No laughing anti-matter
It hit cinemas close to the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing, and Ad Astra feels like a glimpse of some alternate future where the space program never sputtered into public indifference and Apollo was a straight arrow to the stars.
It’s a film that, or a moonbase that looks like Gerry Anderson was bankrolled by the American government, but every moment of NASA footage that made the future look shiny and glorious. Rockets reach for the heavens above pillars of fire and smoke; Mars is all unexplored ochre promise; an impossible Meccano-gasm of a structure stands bolted between Earth orbit and the planet below, like one of Arthur C Clarke’s daydreams.
