Ad Astra came with a huge message. We're staring to the skies so focused on looking for intelligent life, we forgot to look back at ourselves. Intelligent life is right here. Roy McBride's journey is an analogy for a man's quest into himself, rediscovering himself, and learning to let go of everything that holds a man back. It's not about space or science at all. That was just a way of portraying the story.
Yeah! So they make this space pirate scene and the monkey scene and the falling scene in the begining because it isn't about space or science or anything like that. It's about philosophy and Roy's journey,
Then why didn't they have old man McBride go missing while exploring a jungle or something, that way they don't insult the intelligence of their viewers as much, and the characters can still go through the same motions.
The majority of the population don’t care about underlying themes of films. They care about the plot. So most people went to see the film for the space action. Regardless, they could have just not put a bunch of dumb shite in the movie plot, right? You’re basically saying ‘the movie had an underlying message so who cares if they got every detail about space/science wrong’ lol. A good movie would get the details right AND nail the underlying message. Why would they spend so much money on the effects for a space movie, advertise it as a space movie, then get all of the science wrong because they were just using it as a means to an end anyway and the message is all that mattered? It’s either laziness or stupidity. Either way it was a fail.
This is one of my favorite movies. I’m aware that the science isn’t perfect but the mood and story had me going. I can totally respect your opinion though. Really enjoyed the video.
It's an odyssey. Roy has lost all connection. His starting monologue says so. His journey takes him away from earth and the character arc brings him back to where we see he has found the answers he's looking for, not in space, but back here on earth. That's the story. A beautiful one I might add.
First I thought they were building a space elevator and I thought: cool Only after the film did I realize it was an antenna... So many missed opportunities
@@praneethachanta4089 yeah, when I look back I'm pretty sure they mentioned it being an antenna but I must have been so confident in my belief that I didn't register it Yeah, it's dumb
Yeah, wtf is the point of building an antenna that large from the ground up? Since space travel is commonplace, they could just put the whole thing in orbit away from Earth's interference....
I read on a news article that astronomers using sattelites (on earth) are complaining about spacex satellites in space interfering with their observations. Could this be a good reason to use this large antenna; so that astronomers can make observations past the interferance?
You left out the worst mistake. When Brad enters the rocket and they have the floating space fight on an aggressively accelerating rocket. They would be pinned hard in their seat.
Im not disagreeing... but is "interstellar" better in terms of realism? Why does everyone sht on this movie? I f'n loved every second of it. I like interstellar but... they didnt even try compared to this movie imo. Cant yall give it some credit? Lol
Let’s also talk about how all of the asteroid impacts on his shield would have slowed him to a stop and sent rocks hurling toward his ship (if he were accurate) or if he angled to deflect the rocks away from his ship he would have changed his own trajectory. Begin to hit rocks he wasn’t shielding himself from, and still come to a stop.
farolito74 what idiot thought this was believable. I was cringing that whole sequence. So frustrating when movies insult my intelligence so blatantly. You could have still have an interesting action sequence without the idiotic hand waving of simple physics.
@@greyzone1996 And thanks to the stupidity demonstrated in it it was a really BAD movie. Thank God I found that review before spending time on that movie. I rather watch my cat sleep.
There are 2 different types of space movies. The first ones are science fiction movies about space ( Interstellar, Sunshine) the second type of movies are soley set in space but are not about space ( Passangers, Paneorum, Ad Astra)
Yeah it should have been more scientifically accurate, like Interstellar. Roy didn’t even use the love dimension, or jump through a black hole into a little girls bedroom. So unrealistic. By the way, I think you need to watch Pandorum again.
@@arviv22 they were to busy doing a great film about the personal strugles of one who lives in a very advanced world but has no meaning to him Man, you guys are the bad kinds og geeks
@Freeze Peach The good movies that have long lasting appeal do! This was NOT one of those good long lasting movies. It's a popcorn movie (too expensive popcorn).
Alex Alex, but the story wasn’t good. How are we supposed to believe the characters motivations or moods if we can’t believe any of the science in a science-fiction film?
Yes the physics was bad, but the primary purpose of this movie was definitely to highlight the psychological challenges of space exploration. I'm a physics student but I've come to terms with bad science in movies (love you Interstellar) and have learned to appreciate the underlying messages in these movies
I particularly enjoyed the scene in which Brad Pitt's character somehow managed to grab onto a hatch and enter the rocket's going to Mars with 2 or 3 seconds on the countdown without a sweat. It looked highly realistic IMO.
I literally didn't follow that scene. He was climbing the outside of the launch structure and I was like "boy, it's gonna be REALLY hard for him to climb all the way up there in a full spacesuit in the next minute and somehow get into the rocket!" and the movie was like "actually super easy, barely an inconvenience!" and cut to him inside the hatch.
The science was so fantastical that throughout the movie I was pretty sure its all in Brad Pitt's head and in the end we find him strapped up in a straight jacket in some looney bin.
I didn't think he was crazy but I did guess that maybe the whole thing was faked by the space organization to test Brad's mental capability of handling such situations. Like the Star Fleet officers test
In other words, *2001: A Space Odyssey* is _STILL_ the most accurate space movie overall.... *EDIT:* Based on SOME comments, I should add that I include the fact *2001* was the FIRST truely accurate movie of its kind, and ALSO GROUNDBREAKING in many ways....
RocKiteman _ 2001 : If you haven't seen all three seasons of 'The Expanse' yet, you are in for a very special treat. The fourth season starts in December on Amazon.
You never REALLY watched 2001 ... or you wouldn't make such a comment. There's not a single accurate shot in the movie (which is the whole point of it).
@@ascriptedreality Maybe, yet when you compare 2001 to the films of the time [Marooned, Planet of the Apes etc] and even films of today, such as “The Martian, it is amazing how 51 years after it was released it still holds up. Yet it helps to have the like of Stanley Kubrick, AC Clarke, and consultants such as Frank Ordway.. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_I._Ordway_III Although Kubrick did trick us… for example we get used to being in zero g with the centrifuge, but Bowman climbs a ladder to enter into the brain room of Hal, or standing in a 1 g environment of the Pod Bay, but the 0 g environment outside… I am sure you would agree that movies are all about tricking the eye... that is why Kubrick is the Best!
Even for those of us without a PhD in physics, this movie was painful. But I was impressed with the reflections in the space helmet face shields, particularly during the rover chase and especially during this part of the movie 6:09.
Love how space pistols and like 6 moon guards are all they need to protect this world saving mission from space pirates. Were is space armor for vehicles or personal. Where are the space military machines guns?
@@wastelesslearning1245 Exactly. If it's that important, they should have a military escort. Also, the military eliminates pirates in the real world, so it's dumb not to do it on the moon in this movie.
I thought the most ridiculous part is when he stowed away on the rocket, he was climbing it AS it was taking off. He would have immediately lost his grip and would be pinned down to whatever surface was below him. There was no way he's be able to hang on with the acceleration of the rocket.
3rded. The Expanse is much more accurate than Ad Astra but they do get a few things wrong for the sake of good storytelling. The writers/showrunners own up to it though unlike James Gray. Ad Astra could have been great but it fell way short in the science department and had an okay story to go along with it. At least it was visually stunning.
Aside from the sci-fi Protomolecule stuff, the only hard sci-fi laws that the Expanse breaks is the propulsion, which they do explain in a hand-wavey way that some Martian entrepreneur was messing around with settings on his engine and discovered a way of optimizing engines. With that one little science problem explained away, The Expanse does a really good job of showing things like high G maneuvers, pressurization issues, climate control, etc.
@@syringistic they don't really break laws with the Epstein drive. It's unrealistic because it's so so much more advanced than we currently know about fusion technology or propulsion.
@@bryanjahava2610 if I recalled Epstein said he found a way to increase the fusion drive's efficiency. I think fusion is used as an energy source for a hyper-power ion drive. I may well be wrong with this though.
My favourite part was all the talk of it being a full-moon on the way but once on the surface of lunar they look back at earth and it is also illuminated... um, that’s not how it works. The side of earth facing them should have been in darkness. Oh, and IRL we’ve been flying boosters back to the landing site for years now, yet in this future we’re still discarding spent first and second stages? Okay...
Sean MacLean what makes you think the boosters are discarded? Just because you don’t see them land? They’re never shown burning up in the atmosphere either.
@@MizaT11 meh, it's the future, and it's fiction. That's really splitting hairs. If the boosters aren't shown burning up in the atmosphere, then I consider them as being landed.
@@obtsfan I would argue that visible recovery hardware of some sort is equally as important, if not, more so than showing the boosters "burn up in the atmosphere" as otherwise you're grasping at straws.
@@obtsfan I think that the boosters were probably not recovered because they showed no signs of having any attitude control after separation. In current rockets, recovered boosters will begin steering into an attitude to start a retro burn immediately after separation. All of the boosters that we see were just tumbling out of control after separation.
Don't forget that Liv Tyler played Brad's estranged wife. She should have known better as she previously was the girl friend of a man who went into space to set off nukes {see Armageddon (1998)}
Yes . . . HELLO nerd man Andy. I feel you may have spoiled this movie for yourself. It's a bloody work of art. You prob ably didn't notice this because your nerd brain was too busy nit picking. Hmph!
I didn’t mind it, there were some minor holes (mostly these scientific ones) and I didn’t really like how it didn’t leave much for the viewer to analyze because often times things would be flat out said. Like early on in the movie I was picking up that Roy was disconnected emotionally and once I started to learn more about his father, I started to connect the dots and suppose the two were related. But Roy straight up stated something like “there’s this rage, this rage I see in my father and now i see it in myself. I build up walls” or whatever. Like drop me clues and let me figure that out. Or when his s/o was like “even when you’re here you feel distant”. Don’t flat out say that, that’s poor writing. It could have been way better if they just said something like: “I hate to say it but it’s easy for me to just forget that you’re gone because nothing feels like it’s changed”. Tell me he’s distant without actually saying it. But I did like the over arching theme that it’s possible to overcome the scars of your upbringing (that’s the theme I took away at least).
Had the same with Interstellar. I had a five pages long list of bullshit science to rage at but I just couldn't. The music, the acting and the sense of otherworldliness made Interstellar for me the way Ad Astra failed to. Sorry to say because I was looking forward to this movie.
I'm with you, although my experience was definitely reduced by several of the too-wrong-to-ignore bits. (Space monkeys - "ok fine", space monkeys exploding instantly when depressurized - "hey that wouldn't happen...")
Their mistakes you didn't mention: 1. The movie started losing me when Pitt's character said "over and out" on the radio. 2. How could Pitt's character navigate, let alone aim, himself for that spaceship? He couldn't even see it from the Lima. 3. They, as most space movies, show the engine firing during the whole trip from Earth to the Moon, to Mars and then to Neptune. The engine only has to fire long enough to accelerate to trip speed, and then to decel for landing or orbit injection. Your mistakes: 1. (deleted) 2. You would not need more fuel to get from Mars to Neptune. You'd need less, as escaping Mars' gravity would take less fuel than escaping Earth's. Then, you would coast as far as you needed to get to Neptune. In fact, if you're smart, you'd use a slingshot effect from one or more other planets between Mars and Neptune to accelerate or change course. Plus, you're not landing on Neptune, so the final burn would be merely to adjust your velocity and direction to inject your craft (Cepheus) into orbit around Neptune. Maybe you were fooled by error #3, above?
