In the future, sporadic antimatter waves keep hitting Earth, coming from Project Lima, a spaceship sent to find life in the Galaxy, but which stopped at Neptune. Astronaut Roy McBride is sent to Moon, and then to Mars, because his dad is thought to be on Project Lima, the only survivor after the crew mutinied to get back to Earth. Roy sneaks into a spaceship flying to Neptune, but accidentally causes an airlock failure which kills all other astronauts who didn’t carry a spacesuit helmet. Roy arrives to Project Lima, wants to take his dad back, but the latter ejects himself into space. Roy destroys Project Lima and returns back to Earth.
"Ad Astra" is a more ambitious, meditative science-fiction film, though it does suffer from a meandering storyline, and one has seen much cheaper art-films about father-child estrangement. The film starts off with a dazzling futuristic sequence in which astronaut Roy (Brad Pitt) descends down the stairs of a giant, 20 mile tall antenna-station that reaches the stratosphere, yet as unknown antimatter waves hit it and it starts to collapse, Roy is forced to jump down to Earth, falling and falling, until he opens up his parachute and lands safely. It is a great intro, yet the rest of the movie never quite reaches that level. "Ad Astra" starts with a story about Roy having to find find the source of the antimatter waves to save Earth, yet as he travels further and further towards Nepture, the movie itself moves further and further away from this initial story, and floats in vague, abstract directions that shift focus towards his relationship with his father. Several plot points just come and go, and just disappear without playing any role later on. For example, there is this suspenseful episode of Roy and other astronauts being chased by smugglers on lunar vehicles on the Moon, yet as soon as Roy leaves Moon to travel to Mars, this is forgotten, and we never hear anything about those smugglers. Later on, all the characters on Mars are also forgotten, and one wonders why introduce them in the first place. Two sequences of deaths on spaceships feel ill-conceived (Roy killing an aggressive monkey by decompressing him until just blood is seen on the window; Roy accidentally triggering air supply failure which kills astronauts) and should have been simply cut. The finale of Roy trying to reconnect with his dad in Neptune's orbit is also far fetched and never truly rings true, whereas it leaves several questions open (wasn't his dad aware the spaceship was causing all this damage to Earth by emitting antimatter waves?), sacrificing everything for its message about how people should not look for life in space, but should care about life on Earth now, though it does feature a strong quote by his dad: "Sometimes, the human will must overcome the impossible".
Grade:++
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