This week, “Ad Astra” starring Brad Pitt. Wowie Wow Wow. Space cowboys and Brad’s awareness for humans being wasteful. Not too shabby. BUT will Alex point out some major flaws? Will Lacey freak about the abyss of space or the lack of emotional availability!? TUNE IN.
𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝕊𝕪𝕟𝕥𝕙𝕖𝕤𝕚𝕤 is a live talk show that aims to find the relationship between science and fiction in pop culture. We’ll discuss a book, movie, or show each week that’s science-focused and talk about just how realistic it is, where reality is cooler than fiction, and exactly where certain liberties were taken.
00:03
Hey, folks,
00:04
this is Alexander Winn. And I am Lacey Hannan.
00:07
And you are watching The Synthesis, the show where we examine how real science is used in entertainment. Tonight we are talking about Ad Astra the Brad Pitt film from a few years ago.
00:19
Yes, we’ll give you a little bit of a rundown. It’s a, it’s kind of a domestic drama, played out in space, we have a almost like an EMP happening that comes from around Neptune. And it’s causing a lot of problems and the rest of the solar system, especially on Earth where you know, it super matters because people live there. And they’re thinking that it’s anti matter is that something along those lines is causing it. And there’s a ship out there that they’ve had some problems with. And so they bring in Brad Pitt, because his dad was the captain of that ship. So Brad Pitt is part of Space Command, which I will say is better named then space force. But he is what? He’s not a captain. He’s a major. Is that right? And yeah, so he he’s working on the space elevator, EMP hits.
01:23
They’re like, Okay,
01:25
we got to do something about this. And so they call him in, and they’re going to get him to Mars so that he can be in contact with his dad. And then the whole thing kind of spiraled out of control from there, as he takes off in a ship and kind of accidentally kills the entire crew. And then wanders out to Neptune to go get in contact with this dead person face to face. Yes, indeed. So that’s, that’s those are the basics. Yep. And we’ll just kind of go through it.
01:58
Yeah. So this is very much a Heart of Darkness story. That’s the vibe that I was getting very much. All throughout Heart of Darkness. For those who haven’t read it is a book from the late 1800s, about a guy who is trying to find one particular person who has disappeared into Africa. And this is back when Africa was, you know, the dark continent, it was just a big blank space on the map. And so this person is going into the wilderness of activity going beyond what is known to find one particular person out there. It was famously adapted as Apocalypse Now, a story about someone during the Vietnam War, who’s going off into Vietnam to find a commander who has disappeared into Vietnam. And it’s exactly the story. It’s apparently it’s not like officially an adaptation of Heart of Darkness. But I don’t know why. Because it’s literally the same story. So yeah, it’s, it’s interesting. I figured. So this was a film that neither Lacey nor I had seen before we before last night. And I added it to the list of things that we wanted to do for the synthesis. First off, because it’s a sci fi astronaut, movie. And that’s kind of what we’ve been doing. But also specifically, because, you know, the synthesis is all about examining scientific realism, in entertainment. You know, we’re not doing the Star Wars and the Star Trek, that sort of thing. We’re doing stuff like the Martian that at least bills itself as being plausible. And the writer, director of this film, James gray, said, specifically that he wanted to make, and I quote, the most realistic depiction of space travel that’s ever been put in a movie. And to basically say, space is awfully hostile to us. And so that was a that was a flag that I could not ignore. That is exactly what we want to talk about on the show is the most realistic depiction of space travel ever put to film. And let’s talk about how he did.
04:05
I’m not wild about it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, listen, I didn’t hate this. In comparison to some of the things that we’ve seen and in a vacuum, my might hate it. I don’t know. I don’t want to. I don’t I don’t like hating things. Yeah. But I just felt like, there. There was a lot in terms of the space travel specifically that just felt wild wildly. Wrong, like basic basic is, how did his dad was there the McBride’s right? Yeah. Okay. How did commander McBride stay alive on a ship? For decades? Yeah, he’s out there for like 30 years. 30 years. Yeah. And it was not. It was supposed to be half that long. How did he How did he manage that? We don’t we don’t have any Yeah, way of creating food and water for an oxygen for that long.
05:05
Yeah, we are, we are left to assume that they had some sort of like algae tank or something that they could grow their own food in perpetuity, but it’s never commented on. Yeah, yeah, that’s that’s something that I have had to make up what I just said, to explain
05:20
Yeah, you have to fill in some plot holes for them. And I just felt like I wanted them to tell us. Yeah, like, how does this work? Because it’s cool.
05:29
Yeah. Is that surviving alone in space is the entire premise of the Martian? Like there’s, there’s a whole movie there that that you could have gone into for Tommy Lee Jones? Yeah, I think. So I had a funny little realization, where I was like, Oh, I think I, I have a good point. And then I realized that it was not a good point. The thing that I that I was thinking, after I saw this movie was I felt like that quote, from the director about how he wanted to make the most realistic science fiction film, the real, most realistic depiction of space travel that had ever been put to film. My my gut feeling was that he sort of told the art department that and nobody else like he didn’t tell the writer that he didn’t tell, you know, that sort of stuff. Because there is so much that is beautiful. In this movie, I love the art direction. I love the cinematography, I love some of the set pieces, like visually, this probably is the most scientifically accurate thing that I’ve ever seen put to film. But then the story is so not scientifically accurate. That I was I was left thinking, Okay, this guy must have like, been brought on to the project with a pre written script, read it and said, I, the director want to make this the most scientifically realistic thing ever. But I still have to deal with the script that was handed to me. It seemed like a perfectly reasonable explanation. And then I got on Wikipedia, and I realized that the director was the writer. So I guess that wasn’t it. He if he wanted to do it scientifically, accurately, he missed the mark. That being said, like I said, there are definitely a lot of things about this movie that I I really enjoyed in that. In that vein in the scientific realism side,
07:13
listen, like, let me point out one other thing that I really struggled with, but then I will follow it up with something that I liked. And I know you liked it, too. Yeah. Okay. So one of the other things is Mars to Neptune, in 79 days is impossible, and ridiculous and cannot happen. So why, why? Why do that? And I recognize that the story kind of calls for it. Oh, my gosh, there’s this uncontrolled release of anti-matter and it’s going to kill everybody. We don’t have a year or two to get out to Neptune. Yeah,
07:50
exactly. But you, you made this, like, you wrote the story and 70 they said, as he says when he lands on Mars, it’s been seven weeks since he’s had oxygen and sunlight and something else. And I’m thinking that seven weeks from Earth, and then there was this moment that he is on the moon for a while before they head off to Mars, and I’m also sitting there going wait seven weeks, seven weeks to get from from to do all of that. You know, I don’t believe you. Oh,
08:23
yes, seven weeks is a little more realistic like in other universes, like if they had said seven weeks to get to Mars in the expanse universe. Yeah, I buy that. Like they’ve got these crazy Epstein drives that can burn it, you know, high g for the entire duration of the trip. Yes. I completely believe that you could get to Mars in seven weeks. I don’t even think it would be that hard. But if it takes you seven weeks to get from Earth to Mars, how the hell are you getting from Mars to Neptune? In 79 days, math doesn’t work. Yeah.