Well.... you may want to reconsidered your claim about fuel and double check the Δv calcs. True, mars has less gravity, but Neptune is far away and big. It'll take quite a bit of Δv to get out there, and circularize. In fact, I'd count on it being a lot more because they have to have enough to do the trip in reverse. And seeing this was an urgent trip, spurred on by the storms, rather then one played like Voyager, you can't count on any other planets being in the right phase angle when you want to leave, including Neptune itself! but then again, maybe they've discovered Epstien drives or something and don't have to care about fuel efficiency, lol.
#3: the movie clearly assumes there is some ultra fast propulsion as they get to neptune in a matter of weeks. in reality the trip would take 11 years just coasting there, and tommy lee jones would have been long dead.
@@df4196 Ok, so it sounds like they are going The Expanse route, which makes sense for story telling, but then I guess that makes all the other points about phase angles, fuel, etc moot.
@@PsychoMuffinSDM the science in this movie is just bad. it's not far enough future where the science is completely different from now. they still used fuel and rocket propulsion yet the distance between destinations is completely ignored. bad storytelling.
@@df4196 Yeah, if it is better tech, it wasn't really specified, and even if it was, it wouldn't excuse everything else. I'm a big KSP fan, and from that, i notice when the attitude of burns are all wrong, and here they were.
as a space enthusiast, there's a lot in this movie that i would like, but when i'm half way through it i only realized the movie was just not intelligent enough...
Saw this Tuesday night. At the end I turned to my wife and suggested they spent all the money on Brad Pitt, so no money for a science consultant. Some have mentioned things I noticed. Moon gravity for one. Never understood why they took a land vehicle on the moon, and the rovers appeared to have pneumatic tires. Why not fly from the space port to the far side? Second, the grand tour. We did the Voyager missions because the planets were lined up for gravity assist. The problem is, that isn't going to happen until 175 years after the Voyager missions. Seldom are the planets lined up, so if you are going to Neptune, odds are you are not passing by Mars, Jupiter and Saturn on your way. Of course, why were they going to use a nuclear weapon to address the anti-matter. If an uncontrolled release of anti-matter is bad, what would a nuclear weapon do to bring that anti-matter under better control? A flat earth society meeting has more accurate science compared to this movie.
Mars also has lower gravity than Earth. This also tends to get ignored in movies because we haven't seen with our own eyes human beings walking or moving on Mars like we have the Moon. Sure, it's much closer to Earth's 1g gravity than the Moon, but all the scenes showing Brad Pitt and all the other humans walking normally on Mars with no perceptible difference in body movement or balance, were just as ridiculous to me as the Moon scenes.
Tony Bright huh... I hadn’t thought of the whole “blowing up the anti-matter” thing. Kind of like deactivating a warehouse full of dynamite with a hand grenade.
It seems like enjoyment of this film largely depended upon one's ability (or willingness) to suspend disbelief in regards to the science. I decided to just roll with it and found a thematically rich and emotionally resonant film under the sci-fi dressing.
@@ThoughtWord Not me. The "psychological tests" made no sense. Then he meets his father, who didn't care the least for his family, and murdered his crew for a worthless mission. That part was as nonsensical as the astrophysics.
How about the part where the girl from Orange is the New Black was the mars greeter still wearing her prison clothes just to keep everyone's girlfriend interested in the movie..
You need to educate people, especially those dealing with films. There is too little realism in the movies, which makes them so stupid. And people watch it and think that the world is shallow.
When I first saw it in the trailer, I thought the tower scene was going to be a from a space elevator. That would have helped explain all of the human activity in deep space. Also, they should have had earth hit by a massive EMP emitted by Tommy Lee Jones' ship. Instead of having Pitt ride the shock wave, they should have built tension by having him try to reach minimum safe distance before the detonation. The tension can be climaxed by his ship almost being destroyed by the effects of the nuke going off.
Oh you fucktard casual cinemaphills!!!! Ad Astra is made not for entertainment but for delivering a huge message that only few had figured out. Maybe you will feel stupid after years of enlightment.
I was so caught up on the fact that his tears roll down his cheek in zero g that I totally missed all of this. DOWN HIS CHEEK PEOPLE! He'd be blinded by a ball of space tears until he wiped them away.
It was an improvised tear by Brad Pitt, the director liked it and decided to keep it as it was, Pitt told him that he had to make it float with CGI but the director said no way, its a movie guys sometimes reality isn't that important
They had a scene in season 3 episode 11 of "The Expanse" that did just that (the pool of tears in her eyes). The attention to detail was pretty cool. It's @ 21:17 into the episode, give or take a few seconds.
A US astronaut once actually got into great difficulty with sweat inside his helmet, it obscured his vision and threatened to build up so much moisture inside his helmet as to compromise his breathing.
This is so great! I love your work and you explained so many things I thought sounded dumb in the film. Although overall, I actually enjoyed Ad Astra--for the sound design, epic daddy issues, and Brad Pittness.
@@boiledelephant Yes yeah I get that. I mean more how I'd like them to be. If it isn't like that in the movie, it doesn't really bothers me. I just like it more if it's more "realistic". What bothers me is the Earth-like Moon gravity in ad Astra or propulsing from an exploding bomb. That does bother me. The delta-v is more of a thing I like when it's correct, but it doesn't really bothers me if it isn't.
I want to see a proper space opera series. one with realistic physics and showing what humanity would probably actually look like if we had a Solar civilzation. The expanse is good and far more believable than anything, but I want a show where people need to deal with horrendously long travel times as ourdescendants will probably have to. And as our ancestors used to.
I saw this earlier this week, I could tell from the trailer it was not going to be science focused, was still pretty good though. Thank you for your analysis, You did a great job as always.
There was a ton we had to cut for time. There is a line in the movie that the secure Mars facility was the only one left after the bursts. But yes they could have recorded Brad Pitt anywhere. I talk about this in my Film Threat review that should come out soon.
the movie covered it, remember; 1) they said Mars is the "last secure" base to transmit that signal, also as laser , 2) the movie opening Text hint there's other country, in conflict, not just the United Airforce Space military, and 3) the movie clearly shown a "cut" where Brad Pitt walking back & forth, indicating time passes.
All the laser communications on earth were hit by the emp/ antimatter emp thingy. Mars had an underground facility that stopped the emp/antimatter thingy. So that's why he had to go there.
I can personally relate to Ad Astra, I thought it was very full of human emotion and issues between father and son, husband and wife. It was paced pretty good with an action scene about every 30 minutes. I'm a little disappointed if the science wasn't accurate but it did not take away from the human aspects. It had a good moral to the story. If it was not popular, it was because Brad Pitt's character is too emotionally numb and detached for too much of the movie, though he eventually learns to become more human, we don't get enough screen time of that aspect, the happier ending. Never go full emotionally detached.
This is one of the best films of the year, and it's clear that people who didn't like it just didn't understand what the film was doing and the way in which it's a subtle exploration of its themes.
@@circularsky That's your opinion and opinions, as they say, are like farts. I personally watch movies for their stories not themes. Although theme is important, it doesn't compensate for a bad story and Ad Astra had one heck of a bad, bad story. Terrible characters too.
Great review! A few more things: earth-like gravity on the moon, reply from dad comes in minutes not hours (laser light would take hours to reach Neptune), liquid water under hatch at surface, acceleration of rocket at take off would be several Gs but the astronauts intercepting Brad just tumble around leisurely, pulses so strong that they can come from Neptune and cause damage on Earth but they don't bother Brad Pitt when he actually goes to Neptune, etc. The problem for me is not so much whether all of the science works, but whether the plot and characters make sense within the universe of the movie, and that's not the case with this movie at all.
Umm I don't know the movie is set In "Near future" and they might have figured out a way to make artificial gravity on moon and the movie clearly describes the surge being powerful as it progresses through the solar system that's why the surge is not so strong on Neptune. And there are Liquid water lakes under the surface of Mars and if you don't know Water is used to MUFFLE down the sound of those engines. We use the same technology over here on earth and if you meant my "why are the not evaporating ?! " That's because the surface of Mars is too cold and it might compensate to the heat of those engines ( I could be wrong ) . Peace !
@@dragonemperor794 ok but, given the other tech in the movie, artificial gravity on the moon base is a real stretch. My point about the reply from his dad coming in minutes stands: this is really physically impossible given the speed of light. Also, what kind of a radiation "surge" is weaker at its source? That doesn't make sense. As it travels across space it should get weaker because it spreads out over astronomical distances. That's why the sun's surface is 5,778K but here on earth we don't get fried. There's no liquid water on the surface of Mars, because of temperate and pressure. Those lakes will be very deep, kilometers below the surface, where the pressure/temperature may allow liquid water, but this water is right at the surface, separated by a little hatch. The heat of the engines can't compensate; how does it reach the water unless it is exposed? We may use water on earth to muffle sound, but that's because conditions on earth allow liquid water on the surface. And again, a rocket taking off at 2 or 3G does not allow astronauts to float around and fight each other in the back of the space craft. All of these are serious mistakes.
I just saw this, it was really great. There are physics and science problems but one of the more believable science fiction films. This imo was supposed to be a new retelling of Heart of Darkness/ Apocolypse now in a space environment. It tries to be a both a science fiction and psychological film that mostly succeeds. It explores the nature of isolation and the mental fatigue it can have on people in these situations.
That was my thoughts last night when I watched it for the first time. This is Joseph Conrad, the actual physics don't matter, it's the epic story of a man hunting down his antihero and killing him.
This is an excellent round up of the issues in this film, however a HUGE error which I don't think anyone has commented on, is simply that whenever we see Brad or other people on the surface of the Moon or Mars, they bounce along as they are walking, in just the way you would expect in a low gravity environment BUT whenever there are interior scenes we see them walking or running up and down stairs as if they are back on Earth in normal gravity. So does gravity magically increase when you are inside a building on a low gravity planet or moon? This killed it for me within minutes of the film starting. Sadly 'The Martian' also has the same problem!
My first thought when Brad Pitt decides to use the the shockwave of the nuclear blast to propel him back to earth was, "Wait . . . He's on the other side of the rings of Neptune. Isn't the shockwave going to hit the rocks first, turning the whole explosion into a giant nuclear shotgun blast and shred Brad and his ship into tiny dime-sized pieces?"
He didn't ride the nuclear blast, the explosion was from the ship full of antimatter. There is far more potential energy in even a tiny amount of antimatter, than in a fission warhead.
@@paulmichaelfreedman8334 "that's not how the force works!" Han Solo ep7 but that movie doesnt count anymore to me so.. i guess you're right. That is how the strong force works. It was a joke anyway lol
I just started laughing at the end when he surfs through space, didn’t think the movie was gonna go that far but I guess I didn’t learn anything after seeing the monkey bit
I saw Ad Astra as a rereading of Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" and Coppola's famous film adaptation "Apocalypse Now." "Science" enters the film as a very superficial or allegorical setting.
I agree. Its basically Apocalypse Now/Hearts of Darkness in space, the science is second to the story. Doesn't make it a bad movie, but I can see how science savy people wouldn't like it.
