Too Chatty Ad Astra Still Worth the Trip (Movie Review)
Quiet, contemplative sci-fi ranks as some of the best in the genre. For many, the entry point began with Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and has continued up to releases seen this decade. Gravity, The Martian and Arrival are stellar cinematic spectacles (Interstellar is pretty good too) concerned with the inner as well as the outer feelings of space and beyond. Director James Gray’s bid to the stars, Ad Astra, can’t quite reach their level, but this is still a must-see for anyone in love with the big-screen experience. It’s just too bad voice-over track can’t be toggled off.
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Brad Pitt stars as decorated astronaut Roy McBride, the son of an even more highly-decorated officer, Clifford McBride (Tommy Lee Jones), or he was. As we soon learn, Clifford may have killed his fellow crew members, before disappearing over a decade ago, while on a mission to orbit Neptune in search of intelligent life. In the meantime, Roy has stayed the course. He works above planet Earth never really venturing too far out… until now.
Tasked by NASA with a search & destroy mission following a series of deadly electrical surges that have wreaked havoc on Earth, Roy must travel across the galaxy to detonate a bomb, and hopefully end the chaos on our third rock from the sun. Meanwhile, the higher-ups don’t really care if Clifford is alive, let alone brought back. But does Roy? How will he contend with the most absent of absentee dads?
Like 2001 there’s a funny, telling comment on how space travel in the future is still a capitalist’s dream. A stop on the moon means one is never too far from a bite a Yoshinoya. Purchasing a blanket to keep cozy on a space shuttle costs $125. The further through space Roy travels though the less product placement. Mars merely looks like a red-lit bunker base.
Voice-over is said to be a screenwriting 101 no-no, with rare exceptions like Fight Club and Sunset Blvd. It’s used too often to clarify character beats or plot points that, for whatever reason, the film couldn’t deliver any other way. The most famous of the so-bad-it-was-taken-out is Harrison Ford’s monotonous narration in the original theatrical release of Blade Runner. While Roy’s narration in Ad Astra isn’t terrible, it holds the viewer’s hand rather than letting them get lost in space on their own.
While the marketing highlighted a terrific supporting cast including Donald Sutherland, Liv Tyler, and Ruth Negga, this is almost entirely the Pitt show. Nearly everyone else is on-screen for maybe five minutes. To be fair, those are strong minutes, with Negga leaving the biggest impression. (Natasha Lyonne also pops in with her brand of snark on Mars.)
Luckily, Pitt has a lot of great moments. As a nice contrast to his other excellent role earlier this year (Once Upon A Time In… Hollywood), the A-lister expresses plenty non-verbally. He looks older, maybe even a little weary, but he feels like a man who’s ready to risk everything. Like someone who’s been sleeping throughout their life and just woke up. I’ve always thought Pitt to be better in supporting roles (Twelve Monkeys comes to mind), where he’s allowed to swing for the fences. However, Ad Astra and Tarantino’s latest proved me wrong. Both films are career highs.
Now, while I doubt anyone buys a ticket for Ad Astra expecting Gravity-type thrills, there is an incredible moon chase with space pirates (you read that right) riding in moon buggies! Additionally, the sound design is especially effective. Every crash, boom, and pop is muffled for outer spacey feels. A scene with a whacked-out baboon also ups the action quotient.
Still, big space films like Ad Astra need a lot of quiet time to invoke feelings of being alone with one’s thoughts. While the film delivers visually, with Hoyte van Hoytema’s (Interstellar) excellent camerawork and the performances mentioned above, I found the show-don’t-tell rule running in opposition to the film too often. Roy waxes too poetic through voice-over, and as this is a tale of fathers and sons, there’s a lot of thought on how he assesses the isolated and frustrated man he has become. While not exactly the going for the “I’m broken because of my dad” vibe, it’s pretty close.
The real feat of the thinking person’s sci-fi is how such tales allow viewers to make up their minds among the endless canvas of space yet not have the filmmaker’s intentions piped in through pushy audio channels.
This part confuses me because of the article’s title:
“Voice-over is said to be a screenwriting 101 no-no, with rare exceptions like Fight Club and Sunset Blvd. It’s used too often to clarify character beats or plot points that, for whatever reason, the film couldn’t deliver any other way. The most famous of the so-bad-it-was-taken-out is Harrison Ford’s monotonous narration in the original theatrical release of Blade Runner. While Roy’s narration in Ad Astra isn’t terrible, it holds the viewer’s hand rather than letting them get lost in space on their own.”
It seems that you want your cake and eat it, too. If the film is “too chatty” how would that have helped the cause? In context, you would have been bored out of your mind. I think the narration helps folks and is used as a guide. I’ll have to read interviews with James Gray to get clarification. I was just confused by the headline of this article and the paragraph about screenwriting no-no’s. It’s a contradiction.
While I wouldn’t say the voice-over was a huge hindrance from my perspective, I do think the majority of it could be excised without harm to the film’s narrative. It’s not as egregious as Blade Runner’s added voice-over, but it still feels added for the sake of re-emphasizing things that didn’t really need it. (and from what I’ve read, it appears Gray may not have been involved in the voice-over aspects of the film)