08:56
And speaking of math, by the way, I actually did the math, I looked it up from Mars to Neptune is on average, about 2,654,820,000 miles. And on in that distance to get there in 79 days, you would have to be averaging 1.4 million miles an hour. Now obviously, Brad Pitt’s fragile human body cannot just put the pedal to the metal and get up to 1.4 million miles an hour. So in order to do that, you would have to have a long period of acceleration and then a long period of deceleration. But if you spend a long period accelerating a long period decelerating, then you by definition have to go even faster in the middle part. So it’s just the math does not work. Like if he has an engine that can get in from Mars to Neptune in 79 days, then you don’t need to be searching for extraterrestrial life, which is what Tommy Lee Jones his whole mission was about was trying to contact alien life. That’s not a problem and Because you can just go there. Yeah, like, if you can go that fast and Neptune, then you can just get to Alpha Centauri without it being that big a deal.
10:08
And so I just, I feel like the director did not accomplish what he set out to accomplish. And he failed me. And I don’t approve of that. Generally, but what I will say I really enjoyed Mars or the moon, when they when they get to the moon, and we see how things, you know, the the gravity change. And you know, there’s that chase with the pirates. That’s like, that was cool. I had one minor problem with it, it doesn’t even matter. Yeah, it’s the, the whole thing that that going off the side of the crater, and just kind of
10:53
spinning out into nothingness.
10:56
And then landing. Like, we talked about this earlier, landing in the shadow. And of course, the shadows on the moon are so dark, because there’s no atmosphere to diffuse the light. So you get it’s like it was, it was awesome to see someone do that and, and get it right. Yeah. So I enjoyed parts of the space travel, it was just so few and far between that it barely
11:25
I feel like the biggest strength of this movie. And I really, it never got to like the whole movie, this is the part that I was just really loving, was, they did an incredible job of making sci fi stuff seem mundane, that like this is just Yeah, you’re just we’re going to send you the Mars, you’re going to stop by on the moon on the way we’re going to take a commercial flight to the moon to keep a low cover. And, and then they just move on. And like they really a lot of time, filmmakers sort of can’t resist the urge to be like, Oh, he’s going to the moon, you know, like, like, they sort of make a meal about it. And they really the actors and the editing and, and the writing, everything really led to, like the guy said, we’re going to send you to Mars by way of the moon. And it really felt like he was saying we’re gonna send you to Oregon by way of Kansas. And that’s just how this goes like, that’s, it’s no big deal. It’s not like a crazy top secret, you know, insane mission. It’s like, no, we’re just, we’re gonna send you to Mars,
12:24
we’re gonna set you to Mars. So that it, it feels a little bit so that it’s not as noticeable. It’s
12:33
exactly like we’re gonna stop by on the moon because it’s convenient for for, you know, keeping your cover, it’s not a big deal to go to the moon. And there were just so many things like that, in this. In this world, there were so many things that were just sort of casually, futuristic, you know, the whole opening sequence on the space elevator, which, by the way, is the coolest, and maybe the only representation of a space elevator that I’ve ever seen in a big budget thing. But also not a space elevator. I guess it’s they describe it as the International Space antenna. Yeah. Which is weird, because if you’re building something that high, and that thin. That doesn’t work, unless it’s tethered to something in space. Like if it’s a space elevator, it makes sense, because it’s a cable running between the Earth and a counterweight. But if it’s just a tower that he was like, at the top of the night, that’s weird. So I wish that they had just called it the space elevator because way cooler. So tell me tell me more about this. Tell me why it’s weird.
13:37
So you know, with anything that you know, in, in the world of just sort of like kindergarten physics, okay. If you have an object that is going back really far, guys, yeah, if you have an object that’s taller than it is wide, there’s always going to be a tipping point. And the tipping point is, as you tilt it, the point at which its center of gravity is no longer over itself, the point at which its center of gravity is over air, it will start to fall. And so the thing about building really tall things like skyscrapers and antennas, and that sort of stuff, is that you need to widen it to make it taller. That’s the fundamental concept behind a pyramid. You know, like, if you’re gonna build a really big a really tall thing, you need it to be really wide. And, you know, you can you can fudge it as your materials get better. You know, it’s, it’s no, it’s no coincidence that skyscrapers happened at the beginning of the 20th century, right when like, really strong steel was developed because steel can hold it, but the taller you get, the less wiggle room there is, you know, like if you if you picture a radio antenna, that’s like, you know, 20 storys tall. If you’re off by half a degree, you’re already leaning so much that your center of gravity is off the base, which is why if you’re, you know, driving across country and you see a radio tower, they often have cables hold holding them
down.
Because those, if it ever starts to lean in one direction, the other, the cable will pull it back, you know, that’s why they they’re designed that way. So if you have something like what we saw at the beginning about Astra that is ginormous, heaven tall. Yeah, that is space tall. But you know that that thing is not like the whole complex that he’s working on isn’t really any wider than like an office building, you know. And, and this, most of it is just hanging off of these quite thin tubes, that are the actual structure that is reaching down toward the ground. And so the idea is that if you have something that tall, you either have made it out of a manner of a metal that is infinitely strong, that can just handle any kind of force, the atmosphere and wind and you know, like everything is putting on it. If we assume that they don’t have God metal, then then it needs those cables that radio tower has, or, and here’s the big thing, or it needs to be tethered to the sky. And that’s how a rate that’s how a space elevator works is a space elevator is a real thing. You can really build it. It’s perfectly valid science, and it shows up in a lot of science fiction. And what you do is you have a counterweight, you have a big thing like a moon or an asteroid or a really big space station in orbit, and then you do a cable down to the earth. And the cable wants to fall, the cable is not supporting it’s on wait. It’s just taught, it’s pulled between the Earth and this counterweight. And you can imagine like somebody swinging like a bolo, the force of that orbiting object is pulling the cable taut so it stays upright. And so you know, when when the movie started, and he’s out on this incredibly tall thing, and he’s like doing maintenance operations on and I’m like, Oh my god, this is so cool. It’s a space elevator clearly, like the only way something could be this tall. Is it the space elevator? And then later, they refer to it as the International Space antenna. And I was like, what, what?
What? That’s, that’s weird. Like, why not just call it a space? That’s clearly what you have is a space elevator. And it’s so much cooler than an antenna. Right? It was a it was an odd choice. But either way, in my head cannon, it was a space elevator. And that’s awesome. For sure. Presumably there was an elevator in the antenna. That’s how we got up there in the first place.
17:24
Oh, right. Yeah, cuz they didn’t just climb.
17:26
Yeah. That was not, that was not literally a stairway to heaven, built into this, like a spiral staircase with 15 billion steps. Yeah.
17:34
Is it Stairway to Heaven, like a song about to his little girl that died? So that might get really sad. And really, I mean, it’s also just a phrase. But yeah, but that’s okay, whatever.