THANK you. Also, thank you. And thank you again. This is getting really out of hand. Do these guys not even get that fiction and non-fiction are two different things? Why even have fiction? Why even have art? Yes, of course verisimilitude matters. But its far more complex than "Oh, that's inaccurate! Ruined the movie for me!" The same guys are perfectly capable of enjoying Star Wars or Iron Man without this kind of kneejerk rejection because it's "unrealistic". Sure, Ad Astra is more grounded than Star Wars. But it's not a documentary. It's not a science lecture. I could go on. Everyone should wtch and re-watch Dan Olson's "Annihilation and Decoding Metaphor" until they get it. czcams.com/video/URo66iLNEZw/video.html
@@camcabbas You're quite right. But if someone is going to flaunt their science savvy, your first job is to pay attention. If movie watching was a scientific investigation, you're a bad scientist if you don't notice that it's the crew trapped in space with a CRAZY MAN who "take one look" and "give up" -- after MORE THAN A DECADE. They spend something like 13 years looking for life, and watching their captain lose his mind, and finally they've had enough. You're also a bad scientist if you make baseless assumptions. Did they really explain how they're looking for alien life? No. How can you assume that it isn't necessary to go to Neptune if you don't know? Did they explain how their guns work? No. How can you assume that a test with our contemporary guns means anything? Unscientific. Did they explain their rocket engines? No. Would a good scientist assume they work the same as our chemical rockets? Did they explain their anti-matter reactor? No. How can you assume it won't cause a chain reaction of some kind? Is it scientific to dismiss the space antenna? No. You have no data. The movie doesn't spend time on these subjects. If a viewer is space savvy, that's all the more reason for them to know you can't simply fill in the blanks in the most bad faith way possible. Anyone who takes this approach is deliberately trying to ruin the movie for themselves.
Calm down lads. Everyone's right here. The film was advertised as having a hard scifi leaning, and it tries to in various ways. It fails to. But the hard scifi isn't central to the film's goals, so it's ultimately a moot point. The hard scifi being wonky is a valid complaint. The hard scifi not being relevant to the film's ultimate purpose is also a valid defense in hindsight.
@@boiledelephant If Ad Astra isn't hard sci-fi, then there is no such thing. The real problem is that it's being judged by space exploration fans who don't comprehend that if a character in a movie is supposed to look like they aren't wearing makeup, the actor needs to wear makeup to create that illusion. Movie reality is not reality. Even a documentary filmmaker will tell you that tricks of the camera, editing, and storytelling are unavoidable. Ad Astra's director was quite sorry for promising it would be realistic, because he didn't realize those words would be seized upon by an audience who fancies themselves experts in orbital mechanics but is childishly ignorant of the rudiments of how drama and performance work. And the biggest marketing lie was that Ad Astra was a fast paced action movie, judging by the loud, thriller trailer. They hid the fact that it's a quiet, meditative slow burn. The technical errors are no worse than anything you could compare it to. Movies are not real. They're a bunch of 2D pictures projected on a screen, which the audience may choose to interpret as a facsimile of some kind of reality provided a set of agreed up on conventions is followed. What's interesting is the unrealistic choices necessary to bring the audience along, like making the Earth through a window on the moon appear three times larger to meet audience expectations, or adding fake flashes of fire from the railguns, to help the audience follow the action. The questions that matter are why is one unrealistic choice necessary to sell the illusion, and another sets off an audience reaction? Why does the same audience swallow utter nonsense from The Martian but not Ad Astra? Those questions are interesting. Ticking off "mistakes" only shows the prejudices of the critic, and doesn't add to insight about the movie.
I was totally content suspending disbelief when it came to the science. Plus, it's silly for Andy Howell here to say "keep all that *not dumb* stuff, just change the motivations." The search for-and failure to find-intelligent life beyond earth is the thematic core of the film. That motivation is essential and leads to Roy's most important piece of dialogue towards the end with his father: "We're all we've got." You don't get that payoff if Tommy Lee Jones is just a vague "explorer."
The Director lady said she has been ordered to prepare the ship for long distance flight, I remember. But great video and great explanation, and great channel btw, I just subscribed. Also the movie is good, despite the scientific inaccuracies.
A very fair and balanced review of what I considered to be a dreadful film in terms of basic science errors. Dr Howell makes some very useful suggestions on how the film could be improved. I am also a film scientific consultant, sometimes it can be a very difficult job as producers, directors script writers and model makers want to pull off in rather wild directions. Often it requires patience to work through the script and make sure everyone is aware of the changes. It is not clear what went wrong with this film. Did they even have a science director?
What happened was director James gray wasn't invovled and taken off from final cut, edits, and additional reshots and post production. He came out and said it in an interview. It was an amazingly well made film which was ruined by the edits where it's original creators didn't have a say. It was sad all around.
@@joyeternal2314 thanks for that, its never a good idea to mess with the director's original vision. This could have been a really good film, however I would still maintain there were some considerable errors in the original script.
I personally loved the film Ad Astra, knowing this is not a scientific documentary of a visit to Neptune, but rather a depiction of a personal psychodrama with an artistic touch, and a pseudo-realistic look at the near future of space travel. This movie is set somewhere in the near future (approx. 50-100 years from now), so things like refurbishing a spaceship to travel from Mars to Neptune for a longer distance, may will be possible using a different kind of Martian propellant, etc. Of course a viewer may find a handful of scientific inaccuracies in the shots, but they don't actually spoil the narrative, unless you are especially looking for what is "wrong" with this movie. I found the VFXs just amazing, and they don't all have to be 100% scientifically accurate (like the bullets fired on the Moon seem brighter in the shot than they would in direct sunlight, or tears running down an astronauts face in zero gravity). If you consider the movie as a drama, rather than a space documentary, you may see what makes this movie stand out from the crowd. While the narrative is slow compared to regular sci-fi action movies, just like the movie "Interstellar", it raises existential and philosophical questions about our place in the Universe and the meaning of Life in general. I strongly recommend it to anyone who doesn't just want to watch another shoot'em up movie in a space setting, but rather a visually stunning narrative, with a more profound message about what makes us human in the light of the vastness of space.
A great movie that is under-rated. Criticism of the science is certainly fair and fun, but the licenses taken here do not detract from the strength of the storytelling. While other movies in this genre have been very plot focused, the character arc and themes of this one make it the best of a very good era for these types of films. This one is the most artsy and most introspective with its 'into the wild' story frame. A framework seen in other films and in ancient stories (Apocalyse Now comes to mind, though far less grim than that movie). In that sense this film is easily the strongest of the bunch. While film is ultimately just make-believe, it is still good to keep gently prodding filmmakers to use as much realism as possible.
I mean, I love science and all, but is it necessary that a movie need to be scientifically accurate to be good? what's the point of sci-fi then? What I love about these kinds of videos is to see what can be real and what can't, but if sci-fi makes you feel uncomfortable because of that, there's no suspension of disbelief at all, there's no entertainment. It would be different if the plot is inconsistent or lacks of sense because of the characters construction or something. either ways, I LOVE THIS CHANNEL. Cheers.
That is a really good question: I have left the cinema five hours ago and normally my mind would still be somewhere else because of the - great imagery - stunning effects - sublime music to accompany both effects and images - great acting, Brad Pitt's performance in particular However, the film itself raised so many questions and left much unanswered and has failed to take me away. Even as a layman you know that some of the things on show here are impossible and I'm glad that they were addressed here. Also, I believe that the mystery of the purge was not solved, who or what exactly has caused them (never mind the "why") and are they still active or not ? Overall, still a great cinematic experience and I would recommend folk go and see it.
You’d expect the science in a somber near-future space epic to be better than that of, say, ARMAGEDDON, but the emotional vacuity and lack of anything original to say were what really killed this film for me. Not to mention the tedium.
First problem is setting expectation. There are sci-fi movies that are not scientifically accurate but still enjoyable. That's because the makers themselves don't claim it is scientifically accurate. There's hard sci-fi, soft-sci-fi, and sci-fi fantasy. Ad Astra claimed it was hard sci-fi. And also, just because it's science "fiction" doesn't mean its fiction shouldn't be grounded in reality. Good sci-fi is supposed to be grounded in what's possible now and only stretch the limits of reality in the technology that's beyond what we're capable of now. It shouldn't break science that's already proven in the present. It could extrapolate past what's yet to be proven now, but to break established science fact is just bad sci-fi. Most good sci-fi will deviate from reality and go into "fiction" in the areas of science that's still being explored and are unproven today. It will not break science that's already proven. That's the entire point of the genre. If it's not based on science, it's fantasy, not sci-fi. You might as well put wands and spells on the spacecraft for all we care.
Watched the movie a couple weeks ago. They did indeed use ion thrusters! I wasn't expecting anything too accurate but for a balance between sci fi and hard sci fi I give this movie a pass! I really enjoyed the dialog about facing your unfelt pain. Really a fantastic film in all honesty!
THANK YOU! The idiocy of going to Neptune to decide once and for all if there are other intelligent beings in the universe was so apparent to me and I have a PhD in the Humanities.
As a drama that just happened to be i space I'll give it an 8/10 as a space movie a 3/10. I originally thought that if it were produced in the early 1970's I could give it a 8-9/10 but your comments drop it back to late 50's. I enjoyed the movie, but not as a space epic
Fun fact - when Russian astronauts on MIR station were fighting for survival and integrity of space vessel during the fire, American visitor, Jerry Michael Linenger was staying in reentry module, ready to evacuate. Like seriously.. They were briefed not to provide help. Michael Foale, after him broke this protocol and integrated perfectly into the crew and provided help and assistance.
@science vs cinema you say that a bullet sized hole would kill everyone but there was a detected leak on the ISS that ended up being someones attempt at drilling and it went days before noticed and fixed. if you dont like that example then what about the science done on the surface area of the bullet hole not allowing for the pressure to push through, in this case tape can be enough to patch the ship.
i reckon it depends how big the hole is, and how small or big the room or environment is, that it is allowing the escape of gases into space thru.. for example if you havea big space station with many compartments like the ISS,and the hole is extremely small, yea, its not gonna be that huge an emergency.. but if you have a bullet sized hole, in a rocket, with just one compartment, not to mention the fact that the rocket is moving thru an atmosphere and into space when this is happening, it might be more catastrophic.. Are you actually trying to defend the whack science in this movie?? lol Are you a big Brad Pitt fan gurl or something?
The tear ran *down* his face orbiting Neptune. Also, one wouldn’t just let go to drop from the tower - one would be trained to push out in order to stay as clear as possible for the drop.
" Brad Pitt’s ‘Ad Astra’ Acting Is So Good, It Forced Director James Gray to Screw With Science www.indiewire.com/2019/09/brad-pitt-ad-astra-james-gray-1202173241/
Roy McBride Fascinating - and, revealing - that Pitt cared more about the science and less about his own ego than his director. That goes s long way towards explaining what went wrong with AD ASTRA.
Awesome Video. I went to your channel and watched a few more of your discussions. I was surprised you haven't done one on "Interstellar". Did I miss it or did you just not get around to that movie yet?
I loved the movie SO MUCH! I knew right away the stupid physics they used in the movie, but the story was so strong to me that I completely ignored those mistakes. Which are far less than most space movies! Really really great review!
Great video. My one big issue with Space Travel as we know it is the supply limitations, as having no margin of error there makes space travel much more dangerous than we need it to be. Once we get to the point where we can comfortably bring along extra? That's when true space travel will begin.
To be honest I'd like a goofy corny 50s science fiction movie. One that intentionally disregards what 'real' science is. The problem is that most movies try so hard to look real, but abandon actual reality, then claim they're realistic.
Some of us like hard sci fi, I watch a lot of movies, this was garbage, or the adaption was. They consulted NASA and astrophysicists for interstellar, made for better visualization and effects that were true to life. This was garbage, since it was slow, boring, and inaccurate. You notice inaccuracies the slower the pace.
