Gray has a pedigree of movies about family relationships. only his previous movie 'The lost city of Z' (2017, didn't watch it) was a 'big' movie with, as he tells it in the interview, action scenes. it's not that easy to put these two different types of themes / movie genres together.

I was captivated by the story most of the time but I gotta admit that during the last few minutes of the movie I drifted off thinking about work, which is not a good sign lol.

Comparing this to recent space movies I'd say : 'Interstellar' tops both this movie and 'gravity'. (I liked 'Gravity', by the way.) 'Interstellar' just deals with more topics imo. space was also a 'necessary canvas' for both 'Interstellar' and 'Gravity', not so much for 'Ad Astra'

I can see where the 'Apocalypse Now' / 'Heart of Darkness' comparisons come from but I think both that Vietnam war movie and the Joseph Conrad novel dealt with that specific topic in a more thorough way

The '2001 Space Odyssey' comparison is too much praise for 'Ad Astra' imo. I don't really see the connection between both movies.

So yeah, a good watch definitely with some great acting, but maybe I expected a bit too much going in.
Good review! I felt bad for Ron (Brad Pitt) because he traveled to Neptune to see his dad who abandoned him. After all that, he asked his son to release him. What I don't understand is why he didn't ask his dad to stay. That's messed up.