17:47
But yeah, like, you know, that was an example of that was a super cool representation of the thing. And what what I was talking about earlier, this mundane sci fi, it’s like this incredibly awesome set piece of sci fi storytelling. And he’s like a repair guy. You know, like, he’s just going out. And he’s licking himself onto it. And he’s going down, and he’s doing stuff. And he’s, he seems to be functionally the equivalent of like, a window washer on an office building. And I just I loved that. There are so many things in his movies where they took this incredibly cool sci fi thing. And then they were just like, yeah, that’s how the world works.
18:23
I will say that this is the first time that I’ve ever cared about commercial spaceflight. Oh, yeah. The way they showed it. I was like, Oh, yeah, no, this just feels this feels the most realistic. Yeah. You know, we’ve seen spaceflight in the expanse. We’ve seen it in other areas. And it always feels really kind of grim. Yeah, to me, and this just felt like, oh, you’re getting on a Delta flight, you’re getting on a United Airlines Flight, whatever it is. And, and, you know, you’re, I guess paying for your blankets and pillows by then which is a crock. But, you know, there was there was something about it that just felt like okay, this makes sense to me. And it’s cool. The only thing that I really didn’t like, and this is just my, I mean, I think it’s actually a big deal. I’m I shouldn’t downplay it. But the tree hugger comes out in me. The the moment those huge fuel stages just come off and you’re sitting here going, how many commercial flights go up every day? And what about those fuel tanks that just land in the ocean?
19:39
I guess it’s especially interesting because that’s old tech. That’s how it worked in the 60s. But that’s not what SpaceX is doing these days. They they’ve got reusable rockets that you don’t need to just jettison things off into nothingness. So that was an odd choice. It
19:53
was an odd choice. They had some they had some old stuff happening. Yeah, there was something that felt that was clearly in the future. Because they can get, yeah. So Neptune in 79 days,
20:03
it almost it almost seemed like, you know, there were enough throwbacks to sort of the Space Age tech and design and stuff that it almost you could do a reasonable headcanon with this movie, that it’s sort of like a sequel to for for all mankind This is like it’s an alternative universe an alternative history of a world where the space race never ended. And so they do still kind of do it like they did in the 60s, because they never stopped doing
20:27
it that way. I guess there’s, there’s something kind of interesting about that. I’m not usually one for filling in potholes, like, my, my thing is that I want to take things at face value, like, oh, look for the symbolism, I will do all of that. But it didn’t. It doesn’t, it doesn’t always work. And so in this case, I’m happy. Like, I’m not happy to but I’m willing to fill in a couple of the plot holes. And one of the things that they talk about is the amount of war that’s happening. He says that he spent three years over the Arctic Circle, or what the fuck is happening over the Arctic Circle do and the moon has turned into the Wild West. Like, this is all worse than it’s turned into, like, you know, in Mogadishu like, yeah, it’s
21:14
and then and Mars is the same way they talk about, you know, the the outpost that they go to is the American one. And it doesn’t seem like you want to go to the other ones. If you’re an American, like, what is happening? We have not we apparently went to space without coming up with some treaties first, which I think is problematic.
21:36
Yeah, it’s almost like this movie is set during world war three. And they sort of forgot to tell us, you know, that, like, there are all these military installations everywhere. And everybody’s fighting everywhere. And they just kind of like it’s not relevant to this story. So we’re not going to get into it. But like, you set up a really book world.
21:51
Yeah. And but believably so like, it wasn’t post apocalyptic. It was just, this is the futuristic version of the 1930s of the 1940s. Not the 1990s. You know, it’s not a perfectly prosperous time. Are you? Me? It made me sad.
22:05
Yeah, it was.
22:07
I don’t know. It was hard before we move on from the moon, by the way, in the world of odd choices. And I it’s not a criticism. Exactly. It’s just sort of a dot dot dot question mark moment when I was watching. You know, Richard Branson, has a SpaceX competitor. There’s a company called Virgin Galactic that is trying to do private spaceflight, and that sort of thing. And they sold some tickets. Famously, they offered William Shatner a ticket to go into space. And he was like, No, like, No way and for him. But it was, it’s an interesting choice when they take a commercial flight to the moon. It’s Virgin Atlantic. It’s not Virgin Galactic. It’s, it’s Virgin Atlantic, which is the company that really exists that you can like fly to London.
22:53
We did Virgin Atlantic go under. I think
22:55
they were sold and like it was consumed by another airline. But yeah, and they kept the aesthetic. The whole room is lit in sort of pink and purple, which is like if you’ve ever been on a virgin flight, that’s actually how they decorate and stuff. Yeah, well, I’m
23:07
so close even says like, she loves that, that there’s DHL on the moon. And it’s I do appreciate that some of these corporations have stuck around. Yeah,
23:18
I just I wonder what kind of behind the scenes licensing deals had to be struck to get virgin but it wasn’t Virgin Galactic. Yeah, it was the what was the specific legal delineation there because you know, they wanted it to be Virgin Galactic. But yeah, that that whole sequence go on to the moon. It’s all great. I loved on an art direction level. I don’t know why this I got such a kick out of this. I think it was just because I wasn’t expecting it. In one of the very early scenes after he’s fallen off the space elevator. I was admiring their uniforms. I liked the it was it was green, but it had a black shirt and a black tie. It was just kind of like looked all gray. It looks pretty green to me.
23:59
Maybe I’m wrong because it was kind of dimly lit, but it it read to me as army green jacket with a black shirt and a black tie. And it was just one of those things that Yeah, I believe that as a future fashion choice that they wouldn’t do right now. But it’s not so different that I couldn’t see them doing it in a few decades. But and so I was like, okay, that’s kind of cool costuming. And then they went to the moon and I noticed that all the soldiers had lunar cammo they had this like camo pattern that was white and gray and black, but it wasn’t Arctic camo. It was like, sort of futuristic and had all these straight lines that were sort of breaking up the profile. And then when they went to Mars, those same kind of guys were wearing, like tan and gray and orange camo, and that’s Martian camo. And they never talk about it. Like they never address it. They never make a meal of it. They just, that’s what the soldiers look like at this base. And I love that that is exactly the kind of world building that I Appreciate where they just thought about it a little bit, you know, their soldiers aren’t wearing green camo because you wouldn’t wear green camo on Mars. Right does. Putting aside from the fact that you, when you go on the surface of Mars, you’re wearing a spacesuit. Like they’re never gonna wear that camel outfit on the surface anyway, but it’s the army. You got to give them something to wear. And yeah, it’s gonna be Martian camel. I just I love it. Yeah,
25:22
I wasn’t entirely sure why it was green. But okay. What? The Space Command?
25:30
Oh, the Space Command. dress uniforms. Yeah, that they were beautiful. I thought they were nice looking. But they they fell. Oh, hold on. I was like, What? What is? What is what the green?