I dont know why people never comment how he looks EXACTLY the same after such a long journey through space. When he returns back to earth and even throughout the journey to neptune nothing changed about his face/hair which was dumb to me. Also, he just magically wakes up back crashing on Earth after it shows him leaving Neptune which was so incredibly lazy. And not only that, he looks EXACTLY like he looked before he left for the moon at the beginning which is absolutely dumb.
bruh have you seen how astronauts look after staying on the ISS for months to a year? Did you see how Scott Kelly looked compared to his twin brother after a year on the ISS? It wasn’t very different. It isn’t like Brad Pitt was starving on a deserted island. He had resources intended for a crew of THREE. And he wasn’t in deep sleep the whole time. Naturally he’d shave and cut his hair.. as astronauts do now. You make it sound like he needs to look like shit after that journey, yet astronauts don’t look like shit today with our limited level of tech. Maybe the movie should’ve added clips of him shaving, eating, and exercising for you. He’s a space command pilot with extensive experience, not an idiot. He knows how to handle himself in space.
@@obtsfan Oh lord, ok first of all I never implied, or at least meant to imply that he's supposed to look like shit. Second of all this is not as simple as staying on the ISS. My issue is, is that he looked exactly the same in every scene meaning it was obvious that the directors were lazy. You can tell when someone gets a haircut and you could easily tell absolutely nothing changed with his hair/face. Unless, we're supposed to assume that the scenes where they show him he was coincidentally at the same stage of beard/hair growth which is not true. The point isn't even that "oh they didnt focus on how he looked". The point is that the entire journey (TO NEPTUNE AND BACK) is not meaningful in this movie, a few little scenes of him shaking his head and some cuts and he's there. And ONE CUT and he's back waking up on Earth. Some physical change would have been good to symbolize that he has changed from such a journey. The fact that you're even defending this movie is ridiculous. "He's a space command pilot with extensive experience" rigghhht, so flying through the rings of Neptune is a great idea huh. And adding clips of him shaving, eating etc would have actually been a great addition to the film. However, it would not save it unfortunately. Let's say you're right and I am completely wrong about his facial issues/physical changes sure. There are still numerous other things wrong with this movie and he is definetly not "a space command pilot with extensive experience" because half this movie makes no sense and what he did in this movie makes no sense.
@@XeroReflex everything that you said is subjective. Maybe the trip wasn't meaningful to you, but evidently there are a lot of people that thought it was just fine, myself included. Seriously, if this is one of your main gripes then you're strangely focused on a rather minor aspect of the movie. I personally noticed that he had a lot more facial hair when he landed on earth. If you looked at pictures or clips of him at Neptune compared to pictures and clips of him landing on Earth, you'd see it too. It wasn't a tom hanks castaway beard but like I said, if any rational person were on a spacecraft for a few months with a functional razor, a mirror, and running water, they'd probably groom themselves. Any ex-military pilot or government astronaut would definitely groom themselves. What you're asking for is some lowbrow, Hollywood cliche that unfortunately wouldn't happen under normal circumstances. Anyways, it isn't a perfect movie, but few movies are perfect. My coworker and I thoroughly enjoyed it and we're both rocket propulsion engineers. Compared to most space and scifi movies, Ad Astra made a lot of sense.
@@obtsfan If we are talking about subjectivity, then I can throw that right back at you. And like I said, even if we ignore/assume that his physical changes are negligible there are still so many things wrong with this movie. Sorry, but more people thought it was a letdown than people who enjoyed. And at least you enjoyed a movie that make absolutely no sense. To each their own I guess. So many stupid things like shooting a gun on a rocket, being at the combustion site of the rocket 5 seconds away from launch... Also, it does not matter what your profession is, what does not make sense does not make sense.
about the ship not being made for a long journey to Neptune, the lady told him she has orders to RE-PURPOSE the ship for a seek and destroy mission. so it might had the necessary upgrades. (i love your work tho)
I totally agree with your analysis, i took the tower for a kind of test for a futur space elevator. They don't really explain the real function of the tower so they could be anything, but like you i was a bit desappointed that it was not a space elevator. That would have been sooo cool !
totally agree on all your points, i just watched the movie, loved the visuals but the story is just not good at all, lots of things just didn’t make sense
To be fair the guns they used on the Moon chase scene didn't look like regular guns, they're probably some SciFi weapon that works in space, they vaguely even looked like blasters from Star Wars. I also take the spaceship being able to stop and start again, or be used for both a Mars and Neptune trip with a grain of salt because the movie is set in the future so maybe they're more advanced spaceships that surpassed the issues our current spacecrafts have.
The fact that he doesn’t acknowledge that this movie was set in a distant advanced future just goes to suggest that all he cares about is his ‘content’.
When you guys finally realized that this is not a space exploration movie ? This is more to Brad Pitt psychology exploration in space theme , God damn it
Before I watched it, i did a very light research about this movie on Wikipedia. The director said "the most realistic depiction of space travel that's been put in a movie". I stopped reading because afraid of spoiler.... Then I watched the movie at cinema and felt so disappointed after it ends. My disappointment is on par with Transformers The Last Knight.
The idea of space pirates is a commentary on how superpowers fund organizations to fight their wars for resources. The moon is colonized and the narrative of a humanity that shares the solar system as a unified species is highly unlikely. Instead it is more realistic to consider a battery of cold wars over resources. It is my favorite part of the film, a balance between violence and analysis of the future of space colonization.
But they wouldn't have security or hunting parties to take out the bands of moon raiders living right next to a pretty big deal moon base so that every time they go outside they get bullied by pirates?
I feel like there are a ton more problems with the science in this movie. It made me uncomfortably angry while watching and I found it distracted me from the story
Yes but this is always a mistake when it comes to movie 'realism'. Its about plausibility. Some sci-fi is more fantasy (so you can get away with a lot more) while others like As Astra are contemporary, set in a future world not too dissimialr to our own. So then changing and ignoring the rules of science as we know them to fit a story just makes it look silly.
As a side note has anyone found out the soundtrack for the Ad Astra trailer. specifically the flute that plays at the end. I really need it in my life Thanks in advance!
Ad Astra came with a huge message. We're staring to the skies so focused on looking for intelligent life, we forgot to look back at ourselves. Intelligent life is right here. Roy McBride's journey is an analogy for a man's quest into himself, rediscovering himself, and learning to let go of everything that holds a man back.
It's not about space or science at all. That was just a way of portraying the story.
Ikr. People can't appreciate good stuff. They expected action and spectacle.
Yeah! So they make this space pirate scene and the monkey scene and the falling scene in the begining because it isn't about space or science or anything like that. It's about philosophy and Roy's journey,
Then why didn't they have old man McBride go missing while exploring a jungle or something, that way they don't insult the intelligence of their viewers as much, and the characters can still go through the same motions.
The majority of the population don’t care about underlying themes of films. They care about the plot. So most people went to see the film for the space action. Regardless, they could have just not put a bunch of dumb shite in the movie plot, right?
You’re basically saying ‘the movie had an underlying message so who cares if they got every detail about space/science wrong’ lol. A good movie would get the details right AND nail the underlying message. Why would they spend so much money on the effects for a space movie, advertise it as a space movie, then get all of the science wrong because they were just using it as a means to an end anyway and the message is all that mattered? It’s either laziness or stupidity. Either way it was a fail.
Brilliant story, important message
This is one of my favorite movies. I’m aware that the science isn’t perfect but the mood and story had me going. I can totally respect your opinion though. Really enjoyed the video.
Where was the story? What was the story?
@@TheGoddon Dad decided to leave his child so he didn’t have to pay for child support.
It's an odyssey. Roy has lost all connection. His starting monologue says so. His journey takes him away from earth and the character arc brings him back to where we see he has found the answers he's looking for, not in space, but back here on earth. That's the story. A beautiful one I might add.
@@TheGoddon you must be a toddler 😂
First I thought they were building a space elevator and I thought: cool
Only after the film did I realize it was an antenna... So many missed opportunities
I thought it was a space elevator, didn't know it was an antenna till i read this comment, that's do dumb
@@praneethachanta4089 yeah, when I look back I'm pretty sure they mentioned it being an antenna but I must have been so confident in my belief that I didn't register it
Yeah, it's dumb
Yeah, wtf is the point of building an antenna that large from the ground up? Since space travel is commonplace, they could just put the whole thing in orbit away from Earth's interference....
This movie is just a sequence of bullshit ideas. Looks like a bunch of yes-men pandering to producers.
I read on a news article that astronomers using sattelites (on earth) are complaining about spacex satellites in space interfering with their observations. Could this be a good reason to use this large antenna; so that astronomers can make observations past the interferance?
You left out the worst mistake. When Brad enters the rocket and they have the floating space fight on an aggressively accelerating rocket. They would be pinned hard in their seat.
that scene was especially pathetic....
Only woman are affected by acceleration apparently (see the one who broke her neck slamming into the bottom of the capsule).
Im not disagreeing... but is "interstellar" better in terms of realism? Why does everyone sht on this movie? I f'n loved every second of it. I like interstellar but... they didnt even try compared to this movie imo. Cant yall give it some credit? Lol
they were already in soace
@@exhaustguy she was the only one who didnt grab something to hold on to i believe, idk, idc, the movie was fantastic
Let’s also talk about how all of the asteroid impacts on his shield would have slowed him to a stop and sent rocks hurling toward his ship (if he were accurate) or if he angled to deflect the rocks away from his ship he would have changed his own trajectory. Begin to hit rocks he wasn’t shielding himself from, and still come to a stop.
farolito74 what idiot thought this was believable. I was cringing that whole sequence. So frustrating when movies insult my intelligence so blatantly. You could have still have an interesting action sequence without the idiotic hand waving of simple physics.
Sam Rodriguez lmao y’all are such nerds! It’s just a movie lmaooooo
@@greyzone1996 No, all we did was pass science class in the 9th grade... If that's being a nerd to you then my gosh.
@@greyzone1996 And thanks to the stupidity demonstrated in it it was a really BAD movie. Thank God I found that review before spending time on that movie.
I rather watch my cat sleep.
I was thinking the same!
Also, don't planetary ring consist of dust and ice rather than huge rocks?
There are 2 different types of space movies. The first ones are science fiction movies about space ( Interstellar, Sunshine) the second type of movies are soley set in space but are not about space ( Passangers, Paneorum, Ad Astra)
The lady from gravity and brad Pitt from this would go great together.
Literally.
SUNSHINE ??? What
Yeah it should have been more scientifically accurate, like Interstellar. Roy didn’t even use the love dimension, or jump through a black hole into a little girls bedroom. So unrealistic.
By the way, I think you need to watch Pandorum again.
@@bravediomedes217
Interstellar Great..
You you dumb
Evidently, the makers of Ad Astra didn’t consult you.
or any person with a little bit of science knowledge
@@arviv22 they were to busy doing a great film about the personal strugles of one who lives in a very advanced world but has no meaning to him
Man, you guys are the bad kinds og geeks
Their Loss.
@Freeze Peach The good movies that have long lasting appeal do! This was NOT one of those good long lasting movies. It's a popcorn movie (too expensive popcorn).
Alex Alex, but the story wasn’t good. How are we supposed to believe the characters motivations or moods if we can’t believe any of the science in a science-fiction film?
Yes the physics was bad, but the primary purpose of this movie was definitely to highlight the psychological challenges of space exploration. I'm a physics student but I've come to terms with bad science in movies (love you Interstellar) and have learned to appreciate the underlying messages in these movies
How is gravity earth-like when they are indoors on the moon?
Plot gravity
Most likely anti grav generators
The Moon has 0.166 g.
Because they could not fit the set on the vomit comet.
It's a conspiracy- theres actually gravity in space- cause the moon is a disc getting pushed upward by a laser turtle... Just like earth.
