here are so many
reasons to be
excited about
James Gray’s long-
awaited science-fiction
drama, Ad Astra, that you’d
need to be a rocket scientist
just to compute them all.
You might be rubbing your
hands over the cutting-edge
special effects, with the
gleaming rockets and face-
rippling G-force of the trailer
all living up to the director’s
bold ambition to give us
“the most realistic depiction
of space travel that’s ever
been put in a movie”. As
Gray (who also helmed We
Own the Night and The Lost
City of Z, both fantastic) told
shot astronaut who watched
his beloved father (Tommy
Lee Jones) vanish into deep
space 15 years earlier during
a mysterious mission called
the Lima Project, and still
longs to know the truth.
“I’ve been very lucky
because Brad and I are
very, very aligned creatively,”
says Gray of their working
partnership. “And I
don’t think I would have
entered into this if that
weren’t the case.”
But perhaps the most
tantalising thing about
Ad Astra is that this movie
INTELLIGENT
LIFE
Three more sci-fi
films packing brains
as well as brawn...
2001: A SPACE
ODYSSEY (1968)
The daddy of smart sci-fi,
Kubrick’s cosmic mind-
trip is one of the most
influential films ever.
“I’ve tried to shake up the
genre a little bit...”
inhabits not one, not two
but three cinematic spaces
as a white-knuckle actioner,
an emotive family drama and
a celestial mystery – with
McBride discovering that
his ‘hero’ dad could still be
alive out there and plotting
the annihilation of humanity.
All told, it’s shaping up as
anything but your average
space movie. “What I’ve tried
to do,” explains Gray, “is
shake up the genre a little bit…
The weird thing is the movie
has become quite personal for
me, which I think is always
where you want to go if you
want to do work that matters.”
Houston, we have a problem,
and it’s that 18 September
can’t come soon enough.
See Ad Astra in cinemas from
Wednesday 18 September
BLADE RUNNER
(1982)
It’s been 37 years since
Ridley Scott’s neo-noir
classic hit screens – and
we still have questions!
ARRIVAL
(2016)
This Amy Adams head-
scratcher lends itself
to multiple viewings,
each more rewarding.
odeon.co.uk 17
ENTERTAINMENT
the Hollywood Reporter,
“There’s a lot of spacewalk
stuff. The word ‘acrobatic’
doesn’t really apply, but some
very complicated rig work
and that stuff is going to look
amazing. And there’s also
a lunar rover sequence,
which is also basically
CG-built, which is going to
look terrific, I think. But
to make it look perfect
doesn’t happen overnight.”
Or you might be intrigued
by the indisputably A-list
cast. Look out for stellar
support from Donald
Sutherland and Liv Tyler.
But top of the bill is Brad
Pitt as Roy McBride, a hot-