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Chicken Butt posted:I have questions about the antimatter generator It wasn't directly pointed and aimed at Earth, it was just shooting waves that got bigger and bigger, eventually reaching Earth and Mars. TLJ was trying to shut it down when Roy got there. He straight up says it. But I imagine being an old and clearly debilitated man in a vessel designed for many, many people isn't helping his situation.
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Sep 26, 2019 20:09
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charles. posted:This thread is like a Cinemasins episode narrated by Neil Degrasse Tyson This discussion about proper physics should be grounds for a ban imo
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Sep 26, 2019 20:13
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I think the thing I liked most about it is how scary and isolated the movie made space scenes feel. It helped give me the feeling that humans didn't belong there which was most likely done on purpose. The time on Mars felt like a dream sequence. All in all I liked it more than the Martian even though the last third wasn't as interesting.
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Sep 26, 2019 21:29
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The fight between Brad Pitt and Larry, Curly, and Moe on the Neptune mission was the most ridiculous fight in a movie I've seen this year, and I saw Hobbs and Shaw last week. Pitt is absolutely correct when he tells those three idiots that there's no way they'll make it to Neptune without him, considering that they couldn't make it from the Moon to Mars without losing a crewmate and almost blowing up their own ship, which makes the idea that these three goons think they can take on a hardened military veteran and that they would have something to gain by doing so nonsensical. The three would have killed themselves of their own incompetence whether Pitt was there or not, he just accelerated the process. edit: stratofarius posted:It wasn't directly pointed and aimed at Earth, it was just shooting waves that got bigger and bigger, eventually reaching Earth and Mars. Specifically, TLJ was trying to find a way to shut down the thing without destroying the station itself, whereas Brad Pitt did the responsible thing. pospysyl fucked around with this message at 21:41 on Sep 26, 2019 |
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Sep 26, 2019 21:33
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It was also made out to be this huge imminent threat but uh apparently not, given they're traveling around space for weeks/months with no apparent consequences. If it's so bad how are commercial orbital launches totally uninterrupted? They could've leaned into the disaster aspect of it more and had moon pirates be desperate scavengers from a failing habitat. It would've also provided a reason for using those unarmored space buggies for VIP transport and other nonsense like stopping at the Norwegian Shakma station. I'd have rather seen a movie about TLJ's mission and his descent into obsessive madness rather than the wet fart emotional journey with pointless ~symbolic~ pit stops along the way.
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Sep 26, 2019 22:13
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caedwalla posted:It was also made out to be this huge imminent threat but uh apparently not, given they're traveling around space for weeks/months with no apparent consequences. If it's so bad how are commercial orbital launches totally uninterrupted? Yeah I  ed a little when the surge knocked out ship power and they were like "Switch to auxiliary" and everything was finemaybe you guys should just use auxiliary power all the time I know this happens in a lot of scifi (that trick worked on Star Trek every week) it was just kinda weird and funny in this super serious movie
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Sep 27, 2019 00:24
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Brad Pitt had to fly to Neptune to nuke his dad how could I not like this.
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Sep 27, 2019 01:17
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Nroo posted:Brad Pitt had to fly to Neptune to nuke his dad how could I not like this. It's kind of the ultimate "No you shut the gently caress up, Dad" moment. stratofarius posted:TLJ was trying to shut it down when Roy got there. He straight up says it. But I imagine being an old and clearly debilitated man in a vessel designed for many, many people isn't helping his situation. Ah okay, I must have missed that moment, possibly because I was MST3King the movie in my head. Still, it's a crucial yet extremely unsatisfying plot element. In Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now, Kurtz's threat to the authorities consists of undermining their project with his "unsound methods" (though really it's because he's embarrassing them by turning their covert savagery into open atrocities). In Ad Astra, the threat posed by TLJ's character is literally just that his spaceship is malfunctioning, a random issue that fails to tie into any of the movie's larger themes.
