It's pretty on the nose, so I wish I'd investigated a bit further than noting that people had called it a movie about fathers and sons. Because if I'd read more than a paragraph of any review, I think the central metaphor of "guy travels to Neptune to have a conversation with his dad" would have smacked me in the face in print just as thoroughly as it did on screen and we could have seen something that didn't result in such an awkward conversation afterward.

I really enjoyed it though. It was kind of thrilling to watch them pull off something close and emotionally intimate in the furthest reaches of space. Any complaint I had while watching it was kind of turned upside-down throughout. Seemed like the emotional backstory was a bit underwritten at times, but that meant leaning on some really good actors *and* letting my imagination freight the story with some additional metaphors. Not just fathers and sons, but Boomer fathers and Gen-X sons. Not just Boomer fathers and Gen-X sons, but the grand world-building experiment of post-war liberalism and the ultimate emptiness of trying to, uh, transcend the idea of transcendence. And a truly Augustinian antagonist who needs to die alone before he ever gets to his "late have I loved you" moment.

Anyhow, it was brave to let a dummy viewer like me stuff all of that into the story, because outside of the fucked up father/son narrative all you've really got to go on is Brad Pitt's marvelously flat evaluations of his interior state and Tommy Lee Jones working the shit out of the lines on his face. That's some generous movie making.

Could have used more Ruth Negga. I mean, not really because they almost should have made this with only two characters. But that's my permanent reaction to seeing her on screen because she's wonderful so I'm going to stick to it whether it makes sense here or not.

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"Walleye, a lot of things are going to go wrong in your life that technically aren't your fault. Always remember that this doesn't make you any less of an idiot"

--Walleye's Dad