Ad Astra’s Brad Pitt vs Gravity’s George Clooney – who played an astronaut better?
- Promoting his new sci-fi thriller, Pitt had plenty of questions for Nasa – including probing which Hollywood actor made the most convincing spaceman: Pitt, Clooney or Matt Damon?
When Brad Pitt is on a panel with officials from US space agency Nasa, he’s the one with the questions.
We’re usually dealing with benevolent aliens who are going to impart some wisdom, or they’re going to destroy us and we have to stand up and fight. But this question of, what if we’re actually alone? … What does that mean? Are we missing something?
“If we were going to make a trip to Mars, we would have to take off from the moon, because of the lack of gravity?”, he hesitantly asked spacesuit engineer Lindsay Aitchison on September 16, as part of a Washington Post live event based on Pitt’s latest film, Ad Astra. Joining them were the writer-director James Gray, lunar scientist Sarah Noble and panel moderator Ann Hornaday, chief film critic at The Post.
Aitchison’s affirmative response (“It’s helpful”), coupled with a distilled scientific explanation, was characteristic of much of her and Noble’s responses to Pitt’s earnest questions. He was soon outdone by an inquisitive Gray, who explained his granular knowledge of Neil Armstrong’s talk-show appearances by joking, “I don’t get out much”.
Gray’s commitment to portraying space with accuracy over allure is obvious throughout Ad Astra. The sci-fi thriller takes place in the near future and is centred on Major Roy McBride (Pitt), a skilled but emotionally jaded astronaut recruited to determine and shut down the source of unbridled energy causing destructive power surges throughout the solar system. The source is believed to be near Neptune, which happens to be the last known location of the Lima Project, a decades-old effort to discover extraterrestrial life commandeered by Roy’s father (Tommy Lee Jones).
Who was more believable, Clooney or Pitt?
Roy had long presumed his father to be dead, and the revelation that he might not be – and that the Lima Project might be causing the surges – leads Roy to embark on two journeys: the literal one to Neptune, and an equally harrowing exploration of solitude.
“I can’t think of any other film that actually meditates on that topic,” Pitt said. “We’re usually dealing with benevolent aliens who are going to impart some wisdom, or they’re going to destroy us and we have to stand up and fight. But this question of, what if we’re actually alone? … What does that mean? Are we missing something?”
Given that Pitt is largely seen on-screen alone, the film often forgoes interpersonal conversations as a means of establishing Roy’s head space throughout the journey and favours voice-overs pulled from the daily psychological evaluations Roy must complete. During the panel, Hornaday drew a parallel between this method and the narrative technique Francis Ford Coppola employed in Apocalypse Now.