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Sep 27, 2019 05:25
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The threat TLJ posed was pretty much the same thing. He was their star astronaut and he murdered half his crew because he thought they weren't committed to the cause and wanted to go home. He's their idea of exploration taken to extreme. Pragmatic to the point of losing their humanity.
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Sep 27, 2019 06:28
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Just saw it, and while I mostly didn't like it there were some good bits. The cinematography for Mars was gorgeous and good continuation of the movie's use of light and dark. The heart rate == psychlogical wellness seems like the sort of metric-driven bullshit that could easily arise as a consequence of automation. It's clear from the beginning that Pitt's character is deeply psychlogically scarred, but since his damage gives him a steady heartrate he passes the psych evals just fine.
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Sep 27, 2019 06:37
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Gaunab posted:The threat TLJ posed was pretty much the same thing. He was their star astronaut and he murdered half his crew because he thought they weren't committed to the cause and wanted to go home. He's their idea of exploration taken to extreme. Pragmatic to the point of losing their humanity. This does remind me of how odd it is that SpaceCom appears to be intensely devoted to two things: capitalist exploitation and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. I wonder what the story is with that.
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Sep 27, 2019 07:12
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Chicken Butt posted:Still, it's a crucial yet extremely unsatisfying plot element. In Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now, Kurtz's threat to the authorities consists of undermining their project with his "unsound methods" (though really it's because he's embarrassing them by turning their covert savagery into open atrocities). In Ad Astra, the threat posed by TLJ's character is literally just that his spaceship is malfunctioning, a random issue that fails to tie into any of the movie's larger themes. I absolutely thought the entire time that they were building up to Space Dad intentionally causing the surges to try and signal to alien life, and not giving a poo poo about people dying because of them. Even when he said he'd been trying to shut it down I thought that was just him lying to try and make his son go away.
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Sep 27, 2019 09:29
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What was it that Brad Pitt's internal monologue was mumbling about after the monkey attack? "[spoiler] reminded me of my father's anger, and my own anger" or something like that? That was real dumb
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Sep 27, 2019 17:49
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You can obviously nitpick the movie to death on physics plausibility, and the fact that most of the third act zero gravity action just makes you wish you were watching Gravity, but the main issue is that the script and the story are trash. He literally says (thinks) the line "what have I done?" and the phrase "sins of the father", for God's sake. When he highjacked a rocket ship and caused the death of three astronauts, I thought he had punched a one-way ticket. I don't think that was an unreasonable assumption. Then all of a sudden at the end, I'm supposed to be invested in his newfound desire to get back and live his life? What the hell does he have to return to? His journey to Neptune also feels easier than it should- his dad is further out than anybody's ever been, but the trip from Mars to Neptune passes without incident. We're told that it's 79 days, but the movie doesn't really succeed in selling the length and loneliness of that trip. It's a much bigger ordeal getting from Earth to Mars, which is presumably a fairly well-traveled route. You get this payoff when he returns to earth where the hand reaches out to him and the camera lingers on it meaningfully, like "finally, I am in a spiritual and physical place to accept human contact again", but he's spent so little of the movie's run time actually, physically alone that it doesn't really have the impact that it seems to be aiming for.
