3022: Worthy Entry in a Bleak Genre

For some reason, 3022 is the second movie I've seen in as many weeks about astronauts stranded in deep space, unable to return to an unexpected dead or dying Earth. The Midnight Sky was the first, and both reprise Arch Oboler's (great name) masterful Night of the Auk from the 1950s.   I loved Oboler's play, but I'm generally not a fan of these apocalypse astronaut scenarios.   But like The Midnight Sky, 3022 gave me some reasons to like it.

First and foremost, Omar Epp's performance as John Laine, captain of one of the crews out there in the solar system, was really excellent.  So was Kate Walsh as Jackie Miller, engineer and in a romantic relationship with Laine.  Believability, dependent on actors providing the requisite range of human emotions, is essential in these kinds of life-and-death stories in outer space, and Epps and Walsh are up to the task.

Now one of the reasons I generally don't care for these end-of-the-world astronaut stories is that scant or no reason is given for why the Earth is kaput.  The Midnight Sky didn't, and neither did 3022.  Night of the Auk, by the way, did -- nuclear war.

So with the action on Earth a fait accomplis, we're left with the people in space in 3022 to tell us a captivating story.   The usual narrative, which we've seen many times, are the long-term effects life in space has on the body and mind, and even the soul.  We get a good rendition of this in 3022, with happy astronauts evolving towards falling to pieces.

I won't tell you the very end, which we get in the very last minute.  But I will recommend 3022 as a worthy entry in a bleak genre.   Good writing by Ryan Binaco, good directing by John Suits, as well as the fine acting.

first starship to Alpha Centauri ... and they only had enough fuel to get there

The Midnight Sky: Uplifting Downer

Well, you couldn't ask for a better movie than The Midnight Sky in these our Covid-ridden times.  An Earth, in the year 2049, in even far worse shape than ours.  Just about everyone on the planet dead, due to some kind of planet-wide catastrophe.  A spaceship returning home to Earth from a habitable moon of Jupiter, unaware of what they are returning to.  A very sick scientist on Earth, desperately marshalling his last energies to contact them, and tell the ship to turn around.

You know what?  I think this movie, directed by and starring George Clooney, was a superb movie, and would've been outstanding, in any time, Covid or not.  In other words, I strongly disagree with the one myopic critic, in Variety, I think, whom I happened to read yesterday, who panned the movie.

The idea of a spaceship returning to a dying Earth -- an Earth that was fine when the ship took off -- as at least as old Arch Oboler's 1956 Broadway play Night of the Auk.  That was a masterpiece, too.  It's a powerful theme, one that combines the heights and the deadly failures of human civilization.  I haven't read the 2016 novel by Lily Brooks-Dalton, Good Morning, Midnight, on which Mark L. Smith's screenplay is based, so I can't tell you who deserves credit for what.  But I can say the narrative was powerful and plausible, and very well directed by Clooney,

Truthfully, despite the many things that have gone very wrong in our world, in reality, I'm much more of an optimist about our planet's future than either Auk or Midnight Sky allow.  But I'm always up for a provocative downer like his, if it's done right.  Clooney was just right as Augustine.  The spaceship crew were just right, too -- Kyle Chandler as Mitchell, determined to go back so he can at least be close to his family, gave one of his best performances in years.  Felicity Jones, David Oyelowo, Damian Bichir (from The Bridge!), and Tiffany Boone as the rest of the crew were good, too.

[Spoilers below]

As to the fine point of the plot --  Sully on the ship is really Augustine's daughter, and the little girl who shows up and both inspires and protects Augustine is just his vision of her (my wife realized this early in the movie)-- well, sure, it was a little hoaky, but I think that worked very well, too.   And the remaining big questions, like what kind of life will Sully and Adewole have with their baby on that moon around Jupiter, are ok, too.  Because, I would recommend, if there is a sequel, that it turns out there are some humans alive with sophisticated tech back on Earth.

But, again I'm an optimist at heart.  I don't know if you are, but see The Midnight Sky, and see what you think.

first starship to Alpha Centauri ... and they only had enough fuel to get there