25:40
I’ll tell you what is up with the girl? And it pisses me off? Oh, no, it’s realistic in a way that makes me mad. Because spaceforce which came out after this movie was made, but this movie was pressured. Us space force the new division of the armed forces. I know where this is going. Uses army ranks. Come on, guys, they don’t use Navy ranks. You haven’t watched enough science fiction to know that the person who’s in charge of a ship is supposed to be a captain. Come on. Space Command is supposed to use Navy ranks. That’s how this is supposed to work. Everybody knows that there was even a bill in Congress that was going to force space force to use Navy ranks. And it got voted out because Congress is garbage. And it makes me mad. And so the the answer to your question of why is their uniform green? For the same reason that he’s a major? It’s because the US Army ranks? You guys, I have heard this rant multiple times. I think it may have even already happened on this show once. So, you know, I can’t get into it much.
26:55
I’m just saying Congress needs me. Like, this is us. Congress needs to get your shit in here for a number of reasons. But one of them is you gave us space force army ranks. And that’s stupid. And anyway, they have army ranks in this too. And I’m sure that’s why their uniforms are green is because their army guys not Navy guys. So yeah, we will wait. Okay,
27:22
that’s our show tonight, folks. Thanks for watching. We’re done.
27:28
So I I need to talk about the character.
27:35
Yeah, look for a little bit get some film stuff in we have more science to get back to but let’s Yeah, I entertainment side.
27:41
Yeah. Let’s talk about the part where we get into the fact that Lacey didn’t super enjoy the movie, and I kind of did enjoy the movie.
27:51
So Brad Pitt and so here’s the deal. I think Brad Pitt is a great actor. I think he’s interesting to watch. But I thought that the words they put in his mouth were stupid. Oh, I’m sorry. Not necessarily the words they put in his mouth. The words they put in his head because all we heard was freaking voiceovers. Okay, so his initials,
28:18
this is going to be Lacey’s army ranks rant.
28:21
Listen, the initial monologue that he has is like he’s, he won’t be vulnerable to mistakes and he calls his relationship unimportant. And I’m sitting here going, dude, you’re putting so much pressure on yourself. And he talks about how good he is at compartmentalizing. I was like, oh, man, dude, you’re setting yourself up to fail. This is not how EQ works. This is not how mental resiliency works. Who gave you How did you get to be a major
28:47
you use your
28:49
ability to handle stress is bullshit superhero stuff. Like this is not real. And and I’m not the only one who thinks that because I found a whole article on inverse calm Hold on, I have to Who is it? I don’t freaking know. It’s a NASA psychologist on Ad Astra and, and combating stress. And he talks about how AI is really not going to cut it. And he’s like, I’m not trying to be defensive. I was impressed. Because you know, I have harped on this multiple times you guys about the psyche vows or the lack thereof, as seen in
29:31
the one of the interstellar graphic smart like basically everything that we’ve done on the show except for the Martian. It’s got a really bad psychological screening.
29:39
And he talks about like, I’m not trying to be defensive, but it’s going to take a very long time to get to a point where AI could do what psychologists do, because you’re first looking for. You’re looking for people that are good at handling stress, but then you’re also looking for being able to to train people to handle stress, and you okay over there got a cable, like, tangled in my chair.
30:11
I’m sorry, all I’m seeing is the top of your boss
30:14
on me. I’m just being weird.
30:17
Okay. Bye. But,
30:20
you know, stress, there was a there was an astronaut that came back to Earth. And then because of the psychological stress she like, attempted to kidnap somebody. I
30:31
mean, the straw. Yeah, got real weird. She wore diapers so she could stock people longer. And yeah, I got real weird.
30:36
Yeah. So I’m just saying, like, the idea that psych evals could be done. The way that they do them in this movie, like, I appreciate the amount of them. I don’t appreciate how they did them. Because I think it’s BS. I don’t think like, I know that this movie is not set in the next 10 years. But it seems like it’s set. Not that far in the distant future. And I don’t believe that neural networks are going to be great for psychology and psychological evaluations, because there’s no trust there. Humans don’t just trust machines. And one of the things that this NASA psychologist says is, humans don’t like to give up agency to machines, we are practically unwilling to do it. And now, that’s going to be with like super private things and, and things like that. And so the amount of work that they have to do to build up enough trust to get astronauts to actually talk to them, is huge. And he just says that you can’t like, it’s it’s not that it will never happen. But it’s unlikely to happen anytime in the near future. And I appreciated that because it it fed into what I was feeling I was sitting there going, I’m sorry, this guy, you remember, there’s a James Bond scene, and I think it’s with Oh, I don’t remember which James Bond where they open the they open the movie with him pretending he’s dead. And he has like, slowed his heart rate down to zero. And he’s in the hospital. And so they declare him dead. And then they leave the room and he gets up and walks out. I think it’s a Pierce Brosnan one. And I felt like it was like this. It’s just so it’s so not real, that a man would never have his heart rate go over 80 know, when he’s falling from the sky, you know?
32:48
Yeah, there’s a certain there’s a certain amount of it’s not about tough. You’re, you know, there’s a I think it’s in the Dresden Files, books. There’s some book that I’ve been that I read recently, where the main character talks about how, when something is flying at your face with the intent to kill you, you get scared. And that’s not a matter of toughness or cowardice. It’s not a matter of training, it’s not a matter of anything. If you have bilateral symmetry, you’re going to be scared. Like, that’s just how this works. And that is to me. Yeah, like there’s no such thing as a guy who’s whose heart rate never goes above 80 when he’s in the military.
33:37
And one of the things that this guy says, I’m going to read a quote from this article, it’s, it’s, it’s really interesting. And of course, you know, at one point, he talks about the Martian, which we love, so the only makes it better. But he says, as humans, agency is so important to us having our self determination that I think it might be a source of information. And it might have a high degree of predictive probability on things, but human decision making will always be in the loop. And there will be a myriad of factors that determine an individual’s readiness to perform a mission regardless of what the psychological status and I just think that’s interesting, because my whole thought on those cycles is they’re not taking in there are too many variables that I, I think that they didn’t look at, and also the variables that they did look at felt like BS. Yeah. So anyway, I could go on about it for the rest of the time that we have, but I won’t,
34:39
I will overflow agrees with you. Because soflo stated that he’s got the emotional range of a pet rock.
34:47
Yes. Yeah. And you can even hear it in the, in the in the voiceovers. Because, you know, a lot of the language is very philosophical, but it’s not deep. at all It feels like it feels like a freshman. Like poetry slash philosophy major, like talking about his mental state. I have very specific people in mind for this. And I’m sure all I think we all do, right. And that’s just it feels so emo. Yeah, totally, totally Alex. But I really struggled with the voiceovers because they, they felt very shallow, even with the vocabulary that they use. One of the other things is he’s like they’re using me. They’re using me. So you know, he’s on. He’s on Mars. And he’s been given the script to call out to his dad. And then they put him in a calming room, which is like one of the least calming
35:49
Yeah, we’ve ever seen.
35:51
You ever need to stress me out? You put me in that calming room was horrifying.
35:58
And he’s just like pacing. Right? And definitely not calming down punching the wall. Yeah. And he’s like, they’re just using me. God damn them. And I’m like, Yeah, man, they’re trying to save humanity. You do what you have to do. Like, who gives a shit if they’re using you?
