Ad Astra - To the stars

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Movie
German title Ad Astra - To the stars
Original title Ad Astra
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 2019
length 123 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
JMK 14
Rod
Director James Gray
script James Gray,
Ethan Gross
production Dede Gardner ,
James Gray,
Anthony Katagas ,
Jeremy Kleiner ,
Brad Pitt ,
Rodrigo Teixeira ,
Arnon Milchan
music Max Richter ,
Lorne Balfe
camera Hoyte van Hoytema
cut John Axelrad ,
Lee Haugen
occupation
synchronization

Ad Astra - To the stars (original title Ad Astra) is a science fiction - Thriller by James Gray from the year 2019 . In the film, space engineer Roy McBride (played by Brad Pitt ) travels to Neptune to find his father and the trigger for electromagnetic storms that threaten the earth.

Gray's directorial work celebrated its world premiere on August 29, 2019 as part of the Venice Film Festival and was released in German cinemas on September 19, 2019 and in US cinemas the following day.

action

The destination of Roy McBride's journey: Neptune

The engineer Roy McBride works for the US space agency SpaceCom . Interpersonal relationships are difficult for him, including with his wife who has left him. But Roy is characterized by his stoic manner at work and passes the regular psychological tests with flying colors. His heart rate never rises above 80 beats per minute, not even in the event of a catastrophic work accident involving a space antenna caused by an energy wave. Thereupon he is recruited by SpaceCom for a secret space mission - he is supposed to look for his possibly still alive father Clifford McBride, who disappeared without a trace 20 years earlier on a trip to Neptune . Clifford had traveled to the planet as part of the Lima Project to look for signs of intelligent, extraterrestrial life. However, 16 years after the start of the mission, the spaceship and its entire crew disappeared. The SpaceCom tour nevertheless connects Roy's father with the electromagnetic storms that have claimed thousands of victims on earth so far.

As mankind's last hope, Roy heads for Neptune. His liaison is Colonel Thomas Pruitt, who used to work with his father. The moon and Mars serve as nodes on their journey . On the moon Roy and Pruitt get into a fight with pirates and Pruitt has to end the mission injured. With the crew of the Cepheus, Roy travels on to Mars. On the journey there, the Cepheus has to make a short stopover due to the distress signal from another spaceship. From the base on the back of Mars, Roy sends pre-formulated audio messages in the direction of Neptune at SpaceCom's behest . Only when Roy formulates a personal message for his father does there seem to be an answer. But those responsible for the secret project do not want to give him any information about it. Roy is told that because of his personal connection to his father he is unsuitable for the mission and should be sent back to earth.

Roy receives unexpected help from the base manager Helen Lantos, who lost her parents during the Lima project. She shows him a video recording that proves that his father killed the Lima space station crew for mutiny when some tried to return to Earth. It turns out that SpaceCom covered up the crime and made Clifford a hero. Through Helen, Roy gets back on board the Cepheus , which is immediately on its way to Neptune. When the crew is supposed to neutralize him on orders from SpaceCom , an accident occurs in which the crew members of the Cepheus lose their lives. Roy, who is certain that his father is still alive, steers the spaceship on his own in the direction of Neptune.

When he arrived at his destination, Roy went to the Lima station in a space capsule . In addition to numerous corpses, he comes across his father, who is still alive, but is sick and aged. Clifford tells him about a mutiny triggered core meltdown that damaged the station and caused the energy waves. Although Roy's father never found any evidence of extraterrestrial life, he still manically pursues his mission goal. When Roy wants to cross over to Cepheus in space suits with Clifford , a fight between father and son breaks out. To survive, Roy must disconnect the safety line from Clifford, who willingly goes to certain death. Roy is lucky to return to Cepheus . He uses the explosion of a nuclear warhead left on the Lima as an alternative drive and returns safely to Earth. There he tries to get in touch with his wife again.

production

Bar and film title

Filmmaker James Gray first announced his plans to shoot Ad Astra and also write the screenplay at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2016. In April 2017, Gray stated that he wanted to create the most realistic representation of space travel ever in one Film had been shown. Space should be an extremely inhuman place. Among other things, the film was funded by the Bona Film Group.

The title of the film, Ad Astra , translated from Latin means “to the stars”. The expression, which is also used by many aerospace organizations, was coined by the poet Virgil , who wrote in his epic Aeneis “sic itur ad astra”, meaning “this is how you travel to the stars”.

