Just got back from it myself and this is similar to how I was going to explain it. The world building is so interesting and done so well that it’s the best part of the movie. The “distractions” from his main mission will be what you remember. It’s too bad the main story kind of fizzles out.
Agreed.
according to this, it is … MSN
Oof.
I really liked it, but I can also understand some of the responses on Twitter and elsewhere calling it slow. I’ve read comparisons to 2001, and that seems apt. Brad Pitt’s character is very distant emotionally, which makes sense for the character but doesn’t draw you in like Pitt can in other movies, but he’s very good in the role. I was captivated by the whole movie, and it’s beautifully shot. I also knew nothing going in, and there were some action scenes I was not expecting and quite enjoyed. The thing I enjoyed the most I’ve seen mentioned in some reviews but I did not know about before so I’m going to put it in a spoiler box:
Moon pirates!!! It makes sense with how they showed society developing on the moon, but I was not expecting it, I thought that was a lot of fun.
Yeah, there were some big violations of science in this. Some of them I was wondering if there was some explanation that I either missed or that was cut out, but I was enjoying it all so much it didn’t bother me. But after I got home and was reading a quote from the director about making very accurate space travel that made me laugh. Especially after I just finished watching the first three seasons of The Expanse, which works very hard on making all the space travel stuff as accurate as possible.
I agree that it might be helpful if there was some term where it’s not extremely accurate hard sci-fi, but it’s also not like something with Jedis using the force or talking raccoons or other stuff like that. I’ve enjoyed a lot of all types of sci-fi, but it might help to manage expectations for some people at least.
I was of the opinion that the final scene in space, the Iron Man type of stunt was especially woo. I liked the movie; not nearly as good as the book though.
I watched Ad Asta today. It was slow, but not 2001 Space Odyssey slow. I thought it was fair for hard scifi, but there were some problems on screen.
1. Lunar gravity appeared identical to Earth gravity.
2. Brad Pitt’s tears rolled down his cheek instead of balling up into a sphere.
3. Can a nuclear explosion really push a spacecraft away without tearing it apart?
4. I’m fairly certain that the way McBride propelled himself through Neptune’s ring to return to his spacecraft would not work; not likely he could correctly judge the trajectory.
5. Animal bodies do not rupture when quickly exposed to a vacuum
6. Even with McBride’s spacecraft’s shielding him from the nuclear explosion, the secondary ionizations that occur as a result would quickly incapacitate him.
I don’t think it passed the Bechdel Test either. Liv Tyler did not have any lines in the movie. 
I think this was better in terms of being hard SF than “Interstellar” or “2001”, because there was nothing that was just basically magic (and I know the Arthur Clarke quote, but I don’t think it excuses everything). I think the greatest violation of the genre here was the way they walked around the moonbase and Mars base like it was Earth gravity. I’m assuming they knew that was hinky, but they just didn’t have the budget to do anything about it.
I had a couple of problems with the story.
1. Why did he land at the commercial spaceport and have to take the deadly drive across the moon to the military spaceport? Why not just take a rocket directly to the military spaceport and avoid the dangerous drive? Of course then we don’t get the glimpse of how commercial and ordinary the commercial spaceport was and we don’t get the cool extraterrestrial car chase.
2. As I understood the plot, the only reason to go to Mars was so that he could record a message to be transmitted to his father, in what appeared to be a state-of-the-art Martian recording studio. Why travel at all? Why not just record the message on Earth and then transmit it directly to Neptune from there, or to Mars where it’s then relayed to Neptune?
3. And as someone suggested earlier, there was quite a lot of zipping about in zero-G from one spacecraft to another, apparently without using some sort of small thruster.
Maybe I’m wrong and these were not plot holes but I wondered about them while watching the movie.
1. It was said that he had to fly commercial to keep a low profile. The reality is that it was to complicate the plot, but they did give an explanation in the movie.
2. The real answer is the same as above, but they said it was on a “secure laser transmission”, and had earlier said that the secure transmission facilities on Earth and the Moon were destroyed by the surge. So that is the technobabble explanation.
From Box Office Mojo’s weekend wrapup. Ad Astra is estimated to make $19.2M this weekend. So pretty close to expectations and no surprise bonus money for Fox.
Brought in $26M overseas from a few markets with several more to go. The article doesn’t mention China. Turns out it’s a national holiday time so they’re waiting for that to be over. That’s a pretty decent haul given the size of the markets. OTOH, the percentage from overseas ticket sales is smaller so even if it makes $100M overseas there’s still some financial pain going forward.