36:13
Well, and also they told you, yeah, we’re gonna use you. Well, that’s that’s the mission is to be used by the army to make contact with us and you agree
36:21
to it. So if you have a problem with it, lay out your argument. I want to know what it is. I’m sure you have one. Even if I don’t agree with it. Just lay out the argument. But you can’t just say they’re using me and think I’m gonna feel bad for you. Like I had zero empathy for this guy the entire time. I just didn’t care. I didn’t care if he found his dad. I didn’t care if he went back to his wife. He said his relationship to her was unimportant. Like that as one of his very first line. So for her sake, I hope she never goes back to him because he’s toxic. And it just like, I don’t know, I felt like the main character had zero emotional depth.
37:02
Yeah, well, there were a lot of things for it throughout the story. There are a lot of things were the human side was weird. Like, I mean, the biggest one for me, isn’t even Brad Pitt’s character. It’s that the professionally trained spacepilot freezes up at the landing. Yeah, like, this is your whole job, man. Like, what? What is the problem? Exactly? And they never say like, there’s no, there’s no indication in the storyline of what exactly is the problem, they get hit by a surge. So they they’re not going to land on autopilot. And I mean, the only thing that I can think of is that we’re living in a world where autopilot is so universal, that he just actually doesn’t know how to land without it. Like, you know, yeah, sure. If all of the automatic transmissions in all of the cars and all of the worlds suddenly stopped working, a lot of people wouldn’t be able to drive a manual, you know, like a stick shift. Yeah, sure. But you’re a pilot man. Like, even if you don’t know how you should be figuring it out. You should be grabbing the stick and punching buttons and figuring out what to do. You shouldn’t just be sitting there and then glancing with a four lawn look over at the guy next to you like what the fuck is your job? And then at the end, Brad Pitt is like, I will not report what you did to space calm, and I’m sitting there going okay, but like, you should. Yeah, like, for the for the betterment of everybody that’s ever going to be on the sky ship. You should report this is exactly what you need to
38:29
crew at the very least would have died. Had it not been for Brad Pitt’s character. Yeah. And, and not to mention the people at the landing site. Yeah, it just what the hell
38:41
yeah. When a pilot responsible when a pilot can’t land his plane, you report that shit to space calm? Yeah, it was it was very strange. There were a lot of things like that, that were just okay.
38:53
Yeah. And I kept going, you know, they’d have you, you’d, you’d have trained for all of this. And then, you know, my mom’s a dental hygienist. And she has to go to a certain amount of training every year, and it’s rather a lot. And pilots get refresher courses
39:10
all the time. Yeah. And so what the hell is your problem, man? And, you know, we’re totally skipping over the first time that we see this guy, lose his cool, and it’s just a touch. But that’s when there’s the Mayday and what the what the hell was the point of that Mayday? I don’t, what what did it do for the story, to have these deranged, poor animals, lose it on their scientists and then kill the captain of this pilot that was checking on the Mayday? Like, what the hell was that and why?
39:51
Yeah, it’s I mean, to me, it was interesting. Yeah, like doing animal testing out there and one of them gets loose and there’s a crazy like, how do you how do you deal With that, that’s an interesting premise. But what did it do for this story? Like if you had cut that scene, what would you have lost?
40:08
Nothing, literally nothing. Yeah. So all you just get is this weird gore fest for a minute. Yeah.
40:14
And, you know, there was a point with the with the sound or the music earlier on in the film that I was like, Okay, wait, did we just step into a thriller? Or is there going to be like pops of horror in this movie? Because the music kind of set that up? But the trailer did not. And so I was confused. And I, I didn’t. I didn’t know. I don’t know what they were trying to do with this movie. I felt like they were trying to mesh too many genres. And they didn’t do a good job of it.
40:55
Yeah. Well, so segwaying back to some stuff. That was really cool. The Lunar Chase was really cool. That was a really cool action scene. And, again, from the from the sort of art design side, I felt like that scene had a lot of really cool, subtle things to it. So for example, when you’ve got a bunch of people in white spacesuits on white rovers, driving across a white plane, it’d be really easy to lose track of who is who, you know, that’s, that would be a real concern. And I feel like they did a great job of not letting you there were there were little cues like the the good guys had gold visors, and the bad guys had black visors. The rovers had subtly different designs and that sort of thing. But they were Yeah, like that whole thing and worth mentioning. This movie was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Sound Mixing. And it was that scene, I’m sure that got it for him. Because the the sound mixing in that scene of there is no sound in space. But there is sound of stuff hitting you. When you drive into a rock. You can hear it because it’s coming up through the rover. And, you know, that sort of stuff is that is that was really well done. I thought that it was exceptionally well done. And I and I will say that there, there were things that were totally beautiful the cinematography of this movie. I often love to not always I felt like some of the trippy stuff got really distracting. But there were times that it was just gorgeous. And you know, it’s the same cinematographer I believe who did and that did Interstellar. Yeah. So you know, the the planets were stunning, just like it. It was one of those things are just kind of makes you drool over where we where we get to live,
42:51
right? Yeah,
42:52
it’s so beautiful.
42:54
I want to go to there like, Oh,
42:58
yeah, yeah.
43:00
There is.
43:05
I don’t Did you did you just just just
43:07
just went out of my brain. There was the thing. And then there wasn’t.
43:11
I’m sorry, I interrupted your whole thing about the sound mixing and the the the chase on the moon with cinematography work, because it was something I could compliment. Oh, so I had to interrupt you just to say something nice.
43:24
Yeah, no, you’re you’re, you’re good. Yeah, the the lunar Chase was awesome. There were there were a lot of things that we haven’t seen before. You know, like, these days, for those of you who are watching it for all mankind is an Apple TV plus show that is dealing with the idea of combat in space. It’s alternative history where the United States and the Soviet Union continue the space race. And so they have they each have lunar bases and their conflicts on the moon. And they’ve made a lot of hay out of the fact that season two sees the first actual combat on the moon and they’re all the press material have these astronauts carrying like white and sixteens and all that. And so you know, that is starting to do it. But Ad Astra obviously been out for a little while. That’s the first time I think I’ve ever seen a realistic depiction of a battle on the moon. You know, that’s, that isn’t just like Star Trek, you know, that. That was astronauts fighting and I believed it that seemed like about how it would go down. Which is to say quick and really, really deadly.
44:30
Yeah. Which I Oh, tell me about your take on the fight when he gets when he gets on the shuttle that he’s not supposed to be on?
44:39
Yeah. So that I thought was interesting. I feel like again, from a storytelling standpoint, I sort of have some issues with it because you just slaughtered three people and took over, essentially an Air Force jet. And you know, like that was Whoa. But I did really appreciate That, you know, 03 combat is weird. You know, like, that’s, that’s not what humans were meant for. And I feel like they really captured the elegance of it. You know, Hey, he’s like, don’t, don’t worry, I’m not here to do anything. And they’re like coming out and one, one woman pulls out a gun and, and then all of a sudden the rocket kicks on. And you forget that, Oh, you don’t just float in space, you float in space, if your ship is floating in space, and then as soon as your ship starts moving, and you’re not strapped in, it’s effectively gravity. And she just gets squished. And it’s, it’s painful to watch. But it is a good reminder that like, you can’t treat this stuff as a given in space. And then, you know, the other guy and Brad Pitt are wrestling and they’re sort of spinning end over end as, as they’re fighting. And it just, I feel like, you know, one of the things that people talk about is, when you see a bar fight in a movie, it’s, it’s easy to follow. It’s like a boxing match. And they’re, they’re pounding each other and they’re taking, you know, they’re, they’re trading blows. And if you ever see a bar fight in real life, it’s like, it looks more like deer just locking antlers, it’s like two guys just run at each other. And they just sort of like grab each other.
