What’s your bluff limit? You know, your bluff limit. The point to which you are willing to overextend your actual abilities. Maybe yours is pretty low – maybe you’d never want the stress of exaggerating what you can do to get somewhere which may be rather stressful. Or, maybe you like the thrill of chancing your arm, seeing where it gets you – because it could get you very far. The third possibility is that there’s no plan – just a willingness to see what might happen – if no one susses you out, that is. See what you can do, and make your excuses later, if necessary. Brilliant careers have no doubt been forged this way.
This brings us to AstroNots (2024), and the cockpit of the Ares 7. With the planet being in the state it is, the Ares is headed to Mars to scope out the possibility of terraforming the red planet: it’s a once-in-a-lifetime voyage in terms of its significance, so perhaps we can forgive Commander Thomas Collins (Adam Dunn) for running through the speech he’s hoping will go down in history. If optics were important in the Sixties, then they’re surely more important today, when everything is so dependent on public approbation – and when humanity itself depends on the mission. And yet, co-pilot Abe Adams (Aaron Glenane) doesn’t seem particularly excited. He doesn’t even have a speech prepared. Instead, he’s turning into a mess of snot and tears; he isn’t ready for this. Tom, who presumably starts out here wanting to avoid a long-term trip with someone given to panic attacks, keeps him calm. Remember your training, he reassures him. You have trained for this. You’re good.
Well, yeah – he’s trained for this in that he’s somehow got the boxes ticked and the certificates framed, but Adams is ready – with a couple of minutes to go until the launch – to confess that he is, if not the worst choice for the co-pilot seat, then certainly quite high on that list. His training has consisted of crashing things, breaking things and failing to understand the basics. Sure, he got through, but go to Mars? He’s upset because the crushing weight of realisation has hit him. He has overstepped his bluff limit by a staggering margin. So now what? What are they going to do?
As Tom talks him up and Abe talks himself back down, we get a sense of a neat script with a few nice moments of verbal trickery, but there’s more to AstroNots than just being an interesting farce. It has a gently serious punchline, but it also pokes timely fun at the fact that maybe very few of our motivations are selfless these days. Even Tom Collins, named for the drink he could probably use, is more given to ideas of his own reputation and legacy; he’s just as guilty, at a few points, of being willing to overlook more pressing concerns.
But the real joke – and the film’s heaviest moment – is saved for the end: here, the cockpit becomes a microcosm for a world where people like the ideas of things, but not so much the dedication and hard graft which go along with it. Sometimes, you just have to make do. This central conceit is nicely handled by director Andrew Seaton, alongside Dunn and Glenane, who are also the writers here. As to what happens to Collins and Adams? Well, watch this space because if plans come to pass, then there’ll be another instalment in a different format…
AstroNots will screen on 22nd July as part of the Fantasia International Film Festival.