“Ad Astra” when translated from latin means “to the stars,” and that is an accurate title to represent the movie that portrays a futuristic space drama. Ad Astra, a film that came out not to long ago, follows the story of Roy McBride, who is in search for his missing father, who he believes is dead. Brad Pitt portrays this character beautifully, and acts to get across a deeper meaning to the audience. Some may think that a space movie is just not possible to have an influence on society, but the direction in this movie allows for just that.
Roy McBride follows in the footsteps of his father, and becomes a well known astronaut. He gets informed that his father may be alive, and gets sent to find him. In his journey, he finds out that he is going to be used to locate his father, and a team was gonna go and destroy the operation he has been working on even if his father dies in the process. The operation is going to cause serious harm to earth, and can only be stopped if destroyed. When Roy finds out about this operation, he begins to wonder if he will defy all orders of staying back and going after his father. The truth unfolds that his dad has killed anyone who went to the operation site with him, just to further his exploration. After finding all this out Roy still decides to sneak onto a rocket and look for his dad.
When he finds him, Roy realizes that the man he thought he knew is gone, and that he is this monster that everyone is saying he is. Roy struggles with the dilemma to leave his father to die, or to save planet earth. It is a struggle of right and wrong, but not so easy having the wrong be your father. Roy realizes that his father’s wrong cannot be corrected, and realizes that there’s more to this and decides to leave his father and go after his ex-wife. He realizes not to live in the past and to move towards creating a better future.
In today’s society, we are dealing with issues in our past. From having our leaders falling into past behaviors, or society falling into the same mentality they had when this world was struggling for equality. Through the changes we have seen throughout the years, we see this change omnipresent in society, but slowly we see challenges to these new ideals.
This movie reflects where we stand in society today. People know whats right and wrong when it comes to principles have become accepted by society, and still try to oppose them. People hang on to the way things were because they believe change is bad, and that accepting change will be difficult. Roy made the change he was struggling with and choose to accept the things he learned about his past, and use them to make his future better and be one that reflects what he should be doing. People need to let go of the past along with the judgement they have based on societal standards, and move towards a future that is inclusive and changes to be better for everyone.
Leave a Reply