And it just looks like a really angry hook. But let me tell you, as someone who worked in a sports bar for a very long time, those bar fights tend to turn into many people. Yeah, they tend to end up on the street. And it is not elegant, it’s totally hard to follow, and you don’t know who you’re fighting or why Yeah, and then and I’m not part of it, I’m just saying I’ve seen 16 people stop traffic because of this. And it’s
46:41
absurd. And the the the thing that I’m sort of leaning into right now is it’s not you don’t keep your distance, you know, it’s not to boxers, they’re like, you know, reaching out with their arm to punch the other guy. For the most part, they sort of smash their faces into each other’s shoulders, and they’ve got their arms like trying to hit each other in the back and they’re like me and each other, like, it’s just this sort of dog pile of, it really looks like an angry hug. And it that I feel like what’s captured in this scene is like, two people are trying to kill each other in space and it just looks kind of dumb, like, like they’re just kind of spinning it over and and try to get at each other and it’s just inelegant. Does
47:22
anybody know what was in that canister? That got loose? And then it just like killed the captain? Or the pilot, whatever? Because that makes no sense. And why didn’t the captain who was an arm’s reach of of oxygen put on his own oxygen mask? This man that pilot had zeros like serve to make his survival skills are zero and he should not have been in this position? Obviously, and the psyche, Val’s would have told us that, listen, I will try not to come back to the psyche. Val’s repeatedly,
47:57
but the psyche valid, you want to believe you
47:59
told us to this? And Alex was like, I take you know this. Do you think the military really has good psyche veils? And I was like, I don’t know. I mean, they’re probably not great.
48:10
Don’t get me to actually give the backstory on that comment.
48:13
Would you like to know, because it’s, the whole thing is like, these are all military people. And we like to think that the military has does good psyche. Val’s. But my question that, and Alex said that he you know, like he takes you were saying that you, you could handle the psyche vows. And that you took that at face value, which is, you know, the military is not great at everything.
48:46
Yeah, that basically Lacy was arguing that the the psyche vows were so bad that they were unrealistic. And the way that I read the film was that the psyche, vows are really bad, because the army kind of doesn’t care that much. They care if you can continue the mission, and they don’t actually care that much about your well being and as long as you can continue the mission, then they’ll, they’ll just sort of rubber stamp it. And that seems like exactly the sort of thing that the military would do. I just,
49:10
I couldn’t I can’t handle that. Like that just is so heart. Like it’s not heartbreaking. It just like it’s heart crushing. Yeah. And it’s, it is in itself crushing. And so I just, oh, I couldn’t I couldn’t handle it. And I kept saying like, they’re all of these people in these positions, that you’re asking me to take it at face value that at face value, that they should be here and that they should be in these positions, but I can’t take it at face value because I don’t value its face, and that the pilot is one of them. And also you can’t handle the edge cases which are both of the McBride men come on. And Ruth Megas character also probably shouldn’t be in the position that she should be on on Mars. So anyway, I’m just saying every last one of them had they’ve been promoted beyond
50:13
their capabilities. And I don’t like it. You don’t like to see it? Well, the way we got off on this was talking about the canister that gets shot that is that yeah, that is something that like, I really wish that they had just like thrown in a line of dialogue that that was like some kind of super toxic gas or something. And because I don’t think they mentioned it at all. But there was one thing that Brad Pitt says sort of like in passing, which it sounds like he says it was oxygen. And that doesn’t make sense. So yeah, I just have to assume that it was some kind of like nerve agent that God,
50:47
why would it just be sitting there on the wall like that? Yeah,
50:50
it’s, I mean, it seemed like it was maybe close to where they were keeping the nukes. So maybe it was some sort of like, super radioactive gas? I don’t know. It’s like, you can sort of fill in the blanks and come up with something that kind of makes sense. But I wish that they just thrown in a line and been like, yeah, that’s what, oh, no, you released the nerve gas that we were going to use to kill everybody on the ship that you know, whatever. Yeah, that was kind of odd.
51:14
Should we? Should we talk about the climax of the movie? Yeah,
51:18
I was about to say, let’s, let’s get to Neptune. So he’s so our hero arrives at Neptune. He’s there to to sort of reconnect with his father recontact his father and bring him home, and then also to destroy the ship because it’s been established that the the surge, the problem in this movie is coming from this ship. And I kind of misunderstood. I thought that this movie was a mystery about what is the surge? I thought that we were trying to get to Neptune so that we could figure out what is Tommy Lee Jones doing to create this phenomenon? And then it turned I guess that’s, I guess that was a misunderstanding. That was not what this movie was about. It’s just his ship is broken. And it’s causing this and there’s no like,
52:02
and his his thing is that he says that the crew mutiny, the mutiny, the last bit of the crew mutinied, and things went wrong, and that’s what started this.
52:14
Which, by the way, we’ve already established that the crew mutinied earlier and he killed them all. And so if these are his last loyal crew mutinied against him, these people suck and mutinying man, like this guy already killed everyone who rose up against him. If you’re going to rise up against him, you kill him in his sleep. I mean, come on, like you don’t just tell him, Hey, we’re going home and there’s nothing you can do to stop us. Like, there is a thing you can do to stop you. So like, you should really do a thing. Yeah, take take precaution.
52:48
They leaned into the creep factor. And a way that I felt was forced.
52:55
I appreciated seeing it from Tommy Lee Jones. This is an unusual role for Tommy Lee Jones and he he crazy this,
53:01
I mean, like, sure, but yeah, I’m talking about kind of the environmental stuff like Brad Pitt gets into the ship. And the first thing we like, the first thing we see is someone dead, with their head in a bag, like a plastic bag, and then you start to see more dead bodies in implying by the way that he was killed like by hand like this is not a guy who was killed because he got locked in an airlock.
53:29
This is someone who was murdered, face to face.
53:32
Yeah. And in the background is a TV playing at Black and White musical number
53:41
in the creepiest way possible in
53:42
the creepiest way possible, though, I would love to know what that film was because I want to see that. I’ve never seen that clip before. So if it’s a real clip, I need to know what it is.
53:54
Sure it is.
53:56
But it was just like it felt like creepy for creepiness sake and not actually for to move the
54:08
sense in the universe. Just a storytelling. I kind of
54:11
felt like they between that and the monkeys and some of the way that no drowning.
54:17
You can die in space for monkeys, but you can’t drown
54:20
this. Listen,
54:21
I like it not true. He goes underwater. He goes through an underground Lake it does. There is actually the risk of drowning in that asteroid.