I particularly enjoyed the scene in which Brad Pitt's character somehow managed to grab onto a hatch and enter the rocket's going to Mars with 2 or 3 seconds on the countdown without a sweat. It looked highly realistic IMO.
I like the part right after that where they have a 0g fight while the rocket is accelerating.
That scene was just plain stupid. How would the crew not be alerted if a HATCH opened beside the engine exhaust at TAKEOFF.
I literally didn't follow that scene. He was climbing the outside of the launch structure and I was like "boy, it's gonna be REALLY hard for him to climb all the way up there in a full spacesuit in the next minute and somehow get into the rocket!" and the movie was like "actually super easy, barely an inconvenience!" and cut to him inside the hatch.
Conor L.G. The crew was alerted that is why the whole 0g fightscene happens.
they didn't have the budget to film the climbing up the rocket scene. It was cut.
The science was so fantastical that throughout the movie I was pretty sure its all in Brad Pitt's head and in the end we find him strapped up in a straight jacket in some looney bin.
You must be 10-12 years old to suggest that
Mohit Singh or just a regular person making a *joke*
I didn't think he was crazy but I did guess that maybe the whole thing was faked by the space organization to test Brad's mental capability of handling such situations. Like the Star Fleet officers test
@@derekofbaltimore That one crossed my mind as well...
@@riot2136 looks like the meaning just flew over his head.......oh well
re: stowing away: how about that hatch that opens into/near the rocket exhaust?
Exactly, so dumb.
Much of that sequence was cut/edited, I wouldn't be shocked if additional footage resolves a lot about that confusing scene.
In other words, *2001: A Space Odyssey* is _STILL_ the most accurate space movie overall....
*EDIT:* Based on SOME comments, I should add that I include the fact *2001* was the FIRST truely accurate movie of its kind, and ALSO GROUNDBREAKING in many ways....
RocKiteman _ 2001
: If you haven't seen all three seasons of 'The Expanse' yet, you are in for a very special treat. The fourth season starts in December on Amazon.
Apollo 13 ?
You never REALLY watched 2001 ... or you wouldn't make such a comment. There's not a single accurate shot in the movie (which is the whole point of it).
@@ascriptedreality still, most self-consistent and attentive movie ever, especially for time it was made.
@@ascriptedreality Maybe, yet when you compare 2001 to the films of the time [Marooned, Planet of the Apes etc] and even films of today, such as “The Martian, it is amazing how 51 years after it was released it still holds up. Yet it helps to have the like of Stanley Kubrick, AC Clarke, and consultants such as Frank Ordway..
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_I._Ordway_III
Although Kubrick did trick us… for example we get used to being in zero g with the centrifuge, but Bowman climbs a ladder to enter into the brain room of Hal, or standing in a 1 g environment of the Pod Bay, but the 0 g environment outside… I am sure you would agree that movies are all about tricking the eye... that is why Kubrick is the Best!
Even for those of us without a PhD in physics, this movie was painful. But I was impressed with the reflections in the space helmet face shields, particularly during the rover chase and especially during this part of the movie 6:09.
Just to clarify: they have stated they aren’t traditional guns, but more like “rail guns” which accelerate the projectile via electromagnetic forces
Apparently they're "stilletos" i.e. basically handheld versions of Mass Effect Thanix Cannons.
It's not the propulsion, it's that they're shooting projectiles in a spacecraft.
It figures that they over-explain the one aspect of the movie that didn't need a justification.
Love how space pistols and like 6 moon guards are all they need to protect this world saving mission from space pirates. Were is space armor for vehicles or personal. Where are the space military machines guns?
@@wastelesslearning1245 Exactly. If it's that important, they should have a military escort. Also, the military eliminates pirates in the real world, so it's dumb not to do it on the moon in this movie.
I thought the most ridiculous part is when he stowed away on the rocket, he was climbing it AS it was taking off. He would have immediately lost his grip and would be pinned down to whatever surface was below him. There was no way he's be able to hang on with the acceleration of the rocket.
i know you only do movies but i would love to know your thoughts on The Expanse, especially the TV series.
I definitely second that!
3rded. The Expanse is much more accurate than Ad Astra but they do get a few things wrong for the sake of good storytelling. The writers/showrunners own up to it though unlike James Gray. Ad Astra could have been great but it fell way short in the science department and had an okay story to go along with it. At least it was visually stunning.
Aside from the sci-fi Protomolecule stuff, the only hard sci-fi laws that the Expanse breaks is the propulsion, which they do explain in a hand-wavey way that some Martian entrepreneur was messing around with settings on his engine and discovered a way of optimizing engines.
With that one little science problem explained away, The Expanse does a really good job of showing things like high G maneuvers, pressurization issues, climate control, etc.
@@syringistic they don't really break laws with the Epstein drive.
It's unrealistic because it's so so much more advanced than we currently know about fusion technology or propulsion.
@@bryanjahava2610 if I recalled Epstein said he found a way to increase the fusion drive's efficiency. I think fusion is used as an energy source for a hyper-power ion drive. I may well be wrong with this though.
My favourite part was all the talk of it being a full-moon on the way but once on the surface of lunar they look back at earth and it is also illuminated... um, that’s not how it works. The side of earth facing them should have been in darkness.
Oh, and IRL we’ve been flying boosters back to the landing site for years now, yet in this future we’re still discarding spent first and second stages? Okay...
Sean MacLean what makes you think the boosters are discarded? Just because you don’t see them land? They’re never shown burning up in the atmosphere either.
@@obtsfan Probably the lack of visible recovery hardware.
@@MizaT11 meh, it's the future, and it's fiction. That's really splitting hairs. If the boosters aren't shown burning up in the atmosphere, then I consider them as being landed.
@@obtsfan I would argue that visible recovery hardware of some sort is equally as important, if not, more so than showing the boosters "burn up in the atmosphere" as otherwise you're grasping at straws.
@@obtsfan I think that the boosters were probably not recovered because they showed no signs of having any attitude control after separation. In current rockets, recovered boosters will begin steering into an attitude to start a retro burn immediately after separation. All of the boosters that we see were just tumbling out of control after separation.
Why didnt they make the structure a space elevator?
The accident could have damaged the elevator and necessitated the rocket launch scene
I though the structure was an antenna which was needed to pull in signals from their far off projects...
@@derekofbaltimore
Yeah...to my disappointment it was an antenna, not a space elevator
They should have brought in Matt Damon as a science adviser...
😂
No, Matt Damon should have been the one to rescue
Don't forget that Liv Tyler played Brad's estranged wife. She should have known better as she previously was the girl friend of a man who went into space to set off nukes {see Armageddon (1998)}
I gave this movie 5 minutes, if Matt D. Was in it I would not have bothered at all.
I loved 'Ad Astra'! All things you pointed out a correct, still enjoyed the movie very very much!
Tom Hahnl it’s true. I was fully aware from early on that this movie had flawed science and flawed premises, but it still gave some lovely ideas too.
Yes . . . HELLO nerd man Andy. I feel you may have spoiled this movie for yourself. It's a bloody work of art. You prob ably didn't notice this because your nerd brain was too busy nit picking. Hmph!
I didn’t mind it, there were some minor holes (mostly these scientific ones) and I didn’t really like how it didn’t leave much for the viewer to analyze because often times things would be flat out said. Like early on in the movie I was picking up that Roy was disconnected emotionally and once I started to learn more about his father, I started to connect the dots and suppose the two were related. But Roy straight up stated something like “there’s this rage, this rage I see in my father and now i see it in myself. I build up walls” or whatever. Like drop me clues and let me figure that out. Or when his s/o was like “even when you’re here you feel distant”. Don’t flat out say that, that’s poor writing. It could have been way better if they just said something like: “I hate to say it but it’s easy for me to just forget that you’re gone because nothing feels like it’s changed”. Tell me he’s distant without actually saying it. But I did like the over arching theme that it’s possible to overcome the scars of your upbringing (that’s the theme I took away at least).
Had the same with Interstellar. I had a five pages long list of bullshit science to rage at but I just couldn't. The music, the acting and the sense of otherworldliness made Interstellar for me the way Ad Astra failed to. Sorry to say because I was looking forward to this movie.
Good to know. Tnks
I agree that there are many scenes that doesnt make sense but i enjoyed it anyway
I loved it
I'm with you, although my experience was definitely reduced by several of the too-wrong-to-ignore bits. (Space monkeys - "ok fine", space monkeys exploding instantly when depressurized - "hey that wouldn't happen...")
@tommy aronson your grasp of the English language is astounding...
Interstellar was way better!
Their mistakes you didn't mention:
1. The movie started losing me when Pitt's character said "over and out" on the radio.
2. How could Pitt's character navigate, let alone aim, himself for that spaceship? He couldn't even see it from the Lima.
3. They, as most space movies, show the engine firing during the whole trip from Earth to the Moon, to Mars and then to Neptune. The engine only has to fire long enough to accelerate to trip speed, and then to decel for landing or orbit injection.
Your mistakes:
1. (deleted)
2. You would not need more fuel to get from Mars to Neptune. You'd need less, as escaping Mars' gravity would take less fuel than escaping Earth's. Then, you would coast as far as you needed to get to Neptune. In fact, if you're smart, you'd use a slingshot effect from one or more other planets between Mars and Neptune to accelerate or change course. Plus, you're not landing on Neptune, so the final burn would be merely to adjust your velocity and direction to inject your craft (Cepheus) into orbit around Neptune. Maybe you were fooled by error #3, above?
Well.... you may want to reconsidered your claim about fuel and double check the Δv calcs. True, mars has less gravity, but Neptune is far away and big. It'll take quite a bit of Δv to get out there, and circularize. In fact, I'd count on it being a lot more because they have to have enough to do the trip in reverse. And seeing this was an urgent trip, spurred on by the storms, rather then one played like Voyager, you can't count on any other planets being in the right phase angle when you want to leave, including Neptune itself! but then again, maybe they've discovered Epstien drives or something and don't have to care about fuel efficiency, lol.
#3: the movie clearly assumes there is some ultra fast propulsion as they get to neptune in a matter of weeks. in reality the trip would take 11 years just coasting there, and tommy lee jones would have been long dead.
@@df4196 Ok, so it sounds like they are going The Expanse route, which makes sense for story telling, but then I guess that makes all the other points about phase angles, fuel, etc moot.
@@PsychoMuffinSDM the science in this movie is just bad. it's not far enough future where the science is completely different from now. they still used fuel and rocket propulsion yet the distance between destinations is completely ignored. bad storytelling.
@@df4196 Yeah, if it is better tech, it wasn't really specified, and even if it was, it wouldn't excuse everything else. I'm a big KSP fan, and from that, i notice when the attitude of burns are all wrong, and here they were.
as a space enthusiast, there's a lot in this movie that i would like, but when i'm half way through it i only realized the movie was just not intelligent enough...
Movies are not for you
pls watch czcams.com/video/gHaF3jQvUBs/video.html
and even this explains only few brilliance of film
Try watching Interstellar lol
@@retired5218 interstellar is 100x times better
Saw this Tuesday night. At the end I turned to my wife and suggested they spent all the money on Brad Pitt, so no money for a science consultant.
Some have mentioned things I noticed. Moon gravity for one.
Never understood why they took a land vehicle on the moon, and the rovers appeared to have pneumatic tires. Why not fly from the space port to the far side?
Second, the grand tour. We did the Voyager missions because the planets were lined up for gravity assist. The problem is, that isn't going to happen until 175 years after the Voyager missions.
Seldom are the planets lined up, so if you are going to Neptune, odds are you are not passing by Mars, Jupiter and Saturn on your way.
