I do believe, Ad Astra is as close as we will ever get another 2001: A Space Odyssey in movies. Christopher Nolan did try something similar with his disappointing Interstellar but ended up getting lost in the mush. James Gray, on the other hand, makes a far more valiant attempt in creating a philosophical sci-fi movie that is about something else than just sci-fi. In the solitude of space, he manages to create a far more compelling study on humanity, of what it means to be human, to feel a longing for love and connection. To try to understand the world that is so obvious yet so strange and far away.
In the near future, we have begun exploring space near and far from us more thoroughly. Roy McBride (Pitt) is doing maintenance for a large space antenna, when a mysterious energy burst hits Earth, causing major havoc on all-electric systems. SpaceCom pinpoints the source of the energy burst to Neptune, believing it emitting from the dark matter engines of long lost Lima project vessel, which was commanded by Roy's father, Clifford McBride (Jones). They inform Roy, that they believe his father to be alive and responsible for the energy spikes.
Roy is sent on a secret mission to Mars to send a mission to his father. They have to send the message from their Mars facility, as it is the only long-range system working reliably after several spikes. At first, Roy is asked to send a message written for him, but this has no effect. He then proceeds to speak what is on his mind and an answer is received. But SpaceCom decides Roy to be too unstable to have any further part in the mission and he is sent home.
Before Roy manages to leave, he is visited by Helen Lantos (Ruth Negga), who tells him the truth about what happened before the Lima mission went silent. Clifford decided to kill his crewmembers, including Helen's parents, when they mutinied and wanted to return home after becoming disillusioned with their possibilities of finding intelligent life with their deepspace scanners. He was adamant about continuing the mission, so he thought it necessary to cut any insurrection to its bud.
Having thought his father a hero, just like everyone else as SpaceCom felt it was necessary to hide the truth, Roy now realizes he didn't know his father at all. He had known Clifford had always placed his work and desires before his family, but this new piece of information places his obsession in an entirely new light.
Helen helps Roy aboard the Cepheus, the ship SpaceCom is sending to Neptune after they pinpointed the location of the Lima after the reply. Roy's intrusion into the ship ends up in a disaster for the crew, but he informs SpaceCom that he will continue alone and complete the mission of delivering the nuclear device to Lima.
After almost 3 months of solitude in space, Roy finally arrives in Lima. He finds, that his father is alive, attempting to fix the broken antimatter power source. He still insists on continuing the mission, despite he has not managed to find any evidence of life. Before powering the nuclear bomb, Roy takes all the records Lima has gathered and pleads with Clifford to return back home with him. The old man states he is home and that he has never missed his wife or his son. Still, Roy convinces him to leave, but instead of getting to Cepheus, Clifford decides to commit suicide by plummeting into space, asking Roy to let him go.
Roy accelerates Cepheus back towards Earth with the explosion wave. Now, after long solitude and his mission completed, he finally realizes, that the solitude he has always sought from space is not what he has longed for. More than anything else, he longs for his loneliness to end. He longs to love.
Ad Astra belongs in the rare group of actually good slow-paced philosophical sci-fi movies. While it is visually a stunning movie, its core is about exploring humanity, not only the humanity of Roy but humanity as a whole in the middle of technological evolution that is faster than we can grasp. No matter the technology we have and no matter what the technology can do to us or our environment, we still are humans with human needs, we just have to find those needs from time to time when they are buried under the detritus of distractions.
For Roy, the humanity he has lost is found again when he finds his father, who claims to have lost his for good. Even that might just be another lie we sometimes tell ourselves so we can go on with the toils we deem more important.
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