# Ad Astra (2019)



## Brian G Turner (Jun 5, 2019)

Not sure what to think about this - shows promise, but the question is whether it lives up to its potential:


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## Nozzle Velocity (Jun 5, 2019)

Hmm, could go either way. I kept waiting for, "Let's do this", or "I've got a bad feeling about this" - didn't hear it.


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## Vince W (Jun 11, 2019)

This _should_ tick all the boxes for me but Pitt's films tend to fall flat with me. I guess we'll see.


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## Narkalui (Jun 13, 2019)

I'm watching it! It seems to tick all of my boxes


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## scarpelius (Sep 25, 2019)

After seeing this movie I wondered if there is any chance to ask for my money back. One of my friends said it should be classified under "why bother" which is a better reaction than my exclamation "What a piece of *****!".



Spoiler: Dont read if you think it will spoil your expectations!



Full of cliches, badly implemented cliches, the director of this "master piece" tried to give it a psychological dimension and fails miserably. Notable are the automated assessed psychological profiles (there's one in the start) where MC shows a suicidal face but the AI gives him the OK.
Badly constructed characters which constantly ask MC if he's OK, questionable situations that builds the dramatic moments (eg. falling from outer space to Earth after a catastrophe and landing with a parachute without being toasted like a chicken wing on a Sunday barbecue). car chase (because action is built by car chase, right?), unnecessary horror moments in space (for Pete sake, why are medical research conducted in the asteroid belt?).

Also, "In space nobody here you scream" and boy does he scream, with nobody to hear him, except for the laughing audience in the cinema seats .


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## Ian Fortytwo (Sep 25, 2019)

I saw this film last week and thought it was brilliant, good acting and plotline. I rated it 9/10.


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## Al Jackson (Sep 27, 2019)

This was not a dreadfully bad movie, but if you compare it to The Martian , lots of space suits and space ships, this is very poor.


Spoiler: Spoilers tho I don't consider them as such



I did not care for the endless repetition of Heart of Darkness theme.
There are some awful science goofs , especially astrodynamics ones like travel times to Mars and Neptune.
There is a dropped and totally muddled story about antimatter and an unexplained threat.
There is a tiresome one-man-against-the-system theme that is a cliché.
The implied extraterrestrial contact theme, in the title that is no followed up.


All in all this not a good science fiction movie story.

Over at Rotten Tomatoes I usually side with the critics, but for this the audience has the correct rating.


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## Vince W (Sep 27, 2019)

I was looking forward to seeing Ad Astra, however, after the poor reviews I've heard it's been relegated to streaming service watching.


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## mosaix (Sep 28, 2019)

Perhaps the silliest, most unbelievable, Science Fiction movie I’ve ever seen.

Watched it in a smallish cinema in my home town. Seven members if the audience walked out before half way through.


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## Dave (Sep 28, 2019)

I've not sen this but wanted to ask:
Is this an alternative reality story, or does that trailer muddle up clips of the film in a more exciting order, or is it just a very muddled story anyway?


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## mosaix (Sep 28, 2019)

Dave said:


> I've not sen this but wanted to ask:
> Is this an alternative reality story, or does that trailer muddle up clips of the film in a more exciting order, or is it just a very muddled story anyway?



The story seemed quite straight forward to me, Dave. It was just that the science was absolute nonsense. 



Spoiler



Brad Pitt opens the air lock door of a space ship as it’s taking off and climbs inside. The acceleration of the space ship is totally ignored. There are numerous other examples.


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## Judderman (Sep 30, 2019)

Well it was definitely better than Gravity. Quite thoughtful and had a few great scenes, especially early on. But it dragged along, especially in the 2nd half, and ended up being another simple family story. Not much real futuristic sci-fi there. 
It started quite strongly and I liked the Mayday ship section. But a letdown overall. 
The "pirates" appeared from where? Almost like there would have to be another base.

Brad portrays a character who is not emotive very well. Neither are many of the characters emotive. Perhaps they were trying to rip off Bladerunner style a bit. Then the emotion related to family does appear near the end... but the problem with watching characters who don't show much emotion is that it is quite dull. Ruth Negga is a great actress, who showed a little more, but even she had to reign it in.

I agree with Al that is it is not up there with the Martian. There hasn't been good sci-fi stories in films set in the space for some years now.
Also I see Vince's points on high critic rating vs low audience rating. That usually corresponds to a very highbrow artistic/unusual film. This one had some great scenes but not really highbrow, and perhaps just highly rated for the scenes. That said this was not as well reviewed as Gravity which was a poor film.

