A little torn on this one. It’s incredibly beautiful, pretty meditative at times, but the voiceover almost killed it for me. I don’t hate voiceovers normally, and I don’t normally care for the ‘show, don’t tell’ “rule”, but this movie seriously needed to stop telling us everything we already understood. I felt like a good 70% of Ray’s non stop inner monologuing could have easily been cut. If this is a stream of consciousness type of thing, I felt like it was pretty feeble. It’s also too short.
But Brad Pitt is so good. And someone put an Oscar into van Hoytema’s pocket pretty please. Holy crap it’s so beautiful looking. I couldn’t hate this movie even if I wanted. I feel like it’ll grow on me, and it would really benefit from a longer cut.
I appreciate how direct Gray is with the audience. He turns the subtext into text towards a simple but beautiful ambition. It is a metaphorical search for a father who May also be a god and vice versa and reckoning with what defines a hero. I wonder how many of us are trying to outthink it. This isn’t an intellectual movie, it’s an intuitive one.
Not everything works, its rushed and messy and it’s literal approach can be a turn off, but there’s something liberating about the design that makes me want to return to it.
It is fascinating seeing the margin of opinion this film is being responded with. Not only on here, but also people who I really like on Twitter are either loving this movie or tearing it shreds.
I've been letting it marinate more and I have more annoyances with the movie despite really liking it.
Like Liv Tyler's part. She's barely in the film but she was in all the advertising. Like why give such a small thankless role to such a big name? Same with Ruth Negga. I'm wondering if their parts were cut.
Gray also gives us a lot of information and some world building but it never goes anywhere. Like the lieutenant who gets killed by space pirates, we only know him for barely 5 minutes but we gotta feel sad for him because he has a family.
There are also pieces of connective tissue missing. Like the baboon scene is meant to affect Roy's behavior on mars but I feel like something was cut because a major event like that is not really discussed too much after it happens or meditated upon more. Like in an earlier narration, Roy feels guilty for the deaths he caused and this death he could have prevented if he was more firm with the captain.
It's still a beautiful movie and the core story and overall arc is still great. But I feel like there is either a lot of bulk that doesn't serve the main story or not enough story to serve that if that makes any sense.
I've been letting it marinate more and I have more annoyances with the movie despite really liking it.
Like Liv Tyler's part. She's barely in the film but she was in all the advertising. Like why give such a small thankless role to such a big name? Same with Ruth Negga. I'm wondering if their parts were cut.
Gray also gives us a lot of information and some world building but it never goes anywhere. Like the lieutenant who gets killed by space pirates, we only know him for barely 5 minutes but we gotta feel sad for him because he has a family.
There are also pieces of connective tissue missing. Like the baboon scene is meant to affect Roy's behavior on mars but I feel like something was cut because a major event like that is not really discussed too much after it happens or meditated upon more. Like in an earlier narration, Roy feels guilty for the deaths he caused and this death he could have prevented if he was more firm with the captain.
It's still a beautiful movie and the core story and overall arc is still great. But I feel like there is either a lot of bulk that doesn't serve the main story or not enough story to serve that if that makes any sense.
It’s rumored that Liv Tyler’s part was only added in reshoots. I also read that Ruth Negga’s part was originally bigger.
I quite liked this. Pitt is amazing, Tommy Lee Jones does an amazing job as well and Sutherland's still got it too. I loved Negga's performance, albeit a short one. Van Hoytema delivers stunning work, once again, he should definitely get an Oscar nomination (same goes for Pitt and TLJ imo). The production design was beautiful and I just loved the setting. This near future with people on the Moon and an underground base on Mars is something incredibly exciting and not too far fetched. I loved how they kept it grounded with
Roy asking for a pillow and a blanket and then getting a $125 bill lol and Negga's character being born on Mars. It just builds the world the story inhabits in well.
As for the story, I thought this
father/son story with the vastness of space as a backdrop was intuitive and effective. Also, the Neptune shots were gorgeous. Glad to see it getting some love.
As for the voice-over, which I usually really don't like, was fine but a bit too much.
It works for the ending of course
but they should've cut back on it.
Gray set out for this somber, melancholic journey and I think for the most part of the film, he succeeded.
It's good thanks to the performance from Pitt, great cinematography, setting and grand set pieces.
However, the narration is annoying. I think it could have been cut completely, replaced by visual representations and dialogue scenes and it would have worked much better and be more emotional. Because the core of the film deserved to be more emotional. It's a story of self-imposed loneliness and then looking for a way out. This should have been a beautiful cinematic journey but it felt mostly flat. Thankfully Pitt is so good here that he can create drama himself.
The concepts of space pirates and humanity starting to settle around to solar system was great. I loved the commercial moon travels and having a pillow and a blanket cost 125 dollars. I would have loved for them to have even more bases on Europa or Enceladus as well and maybe switch ships to have a more faithful representation of space travel but what we got was solid enough. And having an amazing representation of Neptune was great. Finally it got a time to shine instead of Jupiter or Saturn... Is it time for Uranus? Probably not
Unfortunately, there are big issues with the science of the film, especially the main part of the film... why would Tommy Lee Jones go to Neptune to look for alien life forms? It makes no sense. Also, anti-matter does not create a chain reaction, so there shouldn't be any risk for humanity. I know the irony of searching for life while there's plenty on earth lies at the core of the film but still they could have made up something similar that wouldn't be so pointless.
Overall, the technical aspects and world-building outweigh the flaws and it's a solid addition to modern space cinema. It's probably the weakest of the most recent bunch (other than Passengers) but it's a good film nonetheless.
Comparing to the others I'd go:
1. Interstellar 10/10
2. Gravity 9/10
3. First Man 8/10
4. The Martian 8/10 5. Ad Astra7/10
6. Passengers 6/10
FINALLY fucking saw this. Quite good. It is much more straightforward than I thought it’d be, which isn’t a bad thing. Obvious standouts are the Dutchman and Pitt. Jones does great with what little he’s given as well.