Of course, why were they going to use a nuclear weapon to address the anti-matter. If an uncontrolled release of anti-matter is bad, what would a nuclear weapon do to bring that anti-matter under better control?
A flat earth society meeting has more accurate science compared to this movie.
Mars also has lower gravity than Earth.
This also tends to get ignored in movies because we haven't seen with our own eyes human beings walking or moving on Mars like we have the Moon.
Sure, it's much closer to Earth's 1g gravity than the Moon, but all the scenes showing Brad Pitt and all the other humans walking normally on Mars with no perceptible difference in body movement or balance, were just as ridiculous to me as the Moon scenes.
Tony Bright huh... I hadn’t thought of the whole “blowing up the anti-matter” thing. Kind of like deactivating a warehouse full of dynamite with a hand grenade.
It seems like enjoyment of this film largely depended upon one's ability (or willingness) to suspend disbelief in regards to the science. I decided to just roll with it and found a thematically rich and emotionally resonant film under the sci-fi dressing.
@@ThoughtWord Not me. The "psychological tests" made no sense. Then he meets his father, who didn't care the least for his family, and murdered his crew for a worthless mission. That part was as nonsensical as the astrophysics.
How about the part where the girl from Orange is the New Black was the mars greeter still wearing her prison clothes just to keep everyone's girlfriend interested in the movie..
Science: "I exist"
Ad Astra: "Hold my beer..."
You need to educate people, especially those dealing with films. There is too little realism in the movies, which makes them so stupid. And people watch it and think that the world is shallow.
Watch Ad Astra for the cinematography, the acting, and the soundtrack, not for the science. :)
It’s only under Science Fiction genre.
i wish the plot/storyline was stronger too. The "like father like son" trope is way over done.
doug b
Yes, this is 2020... and movies don’t offer anything greater. The writers are smoking too much skunk.
@@Blue-hf7xt what strain do you recommend for better movies?
doug b
Strain?
Being free of drugs will produce better movies.
Movie: "Alright boys let's have a field trip round the solar system! Bring the barbecue stuff."
Physics: "Let me stop you right there."
_" Physics: "Let me stop you right there." "_
Movie: No, let _me_ stop _you_ right there...
Project Orion is the single most human plan in the history of the universe
"We're gonna go to space"
"How?"
".... All of the nukes"
Sounds American to me hahaha
Fire in space: Don't need to imagine, just watch The Expanse.
Yep. Season 3.
@@katherineblackwater6717 Season 4 Soon!!
At least Tommy Lee Jones didn’t have ‘Space Dimentia’. Thanks, “Armageddon”.
No, he was just a psychopath, like everyone who goes to space. 😂
No, he stared too long into the void of space and became a Reaver!
@@stvdagger8074 I like to gaze into the abyss sometimes...
@@nihilist1680 Remember to be kind - Always Kill, Rape and Eat in that order.
I'm a huge space fan and was pumped for this movie...I fell asleep.
The James Webb shenanigans is the real killer, This movie I see as a pure snooze. Not gonna waste my time and money to go see it,
Already waste my money for this movie , got sleep on the theatre , why can't they make some thing like the 2001 space oddesey
I fell asleep at the Ryan gosling space movie twice... I mean I saw it twice and fell asleep both times.. through the whole thing..
That was a blessing. Consider yourself lucky.
I liked it but the physics are weak.
When I first saw it in the trailer, I thought the tower scene was going to be a from a space elevator. That would have helped explain all of the human activity in deep space. Also, they should have had earth hit by a massive EMP emitted by Tommy Lee Jones' ship. Instead of having Pitt ride the shock wave, they should have built tension by having him try to reach minimum safe distance before the detonation. The tension can be climaxed by his ship almost being destroyed by the effects of the nuke going off.
Oh you fucktard casual cinemaphills!!!! Ad Astra is made not for entertainment but for delivering a huge message that only few had figured out.
Maybe you will feel stupid after years of enlightment.
Ugh. This movie bugged me from scene one.
I made it to scene two when I realized that antenna was actually a tower.
It should only bug you because it's just that good.
Movies are not for you
don't forget about the 1960s lawn chairs on the lunar rover
I was so caught up on the fact that his tears roll down his cheek in zero g that I totally missed all of this.
DOWN HIS CHEEK PEOPLE! He'd be blinded by a ball of space tears until he wiped them away.
It was an improvised tear by Brad Pitt, the director liked it and decided to keep it as it was, Pitt told him that he had to make it float with CGI but the director said no way, its a movie guys sometimes reality isn't that important
@@oscarleon4183 Hahaha
They had a scene in season 3 episode 11 of "The Expanse" that did just that (the pool of tears in her eyes). The attention to detail was pretty cool. It's @ 21:17 into the episode, give or take a few seconds.
@@AndrewTFenn and Brad Pitt's character just floating in the very exact room.
A US astronaut once actually got into great difficulty with sweat inside his helmet, it obscured his vision and threatened to build up so much moisture inside his helmet as to compromise his breathing.
This is so great! I love your work and you explained so many things I thought sounded dumb in the film. Although overall, I actually enjoyed Ad Astra--for the sound design, epic daddy issues, and Brad Pittness.
I’ve just come to accept that all space movies, except for the Martian, give their ships unlimited delta V
I just tried to assume they had some kind of advanced engine that could go directly from planet to planet without requiring refueling.
Exactly, and that's because Andy Weir is an excellent sci-fi writer that takes these things into account. That's how these should be made.
@@MrPabgon It's a hard sell with the execs, I imagine, because 95% of audience members won't notice or care about accurate physics.
@@boiledelephant Yes yeah I get that. I mean more how I'd like them to be. If it isn't like that in the movie, it doesn't really bothers me. I just like it more if it's more "realistic". What bothers me is the Earth-like Moon gravity in ad Astra or propulsing from an exploding bomb. That does bother me. The delta-v is more of a thing I like when it's correct, but it doesn't really bothers me if it isn't.
I want to see a proper space opera series. one with realistic physics and showing what humanity would probably actually look like if we had a Solar civilzation. The expanse is good and far more believable than anything, but I want a show where people need to deal with horrendously long travel times as ourdescendants will probably have to. And as our ancestors used to.
I thought it was a space elevator from the trailer.. made me think it was going to be more grounded than it was.
Damn.. I loved this movie a lot. The atmosphere was perfect.. I have to be honest, it bums me out to know that the science is so inaccurate.
The pirate metaphor is on point. Substitute "space" with "sea", and you get the idea the writer-director tried to capture in the first place.
I immediately grasped that. My friend and I even paused the film to discuss such!
I saw this earlier this week, I could tell from the trailer it was not going to be science focused, was still pretty good though. Thank you for your analysis, You did a great job as always.
You didn’t talk about the laser communication and why being on Mars makes no difference
There was a ton we had to cut for time. There is a line in the movie that the secure Mars facility was the only one left after the bursts. But yes they could have recorded Brad Pitt anywhere. I talk about this in my Film Threat review that should come out soon.
Also getting a response seconds later... it should take at least 8 hours to get a response if they were communicating at the speed of light.
the movie covered it, remember; 1) they said Mars is the "last secure" base to transmit that signal, also as laser , 2) the movie opening Text hint there's other country, in conflict, not just the United Airforce Space military, and 3) the movie clearly shown a "cut" where Brad Pitt walking back & forth, indicating time passes.
All the laser communications on earth were hit by the emp/ antimatter emp thingy. Mars had an underground facility that stopped the emp/antimatter thingy. So that's why he had to go there.
@@xponen true that there was a cut but are we supposed to believe Brad Pitt sat there for 9 hours? IMO the movie failed to convey that.
I can personally relate to Ad Astra, I thought it was very full of human emotion and issues between father and son, husband and wife. It was paced pretty good with an action scene about every 30 minutes. I'm a little disappointed if the science wasn't accurate but it did not take away from the human aspects. It had a good moral to the story. If it was not popular, it was because Brad Pitt's character is too emotionally numb and detached for too much of the movie, though he eventually learns to become more human, we don't get enough screen time of that aspect, the happier ending. Never go full emotionally detached.
Well, I tought that tower was a space elevator (which make more sense actually)
In fact, tower represents Babylon tower once made by human to claim supremasy before god, but god destroyed it. Can you see the parallel? =)
This movie was so close to being good. Fantastic cinematography but the movie just got worse and worse as time went on.
I am disappoint
I agree with you. I thought it was just awful. It had potential, definitely doesn’t compare to interstellar. But it fell flat
This is one of the best films of the year, and it's clear that people who didn't like it just didn't understand what the film was doing and the way in which it's a subtle exploration of its themes.
@@circularsky That's your opinion and opinions, as they say, are like farts. I personally watch movies for their stories not themes. Although theme is important, it doesn't compensate for a bad story and Ad Astra had one heck of a bad, bad story. Terrible characters too.
@@circularsky
Oh yeah? Care to illuminate us?
That feeling when the story of the Mir fire makes a better movie than all of Ad Astra.
Stumbled upon your Channel. Love your content love your explanations. I am now a subscriber. Thanks for uploading!
Have you considered doing a Science vs Tv series? I would love to see you digest a series like The Expanse! Great content keep up the amazing work!
Great review! A few more things: earth-like gravity on the moon, reply from dad comes in minutes not hours (laser light would take hours to reach Neptune), liquid water under hatch at surface, acceleration of rocket at take off would be several Gs but the astronauts intercepting Brad just tumble around leisurely, pulses so strong that they can come from Neptune and cause damage on Earth but they don't bother Brad Pitt when he actually goes to Neptune, etc. The problem for me is not so much whether all of the science works, but whether the plot and characters make sense within the universe of the movie, and that's not the case with this movie at all.
Umm I don't know the movie is set In "Near future" and they might have figured out a way to make artificial gravity on moon and the movie clearly describes the surge being powerful as it progresses through the solar system that's why the surge is not so strong on Neptune. And there are Liquid water lakes under the surface of Mars and if you don't know Water is used to MUFFLE down the sound of those engines. We use the same technology over here on earth and if you meant my "why are the not evaporating ?! " That's because the surface of Mars is too cold and it might compensate to the heat of those engines ( I could be wrong ) . Peace !
@@dragonemperor794 ok but, given the other tech in the movie, artificial gravity on the moon base is a real stretch. My point about the reply from his dad coming in minutes stands: this is really physically impossible given the speed of light. Also, what kind of a radiation "surge" is weaker at its source? That doesn't make sense. As it travels across space it should get weaker because it spreads out over astronomical distances. That's why the sun's surface is 5,778K but here on earth we don't get fried. There's no liquid water on the surface of Mars, because of temperate and pressure. Those lakes will be very deep, kilometers below the surface, where the pressure/temperature may allow liquid water, but this water is right at the surface, separated by a little hatch. The heat of the engines can't compensate; how does it reach the water unless it is exposed? We may use water on earth to muffle sound, but that's because conditions on earth allow liquid water on the surface. And again, a rocket taking off at 2 or 3G does not allow astronauts to float around and fight each other in the back of the space craft. All of these are serious mistakes.
@@gekhond I respect you thinking now now I am buying some time to think of a way to rebel your comment.
I just saw this, it was really great. There are physics and science problems but one of the more believable science fiction films. This imo was supposed to be a new retelling of Heart of Darkness/ Apocolypse now in a space environment. It tries to be a both a science fiction and psychological film that mostly succeeds. It explores the nature of isolation and the mental fatigue it can have on people in these situations.
I hope someday somebody makes Heart of Darkness / APOCALYPSE NOW in space. I’d love to see that movie.
