This looks pretty interesting, and I'm trying to figure out if it's set in our present or slightly in the future or is some sort of retro/future thing because some of it looks like it's set in the present, some of it in the 1960's rocket heyday and some in the future with some unfamiliar looking green uniforms? US Space Force?

What do you all think?

Looks entertaining at any rate. Near (25-40yrs) future is my guess. Good to see Liv Tyler is still alive at least...

Is that a space elevator in the trailer?

So it opens September 20th.

Looks like it may actually be pretty good! Not a lot of details about WHEN it’s set but I’m guessing about 50 years in the future. Major McBride (Brad Pitt) wears a uniform with US Army nametape and the green dress uniforms in the first trailer were vaguely Army Class-A-ish. He’s also wearing US Army Astronaut wings in one of the trailers.

Apparently we have a pretty large, established Moon Base in the future, complete with Moon Pirates!

Looks like a distance future movie with some Apocalypse Now themes (rouge former leader, thought dead, on his own, etc).

Might be worth the watch.

quote:

Originally posted by RHINOWSO:
Looks like a distance future movie with some Apocalypse Now themes (rouge former leader, thought dead, on his own, etc).

Might be worth the watch.

"Charlie don't EVA!"

Now that I got that out of my system, this looks like a pretty expensive cast so maybe it won't suck.

I’m interested in the movie, but have to say the moon buggy shootout looks stupid and too heavily CGI’d.

With the way movie studios are putting out trailers and, and how they obscure the plot, this could very well be a astronaut discovering his father is having an affair out in space.
Looks interesting though..

Looks worth the look! Great cast of characters. I'm needing some new SF in my life. This life is getting too interesting at times of late.

Anyone seen this movie yet? Looking for a review.

JP

Ad Astra review: Brad Pitt sulks in outer space
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“2001 meets Apocalypse Now” may be the preferred pitch for this self-consciously philosophical science-fiction adventure from James Gray, writer-director of such varied fare as The Yards, Two Lovers and The Lost City of Z, but “Event Horizon with interstellar overdrive” is perhaps a more accurate description.

In Paul WS Anderson’s British-made 1997 potboiler Event Horizon, a spaceship powered by a black hole disappeared on its maiden voyage to the stars, popping up years later near Neptune, having apparently gone to hell and back. In Ad Astra, it’s the ghost of the “Lima project” that haunts Neptune’s rings, after vanishing with its cataclysmic antimatter drive decades ago.

This time it’s Brad Pitt rather than Joely Richardson, Jason Isaacs or Laurence Fishburne (a veteran of Apocalypse Now) on the trail of the cosmic mystery, but the essential thematic coordinates are the same – a trip into deep space in search of a lost expedition that had gazed too long into the abyss. The result is an A-list B-movie that juggles moments of breath-taking visual splendour with much on-the-nose speechifying about sins of the fathers and eternal isolation, spiced up with some action-packed silliness that entirely undercuts its more po-faced pretensions.

Just as the makers of Alien looked to Joseph Conrad when naming their spaceships Nostromo and Narcissus, so Gray and co-writer Ethan Gross use Marlow and Kurtz from Heart of Darkness as models for astronaut Roy McBride (Pitt) and his pioneering father Clifford (Tommy Lee Jones). As leader of the Lima project, Cliff “went further than any of us”, travelling to the outskirts of the solar system before going off-grid – physically, morally, theologically. Now Roy (whose “What did he find out there?” narration might as well have been read by Martin Sheen) must follow Dad’s path into the void. Will Roy be able to find the source of the electrical “surges” that are threatening life on Earth? Or will he simply come face to face with “the horror, the horror… ”?

Tommy Lee Jones in Ad Astra.
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Tommy Lee Jones in Ad Astra. Photograph: François Duhamel
From its vertiginous opening sequence, in which the “steady, calm” Roy (whose pulse doesn’t break 80bpm) is knocked from a terrifyingly tall transmitter tower, Gray and Interstellar cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema demonstrate their mastery of experiential film-making. Shot with widescreen majesty on 35mm, Ad Astra combines sinewy, space-bound sequences – all floating elegance and weightless wonder – with moments of shimmery inner stillness, reminiscent of Soderbergh’s undervalued Solaris remake.

