The Midnight Sky review
There have been some incredible additions to the sci-fi genre in recent years — Star Wars: The Last Jedi, The Martian and Avengers: Endgame just to name a few. Unfortunately, this isn’t one of them.
The film follows scientist, Augustine Lofthouse — played by George Clooney — following an unknown cataclysmic event on Earth. It’s never confirmed that he’s the only human left on the planet, and he does find a child — played by Caoilinn Springall — hiding in the base he’s living in. but at the very least he’s one of the few that survived, and he’s the only Earth-bound adult character we meet.
Aether is a crewed space mission detecting whether one of Jupiter’s moons, K-23 is habitable, but they’re now on their way back to Earth, unknowing of the unlivable state the planet is now in. They’ve lost communication with Earth, but assume it’s an issue with the ship. Lofthouse tries to warn the crew not to return, but his antenna is too weak so he sets out on a dangerous journey to another base with a stronger antenna.
Interspersed with Lofthouse’s struggles as he tries to reach the other base on a snowmobile, we are introduced to the Aether crew. Sully — played by Felicity Jones — is the main astronaut we follow. She’s pregnant with her partner who is also an astronaut on the ship, Commander Adewole — played by David Oyelowo. Unfortunately, we don’t get to see their relationship much at all, nor do we get to see the relationships with other crew members as much as you’d hope.
In fact, this is something that plagues the film all the way through. When emotional scenes happen, it’s difficult to feel sad as you have very little attachment to any character. The movie is essentially a 50/50 split between Lofthouse and the crew. It may have worked better if 70% of the film was based around Aether.
There are parts of Lofthouse’s story that felt unnecessary. Flashbacks turned out to be important for the ending, but during the film they seemed off-putting and they didn’t fit. There are also questions over whether the story needed to show his journey from one base to another, or whether it could have started with him at the base with the stronger antenna. This would have given more time to focus on the Aether crew.
The ship itself has a lot of potential, looking modern and unique to other ships we see in sci-fi movies. The way in which crew members could put themselves into memories with their family and friends in particular, is a lovely touch.
Having said that, there were issues with the story unfolding on the ship too. At one point, they get hit by space rocks and take damage. Some of the astronauts need to do a space walk to fix the ship, and Sully (who is heavily pregnant, remember) is one of these astronauts. There is little to no argument about her joining the space walk, not even from the father of the unborn baby. It’s unrealistic to think this wouldn’t be something that would at the very least be questioned.
All in all, you can see the idea of translating this novel to the screen should have stayed as just that — an idea. Whether the execution was wrong, or this story will never work on screen is to be debated. For example, perhaps a series would have worked better. But as a film, it is empty, flat and is missing any real connection with the viewer.
Hannah Parker