Cast and filming

Brad Pitt (right) took on the role of Roy McBride in the film, pictured with NASA engineer Jennifer Trosper

Brad Pitt took on the role of Roy McBride in the film, whose thoughts are told through a voice-over. Tommy Lee Jones stars in the role of his father Clifford McBride and appears only in archived video messages for most of the film. Donald Sutherland plays Thomas Pruitt, a retired colleague of his father, and Ruth Negga a Mars resident who is informed about the Lima project. Pitt already appeared in front of the camera with Negga for the film World War Z. Pitt had previously wanted to film The Sunken City Z with director James Gray, but was unable to play the role due to scheduling problems and only stayed on board as a producer. Liv Tyler has a small role as Roy's wife Eva.

The shooting with cameraman Hoyte van Hoytema took place in August 2017 in Santa Clarita and Los Angeles . The film editors were John Axelrad and Lee Haugen , who most recently worked on The Sunken City Z and Papillon with Gray. Scott Fisher and Allen Harris were responsible for the visual effects . Kevin Thompson developed the production design , and Albert Wolsky created the costumes .

Film music and sound design

The film music was composed by Max Richter . The recording was made in the summer of 2019 at AIR Studios in London. Lorne Balfe composed new and other film music . This recording was made in the Synchron Stage Vienna . The soundtrack with Richter's music was released for download on October 18, 2019 by Deutsche Grammophon . The album debuted at number 29 on the UK Soundtrack Albums Chart on November 29, 2019.

For the sound design drew Gary Rydstrom , sound editor for the Academy Award winner Mark Ulano responsible.

Marketing and Publishing

The first images were published in September 2018.

From August 29, 2019, the film was shown in the main competition at the Venice Film Festival , where it competed for the Golden Lion . 20th Century Fox took over the distribution . After several postponements, the film was released in German and Swiss cinemas on September 19, 2019, and in Austrian and US cinemas on the following day.

reception

Age rating

In the US, the film was rated PG-13 by the MPAA . In Germany, the film was approved by the FSK from the age of 12.

Reviews and grossing results

By October 2019, the film was able to convince 84 percent of the critics considered by Rotten Tomatoes and received an average rating of 7.6 out of a possible 10 points. The film also won the 21st Annual Golden Tomato Awards in the Best Sci-Fi / Fantasy Movies 2019 category . Ad Astra was repeatedly compared by film critics with Apocalypse Now and because of the situations on Mars and the Moon with Mad Max: Fury Road , because of its location in lonely space but also with 2001: A Space Odyssey and Solaris .

Sheri Linden from The Hollywood Reporter writes that Ad Astra reminds of science fiction classics like Solaris with its meditative pace , but not the narrative complexity. The story is reduced to the archetypal bones and is essentially about a simple father-son relationship and the associated fears and longings. It is a film about a self-confident man and conscientious son who is becoming increasingly aware of how out of place he feels, in the organization he works for, but also in his own skin. Although Roy has a number of encounters on his travels from Earth to the Moon, Mars, and beyond, it is essentially a lonely journey, a circumstance inherent in Hoyte Van Hoytema's fluid superimposition of reflection and shadow and outstanding sound design is underlined by Gary Rydstrom , said Linden.

The film critic Antje Wessels writes that James Gray has equipped his big project with a downright indifferent main character, showing early on the narrative dimensions into which he is able to penetrate with Ad Astra : “This is not a commercial space travel adventure, but rather a narrative far deeper An established story - or at least that's what it should be. ”The stressed non-pace of Ad Astra demands the audience's seated meat, especially in the first half, in which the story actually hardly progresses, and he quickly understands that Roy McBride is not a new brand Watney is. Even Matthew McConaughey's Cooper showed a lot more emotions in Interstellar , and at the end of Ad Astra you think you know more about George Clooney's role in Gravity than about this loner McBride, according to Wessels. The emotional drawing of the protagonist makes it almost impossible to sympathize with the character. She sums it up: “ Ad Astra - To the stars feels like Gravity on Valium, only that much more is formulated and symbolically supported here than in Alfonso Cuarón's space masterpiece . The major topics actually envisaged can hardly unfold below. It is like looking at a painting on the surface of which the interpretation of the work has already been written with a thick felt pen. "

Marietta Steinhart from Zeit Online says about the work of cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema that almost every minute of Ad Astra is breathtaking to watch: “A man who falls to earth; the twinkling stars in Brad Pitt's eyes; a close combat scene in weightlessness that turns into a floating ballet […] It's a spectacle that you want to see on the big screen. ”Brad Pitt has to carry all of space on his shoulders in Ad Astra and show how he does in the Roy’s role has both glorified and internalized his father’s failings and turned the film into a kind of psychogram. It is true that one wishes that Pitt's kitchen psychological thoughts from the off were not so present, according to Steinhart, but the actor articulates the mixture of melancholy, love and loneliness that defines his character and comes to a conclusion that Kurt Vonnegut would have liked : "Whether on solid ground or on a distant planet, we are still lonely and scared, reaching for each other and trying to find someone or something to hold onto."