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Sep 27, 2019 18:19
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Roadie posted:I absolutely thought the entire time that they were building up to Space Dad intentionally causing the surges to try and signal to alien life, and not giving a poo poo about people dying because of them. Even when he said he'd been trying to shut it down I thought that was just him lying to try and make his son go away. I saw it tonight and this is a much cooler plot
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Sep 28, 2019 03:14
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This felt really derivative of a lot of the slower, artsy science fiction movies of the past decade, and to a point where it kinda exemplified their worst faults. Case in point- if you're gonna try and make the next 2001 or Solaris, you can't just make a space movie that moves kinda slowly and looks nicer than average. 2001 in particular really only works because the narrative takes second place to a sort of extended visual essay on mankind's progress and the promise and peril of technology, and because every single image is meticulously crafted because Kubrick cashed in all his chips and spent an absurd amount of time and money on the project. Tarkovsky didn't have Kubrick's resources but again, he makes it clear that narrative is secondary to the experience and creates a hypnotic vibe in part through the slow, unusual pacing. This, on the other hand, feels just like a conventional narrative with slower than usual pacing and some New Agey music. And the story is just shaggy on top of it. What do the moon pirates or rampaging apes have to do with anything? I mean I'm not complaining that there are aggressive man-eating primates in outer space but is it supposed to be some kind of symbolism? Was the fall from the beanstalk... anything? Why is Spacecom hell bent on keeping McBride away from the mission? He just ends up doing the thing they wanted to do anyway. Like there's something about him not conforming, man, but it's very weak and watery. Like they're adding complications because the story needs them because once he gets to Neptune there's... not a lot. Which brings me to my major point that the lead is uninteresting and actually kinda sucks. He has sort of a motivation in the form of dad issues but he seems to hold everyone around him in contempt, and while he's validated by the Mars/Neptune crew being idiots because of drugs, it's not like he's in good psychological shape either. I get why Brad Pitt saw this as a good star vehicle but the character is just uninteresting. Speaking of actors, Natasha Lyonne's cameo was at least good. She had more energy and life than anyone else in the entire film and I kinda wanted the movie to start being about her somehow. The narration felt really tacked on, like when he's on the moon he's like "everything's become cheapened and commercialized" like they were afraid we'd miss the brand logos everywhere. (Incidentally Futurama did this whole bit better in their second episode.) Through the whole thing I'm not actually sure there's a scene where it adds anything. The gore feels kinda out of place, the action scenes just don't work for me, and again it's one of those movies where everyone's cold and distant because It's The Cold Heartless Future but again, you kinda have to work to pull that off and still have it be dramatically interesting. There's some interesting material with Spacecom and the capitalist exploitation of space travel but I don't think that alone saves the film. Honestly a satire focused on the Idiot Crew would probably have made that point more effectively.
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Sep 29, 2019 04:15
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Credit where it's due, I liked that, for once, space helmets do not have lights in them for the benefit of the viewer. When it is dark, you can't see people's faces. It's a small thing, but it does show more attention to detail than the average Hollywood space movie.
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Sep 29, 2019 12:29
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SimonChris posted:Credit where it's due, I liked that, for once, space helmets do not have lights in them for the benefit of the viewer. When it is dark, you can't see people's faces. It's a small thing, but it does show more attention to detail than the average Hollywood space movie. The scene where they enter the derelict space station, there’s a shot where they open the hatch, and there’s just this round black void reflected on their visors. That’s a really good shot. Good job, movie.
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Sep 29, 2019 17:26
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Pretty disappointed in this, for many of the reasons already mentioned. One thing I didn't get is that They make a big deal about how piracy is rampant and Pitt will get a military escort to the rocket on the moon... yet when they come under attack they seem completely caught off guard and are wiped out fairly easily.
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Sep 29, 2019 19:00
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The other rovers take up flanking positions to shield Pitt from the pirate rovers. Just cuz they are military doesnt mean they wont be in trouble if they get flanked since they are all ostensibly fighting in lovely space suits.
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Sep 30, 2019 02:45
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That whole thing makes very little sense, given that with the launch capacity to regularly ship goddamn Subway sandwiches to the moon, the military would have had actual APCs up there instead of open rovers.
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Sep 30, 2019 02:53
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Why bother with taking a rover all the way across the moon in the first place instead of a short hop on another rocket
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Sep 30, 2019 03:48
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Okay I was boggled a little by that whole sequence but what the hell happened at the end - was that supposed to be artillery fire shooting at the pirates? Like they called for help and the base they were driving towards just started shooting?
