Just watched the Mainland Chinese movie ***Per Aspera Ad Astra*** on Netflix. It’s the summer movie I’ve been wanting.
It had a cinematic release earlier this spring and was released on Netflix June 18th.
While set in space, it’s focused on virtual reality and AI. Some have described as a mix of EEAAO and The Matrix. I’d add in a fair dose of high concept Star Trek too.
It’s a fun ride with a good message. Highly recommend it for sci-fi fans looking for a well executed story with competent problem solving and positive values.
Dylan Wang He Di, Victoria Song Qian and Wang Duo deliver a compelling and action packed tale. While I watched with subtitles because the cast all voiced their own parts in the original Mandarin, the English language dub is reportedly excellent. I found the special effects well done (but would really welcome the views of experts here including @virtualbri).
Here’s the synopsis from Netflix:
*An AI system lets people live their dreams during space travel, but when a crisis arises a technician must enter the dreamscape to save the passengers.
And here’s a translation of the original promotion for the movie:\
*High school student Zhang Qi Meng, focused on preparing for exams, is pulled out of the examination hall by a stranger named Brother Biao, who breaks through the window. He is then informed of a shocking fact: his world is just a virtual metaverse program. In reality, Qi Meng is an astronaut in hibernation, and at this moment, disaster is rapidly approaching their spaceship...*
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Sometimes there’s very consistent tone — Mobius is a good example of tight and consistent tone.
But many in other cases there can be jarring juxtapositions in tone.
Shows that start out as slapstick or Lucille Ball type comedies may become very dark and serious in the third quarter.
Sometimes a comedy is defined only by the protagonists not dying in the end and a ‘happily ever after outcome.’ More in the vein of an Ancient Greek definition of comedy.
And more like Shakespeare’s theatre, there can be moments of outright comic relief in the midst of 40 episode nonstop tragedy.
Then, there are the comic non sequitur comments — especially about food preferences— in the middle of fight scenes that originated in Hong Kong action movies (Per Aspera Ad Astra references those).
That’s quite fascinating! I want to watch Three Body Problem at some point but I want to read the series first before watching the adaptation.
Is Mobius something you recommend?
As I noted to someone else, Mobius is a current day timey-wimey scifi action thriller available on Netflix. I thought it was very well done.
It’s about a police detective sergeant who possesses the ability to relive some (unpredictably random) days and uses it in solving crimes.
It takes place in Macau, so there’s some Cantonese and English mixed in with the Mandarin although the lead actor Bai Jingting is ethnically Manchu and from Beijing.
Bai Jingting has done quite a few scifi dramas recently. Another timey-wimey one Reset takes place mainly in the Chinese Republican era — with all the angsty spy-stuff and factional twists of that era — and was also on Netflix. (It’s no longer available in Canada but may still be on in the USA.)