The Imax screen was good for the sky shots. A little grainy though.

(We also watched Judy earlier on in the same day. That was great!)


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## Al Jackson (Oct 1, 2019)

Dave said:


> I've not sen this but wanted to ask:
> Is this an alternative reality story, or does that trailer muddle up clips of the film in a more exciting order, or is it just a very muddled story anyway?


It is said that all fiction is alternate universe … science fiction films can really be over the top in this way. For instance consider 2001: A Space Odyssey … released in 1968... it had 2001 as the 'date' all the action takes place 30 years from 1968, Kubrick and Clarke (tho I wonder about Clarke) felt that there were be a big presence in space, on the moon, …. things like nuclear propulsion, …. 30 years later that all passed into an alternate universe. Movies do this more than the prose form.... that is give a specific date... in November of this year the world of Blade Runner , 1982, will be reached, strictly speaking nothing of that world really exists right now... I have never figured out why film makers want to tag a date.... SF writers long ago figured how to hedge their bets, either set things 200 to 300 years in the future, or never give a date a all! I was always satisfied with this , and I can't imagine audiences care... so it's always been a puzzle.


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## Al Jackson (Oct 1, 2019)

Judderman said:


> Well it was definitely better than Gravity. Quite thoughtful and had a few great scenes, especially early on. But it dragged along, especially in the 2nd half, and ended up being another simple family story. Not much real futuristic sci-fi there.
> It started quite strongly and I liked the Mayday ship section. But a letdown overall.
> The "pirates" appeared from where? Almost like there would have to be another base.
> 
> ...



O I was much more entertained by Gravity … that film has terrific pace... it's only 90 min long, as far as I can tell all the physics in it is correct it's just that a lot of it is like super low probability. I do know that the repeated orbits* of the debris field is incorrect, but I give that a poetic license by. So many things are clever , zero g very well done, I like, Kubrick like, no narrator to tell you) that you are always hearing , POV, what the astronaut hears, that is sound transmitted though the suit or the walls of a cabin. There is one Kubrick moment , when the Soyuz undocks from the ISS and the POV is outside the station there is zero sound. Other wise the only sound is the music sound track. Tell ya I was 100 times more entertained by Gravity than Ad Astra.
I was more entertained by Interstellar, this is a dreary movie with some bad science and non sequitur plot elements.
*By the by Gravity is an alternate universe story, there is no such Shuttle, the ISS and Hubble and Chinese space station are in the wrong orbits , so this story is not on our world line.


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## Margaret Note Spelling (Oct 1, 2019)

Strangely enough--and this has nothing to do with anything but the title--when I first ran across mention of this movie, I actually knew what the title meant; not because I'm any good at Latin, but because I was worldbuilding for an RPG adventure recently and I had to come up with a motto for my Royal Space Admiralty--To The Stars and Back, which, after some fiddling around, Google translated to "Ad Astra Et Retro." I came up with the motto rather arbitrarily--imagine my surprise at seeing an actual movie with part of that for its title!

A movie which, now that I think about it, had probably already been in development long before I thought of my motto.

We like to think our new ideas are so unique, don't we? I literally once just added an N to the name Gale and came up with Galen for a character--and then met two _actual_ Galens just months later, and watched Rogue One, and learned it was indeed an real name in circulation.

Is there anything more soul-crushing than seeing your "new" idea shifted to the realm of "been done, and everyone else knows it" before your eyes?


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## HareBrain (Oct 1, 2019)

Margaret Note Spelling said:


> I had to come up with a motto for my Royal Space Admiralty--To The Stars and Back, which, after some fiddling around, Google translated to "Ad Astra Et Retro." I came up with the motto rather arbitrarily--imagine my surprise at seeing an actual movie with part of that for its title!



You might also be surprised to learn that "per ardua ad astra" (through adversity to the stars) is the motto of the Royal Air Force (and Commonwealth equivalents).


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## Dave (Oct 1, 2019)

HareBrain said:


> You might also be surprised to learn that "per ardua ad astra" (through adversity to the stars) is the motto of the Royal Air Force (and Commonwealth equivalents).


That is exactly why I already knew what it meant without having to look it up.


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## HareBrain (Oct 1, 2019)

It's also why the Pizza Express pizza "pollo ad astra" brings such an odd image to mind (a gigantic catapult in my case, and a lot of squawking). I've been unable to ascertain what impression they were hoping to give by the name.


