Ad Astra

It is appropriate, almost divinely so, that Ad Astra concerns outer space and other planets in the Milky Way. Those planets and the vastness of outer space are breathtaking to look at. I love seeing pictures from the Hubble or the Webb telescopes of stars, nebulae, gaseous clouds, and foreign planets. The richness of beauty to be found in the cosmos is a bottomless well. But those planets and the inky blackness of space is also empty of life. Any beauty to be derived is strictly visual. There is no life in outer space, no emotional resonance. It is cold and barren and emotionally flat. And so is Ad Astra. This is an absolutely gorgeous movie. But, emotionally, there is nothing whatsoever for the viewer to anchor to. I'm sure someone will say "that's the point, Brad Pitt's character goes on a journey and in the process he finds emotion". Then why does every other character come off so flat, they could be Nebraska's stunt double? Nobody in this movie emotes anything, any time. Pitt's character SAYS he has anger issues, but we never SEE it. Ad Astra tells us his dad went insane during their decades-long mission, and we're told of his actions, but when we meet him, he seems as composed as everybody else. When one character tells Pitt how his father murdered her parents, she could be telling him about the bake sale at the next PTA meeting. When Pitt watches a video message from his estranged wife, she tells him why she left him, how he's emotionally closed off to the point of not feeling like he's even in the room ... but she shows no more emotion than one would show picking out breakfast cereal. Nobody in this movie emotes, and by extension, the movie doesn't convey any emotion. It's a series of events. Things happen, the characters move on, and we are made to move on with it, not in haste, but in disinterest. This isn't a movie, it's a table read. And if the characters in the movie don't seem to care about anything happening, why should I? On top of this, the plot is a mish-mash of recycled ideas. There's some Apocalypse Now in its "find this missing person and stop them" motif, some doomed-journey aspects of Gravity, and a heaping dose of Event Horizon, right down to the missing spacecraft appearing in orbit around Neptune. A lot of movies borrow, and often blatantly, but not attempting to do anything new with it (seriously, the parallels to Event Horizon are so obvious, I'm shocked there wasn't a plagiarism lawsuit) is the problem, and Ad Astra has no interest in doing anything new. I'll give it credit for being a beautiful film to look at, and it isn't boring, but it's so committed to being aloof, that might be worse than being boring.