That was my thoughts last night when I watched it for the first time. This is Joseph Conrad, the actual physics don't matter, it's the epic story of a man hunting down his antihero and killing him.
@@Deecups510
Doesn't sound like a story I would enjoy.
This is an excellent round up of the issues in this film, however a HUGE error which I don't think anyone has commented on, is simply that whenever we see Brad or other people on the surface of the Moon or Mars, they bounce along as they are walking, in just the way you would expect in a low gravity environment BUT whenever there are interior scenes we see them walking or running up and down stairs as if they are back on Earth in normal gravity. So does gravity magically increase when you are inside a building on a low gravity planet or moon?
This killed it for me within minutes of the film starting. Sadly 'The Martian' also has the same problem!
My first thought when Brad Pitt decides to use the the shockwave of the nuclear blast to propel him back to earth was, "Wait . . . He's on the other side of the rings of Neptune. Isn't the shockwave going to hit the rocks first, turning the whole explosion into a giant nuclear shotgun blast and shred Brad and his ship into tiny dime-sized pieces?"
He didn't ride the nuclear blast, the explosion was from the ship full of antimatter. There is far more potential energy in even a tiny amount of antimatter, than in a fission warhead.
That's not how antimatter works.
@@Galactis1 Actually it's how the strong force works.
@@paulmichaelfreedman8334 "that's not how the force works!" Han Solo ep7 but that movie doesnt count anymore to me so.. i guess you're right. That is how the strong force works. It was a joke anyway lol
Herobrine
@@thatveganteacher9203 No, I'm real life Minecraft Steve...
I just started laughing at the end when he surfs through space, didn’t think the movie was gonna go that far but I guess I didn’t learn anything after seeing the monkey bit
That Princess Leia Marry Poppins fly killed me...😢
Thank you for so good video. I appreciate your work. Brilliant analysis and presentation.
I saw Ad Astra as a rereading of Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" and Coppola's famous film adaptation "Apocalypse Now." "Science" enters the film as a very superficial or allegorical setting.
I agree. Its basically Apocalypse Now/Hearts of Darkness in space, the science is second to the story. Doesn't make it a bad movie, but I can see how science savy people wouldn't like it.
THANK you.
Also, thank you. And thank you again. This is getting really out of hand. Do these guys not even get that fiction and non-fiction are two different things? Why even have fiction? Why even have art? Yes, of course verisimilitude matters. But its far more complex than "Oh, that's inaccurate! Ruined the movie for me!" The same guys are perfectly capable of enjoying Star Wars or Iron Man without this kind of kneejerk rejection because it's "unrealistic". Sure, Ad Astra is more grounded than Star Wars. But it's not a documentary. It's not a science lecture.
I could go on. Everyone should wtch and re-watch Dan Olson's "Annihilation and Decoding Metaphor" until they get it.
czcams.com/video/URo66iLNEZw/video.html
@@camcabbas You're quite right. But if someone is going to flaunt their science savvy, your first job is to pay attention.
If movie watching was a scientific investigation, you're a bad scientist if you don't notice that it's the crew trapped in space with a CRAZY MAN who "take one look" and "give up" -- after MORE THAN A DECADE. They spend something like 13 years looking for life, and watching their captain lose his mind, and finally they've had enough. You're also a bad scientist if you make baseless assumptions. Did they really explain how they're looking for alien life? No. How can you assume that it isn't necessary to go to Neptune if you don't know? Did they explain how their guns work? No. How can you assume that a test with our contemporary guns means anything? Unscientific. Did they explain their rocket engines? No. Would a good scientist assume they work the same as our chemical rockets? Did they explain their anti-matter reactor? No. How can you assume it won't cause a chain reaction of some kind?
Is it scientific to dismiss the space antenna? No. You have no data. The movie doesn't spend time on these subjects. If a viewer is space savvy, that's all the more reason for them to know you can't simply fill in the blanks in the most bad faith way possible.
Anyone who takes this approach is deliberately trying to ruin the movie for themselves.
Calm down lads. Everyone's right here. The film was advertised as having a hard scifi leaning, and it tries to in various ways. It fails to. But the hard scifi isn't central to the film's goals, so it's ultimately a moot point. The hard scifi being wonky is a valid complaint. The hard scifi not being relevant to the film's ultimate purpose is also a valid defense in hindsight.
@@boiledelephant If Ad Astra isn't hard sci-fi, then there is no such thing.
The real problem is that it's being judged by space exploration fans who don't comprehend that if a character in a movie is supposed to look like they aren't wearing makeup, the actor needs to wear makeup to create that illusion. Movie reality is not reality. Even a documentary filmmaker will tell you that tricks of the camera, editing, and storytelling are unavoidable.
Ad Astra's director was quite sorry for promising it would be realistic, because he didn't realize those words would be seized upon by an audience who fancies themselves experts in orbital mechanics but is childishly ignorant of the rudiments of how drama and performance work. And the biggest marketing lie was that Ad Astra was a fast paced action movie, judging by the loud, thriller trailer. They hid the fact that it's a quiet, meditative slow burn. The technical errors are no worse than anything you could compare it to.
Movies are not real. They're a bunch of 2D pictures projected on a screen, which the audience may choose to interpret as a facsimile of some kind of reality provided a set of agreed up on conventions is followed. What's interesting is the unrealistic choices necessary to bring the audience along, like making the Earth through a window on the moon appear three times larger to meet audience expectations, or adding fake flashes of fire from the railguns, to help the audience follow the action.
The questions that matter are why is one unrealistic choice necessary to sell the illusion, and another sets off an audience reaction? Why does the same audience swallow utter nonsense from The Martian but not Ad Astra? Those questions are interesting. Ticking off "mistakes" only shows the prejudices of the critic, and doesn't add to insight about the movie.
I was totally content suspending disbelief when it came to the science. Plus, it's silly for Andy Howell here to say "keep all that *not dumb* stuff, just change the motivations." The search for-and failure to find-intelligent life beyond earth is the thematic core of the film. That motivation is essential and leads to Roy's most important piece of dialogue towards the end with his father: "We're all we've got." You don't get that payoff if Tommy Lee Jones is just a vague "explorer."
Love these long videos, keep them coming!
The Director lady said she has been ordered to prepare the ship for long distance flight, I remember. But great video and great explanation, and great channel btw, I just subscribed. Also the movie is good, despite the scientific inaccuracies.
A very fair and balanced review of what I considered to be a dreadful film in terms of basic science errors. Dr Howell makes some very useful suggestions on how the film could be improved. I am also a film scientific consultant, sometimes it can be a very difficult job as producers, directors script writers and model makers want to pull off in rather wild directions. Often it requires patience to work through the script and make sure everyone is aware of the changes. It is not clear what went wrong with this film. Did they even have a science director?
What happened was director James gray wasn't invovled and taken off from final cut, edits, and additional reshots and post production. He came out and said it in an interview. It was an amazingly well made film which was ruined by the edits where it's original creators didn't have a say. It was sad all around.
@@joyeternal2314 thanks for that, its never a good idea to mess with the director's original vision. This could have been a really good film, however I would still maintain there were some considerable errors in the original script.
This movie is not about space. It just a movie about father son problems that happen to be in space.
No, the movie is _Apocalypse Now,_ set in space, and RUINED by a needless father-son drama. The horror!
I personally loved the film Ad Astra, knowing this is not a scientific documentary of a visit to Neptune, but rather a depiction of a personal psychodrama with an artistic touch, and a pseudo-realistic look at the near future of space travel. This movie is set somewhere in the near future (approx. 50-100 years from now), so things like refurbishing a spaceship to travel from Mars to Neptune for a longer distance, may will be possible using a different kind of Martian propellant, etc. Of course a viewer may find a handful of scientific inaccuracies in the shots, but they don't actually spoil the narrative, unless you are especially looking for what is "wrong" with this movie. I found the VFXs just amazing, and they don't all have to be 100% scientifically accurate (like the bullets fired on the Moon seem brighter in the shot than they would in direct sunlight, or tears running down an astronauts face in zero gravity). If you consider the movie as a drama, rather than a space documentary, you may see what makes this movie stand out from the crowd. While the narrative is slow compared to regular sci-fi action movies, just like the movie "Interstellar", it raises existential and philosophical questions about our place in the Universe and the meaning of Life in general. I strongly recommend it to anyone who doesn't just want to watch another shoot'em up movie in a space setting, but rather a visually stunning narrative, with a more profound message about what makes us human in the light of the vastness of space.
A great movie that is under-rated. Criticism of the science is certainly fair and fun, but the licenses taken here do not detract from the strength of the storytelling. While other movies in this genre have been very plot focused, the character arc and themes of this one make it the best of a very good era for these types of films. This one is the most artsy and most introspective with its 'into the wild' story frame. A framework seen in other films and in ancient stories (Apocalyse Now comes to mind, though far less grim than that movie). In that sense this film is easily the strongest of the bunch. While film is ultimately just make-believe, it is still good to keep gently prodding filmmakers to use as much realism as possible.
I mean, I love science and all, but is it necessary that a movie need to be scientifically accurate to be good? what's the point of sci-fi then? What I love about these kinds of videos is to see what can be real and what can't, but if sci-fi makes you feel uncomfortable because of that, there's no suspension of disbelief at all, there's no entertainment. It would be different if the plot is inconsistent or lacks of sense because of the characters construction or something.
either ways, I LOVE THIS CHANNEL. Cheers.
That is a really good question:
I have left the cinema five hours ago and normally my mind would still be somewhere else because of the
- great imagery
- stunning effects
- sublime music to accompany
both effects and images
- great acting, Brad Pitt's
performance in particular
However, the film itself raised so many questions and left much unanswered and has failed to take me away. Even as a layman you know that some of the things on show here are impossible and I'm glad that they were addressed here. Also, I believe that the mystery of the purge was not solved, who or what exactly has caused them (never mind the "why") and are they still active or not ?
Overall, still a great cinematic experience and I would recommend folk go and see it.
You’d expect the science in a somber near-future space epic to be better than that of, say, ARMAGEDDON, but the emotional vacuity and lack of anything original to say were what really killed this film for me. Not to mention the tedium.
First problem is setting expectation. There are sci-fi movies that are not scientifically accurate but still enjoyable. That's because the makers themselves don't claim it is scientifically accurate. There's hard sci-fi, soft-sci-fi, and sci-fi fantasy. Ad Astra claimed it was hard sci-fi.
And also, just because it's science "fiction" doesn't mean its fiction shouldn't be grounded in reality. Good sci-fi is supposed to be grounded in what's possible now and only stretch the limits of reality in the technology that's beyond what we're capable of now. It shouldn't break science that's already proven in the present. It could extrapolate past what's yet to be proven now, but to break established science fact is just bad sci-fi. Most good sci-fi will deviate from reality and go into "fiction" in the areas of science that's still being explored and are unproven today. It will not break science that's already proven. That's the entire point of the genre. If it's not based on science, it's fantasy, not sci-fi. You might as well put wands and spells on the spacecraft for all we care.
Watched the movie a couple weeks ago. They did indeed use ion thrusters! I wasn't expecting anything too accurate but for a balance between sci fi and hard sci fi I give this movie a pass! I really enjoyed the dialog about facing your unfelt pain. Really a fantastic film in all honesty!
I wanna see this amount of effort put into the effects of something like the Expanse.
THANK YOU! The idiocy of going to Neptune to decide once and for all if there are other intelligent beings in the universe was so apparent to me and I have a PhD in the Humanities.