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Sep 30, 2019 03:59
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Roadie posted:That whole thing makes very little sense, given that with the launch capacity to regularly ship goddamn Subway sandwiches to the moon, the military would have had actual APCs up there instead of open rovers. Yeah it doesn’t make sense that the pirates have space humvees while the military is driving around in buggies like it’s 1970
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Sep 30, 2019 04:17
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Anyone notice Hollywood sci-fi movies, despite how much they profess to be cerebral, cannot ever escape from the problem of sudden and constant emergencies as a way to create drama Aight hold up. The 1962 Russian film Planet Of Storms is entirely a series of inexplicable disasters and dinosaur attacks(!), while the space movie that Brad Astra most resembles is arguably the 1963 Czech film Icarus XB-1. The baboon horror interlude is straight out of Icarus - specifically the scene where the Icarus crew investigate the dead remains of a capitalist ship and comment on its blunt metaphoricality. (Icarus is also one of the films to most prominently focus on Space Madness). This isn’t a Hollywood thing. It’s you missing that Brad Astra is just pulpy. It’s Commando Cody packing a laser gun and battling space pirates on the moon. Those events aren’t deviations from some platonic ideal of ‘realistic space movie’; they are the movie, even if the point is that being Commando Cody actually sucks. The movie Brad Astra most resembles is THX 1138, the dystopian story that opens with a Buck Rogers trailer: “By turning the dial to project us ahead in time we’re able to be with Buck and friends in the wonderful world of the future. A world that sees a lot of our scientific and mechanical dreams come true. You know, there’s nothing supernatural or mystic about Buck. He’s just an ordinary, normal human being who keeps his wits about him”. I’d argue that the entire aesthetic is straight out of THX - filming in subway stations and, like, lovely concrete reservoirs. That’s not to say this movie’s particularly great, but proper evaluation begins with understanding what it is. quote:What do the moon pirates or rampaging apes have to do with anything? I mean I'm not complaining that there are aggressive man-eating primates in outer space but is it supposed to be some kind of symbolism? The point of the entire moon sequence is the surreal microcosm where rich Americans pay millions of dollars to hang out in Moon Disneyland, minutes away from a Somalian warzone and a (very literal) CIA black site. This is, notably, the only picture we get of what everyday life is like for people. As for the space baboons, it’s a bit more specific. While it’s really just a random accident, it has a huge impact on Pitt’s character because he interprets it as a metaphor. There are two baboons, and Pitt sees the first as an externalization of his unspoken inner rage (against the captain for interrupting the mission). The second baboon then reminds Pitt of his father (who, as we see in a flashback, was physically abusive). SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 15:09 on Sep 30, 2019 |
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Sep 30, 2019 14:40
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xiw posted:Okay I was boggled a little by that whole sequence but what the hell happened at the end - was that supposed to be artillery fire shooting at the pirates? Like they called for help and the base they were driving towards just started shooting? I think it was artillery but they never addressed it. Did have a laugh at the Space Force Army Man declaring they'd get the VIPs to the not-very-secret moon base safely and then all of the Space Force escort immediately dies, leaving Brad Pitt and an infirm old man to drive the dark side of the moon while under friendly artillery fire. It's fine though, BP told them where the dead lovely Space Force Marine Guy's body was.
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Sep 30, 2019 16:40
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caedwalla posted:I think it was artillery but they never addressed it. Did have a laugh at the Space Force Army Man declaring they'd get the VIPs to the not-very-secret moon base safely and then all of the Space Force escort immediately dies, leaving Brad Pitt and an infirm old man to drive the dark side of the moon while under friendly artillery fire. It's fine though, BP told them where the dead lovely Space Force Marine Guy's body was. This is the kind of bad criticism where you just transcribe what's going on while expressing bafflement. Like, yes, Space Command sucks. The point of the movie is that Space Command (in partnership with Lockheed Martin!) is doing a halfassed coverup that almost destroys the Earth. Even though the entire solar system is threatened, their top priority is preventing anyone from drawing a connection between crazy dad and the 'surges'. Pitt is sent to the moon with minimal escort and smuggled into a different mission purely because they don't want anyone to see him. This is very unnecessarily risky, but Space Command is going to extreme lengths to avoid blame. Sir Kodiak is right, then, to observe that Pitt probably does go along with the coverup at the end. And that gives the 'family reunion' ending a bit of an interesting kynical twist
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Sep 30, 2019 17:52
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I think overall the movie is just kind of a mediocre movie whose biggest sin is a lame message that doesn't really fit with the spirit of the genre. The second biggest sin is that overall the movie feels like a disjointed collection of scenes that all belong in some other movie. Sometimes the movie is a hard sci-fi action/adventure, where other times Brad Pitt flies through the rings of Neptune Superman style and those scenes just don't belong in the same movie together.