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## Venusian Broon (Oct 1, 2019)

Al Jackson said:


> I do know that the repeated orbits* of the debris field is incorrect, but I give that a poetic license by.



Sorry going on a tangent, and I haven't watched the film ! (I do know the basic story, though) But I'm curious what you mean here. I've seen other comments that, I think, talk about regarding this or related to it, but it's clear to me the people commenting didn't understand orbital mechanics. I think you mean something quite specific though, so could you expand?


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## Toby Frost (Oct 1, 2019)

Maybe they sell the chicken to famous people?


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## Judderman (Oct 1, 2019)

Venusian Broon said:


> Sorry going on a tangent, and I haven't watched the film ! (I do know the basic story, though) But I'm curious what you mean here. I've seen other comments that, I think, talk about regarding this or related to it, but it's clear to me the people commenting didn't understand orbital mechanics. I think you mean something quite specific though, so could you expand?


Yeah that is odd. Debris can repeatedly orbit a planet. All orbits are repeating unless it is something slingshotting around and away. Or not?

Gravity is likely a more accurate film for the Physics. But I think Ad Astra had a poor plot, while gravity had a dreadful love story for plot.


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## Margaret Note Spelling (Oct 1, 2019)

HareBrain said:


> It's also why the Pizza Express pizza "pollo ad astra" brings such an odd image to mind (a gigantic catapult in my case, and a lot of squawking). I've been unable to ascertain what impression they were hoping to give by the name.



The impression of someone linguistically confused on a fundamental level? I can take the concept of sending chickens into outer space, but to do it half in one language and half in another is a bit much.


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## Venusian Broon (Oct 1, 2019)

Judderman said:


> Yeah that is odd. Debris can repeatedly orbit a planet. All orbits are repeating unless it is something slingshotting around and away. Or not?



Essentially yes. In breaking something in orbit up, either some parts of it _may_ gain enough velocity to escape and fly off into interplanetary space, some of it be may be slowed enough to hit the Earth's atmosphere and burn, and all the rest will go into elliptical orbits (probably) that will repeatedly orbit. And all these orbits should intersect approximately at the point that the breakage occured. They shouldn't all intersect at _exactly _the same time, I think, but if the explosion causes a normal distribution of velocities, say, to be added to the bits, then there should be a time when the maximum density of 'broken bits' does all come together. 

I think Al Jackson is talking about the fact that all the things in orbit are far too close together for the film. And that Russian satellites are in different orbits to the American ones in real life. So even if a Russian satellite did break up, all those new orbits probably wouldn't really cross into Sandra Bullocks path...

...Anyway just a tad curious. Sorry about the aside! Back to something more related to the thread. 

I did almost go to see Ad Astra, instead of going to see IT part 2, last week. As I quite enjoyed that, looks like I made a good choice.


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## Dave (Oct 1, 2019)

No one is selling this film to me on the basis of these posts.


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## Bagpuss (Oct 2, 2019)

Margaret Note Spelling said:


> We like to think our new ideas are so unique, don't we? I literally once just added an N to the name Gale and came up with Galen for a character--and then met two _actual_ Galens just months later, and watched Rogue One, and learned it was indeed an real name in circulation.



The name Galen was also used for a Technomage in the short-lived TV series Crusade in 1999. Which I would say beats you and Star Wars. Although, technically, the Greeks manage to beat everyone in naming since Galen of Pergamon was a Greek physician who lived and died in about 210AD. Nothing new under the sun.


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## Al Jackson (Oct 2, 2019)

Venusian Broon said:


> Sorry going on a tangent, and I haven't watched the film ! (I do know the basic story, though) But I'm curious what you mean here. I've seen other comments that, I think, talk about regarding this or related to it, but it's clear to me the people commenting didn't understand orbital mechanics. I think you mean something quite specific though, so could you expand?


Once started the debris cloud will expand to a volume but that structure will follow a mean orbit around the Earth, however the Earth is not a sphere so the gravitational field will cause the orbit to precess  so the cloud cannot , in one orbit , takes many orbits, to trace the track orbit of the firs event.
Show what they show , which supposedly happens every 90 min. could not by orbital mechanics happen.
Does not detract from the story tho.


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## Venusian Broon (Oct 2, 2019)

Al Jackson said:


> Once started the debris cloud will expand to a volume but that structure will follow a mean orbit around the Earth, however the Earth is not a sphere so the gravitational field will cause the orbit to precess  so the cloud cannot , in one orbit , takes many orbits, to trace the track orbit of the firs event.
> Show what they show , which supposedly happens every 90 min. could not by orbital mechanics happen.
> Does not detract from the story tho.


