The Midnight Sky

 

The Midnight Sky (Netflix)

The Midnight Sky is like getting a Christmas present  wrapped in fancy paper but when you open it you find pair of socks. The fancy wrapping paper in this case is the impressive cast. The socks is the plot. Most doomsday films end either in a cataclysm or salvation. Here the earth ends from tediousness.  

 George Clooney is the lead actor and he also directs. The astronauts are Felicity Jones, Kyle Chandler and David Oyelowo with others. In search of a habitable planet to save humanity the astronauts  journey to one of Jupiter’s moons. Sci-fi  makes up its own realities and if you want to have fun you go along with it. Here a google search makes plot seem silly. Why go to Jupiter which takes six years one way when you can go to Mars in eight months? Also Mars has soil and maybe water.

Clooney is an ailing  scientist at an Artic observatory which is being evacuated.  Later on in the empty station he finds a mysterious little girl who was accidentally  been left behind. At first she does not talk and tags along with Clooney. This is the sad  Clooney unlike the suave Ocean’s Eleven Clooney. With grey hair and grey bread he tends to mumble a bit (put on subtitles). Nothing really happens until he shoots at some wolves. In the subzero artic all of a sudden the ice breaks opens and Clooney is swimming  under water. This is an obvious hint at global warming. It seems Clooney is impervious to hypothermia.

Felicity Jones is in the spaceship returning to earth with her husband David Oyelowo. She is well into her pregnancy. NASA spends billions on rocket ships but  can’t afford a few busks for condoms. Everything is harmonies in the ship and nothing much happens  until there is a meteorite strike.  The ship survives but one crew member dies. The best special effect is seeing what blood looks like in zero gravity. It looks like red Milk Dudds.

 Clooney tells the crew not to return to earth because of the catastrophic conditions. So they turn around and make another six years journey back to Jupiter. Are they the last vestiges of humanity? The film is heavily laden with green messaging, a somberness which permeates the movie. There is an a’ha moment in the end which sort of  comes from left  base. The one green thing this film does not have is bucks. It cost $100m and so far has made $63k. The positive thing about the film, if you have Netflix you do not have to pay for it.