AD ASTRA

AD ASTRA. James Gray, director, co-script with Ethan Gross, producer (along with seven others, including Brad Pitt). Kevin Thompson, production design. Brad Pitt, Tommy Lee Jones, Ruth Negga, featured players. Twentieth-Century Fox, one production company and US distribution, 2019. See IMDb for highly complex production and distribution.[1]

Quest for the Father story, with some degree of the Atonement part and other key elements of the Quest/Odyssey ("Monomyth") pattern.[2] Relevant here for containment within space craft and underground or otherwise-protected installations on Earth's Moon and Mars. There is one scene of a deadly Moon-buggy chase for a different sort of military vehicle and take on future warfare, or piracy, and a fair number of the traditional hexagons (a visual trope in SF films and video).[3]

In his periodic reminder to audiences and film-makers that he's not just a pretty face and celebrity, Pitt delivers a master-class on close-in acting (cf. and contrast MAROONED).