54:29
I did not enjoy that part. But I didn’t hate it because there he wasn’t.
54:33
Yeah, there’s no actual problem. But I felt like the director slash writer was like I want to see these things and it was like walking into a convenience store. And just being like, I’m at 711 or while I’m here I’m going to get pick up my reasons and my cheese. It’s on my Coca Cola, and it was just like it was just like a grab bag of random shit. And I I couldn’t handle it because it just Felt pointless oftentimes? Yeah. So
55:05
we do have a few scientific things that happen around Neptune, which are interesting, including one doesn’t happen very often. That was more scientifically accurate. Then I realized I called it out. And then I realized that I was wrong. Okay. And that is he gets, you know, he, there’s a whole thing with his dad, where’s that basically commit suicide. And then he plans to do and he goes to go back to his ship. And he essentially peels off a piece of the hole to use as a shield. And then he rockets himself up through the rings of Neptune to his ship. Yeah. And I wrote down in my notes, flight through the ring was too smooth and too short. But still cool. That’s actually not true. I ended up I ended up looking it up after the it seemed like you know, this is space, like the rings of Neptune, the rings of Saturn, these are going to be huge. It’s going to take you hours to get through the the space that constitutes those rings. And I actually looked it up. Spaces weird, you guys, those rings of Saturn that you can see from Earth, you know, I think they are 30 feet, or 30 feet thick. That is razor thin, compared to the circumference of them. That is insane. If anything, the depiction of them in this movie, he’s in them for too long. Like it’s actually erring on the side of being too thick in this movie, he should have just kind of shot straight through. But that being said, it was too smooth. He was just yet right. He didn’t course
56:50
I didn’t understand why the rocks hitting him didn’t change the knocking projectory. Yeah,
56:58
or at least spin him like that really more than changing what direction he’s going in. They should have he should have been spinning like a top when he came out. They should have been hitting him at oblique angles. And
57:08
yeah, also, they were very blue from the inside. And I felt like that would be true. From the outside. You’re getting you know, from far away, you’re getting like the reflection and the ice, which is what a lot of what those rings are made up of. You’d be getting reflection from the planet or whatever. So that’s what you know, okay, we see them as blue. Cool, but I think inside of it, you wouldn’t. And it really looked like they had like a blue carpet with rocks on it.
57:38
Yeah, there, it didn’t look good.
57:41
There are so right here at the end, we get several things that are not scientifically accurate, which is unfortunate, because again, like there was a bunch of things that I really enjoyed. One of them was that another was this was one of those. So one of the things that I get so frustrated by in, in these sorts of things is like, why did you even put that line in? Like why do it if you’re not going to do it accurately? You know, and we’ve talked about this in in previous stories, where they’ll throw in some line or some picture that isn’t real. When they didn’t need that line. You know, in interstellar, there are lines about how Oh, it’s such and such it breeds nitrogen. That’s not a thing. And it doesn’t need to be. And I had to laugh. There’s this beautiful moment where Brad Pitt is talking about how you know his father is obsessed with the search for extraterrestrial life. And they’ve come out here beyond the edge of the heliosphere, which by the way is not Neptune. the heliosphere is 123 astronomical units wide Neptune is only 30 astronomical units out it’s way further out the Neptune but whatever. They’ve come out beyond the heliosphere to detect alien life. And he’s been working on detecting alien life. And there’s this beautiful scene where Brad Pitt is sort of looking through his data. And he’s looking through and he says he captured strange new worlds in greater detail than ever before. And there’s this montage of all these alien planets that he’s been photographing, right? Those aren’t alien planets. Those are the moons of Jupiter. They’re literally using photos of like Callisto and stuff. Like there’s a picture of Venus that they use. And it’s not even touched up. I know this because I used the textures of Venus in TerraGenesis. There are portions of Venus that haven’t been fully mapped. So if you look at a map of Venus, it’s sort of stripy, there, there are portions that are at higher resolution than others. And it’s frigging stripy. Like they didn’t even give it to a graphic designer to touch up the picture of Venus, this Callisto and there’s Europa and there’s like, over and over and over. They’re all these pictures of worlds from our solar system. Are you making a speech about strange alien worlds? And then using these like, Oh, my God, you could Get on any sci fi forum and find 20 graphic designers who would love to do pictures of alien worlds for Hollywood blockbuster, or, and here’s a radical notion. Just don’t show them. Just have him talk about it.
1:00:15
But that Okay, so here’s I didn’t know that you guys I did not know that that’s what I was looking at. And I was like, Whoa, Wow, those are really beautiful. My goodness, like, what a cool universe we live in, that there could ever be planets or whatever out there that look like this. Those images are what got me through that scene. And it takes me back to what I said earlier today about how how we’re so lucky to live in our solar system. It’s just so beautiful. And oh, that’s so sad. That makes me really sad. Like,
1:00:53
I’m not joking you guys. I have looked up Photoshop tutorials for how to make photorealistic images of alien planets with like procedural landmasses and all that kind of stuff. It takes like 20 minutes. Like, what was the art department thinking? Like, come on, just show us some cool alien planets don’t take the NASA archive of pictures of moons that people have been looking at for 500 years. Like this is literally the Galilean moons. Galileo saw these things. This is not new. If they didn’t even use pictures of Pluto. Come on. It was crazy. And then, so hold on, hold on.
1:01:29
I’m so sorry. You guys. So flow is you. I’m giving you like hero points today because
1:01:38
first of all, soflo is winning the chat on this but the movie was orchestra wives and I am so here for knowing that. No. And the next time we do a classic movie night, that’s what we’re watching.
1:01:49
I see. And I watch old movies on the regular
1:01:51
and it’s just so much fun. I wasn’t raised on them. So I know. I do not know my classic movies and I was on all of them.
1:01:59
Yes. And all. And then I just got a quote. What was said Vice soflo in in the chat. Helio pause for a moment you’re telling me they budget to the science on the heliosphere? Okay, I don’t generally enjoy putting that one. I am here for
1:02:20
guys. She always enjoys ponds. Lacey loves bonds. She doesn’t think she loves bonds, but she loves bonds. She’s mad because I called her out. I telling the truth, just so. So the takeaway here is if you have any really good bonds, be sure to send them to Lacey hunt,
1:02:43
oh, my God, we’re going to be a dead man.
