Most of the major A-list stars delve into the world of science fiction multiple times. George Clooney was in Solaris, Gravity, Tomorrowland, and The Midnight Sky. Matt Damon was in Titan A.E., The Adjustment Bureau, Elysium, The Zero Theorem, Interstellar, The Martian, and Downsizing. Scarlett Johansson has The Island, The Prestige, Under the Skin, Her, Lucy, Ghost in the Shell, Asteroid City, Transformers One, and Jurassic World Rebirth under her belt. And that’s just if we’re not including the superhero genre as sci-fi. But there’s one top-tier, major, bankable movie star who actually hasn’t found himself in sci-fi all that often.
Videos by ComicBook.com
That would be Brad Pitt. But he has contributed to the genre, twice in films that are straightforward sci-fi and twice in movies that have sci-fi elements but aren’t quite full-on members of the genre. Let’s rank them, both in term of overall quality and how important they were to his career.
4) World War Z
It seems we’re finally getting a sequel to World War Z, but time will tell if it picks up where the 2013 film’s narrative left off. Probably not, considering it’s not a particularly beloved film, though it did make a respectable enough amount of money and received a marginally positive response from critics.
The issue with World War Z is that it wears its reshoot issues on its sleeves. The ending is nonsensical and anti-climactic but even before then it’s not all that involving. It kind of just moves from one “run from the fast zombies” scene to the next. As for Pitt’s Gerry Lane, he’s so underwritten that he could have been played by any actor, including one with less range who is far less expensive. There’s a good chance that’s the direction the sequel goes, and we’d be hard-pressed to say that a lack of Pitt would be a total dealbreaker.
Stream World War Z on Paramount+.
3) Ad Astra
Ad Astra has a lofty concept at its core yet an intimate focus. It’s fairly hard sci-fi but, at the end of the day, it’s really about a complex father-son dynamic.
Oddly enough, it’s when the movie isn’t focusing on the sci-fi half of itself that it’s at its strongest. Furthermore, for anyone expecting some bombast (not an unfair expectation given its big budget and gloss), this isn’t the sci-fi movie for you. Dare we say it can actually be slow at times. But in terms of emotional payoff, Ad Astra does quite well in the third act.
Stream Ad Astra on fuboTV.
2) The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is not David Fincher’s best movie, and that’s coming from someone who thinks he may very well be the best director alive. It’s visually impressive and thematically rich, but it’s also extremely long and verges on being saccharine fairly often.
But one must give it to Benjamin Button for its ambition as well as the fact that it is one of the best displays of Pitt’s range on his entire filmography. This was his second acting-related Academy Award nomination, and the first for Best Actor. As for his first Oscar nomination, it just so happens to be coming up next.
Stream The Curious Case of Benjamin Button on Netflix.
1) 12 Monkeys
Terry Gilliam’s works can be so cerebral and, well, out there that they’re not necessarily accessible on the macro scale. 12 Monkeys, however, has a little bit of something for everyone. It also features Pitt’s best performance to date, regardless of genre.
Considering it follows a prisoner sent back in time to find the origin of a humanity-annihilating virus, only to end up in the wrong year, it’s not the type of movie where you’re likely to get everything on the first viewing. Thankfully, it’s the type of movie that doesn’t just reward rewatches but holds up on rewatches. Pitt’s energetic work as Jeffrey Goines is as much to thank for that as Gilliam’s ambition and style. This is one of the most thought-provoking movies of the ’90s, and is one of the three movies of its decade that proved Bruce Willis was a very reliable presence in sci-fi (the other two being The Fifth Element and Armageddon, which wasn’t a great movie by any stretch of the imagination but was bolstered by his presence).
Most Viewed
-
Image courtesy of Marvel Studios.
