Brad Pitt Goes Looking For His Deadbeat Astronaut Dad In The First Trailer For ‘Ad Astra’

Over the last few years, Brad Pitt has slowly shifted his public image.

No longer interested in the hunky leading man roles that once defined his career, he’s transformed into one of Hollywood’s most compelling and understated character actors — all grizzled chops and hard stares. When he does take centre stage, it’s usually as an ornery old loner — think Netflix’s bizarre War Machine, for instance, or his masterpiece, the all-time classic The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford — but even that is getting rarer and rarer these days.

Most of the time, he seems content to show up in amusing, ultra brief cameos, or to get back to his real love, producing (he’s one of the men behind 12 Years A Slave, and Moonlight director Barry Jenkins’ If Beale Street Could Talk.)

For that reason, every time a Pitt vehicle comes along we should celebrate it. And wouldn’t you know it, the trailer for one has just dropped — a melancholy sci-fi film from director James Gray called Ad Astra.

Plot details for the new film are pretty vague, but here’s what we know: Brad Pitt plays an astronaut whose deadbeat dad, played by Tommy Lee Jones, has disappeared into the vast recesses of space following a routine mission. Now, it seems clear that whatever Jones was sent up into space to do has gone horribly wrong, and is causing electrical surges to come rippling through the galaxy and having profound effects on Earth.

To that end, NASA decide that the best person to make contact with Jones and bring him back to Earth is his own son. Cue doleful stares, lots of spaceships, and an actual car chase on the surface of the moon.

Basically, it looks like exactly the kind of vehicle that Pitt excels at these days — a mediative, beautiful reflection on old age and the passage of time.

We’ll find out for sure when it hits Australian cinemas on September 19.