Jean-Paul’s Rating: 1/5 stars
Bottom Line: Like “Apocalypse Now” only massively more boring. But at least it has killer space monkeys? Also, spoilers galore because screw this movie!
The vast, unforgiving nothingness that is space is apparently full of ridiculous coincidences in this abysmally thought out movie. Roy McBride (Brad Pitt) plummets from space to Earth after the antenna he’s working on blows up in a “surge”, runs into space pirates on the moon, killer space monkeys on his way to Mars, another “surge” as his ship is landing on Mars, hijacks a ship bound for Neptune, runs past a satellite on the way to Neptune, and is somehow able to find a tiny ship orbiting Neptune in the middle of its rocky rings. This movie’s science is weak.
The so-called “surge” is coming from a Lima Project spaceship orbiting Neptune and McBride is tasked with stopping it and it’s captain, who happens to be McBride’s father, H. Clifford McBride(Tommy Lee Jones), before it somehow destroys the solar system. The Lima Project is a deep space mission to find extraterrestrial life by going to Neptune for some reason. The giant space antenna McBride is working on when it is destroyed is also dedicated to finding extraterrestrial life. There is a one sentence throw away line near the end of the movie that tries to draw a moral from this extraterrestrial search so you can’t say absolutely nothing came of this movie.
For reasons that are completely unclear or that I completely missed, the Lima Project space ship orbiting Neptune was thought lost because no one had heard from it in sixteen years. Then the surges start and the Lima Project is all “surprise muthaf@#!ers, I’m still alive!” and Earth is like “geez, what are you doing? Why are you trying to destroy us?” and the Lima Project gives it the silent treatment and the Earth is like “oh yeah, well we’re going to send this dude McBride to the moon so that he can go to Mars so that he can try communicating with you and if you don’t respond, he’s going to Neptune to blow you up! And this is totally a sequence of events that has to happen because we need this movie to be two hours!” and the Lima Project goes all “oh yeah, I’d like to see you try!”. It is later revealed that Earth somehow knew exactly what happened to the Lima Project all along and completely destroys any need for any of this movie. I mean why send a human to do what a nuclear missile can do just as easily?
If this film can be said to have any intent whatsoever, I’m sure it was supposed to be about the father-son relationship. For the entire movie, parallels are drawn between Roy and his father. There’s a nature vs. nurture lesson which definitely leans on nature as Roy and Clifford are shown to be the same person despite Roy not growing up with Clifford at all. Roy also internally struggles with whether the sins of the father should be visited upon the son as he continues to do the exact same stupid things his dad did. The most important and mindbogglingly stupid parallel drawn between the two isthat both kill their entire crew out of fear that the crew is going to jeopardize the mission. And when Roy gets back to Earth, he is greeted as a hero even though he, a member of the armed forces, hijacked an armed forces spaceship and killed its entire armed forces crew. And this wasn’t clandestinely done either. Because nothing can be done right in this movie.
I got much more enjoyment writing this review than I did watching “Ad Astra”. Is this what happens when a good idea for a movie gets away from you? Did some movie executive come in and say “Do you know what this movie needs? Killer space monkeys!”? Did George Clooney dare Brad Pitt to pitch this movie to see how crappy of a movie can be made on his name alone? The world may never know.