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Sep 30, 2019 19:37
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Simplex posted:I think overall the movie is just kind of a mediocre movie whose biggest sin is a lame message that doesn't really fit with the spirit of the genre. I believe it’s totally in the spirit of the genre to use the space movie as a means of illustrating the work of a particular philosopher. It’s just that, instead of Friedrich Nietzsche, they went with the obscure liberal catholic philosopher Michael Oakeshott - an avowed conservative whose main project was a sort of horseshoe-theory attack on “collectivist” political projects. To that end, Oakeshott famously(?) employed the metaphor of the Tower Of Babel - as in the opening scene of this film.
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Sep 30, 2019 20:33
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Ad Astra argues that space travel won't fix all our problems, and I find that personally offensive.SuperMechagodzilla posted:I believe it’s totally in the spirit of the genre to use the space movie as a means of illustrating the work of a particular philosopher. I don't know anything about Oakeshott, but this movie definitely felt horshoe-theory like. The way Brad Pitt is obviously superior to the various toadies we see in the movie and treats those toadies as disposable felt fash-y, but I gather it was meant to draw a parallel between him and his more obviously fascist father. That both the incompetent collectivism of Space Command and the insane futility of TLJ's authoritarianism both fall apart makes sense. Brad Pitt doesn't want to be his horrible father, but he also doesn't want to be limited by Space Command's mediocrity. pospysyl fucked around with this message at 21:16 on Sep 30, 2019 |
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Sep 30, 2019 21:09
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:I believe it’s totally in the spirit of the genre to use the space movie as a means of illustrating the work of a particular philosopher.
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Sep 30, 2019 23:44
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pospysyl posted:I don't know anything about Oakeshott, but this movie definitely felt horshoe-theory like. The way Brad Pitt is obviously superior to the various toadies we see in the movie and treats those toadies as disposable felt fash-y, but I gather it was meant to draw a parallel between him and his more obviously fascist father. That both the incompetent collectivism of Space Command and the insane futility of TLJ's authoritarianism both fall apart makes sense. Brad Pitt doesn't want to be his horrible father, but he also doesn't want to be limited by Space Command's mediocrity. To go into specifics, Oakeshott’s version of the Babel myth bears an uncanny similarity to Laclau’s Impossibility Of Society. Oakeshott says these utopian political projects of the 20th century strive for an impossible unity and wholeness that is (akin to, if not literally) a return to Eden and reunion with God. (The collapse of Babel is thus read as a repeat of man’s fall from paradise - hence the emphasis on how Pitt falls at the start of the film.) However, unlike those on the left, Oakeshott was not engaged in the critique of ideology. Instead of understanding this impossibility of society in terms of class struggle, he instead embraced what we would call nowadays the “post-ideological”: the liberal post-politics of administration. Societies must “[reconcile] themselves to their expulsion from the Garden and ... come to regard their eternal salvation as God’s business, not theirs.” Oakeshott pushed Small Government as a means of facilitating a postmodern “discourse” or “civil intercourse” between individuals where no one voice dominates (and this focus on communication is again reflected in the film; Pitt spending half the runtime trying to access a government microphone).
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Oct 1, 2019 01:40
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I wish the premise of the movie was "just Tommy Lee Jones is at the top of the antenna" and the whole movie was Brad Pitt trying to get to the top.