In the taz , Tim Caspar Boehme praised the film for its refusal to feed the genre-typical escapism : Director Gray let his characters "consistently fall back on themselves". In contrast to the film adaptations of the similarly designed Solaris by Stanisław Lem , father and son McBride, however, only found “their own emptiness”.

David Ehrlich of Indie Wire writes that Ad Astra is also a film about a man's fear of becoming like his own father.

Dietmar Dath from the FAZ criticizes the film as "artistically empty" and as "too flat in characterization for the intended profundity". He further describes Ad Astra with the words "hardly thought out, but very expensive and totally well-intentioned", in the further course of his criticism also as "Hollywood kitsch". The only bright spot he sees is the performance of the main actor Brad Pitt .

With a budget of around 90 million US dollars, the film grossed around 127.5 million US dollars worldwide. So far, it has recorded 335,709 visitors in Germany.

Awards

Art Directors Guild Awards 2020

  • Nomination in the fantasy film category

Chicago Film Critics Association Awards 2019

  • Award for the best use of visual effects

Critics' Choice Movie Awards 2020

Golden Reel Awards 2020

  • Nomination in the category Best Sound Editing: Music Underscore in a Feature Film

Hollywood Critics Association Awards 2020

  • Nomination for the best visual effects

Houston Film Critics Society Awards 2020

  • Nomination for the best visual effects

Venice International Film Festival 2019

London Critics' Circle Film Awards 2020

  • Nomination for the Technical Achievement Award ( Allen Maris for the visual effects)

National Film & TV Awards 2019

  • Nomination for Best Film 2019
  • Nomination for Best Supporting Actor ( Tommy Lee Jones )

Academy Awards 2020

San Diego Film Critics Society's Awards 2019

  • Award for the best visual effects
  • Nomination for Best Cinematography ( Hoyte van Hoytema )

Seattle Film Critics Society Awards 2019

St. Louis Film Critics Association Awards 2019

  • Nomination for the best visual effects
  • Nomination for the best film music

synchronization

The German synchronization was based on a dialogue book and the dialogue direction by Jan Odle on behalf of RC Production Kunze & Wunder GmbH & Co. KG in Berlin .

actor role Voice actor
Brad Pitt Roy McBride Tobias Master
Tommy Lee Jones Clifford McBride Ronald Nitschke
LisaGay Hamilton Adjutant General Vogel Heike Schroetter
Donnie Keshawarz Captain Lawrence Tanner Lutz Schnell
Greg Bryk Chip yarn Asad Black
Loren Dean Donald Stanford Markus Pfeiffer
Liv Tyler Eve Nana Spier
Bobby Nish Franklin Yoshida Frank Röth
John Finn General Stroud Jan Spitzer
Ruth Negga Helen Lantos Luise Helm
John Ortiz Lieutenant General Rivas Matthias Klie
Donald Sutherland Thomas Pruitt Jürgen Kluckert
Sean Blakemore Willie Levant Oliver Siebeck