As a drama that just happened to be i space I'll give it an 8/10 as a space movie a 3/10. I originally thought that if it were produced in the early 1970's I could give it a 8-9/10 but your comments drop it back to late 50's. I enjoyed the movie, but not as a space epic
Are you guys ever gonna do interstellar
They can't because that movie is so accurate
That is one dumb movie too!!!!!!!!!!
@@frankdai You probably were sarcastic, but surviving falling into a black hole and go through a worm hole, isn't really accurate science.
This channel occupies a great niche. I don't see any others like it (or haven't found them yet).
Fun fact - when Russian astronauts on MIR station were fighting for survival and integrity of space vessel during the fire, American visitor, Jerry Michael Linenger was staying in reentry module, ready to evacuate. Like seriously.. They were briefed not to provide help. Michael Foale, after him broke this protocol and integrated perfectly into the crew and provided help and assistance.
@science vs cinema you say that a bullet sized hole would kill everyone but there was a detected leak on the ISS that ended up being someones attempt at drilling and it went days before noticed and fixed.
if you dont like that example then what about the science done on the surface area of the bullet hole not allowing for the pressure to push through, in this case tape can be enough to patch the ship.
i reckon it depends how big the hole is, and how small or big the room or environment is, that it is allowing the escape of gases into space thru.. for example if you havea big space station with many compartments like the ISS,and the hole is extremely small, yea, its not gonna be that huge an emergency.. but if you have a bullet sized hole, in a rocket, with just one compartment, not to mention the fact that the rocket is moving thru an atmosphere and into space when this is happening, it might be more catastrophic.. Are you actually trying to defend the whack science in this movie?? lol Are you a big Brad Pitt fan gurl or something?
The tear ran *down* his face orbiting Neptune. Also, one wouldn’t just let go to drop from the tower - one would be trained to push out in order to stay as clear as possible for the drop.
"
Brad Pitt’s ‘Ad Astra’ Acting Is So Good, It Forced Director James Gray to Screw With Science
www.indiewire.com/2019/09/brad-pitt-ad-astra-james-gray-1202173241/
Roy McBride Fascinating - and, revealing - that Pitt cared more about the science and less about his own ego than his director. That goes s long way towards explaining what went wrong with AD ASTRA.
Awesome Video. I went to your channel and watched a few more of your discussions. I was surprised you haven't done one on "Interstellar". Did I miss it or did you just not get around to that movie yet?
He - like the rest of us 9 billion people that aren't Kip Thorne - isn't intelligent enough to talk shit about it.
Thank you. You are a fellow SyFy enthusiast with respect for the genre. Keep up the good work!
Another glaring mistake was the moon-like gravity while outside the air locks but in the pressurised moon base they had normal walking gates. Wtf
tommy aronson you’re an idiot
I loved the movie SO MUCH! I knew right away the stupid physics they used in the movie, but the story was so strong to me that I completely ignored those mistakes. Which are far less than most space movies! Really really great review!
Story? What story? It's the most self-indulgent and meandering movie I've ever watched.
Great video. My one big issue with Space Travel as we know it is the supply limitations, as having no margin of error there makes space travel much more dangerous than we need it to be.
Once we get to the point where we can comfortably bring along extra? That's when true space travel will begin.
how did you get all this footage of the movie?
I noticed all these issues, it ruined the movie. It was like watching some bad 50s sci fi.
first half of the movie is good, but then oh.
To be honest I'd like a goofy corny 50s science fiction movie. One that intentionally disregards what 'real' science is. The problem is that most movies try so hard to look real, but abandon actual reality, then claim they're realistic.
YES!
How much of a loser to you have to be to have a sci-fi movie ruined for you because it’s “too unrealistic”.
Some of us like hard sci fi, I watch a lot of movies, this was garbage, or the adaption was. They consulted NASA and astrophysicists for interstellar, made for better visualization and effects that were true to life. This was garbage, since it was slow, boring, and inaccurate. You notice inaccuracies the slower the pace.
I dont know why people never comment how he looks EXACTLY the same after such a long journey through space. When he returns back to earth and even throughout the journey to neptune nothing changed about his face/hair which was dumb to me. Also, he just magically wakes up back crashing on Earth after it shows him leaving Neptune which was so incredibly lazy. And not only that, he looks EXACTLY like he looked before he left for the moon at the beginning which is absolutely dumb.
bruh have you seen how astronauts look after staying on the ISS for months to a year? Did you see how Scott Kelly looked compared to his twin brother after a year on the ISS? It wasn’t very different. It isn’t like Brad Pitt was starving on a deserted island. He had resources intended for a crew of THREE. And he wasn’t in deep sleep the whole time. Naturally he’d shave and cut his hair.. as astronauts do now. You make it sound like he needs to look like shit after that journey, yet astronauts don’t look like shit today with our limited level of tech. Maybe the movie should’ve added clips of him shaving, eating, and exercising for you. He’s a space command pilot with extensive experience, not an idiot. He knows how to handle himself in space.
@@obtsfan Oh lord, ok first of all I never implied, or at least meant to imply that he's supposed to look like shit. Second of all this is not as simple as staying on the ISS. My issue is, is that he looked exactly the same in every scene meaning it was obvious that the directors were lazy. You can tell when someone gets a haircut and you could easily tell absolutely nothing changed with his hair/face. Unless, we're supposed to assume that the scenes where they show him he was coincidentally at the same stage of beard/hair growth which is not true. The point isn't even that "oh they didnt focus on how he looked". The point is that the entire journey (TO NEPTUNE AND BACK) is not meaningful in this movie, a few little scenes of him shaking his head and some cuts and he's there. And ONE CUT and he's back waking up on Earth. Some physical change would have been good to symbolize that he has changed from such a journey. The fact that you're even defending this movie is ridiculous. "He's a space command pilot with extensive experience" rigghhht, so flying through the rings of Neptune is a great idea huh. And adding clips of him shaving, eating etc would have actually been a great addition to the film. However, it would not save it unfortunately. Let's say you're right and I am completely wrong about his facial issues/physical changes sure. There are still numerous other things wrong with this movie and he is definetly not "a space command pilot with extensive experience" because half this movie makes no sense and what he did in this movie makes no sense.
@@XeroReflex everything that you said is subjective. Maybe the trip wasn't meaningful to you, but evidently there are a lot of people that thought it was just fine, myself included. Seriously, if this is one of your main gripes then you're strangely focused on a rather minor aspect of the movie. I personally noticed that he had a lot more facial hair when he landed on earth. If you looked at pictures or clips of him at Neptune compared to pictures and clips of him landing on Earth, you'd see it too. It wasn't a tom hanks castaway beard but like I said, if any rational person were on a spacecraft for a few months with a functional razor, a mirror, and running water, they'd probably groom themselves. Any ex-military pilot or government astronaut would definitely groom themselves. What you're asking for is some lowbrow, Hollywood cliche that unfortunately wouldn't happen under normal circumstances. Anyways, it isn't a perfect movie, but few movies are perfect. My coworker and I thoroughly enjoyed it and we're both rocket propulsion engineers. Compared to most space and scifi movies, Ad Astra made a lot of sense.
@@obtsfan If we are talking about subjectivity, then I can throw that right back at you. And like I said, even if we ignore/assume that his physical changes are negligible there are still so many things wrong with this movie. Sorry, but more people thought it was a letdown than people who enjoyed. And at least you enjoyed a movie that make absolutely no sense. To each their own I guess. So many stupid things like shooting a gun on a rocket, being at the combustion site of the rocket 5 seconds away from launch... Also, it does not matter what your profession is, what does not make sense does not make sense.
Did you watch the entire film? He has a full fucking beard at the end. And its growth is even in continuity with the journey.
about the ship not being made for a long journey to Neptune, the lady told him she has orders to RE-PURPOSE the ship for a seek and destroy mission. so it might had the necessary upgrades. (i love your work tho)
I totally agree with your analysis, i took the tower for a kind of test for a futur space elevator. They don't really explain the real function of the tower so they could be anything, but like you i was a bit desappointed that it was not a space elevator. That would have been sooo cool !
totally agree on all your points, i just watched the movie, loved the visuals but the story is just not good at all, lots of things just didn’t make sense
Hey Andy. How about the way Brad sneaked into the rocket (to Neptun)?
lol, I lost it while the thing is mid launch and he's just fucking strolling around, wtf film.
Now that seem a bit hokey. But it's Brad Pitt so I gave him some slack.
To be fair the guns they used on the Moon chase scene didn't look like regular guns, they're probably some SciFi weapon that works in space, they vaguely even looked like blasters from Star Wars. I also take the spaceship being able to stop and start again, or be used for both a Mars and Neptune trip with a grain of salt because the movie is set in the future so maybe they're more advanced spaceships that surpassed the issues our current spacecrafts have.
The fact that he doesn’t acknowledge that this movie was set in a distant advanced future just goes to suggest that all he cares about is his ‘content’.
0:45 Okay, thank's for the warning! I'm stopping right here and watch Ad Astra now. ;)
When you guys finally realized that this is not a space exploration movie ? This is more to Brad Pitt psychology exploration in space theme , God damn it
Before I watched it, i did a very light research about this movie on Wikipedia. The director said "the most realistic depiction of space travel that's been put in a movie". I stopped reading because afraid of spoiler.... Then I watched the movie at cinema and felt so disappointed after it ends. My disappointment is on par with Transformers The Last Knight.
Its a crap rewrite of Solaris, cuzz his buddy George C kept riding him about this great space movie he made that Brad hasn't yet.
That's my point
About the movie: why is he recording his message in what it seems to be an anaechoic chamber?
So it would be the nicest recording in all the galaxy! lol
To look futuristic?
Okay, how about the anechoic chamber having a very ordinary looking window and door? Would sort of ruin the hole anechoicness.
The idea of space pirates is a commentary on how superpowers fund organizations to fight their wars for resources.
The moon is colonized and the narrative of a humanity that shares the solar system as a unified species is highly unlikely. Instead it is more realistic to consider a battery of cold wars over resources.
It is my favorite part of the film, a balance between violence and analysis of the future of space colonization.
But they wouldn't have security or hunting parties to take out the bands of moon raiders living right next to a pretty big deal moon base so that every time they go outside they get bullied by pirates?
The voyage from Mars to Neptune took 79 days, but Brad Pitt arrives with the exact same hair cut and stubble. I'm glad he brought his clippers.
I feel like there are a ton more problems with the science in this movie. It made me uncomfortably angry while watching and I found it distracted me from the story
100% agree
Or maybe you don't know as much as you think?
You weren't distracted from the story because there was none to begin with
Actually I found the depiction of space travel in the movie to be so bad it was enjoyable. And you can't go wrong with a killer space monkeys of doom!
More appropriately stated..
"Sci-fi Vs sci-fi.."
Both fiction
Yes but this is always a mistake when it comes to movie 'realism'. Its about plausibility. Some sci-fi is more fantasy (so you can get away with a lot more) while others like As Astra are contemporary, set in a future world not too dissimialr to our own. So then changing and ignoring the rules of science as we know them to fit a story just makes it look silly.
I recall there was an office scene with a very clean desk. it had a pristine set of stapler and tape dispenser.
8:06 this animation is from wikipedia (Gravity assist) :D
I know u don't do TV shows but could u check out "the expanse" u won't regret it
It would be cool if he talked about the things that were realistic.
mention one
The physics of the moon buggies on the moon was realistic, or at least the part where the buggy goes flying off a cliff was.
I left the theater disappointed ... I felt like they could've done so much more.
As a side note has anyone found out the soundtrack for the Ad Astra trailer. specifically the flute that plays at the end.
I really need it in my life Thanks in advance!