You can see why James Gray is admired but also why people don't go to his movies - lots of good stuff and bad stuff in here mixed together. It's a riff on Apocalypse Now only in space which I think is a great idea.
Gray does a half good job of setting up the world - there's not a lot of Indians and Chinese in space in the near future and I'm not trying to be overly woke here it just doesn't strike me as realistic. Sometimes the sets and stuff felt real other times it felt like clunky throwbacks (will we still have CNN? and scrolls across the screen).
Gray isn't that good at exposition - like making the power surge a threat, and I got confused at the end what was going on. He's very good on theme - the importance of connecting and realising we're all we've got. It felt like there was too much narration and dialogue.
He's very good on suspense/action sequences - the opening fall, the chase scene on the moon, the space monkeys. Indeed these sequences could have been spun off into their own movies that probably would have been more fun, especially Brad Pitt vs the space pirates or Brad Pitt vs the space monkeys.
Pretty much everyone who gets a ride with Brad Pitt in this film dies. Pitt is excellent, incidentally. Donald Sutherland and Tommy Lee Jones playing former astronaut colleagues is a nice nod to Space Cowboys.
It's a big budget star driven movie that's not a sequel and is based on an original script. It has a superb star performance and some effective moments.
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