Ad Astra: Cor Tenebrae edit

First off, thanks to Last Impressions for the work put into this edit and for sharing it. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Overall this edit is a substantial improvement over the official release. While I enjoyed the original theatrical cut, it failed for me once Roy McBride (Brad Pitt's character) is alone on the ship traveling from Mars to Neptune. The director, editor, and sound designers' attempt to manufacture phycological tension here never worked for me. What Last Impressions does to refine this scene is a minor miracle, and the rest of the movie is better for it!

Constructive criticism:
The overall theme/thesis of the film is that what we have: Earth, humanity, our solar system, our relationships are all there is, and we should appreciate them instead of looking for more. I'd like to see Roy starting to appreciate the world around him. The character journey the film wants is the evolution of a man so focused on his work he loses sight, like his father, of all the beauty around him. If his change is more apparent and gradual then Roy verbalizing this realization at the end of his journey will land with greater resonance. The film does a decent job with this already, and Last Impressions improves upon it, but there is room for further refinement.

Example:
When Roy travels across the lunar surface, there could be a few additional or extended moments of wonder. i.e. A CU of the earth when they turn to admire it. Let the moon dust scene last a little longer. Tightening those moments to Roy seeing them.

Another opportunity would be letting there be more space, both time and visually, during the travel from the Moon to Mars; this is also a global note for me. I found that a touch too much 'breathing room' has been cut from the film throughout. We don't get to sit with the aftermath of events as much as I think the character needs. A lot of what is happening in the film is internal to Roy's character, and we need time for him to absorb and slowly change. To me, everything on Mars felt rushed. Roy's change from calm to frazzled overall. Not hearing him trying to communicate with his father multiple times resulted in me not buy Roy going against orders and changing his tactics.

Two cuts that didn't work for me.

One:
The first cut that didn't work for me is from arriving at the rocket to leave the moon to Tomas Pruitt (Donald Sutherland) having a heart attack. I don't immediately have a solution though several thoughts have crossed my mind. On the other hand, going from three rovers to one did work as there felt like a passage of time.

Two:
The second is the shot of Roy giving Donald Stanford (Loren Dean) oxygen on the ship after leaving Mars. (Spoiler) I think simply cutting from the ship taking off and the astronauts slamming into the back of the ship to the ship in space and three dead astronauts being released into it would work a lot better.

I love the ending!

To anyone who reads this, I highly recommend this cut of the film. The plot, character development, pace (for the most part), and score are significantly improved.

Thanks again to Last Impressions for creating this edit. It will be my go-to version of the movie and unlike the original already leaves me with a desire to watch it again!

Thoroughly enjoyed watching this and transformed this film into one that is more grounded and improved. Many thanks for putting this one together.

This was near perfection for me… What an experience the film becomes, with this edit!

Other reviewers have talked here about the plot changes, which definitely worked for me. I’d highlight the removal of the pirate attack (why and how would that even work…), the gun firing (they should know why that’s a bad idea in the first place…) and the rest of the scene around it, because the way it’s edited now changes the character building for the better.
Most importantly, the removal of the “shock wave surfing” at the end, which was baffling for me. I mean, do the original authors even though for 1 second about physics… And the new ending, it really works like this.

The highpoint of the edit is, without a doubt, the score. It reminded me of another fanedit, “Annihilation - Noitalihinna” (by The Scribbling Man) which was also trying to rescore the film to recover the theme of the original story/book.

The audio experience is now, throughout the entire film, haunting, melancholic, evocative, poignant, discomfiting, ethereal… It both elevates and guides the story and the feelings evoked by it.

Let me say it: when I watched the original film before, I decided that I never needed to watch it again, it had too many flaws in-between the good parts. Now, I predict I’ll rewatch this version a number of times, probably after any sci-fi film that tries and fails to do what this fanedit now does: to tell a science fiction story that is more about looking thoughtfully to ourselves than anything else.

This is a near perfect fix of a movie that I would never have considered re-watching. I found so much of the original to be strange and uncompelling, and I actually wondered if he was autistic rather than abandoned. I mean I suppose it could be both but in this cut his closed off disconnected nature clearly comes from his father's abandonment, as I'm sure it was intended to be.

I have nothing to add regarding the actual editing because it is technically perfect. The only thing I noticed, which I'm not sure if it was in the original, was a reused shot of him kicking his leg floating asleep during the 80-day trip to Neptune.

Putting in the effort to actually go read a book to inform your decisions on the narrative was above and beyond, and it shows. Even your rationalization for keeping the monkey part (a bit which I personally found completely ludicrous) made it somehow valuable to the overall experience. I doubt there would be a way to edit it out anyway given the Captain's fate but somehow it made more sense in your cut.

Also I can't tell you how happy I was to see that you removed the moon pirates. Like come on now, how would they even exist. They just have to wait for a car to come by so they can scavenge air?? Get outta here.

Overall you took a movie that annoyed, bored, and somewhat angered me and you actually made it into something I would watch for a now-third time. Well done!

I came across this fan edit after first seeing the movie in the theater and coming away baffled at how long and how meandering the theatrical versions turned out to be. Moon Pirates? Voice Overs? Space Surfing? This movie had the potential of being a great story about a man being so driven by being abandoned by his father and turning his fear and sorrow into his work to the degree that he lost his ability to touch base with humanity, only to find it again in the solitude of long term space travel in an effort to find and save his father. What he got instead was a overly long movie that didn't know if it wanted to be an action film, a film about losing a spouse due to coldness, or a space adventure.

This fan edit is a wonderful change from the above and created a whole new vision for the film. Now we have an astronaut, so caught up in the pain and loss of his father abandoning him as a child, that he is unable to connect with his wife due to driving that pain and loss into his work. With the opportunity to perhaps find his father, who he thought was dead, and bring him back home, and in the process reconnect with his own humanity and rekindle the relationship with his wife before it's too late, we have a movie that's streamlined and tells a straightforward story.

The fan editing in this edition is utterly flawless. The visuals are perfect as is the audio editing. The choice to rescore the movie for this fan edit was a bold but correct choice and serves it extremely well. Simply put, I feel this is how the movie was meant to be before the filmmakers got sidetracked in the editing room, making far too many baffling editing decisions that lost the focus of the story.

This is now my go to for this film, with the theatrical version being a companion piece only in how not to make the movie. If I could give this fan edit a score higher than 10 across the board, I would, but failing that, I can't recommend this fan edit enough. Well done.