AC9: Random Movie Review - The Space Between Us

So as someone who loves sci-fi, I am a firm believer that with the right stuff, we can find a habitable planet in Mars. Its not going to be an easy task by any means, but it means that we can live on two planets and we would have a back up should one planet get destroyed. Part of that concept is explored in this film and while its not the main focus of the film, it gives many of us some form of hope that it could very well happen. Well we shall see. For now let's look at this film and see if the concept can realistically happen:

Set in the near future (depending on what year you see this), a man called Nathaniel Shepard (played by the legendary Gary Oldman) is the head of a space company named Genesis and sends a team of astronauts on a mission to colonise Mars. But when its revealed that one of the astronauts is pregnant, she gives birth to a baby boy, but dies from eclampsia. Trying to avoid a PR nightmare, Nathaniel agrees to keeping the child on Mars as a secret in the hopes to have it be the first newborn to be raised on Mars. Around 16 years later, the boy who calls himself Gardner Elliot (played by Asa Butterfield) has been raised on Mars and has only come to know 14 people during his time. Hoping to learn more of his mother, he hacks into one of the terminals to find her things and comes across a USB drive. On the drive is a video of his mother (played by Janet Montgomery) and an unknown man who Gardner believes is his father. And so he sets out to find him on Earth and gets some help in the process.

It is quite a nice, but also a tough film to watch. Nice in that its a romantic story that is one of the bearable ones which is good. And tough in that it brings about the problems someone living on Mars can face when entering a brand new planet. Its not a fantastic film by any means, but it does give us a realistic version of what a human colony on Mars could look like so anyone who believes it like I do can certainly hope that it happens. Its probably worth just the one sit through at least, but whether you choose to watch it again or not is up to you. 7/10