Video/streaming can help quite a bit. But one interesting point. 73% of the audience was 25+. Good: that means legs. Bad: that’s not a good sign for streaming.
(I used to link to stuff at Box Office Prophets but that site has gone downhill. E.g., it predicted Downton would finish 5th with $16M. Instead it’s 1st with nearly twice that. BOM relies on sources that track things like ticket pre-sales and IMDb page hits. So it’s numbers are more reliable. But even it was predicting $22M for Downton. A lot of Molesley fans out there, I guess.)
Hard sci-fi means the characters wear astronaut suits.
Hard sci-fi:
2001: A Space Odyssey
Gravity
Armageddon
The Martian
Interstellar
Wandering Earth
Ad Astra
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Not hard sci-fi:
Star Wars
Star Trek
Guardians of the Galaxy
Starship Troopers
Dune
Avatar
Galaxy Quest
If you’re not worrying about where the air is coming from, it’s not hard sci-fi.
Had two different friends see it this weekend. Both described it as being a long snoozer. One said it was the longest-feeling movie she’s seen since The Thin Red Line.
Since IMDb bought them and Ray Subers left, BOM has felt like it’s on autopilot in terms of doing any real analysis. Still, it’s a great compiler of movie info, in particular non-US box office.
HSX also undershot the Downton Abbey opening weekend, but this is exactly the kind of movie they tend to undershoot.
Ad Astra breaking even is going to be verrrry close, but it’s not a bomb.
FWIW I saw it at a Saturday matinee, and the theater was at 1/3 capacity.
Contrast this with “Avengers: Endgame” that I tried to see the Saturday just after it opened, and could not because the seats were all sold out. So by this one indication alone, I’d believe that Ad Astra raked in only a fraction of what A:E did on its opening weekend.
My review:
As stated by others, this is a movie mostly about a guy chasing after his dad’s legacy, and the resolution comes when he finally comes to terms with who his dad really is.
Pros
Really atmospheric: It was filled with really beautiful spaceflight visions, even though some of them seemed a tad improbable.
I really liked the different “styles” in architecture, clothing, even haircuts, among the various human factions found here and there in the solar system.
Cons
All of the action scenes (fighting / conflict / trouble) were due to the characters failing to properly manage the situations. That is, some of them weren’t very good astronauts. In an ideal case the conflicts should not have happened. (They could have all been removed from the movie without changing the story that much or the lovely space scenery.)
The “spaceflight dynamics” were just wrong in a number of places, which took me out of the movie. Toward the end there were sequences very reminiscent of “Gravity” (in a bad way, meaning just impossible.)
Overall I’d see it for the coolness of the visions, and the nice job Brad Pitt did making us care about his story.
Good comparison…one could say this movie is to realistic SF what The Thin Red Line is to realistic war movies. Space, or the war, is the backdrop to the protagonists’ inner struggles.
I kind of was irritated by Thin Red Line because it felt wrong, or off somehow. I have read WWII-in-the-Pacific history extensively, especially about Guadalcanal, so pivotal and important. So see this importance overshadowed by…something else…just didn’t work for me.
As for Ad Astra, I can forgive some of the spaceflight issues because the awesome production design far makes up for it being a “feeling” movie. After all, spaceflight such as this has very long stretches of apparently not too much going on, but to an astronaut, there’s always something going on.
To quote Dave Scott (Apollo 15 CDR) in The Shadow of the Moon, “You’re not just lying there. Every second is something of significance.” Which is all to say: as an astronautical engineer I’m very well entertained by real spaceflight that may appear boring to others. If you don’t know or care about such details, then it would seem very boring. As my spouse and son would readily agree to. 
Not really a great or fair comparison. A small space film vs the climax to a multi-billion dollar twenty film series.
My wife and I saw it this weekend, we both enjoyed it, but we were both confused about one particular plot point.
The energy surges experienced on Earth, the moon, and Mars, are due to an antimatter leak on the Project Lima station out near Neptune. So, the plan is to nuke the station to stop the surges? Wouldn’t that produce a HUGE surge when all the antimatter gets released?
I definitely felt the same vibe while watching it. It was like Terrence Malick remade Apocalypse Now, but in space.
While watching, I think I saw a chamber or device labeled “Anti-Matter Catalyst”, which made me think the anti-matter was created as need arises? At least that was the train of thought my mind had in the moment which allowed me to get over the very same thought you had. But who knows?