{"id":24729,"date":"2023-07-10T10:00:01","date_gmt":"2023-07-10T14:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/?p=24729"},"modified":"2023-07-10T07:52:26","modified_gmt":"2023-07-10T11:52:26","slug":"ad-astra-2019-a-science-fiction-movie-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/index.php\/2023\/07\/10\/ad-astra-2019-a-science-fiction-movie-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Ad Astra (2019) \u2013 A Science Fiction Movie Review"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"No Time For Caution - Ad Astra - Falling Scene (edit)\" width=\"783\" height=\"440\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/pCUJJuFEqJc?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>(Spoiler Alert \u2013 Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Ad Astra (Latin for \u201cto the stars\u201d) is a science fiction movie starring Brad Pitt as astronaut Roy McBride whose father Clifford McBride (played by a decrepit looking Tommy Lee Jones) is inexplicably firing anti-matter particles back at Earth from the orbit of the planet Neptune.\u00a0 The anti-matter will eventually destroy Earth so Roy is supposed to go to the Moon to catch a ride to Mars to broadcast a message to his father asking him not to destroy Earth, or something.\u00a0 The why and how of all this is very odd.\u00a0 Clifford has been MIA for twenty years on a mission called Lima that was somehow supposed to be looking for extraterrestrial intelligence (from somewhere near Neptune!).<\/p>\n<p>Eventually we learn that Clifford murdered his crew long ago because they figured out, he was crazy.\u00a0 When Roy gives his message on Mars Clifford doesn\u2019t agree to cease and desist so the military outfits a mission to nuke Project Lima to erase the threat.\u00a0 Somehow (but not believably) Roy stows aboard the rocket (after it blasts off) and without really trying he kills the whole crew that were trying to kill him.\u00a0 Now he flies to Neptune and confronts his father who is completely nuts.\u00a0 He sets the nuke and thinks he\u2019s convinced Clifford to return to Earth with him.\u00a0 But when push literally comes to shove, Clifford unshackles himself from Roy and heads off into empty, empty space.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, Roy uses a hatch panel to protect himself while he takes a shortcut through the rings of Neptune and then somehow the nuclear blast that destroyed Project Lima was able to provide most of the kinetic energy to return him to Earth before Roy dies of old age.\u00a0 And despite all the astronauts he killed getting out there the military decides to forgive and forget and so Roy finishes off by reciting some kind of humanistic spiritual affirmation statement of some kind or other and then gets back together with his ex-wife Liv Tyler.<\/p>\n<p>Now maybe that sounds quite odd for a science fiction story.\u00a0 And it is.\u00a0 This is a somewhat confusing rigamarole.\u00a0 So let me give my thoughts on it.\u00a0 The visual effects are quite good.\u00a0 Some scenes in low Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars and aboard spacecraft are a lot of fun to watch.\u00a0 But there are (I kid you not) space monkeys!\u00a0 Which I kinda\/hafta frown upon.\u00a0 So, two points off.\u00a0 Brad Pitt\u2019s character starts out as an apparently emotionless robot who always saves the world from disaster without getting his pulse above eighty.\u00a0 By the end he\u2019s crying about his crazy father being crazy.\u00a0 Tommy Lee Jones\u2019 character is crazy so there\u2019s not much there.\u00a0 Donald Sutherland has a small part and he\u2019s always crazy.\u00a0 So, this movie doesn\u2019t make a lot of sense.\u00a0 For instance, how is Tommy Lee Jones investigating other life in the universe from Neptune.\u00a0 Neptune is too incredibly cold for anything to live there.\u00a0 And it\u2019s not like it\u2019s any closer to the stars than Earth.\u00a0 Alright, I\u2019ll stop making fun of the movie.\u00a0 It\u2019s a crazy movie, but like \u201c2001: A Space Odyssey\u201d it\u2019s a visually enjoyable movie if you don\u2019t care too much about the plot.\u00a0 I recommend it for hard-core sci-fi film lovers who can live with space monkeys.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(Spoiler Alert \u2013 Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation) Ad Astra (Latin for \u201cto the stars\u201d) is a science fiction<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239,237,4,243],"tags":[4175,4176,4177,43,38,1355,44,265,368],"class_list":["post-24729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","category-reviews","category-sff","category-sff-movie-reviews","tag-brad-pitt","tag-donald-sutherland","tag-liv-tyler","tag-movie-review","tag-review","tag-reviews","tag-sci-fi","tag-science-fiction","tag-tommy-lee-jones"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Ad Astra (2019) \u2013 A Science Fiction Movie Review - Orion&#039;s Cold Fire<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, 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