Cheers Al. Thanks for that.

Of course Sandra and George are also precessing along with the debris field anyway, as are all objects in orbit, so we're not worried about the original orbit. 

Instead there would need to be a significant change in precess dynamics between the debris cloud and them, I would imagine, otherwise they would just track each other and the 90 min collision timetable would probably hold up at first. 

However I haven't done the mathematics of the difference between circular and (slightly more energetic) elliptical orbits wrt precession, so don't know and bow to my betters.  

My guess would be that, given the initial collision, various factors will start to 'smear' out the debris field so that eventually this 90 min peak becomes irrelevant.


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## Al Jackson (Oct 2, 2019)

Venusian Broon said:


> Cheers Al. Thanks for that.
> 
> Of course Sandra and George are also precessing along with the debris field anyway, as are all objects in orbit, so we're not worried about the original orbit.
> 
> ...


To get technical , it looked, tho they did not quantify, that the inclination of the debris field had a different orbital inclination from the ISS, therefore the nodal regression rate is going to be different since it is a function of the orbital inclination.
The orbits of the Hubble, the ISS and the Tiangong in the film are not in this universe!
There would be no way an astronaut with a manned maneuvering unit could reach the ISS from Hubble Orbit.
The Tiangong still is not totally assembled , but still It will not be easily reachable from the ISS , it at all, with a Soyuz space craft.

I will note , somebody, back in 2013 wrote a entry for Gravity for Wikipedia that listed it as an 'Alternate Universe Science Fiction story', that is exactly what it is... but Wiki removed that qualification... some bone head moderator did not understand... I guess the movie should of had that in the lead in scrawl !

By the by, someone at JPL was technical for the film, he sent Cuarón 80 pages of 'fix-up' physics for the screen play, but it made the movie run a lot longer than 90 min , so it was not used.

I do know this ...I happened to have worked in manned space flight for 40 years... I knew people who worked ISS and some who knew the Soyuz and said the spacecraft interiors were dead to rights spot on.


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## Wayne Mack (Jan 24, 2022)

I just watched Ad Astra on free TV and I really could not follow the plot line. It seemed that the producers started with multiple 'cool' scenes and then just strung them together. 



Spoiler: Plot Challenges



The plot seemed to be that there were fairly infrequent power outages in the inner solar system emanating from a space station out near Neptune where an astronaut may or may not be alive. Instead of doing anything, authorities have been trying to broadcast messages to the station, but have received no answer. Finally, they recruit the astronaut's son to come to Mars to try and contact him. It is only when the astronaut finally responds that the authorities decide to send a manned mission to blow up the space station (I guess missiles have not yet been invented). The son sneaks onto the mission ship and kills the crew, quite by accident. More calamities follow until the son space walks to the station to confront his father. Son sets bomb on station, but after agreeing to leave, the father decides to fall to his death on Neptune. The son returns to his ship and escapes on the edge of the bomb's blast wave (What would have happened to the original crew?). Instead of returning to Mars, the son returns to Earth to reunite with his wife and become a better husband.


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## Christine Wheelwright (Jan 24, 2022)

I 'ad an Astra once.  Not a great car by any stretch!

Seriously though, what a dull movie it was!  The makers clearly knew this and bolted on the car chase on the moon (irrelevant to any plot).  Give it a miss!


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## AnRoinnUltra (Jun 19, 2022)

Just watched and liked Ad Astra. Though I reckon Astras are solid reliable cars (bought one for 300 quid and it went for years). The film did go off the boil after halfway though -I think over 2 hrs is pushing the boat out for a film; seems to be a trend ...had to have been at least 30 mins worth of 1000yard stare pondering that coulda got snipped. Still, SF is SF so fair play to them.


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## Matteo (Sunday at 12:40 PM)

Saw this last night on Netflix. Went in "cold" - not knowing anything about it (other than it was obviously set in space and that Brad Pitt was in it) or having read any reviews.  Oh...I did know what the title meant .

Very disappointed. It felt like it was trying too hard to be "something" - but, for me, failed to get there.  I get that it was intentially slow and not action-packed (which is absolutely fine) but then there were moments when the film-makers must have thought _"maybe it's a bit too slow, let's put a moon buggy chase or a fight in there".  _The physics seemed off to me as well.

Not _terrible_ but any means, but a bit like the brown acid at Woodstock.


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