My favorite piece of media to trash is the 2019 film “Ad Astra.” Advertised by trailers as another “The Martian”-esque space adventure featuring Brad Pitt (“Babylon”) as astronaut Roy McBride in search of his long-lost father, H. Clifford McBride (Tommy Lee Jones, “Men in Black 3”), “Ad Astra” seemed like the perfect weekend watch with three other friends.
Instead, we were met with disappointment-filled astronaut daddy issues. My friend who was interested in space exploration was sleeping. I was trying not to fall asleep at every arduously long CGI pan over space. My two other friends were roasting the dialogue. The couple next to us in the theater was crinkling hot dog tinfoil for extra special Foley effects. The most memorable scene was when Pitt got attacked by a space gorilla. It was the ideal movie-going experience.
After the screening, my two friends who were giggling about the movie’s plot holes joked that with the way I was concentrating so intently, I must have enjoyed it. I thought it was bad, but I did not have strong feelings beyond that. But I wouldn’t stand for these accusations, so I doubled down on my criticism. I made sure the review I was writing — which never lived to see the light of day in my high school newspaper since I turned it in late — was extra scathing. I scoured Rotten Tomatoes for critics’ reviews and sent them to my friends as rage bait. (Relative to how good the film actually was, some reviews acted as if director James Gray (“Armageddon Time”) had created a masterpiece on par with the Second Coming of “2001: A Space Odyssey,” so I still stand by my initial, mock, but somewhat serious, indignation at critics’ reviews). I held onto this grudge when I made my Letterboxd account two years later, changing my bio to explicitly diss “Ad Astra.”
“Ad Astra” is an inconsequential, mediocre movie that semi-flopped at the box office. There’s nothing about it that deserves excessive criticism or praise. My purported hatred of “Ad Astra” is surface-level at best, but it’s more interesting to lean into the ways that I disliked the film than to leave it at indifference.
This attitude also applies to the films that I claim to enjoy but secretly feel indifferent toward. The most recent culprit was “Past Lives.” During my initial 4 a.m. laptop screening from a sketchy pirated site, I finished the movie understanding the devastation of Hae Sung (Teo Yoo, “Decision to Leave”) but not feeling it. I struggled to suspend disbelief at the idea of both Nora (Greta Lee, “Problemista”) and Hae Sung longing for a childhood connection that didn’t seem like a deep-rooted connection in the first place. I gave it four stars on Letterboxd with the expectation that I would enjoy it more if I leaned into the aspects that people were praising during a second screening.
The second time around, after a short post-film chat with a couple of friends, I found myself getting defensive about the idea that Arthur (John Magaro, “The Big Short”) was cheated on or even placing the focus on him in the first place. In explaining my thought process, I finally felt like I appreciated writer-director Celine Song’s (debut) vision. It’s almost more convincing to me to see Hae Sung as a concept rather than an actual person, so “Past Lives” portraying all the complicated ways that Nora’s past lives and pieces of herself exist in the present became more convincing to me.
This might come off as faking my opinion or just going along with what everyone else says. Most of the time, my indifference toward a film stems from at least a little bit of indecision as to how to feel about it.
However, I’d like to think of this idea as buying into the value of the film. When I choose to lean into particular interpretations, I can analyze a film more deeply and develop a greater appreciation for it. “Ad Astra” is more fun when I get to send the occasional positive Letterboxd review to my friend to laugh about together five years later, as opposed to remembering it as a snooze fest. I ended up enjoying “Past Lives” after having that conversation with my friends, which has led me to better understand and envision interpretations from people who wholeheartedly love the film. My own praises and criticisms of these films are also more interesting when I have less of an opinion to start out, as opposed to when I truly hate something to the point where there’s no point in talking about it at all, or when I truly love a piece of media to the point where I’m speechless at its brilliance.
Choosing to hate — or not hate — art is invigorating and adds flavor when there really wasn’t anything noteworthy about the piece to begin with. I’m a hater by choice, not by circumstance, and it’s honestly more fun that way.
Daily Arts Writer Kristen Su can be reached at krsu@umich.edu.