The Latin phrase “ad astra” means “to the stars.” And indeed, it seems that in the film Ad Astra, Brad Pitt is chasing fellow Ocean’s series stars George Clooney, Sandra Bullock, Matt Damon, and Anne Hathaway into some would-be brainy space drama.
In the film, Pitt plays an astronaut in a real astronaut family: his deceased father (Tommy Lee Jones) was also an astronaut, because maybe this is a Space Cowboys sequel. For reasons yet unclear, weird power surges start making things explode on Earth, and soon Astro-Pitt finds out that it’s likely due to his STILL LIVING father doing experiments with “a highly classified material.” He’s thusly sent back into space in order to stop his father and—wait a minute… have a rover-to-rover gun fight on the moon? Was this sold entirely on the Ad Astra video game rights or what?
Anyway, the film—which also features Liv Tyler’s Armageddon reprise as “loving partner concerned that Matt Damon’s handsome chum is space-bound—is co-written and directed by acclaimed The Lost City of Z director James Gray. You’d never know it from this trailer, though, because it appears almost as dumb as Geostorm (but much better looking otherwise, thanks to talented cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema).
We’ll find out whether there’s more beneath the surface of Ad Astra’s bullet-casing-littered moon when the movie hits theaters September 20.