1:02:48
That’s just your opinion. So the last little bit of scientific realism that we have to talk about is the very last moment in this movie. And I giving the benefit of the doubt because again, there were a lot of things that I really liked scientifically about this movie. The quote from the director that I gave at the very beginning, he did not actually say that he wanted to do the most realistic depiction of space. He said he wanted to do the most realistic depiction of space travel. So I guess that’s, you know, that could be read as just the getting from A to B, except that theory breaks down at the very end, because he tries to ride a nuclear slash anti matter explosion as what he himself describes as using the explosion as my primary propellant. Which is not a thing. You don’t just get to put a nuke at your back and surf the wave. That’s not how nukes work. But also, I just had to laugh. Because normally in space movies, you don’t know exactly where the spaceships are relative to each other. Like it’s just it’s an empty vacuum, you don’t you know, they might actually be tilted at 90 degrees relative to the sun or whatever. In fact, oftentimes they are in Star Trek if you really think about it, because they’re lit from above, which means that they would have to be like this and the sun is that way. But you know the space is very amorphous, there’s no upper down it’s tricky to know but in an Astra we have a rare moment where we know exactly where we are relative to both ships and to the planet because he went from one ship to another ship and he had to do it by going through the rings. So we know that his ship is on one side of the rings. The other ship is on the other side of the rings. So relative to Neptune they are north south from each other. Right there is a there’s a vertical axis here. Neptune does not have a particularly intense tilt the way for example, Uranus does. If this if this had been set on Uranus, it would have been Right, it actually would have been like, weirdly accurate in kind of a way if you could write a nukes, Shockwave or whatever. But with Neptune, we know that if one ship is here, and one ship is here, and he’s going to ride the explosion, that means that the vector of his travel is going to be the line from the first ship to the second ship, it’s going to send him straight up out of the plane of the ecliptic, and earth is that way.
1:05:25
And by that way, he’s going in 90 degrees. Like, yeah, that’s not a thing.
1:05:33
He really and also, I had this moment of, dude, you’re doing it wrong, because he was like, staring at back at the at the his dad ship that was about to explode. And I’m sitting here going, Man, you can’t look at a nuclear explosion. You, you are going you will be blind for the rest of your life.
1:05:54
And hope you enjoyed those eyes. Yeah, exactly.
1:05:57
I was I was actually panicked. It was like the only time that I cared about his well being for the irony of the movie. It was this moment of going. Don’t be stupid now.
1:06:11
Why up here chiming in in the comments, I on sale, not something you can make from trash. Yes, exactly. If you had a ship that was specifically designed to capture the force of an explosion in space, sure, whatever. But oh my god, you can’t just take a rocket and be like, I’m going to set up a nuke behind me. By the way, an anti matter nuke. Remember that this whole movie is powered by the anti matter reactions going on. And anti matter is way more powerful than a nuclear explosion. And then just like write it and be okay.
1:06:44
Yes.
1:06:47
Come on. You got Oh,
1:06:48
I’m just gonna put it out there. For all of those people. Who similar to to Roy McBride. And yours truly, Lacey Hannon. Who have father problems. Let me tell you, it is a it is a lot easier to just go to therapy than to travel billions of miles into space to deal with it,
1:07:15
especially to travel billions of miles into space to find a man whose opening line is, I never loved you or your mother. As soon as they gave me an opportunity to leave. I took it.
1:07:27
And Brad Pitt’s character even said something about like how we kind of knew that. Yeah, and I’m sitting here going, dude, then why are you Why are you here? Yeah. You were told multiple times your dad’s bad dude,
1:07:40
when people tell you who they are. Listen,
1:07:42
yeah, yeah. So anyway, therapy, I, you know, I’m just gonna harp on it every single episode therapy. It’s so so.
1:07:51
So you know, there are a lot of things. There’s actually there’s more that we haven’t even talked about. We didn’t even address the fact that he sent a message to his dad from Mars to Neptune. And then they waited for a response. And when they didn’t want to get one in a couple of minutes. You guys, the light delay from Mars to Neptune is over four hours. And that’s when they’re at their closest point. Once it’s an eight hour round trip to hear a message back, you can’t just sit in a room and wait for a response. There’s more. But fundamentally, Ad Astra gets high marks for scientific realism for the art department. It’s beautiful. It’s beautiful. And it’s well designed. And it’s it’s great world building. And it just everything that you see with your eyes is great. If the problem only comes when that information reaches your brain.
1:08:39
I will tell you my favorite image before we sign out. Yeah. That moment on the moon when he reaches what is what is it called that that moon sand. Like there’s a word for it. regolith regolith, there’s a moment where they’re driving along. And he sticks his hand up into the regolith as because it’s just kind
1:09:03
of dust suspended. And yeah, and it’s like, it’s like when you see in a movie, someone puts their hand out the window and they kind of do that wave thing with the air that streaming by right. And it was really, it was beautiful. And there was just like this lovely contented feeling that you get right before they start getting shot at.
1:09:22
But that was beautiful. Also not scientifically accurate.
1:09:25
I don’t. Okay, listen, this is the one time that I will give it to them. Because I it because I loved it and I needed the beauty. So anyway, there were some things that were fun and interesting. Brad Pitt. I didn’t love this. I didn’t like this. I hated this character. But Brad Pitt is fantastic. Yep. The roof Ruth negga is always great, always great and somehow always terrifying. I never know what I’m supposed to expect from her and this movie. Didn’t Let me expect anything from anybody at any point, because I didn’t know what was happening. But I still enjoyed her. There were some there were some great actors, given some weird stuff. And it was beautiful.
1:10:17
Yeah. So I think that’s it for this week. Tune in next week, Thursday 530. Pacific, we are going to be talking about October sky. We’re going to be going back to our roots Episode One was Apollo 13. We’re going to be doing another historical movie.
1:10:34
Yeah, I’m interested in this because we’ve had a couple of weeks of me not enjoying the things that we’re watching and i don’t like that I love to love things. And I’ve seen this movie once in my in my time, I don’t remember it because because it made me cry and i and i don’t like crying. And so I put it out of my memory. So we’ll see how I feel about it. But it’s there is definitely continuity. Here. We are continuing the theme of oh my god terrible fathers. That is who Oh, yeah, yeah, that’s, that’s gonna be fun. But check out October sky. It is based on a true story of the childhood of someone who grew up to be a rocket scientist at NASA. And for my money, it is beautiful. I’m really excited to be doing October sky because when I was a kid, October sky was like, like, if you had asked 14 year old Alexander when what he wanted to do with his life, he would have just handed you a copy of October Sky
1:11:33
to make the movie or to be a person on the movie on it.
1:11:37
It was just it was like the summation of everything that I love. It’s it’s film it’s space. It’s passos. It’s just yeah, I so love October Sky,
1:11:48
essentially what I’m saying is, I hope for all of our sake, that we can go watch this movie, and just love the ever loving shit out of it. Yes. And then we can just celebrate. And yes, and say good, warm, loving things about it. So that’s my hope, because this hasn’t been been.
1:12:09
Alright, so that is going to be next week on The Synthesis. In the meantime, be sure to subscribe on YouTube or subscribe to the podcast, whichever you prefer. If you’re on YouTube, be sure to hit the bell. So you’re notified about new episodes. And if you’re listening to us on a podcast, we just recently released the synthesis as a podcast and we could really use your ratings and reviews. So be sure to leave us those.
1:12:32
It is a huge deal. Please, please, please do that for us. Yes, we also have a Patreon page at Edgeworks entertainment. Nope. patreon.com slash Edgeworks entertainment. You can get a whole bunch of cool bonuses and rewards both from podcast and then also for TerraGenesis. And yeah, I think that’s it.
1:12:55
We’ll see you guys later. See ya.