There are echoes of Gravity, too, as characters find themselves whirling kinetically in the disorienting emptiness of space. And then there’s the trailer-teased encounter with a space-bound “rhesus primate” – a WTF!? episode that bizarrely reminded me that 2001’s visionary effects wiz Douglas Trumbull inherited the movie bug from his father, who rigged those freaky flying monkeys in The Wizard of Oz. We may be in “serious” sci-fi territory, Toto, but we can still see Kansas from here...

Like Ryan Gosling’s insular Neil Armstrong in Damien Chazelle’s First Man, Pitt’s pathologically “compartmentalised” hero has an almost android-like detachment from human emotions; love, fear, empathy. Indeed, this very quality makes him ideal for a mission that would drive a normal human being to distraction. Yet whereas Gosling’s glazed stare silently suggested deep wellsprings of grief, Pitt gets to verbalise his inner torment in sub-Terrence Malick monologues, interspersed with perfume-ad footage of Liv Tyler, who seems to have wandered straight off the set of Michael Bay’s Armageddon. While First Man was an object lesson in “show, don’t tell” film-making, Ad Astra seems determined to show and tell at every opportunity, right up to the hokey coda, which rivals the knot-tying antics of Insterstellar’s all-too-neat final act.


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None of which is to suggest that Ad Astra isn’t very entertaining hokum. While Pella Kågerman and Hugo Lilja’s Aniara more effectively evoked the existential horrors of being lost and alone in the universe, and Claire Denis’s High Life played the inner/outer space riff with greater oddball conviction, neither of these superior films had the spectacular, crowd-pleasing appeal of Gray’s pulpy epic. In a world in which Star Wars movies still rule the roost, it’s encouraging to find an $80m space-based movie setting its artistic sights on the stars rather than simply recycling intergalactic horse-opera cliches. Yet with its lunar pirates, interplanetary shootouts and preposterous space leaps, Ad Astra owes as much to the legacy of those old Flash Gordon serials of the 1930s as any George Lucas fantasy franchise.

An atmospheric score by Max Richter (augmented by Lorne Balfe’s “additional music”) amplifies the air of intrigue, while Jones’s saddlebag face and uber-grouchy delivery offer an effective counterpoint to Pitt’s perennially wounded star-child pout.

quote:

adventure from James Gray, writer-director of such varied fare as The Yards, Two Lovers and The Lost City of Z,

The Yards was excellent and Two Lovers was a masterpiece that even today people haven’t seen or overlook. Gray’s got some real talent. But I don’t go to the theater anymore so I’ll be clamoring for the 4k disc.

Saw it yesterday. I can see why some make the connections to Apocalypse Now and Event Horizon, but it’s a vastly different movie than either. It’s a slow and cerebral movie with a ton of plot holes. Think more like 2001 than any of the other movies. It was OK and something different.

quote:

Originally posted by Dwill104:
Saw it yesterday. I can see why some make the connections to Apocalypse Now and Event Horizon, but it’s a vastly different movie than either. It’s a slow and cerebral movie with a ton of plot holes. Think more like 2001 than any of the other movies. It was OK and something different.

High praise indeed these days.

A friend saw it opening night and said it sucked big hairy donkey balls.

Then again he didn't like Interstellar either and I liked it so I'm thinking I may like this.

He's more a guy who is disappointed when movies don't have 100% nonstop action and have actual dialog instead.

quote:

Originally posted by Prefontaine:

quote:

adventure from James Gray, writer-director of such varied fare as The Yards, Two Lovers and The Lost City of Z,

The Yards was excellent and Two Lovers was a masterpiece that even today people haven’t seen or overlook. Gray’s got some real talent. But I don’t go to the theater anymore so I’ll be clamoring for the 4k disc.

Ships in a week on 4k!!!!!

Quitting the theater is awesome. Damn films are on 4k and Blu Ray in 90 days from theatrical release!

In space, no one can hear you yawn.

quote:

Originally posted by sigmonkey:
In space, no one can hear you yawn.

Sums it up nicely!

quote:

Originally posted by ChuckFinley:

“2001 meets Apocalypse Now”

Yup, I called it.

That’s fine for me. I will be in the comfort of my own home paying a whopping $2.00 and some change for it, and it’ll be better picture quality than the theater and better sound.