![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
redfiona99The case for the prosecution:
Ad Astra is just a bad film (https://redfiona99.dreamwidth.org/1406097.html). It had pretensions to being hard sci-fi but had fire with no convection, and three photos of Europa at different angles and in different colours pretending to be Kuiper Belt Objects.
The film has sudden moments of violence, and a large number of character deaths, which play out so bizarrely that there's a distinct feeling of bleak, absurdist comedy underneath, and I don't think that's deliberate (I wouldn't mind it so much if it was deliberate).
The scene itself:
Much though I am tempted to go with the "Baboon of Doom" scene, because until the killer is revealed to be a crazed baboon, that's actually scary, I am going to go with a shot when McBride (Brad Pitt) first arrives on the moon, and looks in disgust at how, instead of it being the magnificent moon, it's been turned into just another city (complete with Vegas neon cowboy sign). It's as close as I've ever seen in film to the Douglas Adams bit about how time travel has ruined the past.
Why the scene is so good:
They do that with one look and some set design. We're shown and not told in a film that does the rest of its philosophy in OTT voice-overs.
Ad Astra is just a bad film (https://redfiona99.dreamwidth.org/1406097.html). It had pretensions to being hard sci-fi but had fire with no convection, and three photos of Europa at different angles and in different colours pretending to be Kuiper Belt Objects.
The film has sudden moments of violence, and a large number of character deaths, which play out so bizarrely that there's a distinct feeling of bleak, absurdist comedy underneath, and I don't think that's deliberate (I wouldn't mind it so much if it was deliberate).
The scene itself:
Much though I am tempted to go with the "Baboon of Doom" scene, because until the killer is revealed to be a crazed baboon, that's actually scary, I am going to go with a shot when McBride (Brad Pitt) first arrives on the moon, and looks in disgust at how, instead of it being the magnificent moon, it's been turned into just another city (complete with Vegas neon cowboy sign). It's as close as I've ever seen in film to the Douglas Adams bit about how time travel has ruined the past.
Why the scene is so good:
They do that with one look and some set design. We're shown and not told in a film that does the rest of its philosophy in OTT voice-overs.