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for Ad Astra - To the stars . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry (PDF; test number: 193029 / K). Template: FSK / maintenance / type not set and Par. 1 longer than 4 characters
  2. ↑ Age rating for Ad Astra - To the stars . Youth Media Commission .
  3. ↑ Ad Astra. In: moviepilot.de. Retrieved May 26, 2018.
  4. ↑ Patrick Frater: China's Bona Film Boards Brad Pitt's 'Ad Astra', 'A Dog's Way Home'. In: Variety, December 12, 2018.
  5. ↑ a b c d Sheri Linden: 'Ad Astra': Film Review. In: The Hollywood Reporter, August 29, 2019.
  6. ↑ Owen Gleiberman: Venice Film Review: Brad Pitt in 'Ad Astra'. In: Variety, August 29, 2019.
  7. ↑ https://signalscv.com/2017/08/filming-week-scv-august-21-27-2017/
  8. ↑ Kayleigh Giles: Brad Pitt looks rather downcast as he dons military uniform on set of upcoming sci-fi Ad Astra ... after it's ruled he must pay lighting designer 565,000 Euros in chateau dispute. In: dailymail.co.uk, August 19, 2017.
  9. ↑ http://www.awardscircuit.com/2019/03/06/awards-profile-2019-james-grays-ad-astra/
  10. ↑ Max Richter Scoring James Gray's 'Ad Astra'. In: filmmusicreporter.com, December 6, 2018.
  11. ↑ James Gray's 'Ad Astra' to Feature Music by Lorne Balfe. In: filmmusicreporter.com, 23 August 2019.
  12. ↑ https://www.officialcharts.com/search/albums/ad-astra/
  13. ↑ Annemarie Havran: "Ad Astra": First picture of Brad Pitt in space. In: filmstarts.de, September 15, 2018.
  14. ↑ Ad Astra. In: labiennale.org. Retrieved August 10, 2019.
  15. ↑ Ad Astra - To the stars. In: fox.de. Retrieved September 18, 2019.
  16. ↑ Start dates Germany In: insidekino.com. Retrieved June 8, 2019.
  17. ↑ Brad Pitt in Space: First spectacular trailer for the sci-fi film "Ad Astra". In: outnow.ch, June 5, 2019.
  18. ↑ Ad Astra. In: foxmovies.com. Retrieved June 8, 2019.
  19. ↑ Ad Astra In: Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved October 17, 2019.
  20. ↑ Best Reviewed Sci-Fi / Fantasy Movies 2019. In: Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved January 10, 2020.
  21. ↑ a b David Ehrlich: 'Ad Astra' Review: James Gray's Space Odyssey Is an Interstellar Masterpiece. In: indiewire.com, August 29, 2019.
  22. ↑ https://wessels-filmkritik.com/2019/09/10/ad-astra-zu-den-sternen/
  23. ↑ Marietta Steinhart: "Ad Astra": Into the heart of galactic darkness. In: Zeit Online, September 18, 2019.
  24. ↑ Tim Caspar Boehme: Science fiction film "Ad Astra": Starbucks also on the moon . taz.de , September 24, 2019, accessed October 4, 2019.
  25. ↑ Dietmar Dath: Video film review for “Ad Astra”: A terribly sad rocket thief . ISSN  0174-4909 ( faz.net [accessed September 19, 2019]).
  26. ↑ Ad Astra. In: boxofficemojo.com. Retrieved August 9, 2020.
  27. ↑ Top 100 Germany 2019. In: insidekino.com. Retrieved November 19, 2019.
  28. ↑ Carolyn Giardina: 'Joker,' 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,' 'Rise of Skywalker' Among Art Directors Guild Nominees. In: The Hollywood Reporter, December 9, 2019.
  29. ↑ Karen M. Peterson: Chicago Film Critics Association Announces 2019 Nominees, 'Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood' Leads In: awardscircuit.com on December 12, 2019, accessed January 4, 2020.
  30. ↑ Marc Malkin: Critics' Choice: 'The Irishman', 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood' Lead Movie Nominations. In: Variety, December 8, 2019.
  31. ↑ 67th Golden Reel Awards Nominees In: mpse.org, accessed January 4, 2020.
  32. ↑ Karen M. Peterson: LAOFCS Announces New Name and 2019 Nominations In: awardscircuit.com on November 25, 2019, accessed November 26, 2019.
  33. ↑ Houston Film Critics Society Nominees See 'Marriage Story,' Tarantino's 9th Film In The Lead In: houstonfilmcritics.com on December 16, 2019, accessed January 4, 2020.
  34. ^ Andrew Pulver: The Souvenir leads nominations for London critics' circle film awards. In: The Guardian, December 17, 2019.
  35. ↑ Naomi Wakeling: Nominations for the 2nd annual National Film & TV Awards are announced. In: nationalfilmandtvawards.com, October 21, 2019.
  36. ↑ 2019 San Diego Film Critics Society's Award Nominations In: sdfcs.org on December 6, 2019, accessed December 8, 2019.
  37. ↑ Jessica Peña: 'Parasite' and Bong Joon-Ho Win Top Awards From Seattle Film Critics Society In: awardscircuit.com on December 16, 2019, accessed January 4, 2020.
  38. ↑ Erik Anderson: St. Louis Film Critics Association nominations: 'Once Upon a Time ...,' 'The Irishman,' '1917,' 'Marriage Story' lead. In: awardswatch.com, December 8, 2019.
  39. ↑ Ad Astra - To the stars. In: synchronkartei.de. German synchronous index , accessed on December 29, 2019 .