Le(A)d Astra(y)

[Note: Being a grammar Nazi (the only kind of Nazi our president doesn't like!), it aggravates me to no end that many professional writers don't know that the past tense of 'to lead' is 'led'. 'Lead' is the metal. This is also pertinent because we're talkin' science here. I just wanted to clear that up in case anyone suspected me of poor execution in the title. It was just a convenient bit of wordplay. Thank you. Joke has been ruined. Proceed.]

One of the main challenges for any writer of fiction is knowing what your story is. You may start out writing a slam-bang adventure story only to find yourself meandering through the mind of one of your protagonists who never quite understood why Mrs. Watson didn't give him an A+, instead of just an A, on his baking soda volcano in second grade. You might begin writing a tale about the travails of the downtrodden in post-WWI Birmingham, only to veer into a pastiche of faux Shakespearian tragic romance (Shots fired, Peaky Blinders.) Or you might, as in the case of Ad Astra, not have a clue as to what your story was when it started and still not have one (as your audience didn't) when it appeared in finished form on the screen.

This isn't to say that your story can't change as it moves along or have more depth than is initially thought. But it has to retain some level of coherency so that your audience still feels like they're with you when the end credits roll or the last page is turned. If your story starts out as a moody study on the question of the moral rights of intelligent beings but incorporates some of the best aspects of horror thrillers along the way (like, say, Deus Machina), great, But if your story starts out as something of an introspective wander, contrasting the vastness of space and global politics with one man's struggle with his own inner demons, then you probably want to stay there and not take a hard right into an action/heist film, with the appropriate plot holes and drastic departures from the established pace.

Since so many people have been complaining about the voiceover in the film, it's pretty easy to draw a comparison between Ad Astra and Blade Runner, as a case study in how to and how not to stick with the story. Blade Runner began as a noir film: ex-cop drafted to do what he does best: legally kill other sentient beings. But, along the way, we're examining what makes that right and even what the definition of "humanity" happens to be. There are going to be brief and intense action scenes, but nowhere along the way do you lose sense of what the story is and how outside events (defining emotional vat-grown humans as not humans, but emotionless killers as still human) are only highlighting the essential question of the film. Ad Astra doesn't do that because the essential question of the film really has no ethical or moral parameters. It's mostly about Roy McBride and his personal issues. And that can be a story. It just usually doesn't need a trip to Neptune with a ship blasting radiation that somehow threatens all of Earth to make it work. The voiceover in Blade Runner was just one more mistake that lessened the theater release of the film. In Ad Astra, it really doesn't have that much impact because the questions the film asks aren't important enough to be distracted from.

It starts out interestingly. We have the drop from the space antenna which introduces us to Roy and his apparent inability to be affected by even the most trying circumstances. Then, we have the flight to the Moon which is followed by a near ambush by pirates where Roy is still Joe Cool and shows us the transposition of regular Earth struggles (the fight for resources) to space. And then the weird encounter on the Norwegian station with the space monkeys (baboons.) It's strange, but that's fine. Some of the early parts of 2001: A Space Odyssey are strange, too, despite everyone only remembering the final 20 minutes. Then, we hit our hard right turn.

The difference between our main character struggling with issues surrounding his father's absence in the face of a mounting threat to his home planet and the father's absence being THE REASON there's a mounting threat to the home planet is, uh, rather stark. One approach is an opportunity to play into larger messages: "Hey. Look how we're still fighting the same wars out in space. Even the animals are against us out in space. Do I really want to go through with this? Would I have been the loyal soldier if I didn't need Space Force to replace Dad?" and so on. The other approach is Star Wars. Unfortunately, Ad Astra went with Star Wars and we quickly got into action movie mode wherein you paper over all the obvious plot holes and just expect the hero's journey to jump those chasms because he's a hero. "Your dad is the menace currently orbiting Neptune, coincidentally enough, and he also killed my parents when he started on his personal crusade so, here, let me show you the secret passage out to a launch pad. On Mars. Your codename is now Colonel Mustard. Here's a candlestick."

Yeah, man. You lost me right there.

The rest of the film is just bog-standard adventure story and a lot of glowering by Tommy Lee Jones. Don't get me wrong. Jones does OK with the rather one-dimensional role that he's given. Pitt's performance is also decent, especially for someone who's supposed to be in his own shell. But there's just not much left here that didn't come from a SyFy Channel screenplay with a somewhat better visual effects budget. Even worse, despite their general adherence to science in their science fiction, they totally lose that adhesion in the second half of the film. Instead of a natural phenomenon threatening Earth or even an alien-created one (since Jones' original mission was discovering new worlds and new civilizations, yo), we find out that said mission, one couple hundred foot-long ship currently orbiting Neptune, is the threat to our entire planet.

So, lemme just go over some basic astrophysical stuff. The Earth's atmosphere blocks all kinds of nasty radiation coming from the source of all life on this planet: the Sun. The Sun is one AU away: 93 million miles. When Earth's and Neptune's orbits happen to line up so they're at their closest point (Neptune orbits the Sun every 165 years, as opposed to Earth's, you know... 1 year.), they're 2.7 billion miles apart. Billion. With a 'b'. So, 29 times farther away at their closest point. Thus, the premise of this story is that one ship at least 29 times farther away than our Sun is more of a radiation threat than said local star. And it's because of some special technology that Space Force used to send our antagonist out to Neptune. Technology that, in the intervening 30+ years, has somehow fallen out of use, despite it being a superior method of travel...? Even worse, the film begins failing on the basic physics front for no other reason than to deliver a pretty picture. Our hero has to blast through Neptune's ring to get back to his ship. So, despite being thrust forward fast enough for small meteorites and dust to flare with friction against his blast shield (let's not talk about the physics of that), none of said space rocks hinder his momentum whatsoever. This is completely aside from the whole momentum thing that was already ignored when dad and son are doing the impromptu spacewalk (i.e. when momentum is arrested, you stop; of all films, Gravity failed with this principle, too.) And, again, this is all in service to making a pretty picture of Roy blasting through a natural phenomenon (Is that why Earth is out of resources and pirates are on the Moon? Maybe.) But none of these pretty, CGI pictures do service to the story or are even that impressive, especially when you compare them to a previous film in this diatribe, where matte paintings and models made Blade Runner so visually impressive and absorbing that it didn't need a voiceover.

Again, don't get me wrong. If you're going to go full-on laser blasters and hyperspace and jetpacks (We still don't have jetpacks! We were promised jetpacks!!), go for it. Do that thing. I'm all about it. The least troubling parts of George Lucas' films are the way they abuse science. I don't care. That's why it's science fiction. But if you're going to give us the "Just a few years from now..." premise, rather than the "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..." one, then stick with it.

Do I think it was an awful film? No. I think it had its moments. Am I glad I didn't actually spend money to see it (unless you consider the wholly appropriate membership to the Michigan Theater spent money... which it is... but, I mean, isn't just for this film)? Yes. Ad Astra is an interesting experiment in how to lose track of one's own story, for all you film students out there, but there's not much else that can really be said about it.