Ad Astra

Set in the not-so-distant future where mankind has started to inhabit the other planets in our solar system and space travel has become a commercial commodity, Roy Mcbride; one of the most elite astronauts of his time, is set out on a classified mission to see if his father, which was previously thought to have died in space, may still be alive and the cause of some rather scary power surges happening in the other space ports.

On his journey, Roy encounters many foes and conflicts. Everything from space pirates to a deranged monkey, and somehow makes it out unscathed while his counterparts are dying all around him. And in that moment he makes a grand discovery, it is that even though man has the smarts and the tech to go into space, the heart of man is still wasteful and in the end we would only end up creating more chaos by inhabiting other planets.

Spoiler alert, Roy finds his father alive but the years spent in isolation has caused a severe mental breakdown in his father who now is determined to inhabit Neptune and does not even really acknowledge his long lost son.

The ending of the film is rather un-extraordinary. But the visuals created during the film itself are some of the most beautiful I have ever seen in a space-type movie.

Something I thought to take away from the film is the idea of waste and how people don't really change. Now in this day and age we can say that we are on the way to creating a more sustainable environment and attempting to undo the damage that we have caused to mother earth. My question to you is, is what we are doing enough? And how much can we really change as a society?