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Oct 1, 2019 22:01
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General Dog posted:I wish the premise of the movie was "just Tommy Lee Jones is at the top of the antenna" and the whole movie was Brad Pitt trying to get to the top. Well I mean, metaphorically, that’s precisely what’s going on. The Babel antenna is both a continuation of Jones’ work and a symbolic attempt at contacting him. Its destruction is then directly caused by his failure - or, more specifically, by what Oakeshott criticized as “the politics of faith”: “Faith, in this context, is ... ‘virtually the opposite of traditional religious faith.’ In this style of government, man is thought to be capable of achieving Utopia on earth. There are no inherent limitations to human progress, and political activity therefore directs the progress toward perfection. Government becomes huge as it strains to direct the activities of its citizens in politics and in all other spheres of life. It is the ‘chief inspirer and sole director’ of the improvement that is supposed to lead to perfection. Faith means, in short, faith in human capabilities.” -Elizabeth Corey The specific human held up as a model of perfection by the totalitarian Space Command is, of course, Jones. And Jones is, for his part, enabled by Space Command, who refused to perceive him as a human - and then struggled desperately to hide the fact of his imperfection. (The above quote explains rather succinctly why “progress”, in the opening text, is treated as a dirty word.)
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Oct 2, 2019 09:44
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Why hasn't the soundtrack released yet
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Oct 6, 2019 03:58
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I liked it a lot. There are some valid criticisms in this thread about stuff like the wife, but overall it was a good cinematic experience. I thought the physics were pretty dumb throughout but I also didn't think that was the point. I generally watch films hoping for more of a dreamlike experience than an attempt at painstaking realism, and Ad Astra delivered on that (while giving me nice photo-realistic space stuff to gawk at). It felt like it was trying to be a small bit of poetry with a hard sci-fi aesthetic. That said, I was genuinely impressed with the attention to detail in world-building. I thought the movie effectively evoked the feel of a believable future pretty well, even if the events were ludicrous. The "realism" seemed to have more to do with the details of how space helmets and pieces of tech would look than how the characters would realistically fare on a journey like this. Again, I don't think that was the point, though. The movie resonated emotionally with me as a layman science enthusiast who spends a disproportionate amount of time thinking about ET while lamenting stuff like war and capitalism. The movie explicitly tells you what it's about : a lot of us desperately hope the answer to our abysmal situation is out there somewhere, and we value the journey outward so highly that we neglect the journey within. So it asks "what if there are no answers out there?" (Which there probably aren't.) It also doesn't necessarily say there is nothing of value in exploration, just that exploration in itself it may not provide the precise existential relief we're looking for. Drink-Mix Man fucked around with this message at 00:27 on Oct 12, 2019 |
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Oct 12, 2019 00:18
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Interesting. The idea that SETI is motivated by a desire to find practical solution to our current conditions among the stars isn't something I'd run into before. Always seemed like the sort of thing we did for its own ends, to learn more about the universe we live in, which is its own existential aspiration, not a substitute for other sources of fulfilment (personal companionship, etc.).
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Oct 13, 2019 22:59
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Sir Kodiak posted:Interesting. The idea that SETI is motivated by a desire to find practical solution to our current conditions among the stars isn't something I'd run into before. Always seemed like the sort of thing we did for its own ends, to learn more about the universe we live in, which is its own existential aspiration, not a substitute for other sources of fulfilment (personal companionship, etc.). I'm not so sure about SETI and other actual scientific organizations, but science cargo cult capitalists like Elon Musk and our popular culture at large certainly do.
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Oct 14, 2019 06:09
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Hodgepodge posted:I'm not so sure about SETI and other actual scientific organizations, but science cargo cult capitalists like Elon Musk and our popular culture at large certainly do. Yeah, that's a fair point. I was thinking about actual scientists (which is, of course, what's depicted in the actual movie), but I've met people who, with no involvement in the field, are convinced aliens are going to show up and fix everything so why bother and stuff like that. But they don't end up in charge of research facilities devoted to SETI.
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Oct 14, 2019 23:31
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Watched last night, really loved the world building and vision of a near future sci-fi capitalism hellscape in space. It felt uncomfortably realistic, so I hope the writers are wrong about this being our future in space.
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Dec 5, 2019 17:06
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