Fans of Christopher Nolan’s Inception have a movie coming to Netflix that should be of interest. There is a new Chinese sci-fi blockbuster starring Dylan Wang that is set for a Netflix release, and it shares a lot in common with Inception. As a reminder, Inception was a Nolan 2010 sci-fi movie about a group of heist specialists who could break into someone’s mind and unlock secrets for clients. While in the mind, the laws of physics no longer matter, and the entire world changes based on either planned events or emotional changes in the mind itself. That idea of toying with the mind plays out in the new Netflix movie, Per Aspera Ad Astra.
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Per Aspera Ad Astra is a Chinese sci-fi adventure film coming to Netflix, and it takes some of the ideas from Inception and gears them toward younger audiences. Directed by Han Yan, the movie stars Dylan Wang (Meteor Garden, Love Between Fairy and Devil) and Victoria Song (Find Yourself, Lover or Stranger) in the lead roles.
What Can Fans Expect From Per Aspera Ad Astra?
Per Aspera Ad Astra takes place in the near future on a colonizing spaceship where a new revolutionary virtual dream system called “Sweet Dreams LM” exists. This allows people to step into fully customized dream worlds to effortlessly live out their fantasies without suffering neural damage. Of course, in sci-fi movies with these themes, everything goes wrong when people end up trapped in their shifting dreamscapes. Sweet Dreams administrator Xu Tianbiao (Dylan Wang) teams up with spaceship Captain Li Simeng (Victoria Song) to fight to get them out, but they end up diving deep into these dream-like realities. It sounds a lot like what the visual dynamics of Inception looked like.
Netflix even refers to it as “Inception meets high-stakes interstellar exploration, packed to the brim with state-of-the-art visual effects and thrilling anti-AI undertones.” Per Aspera Ad Astra was already released in China during the highly competitive Spring Festival earlier in 2026. It also received a small release in the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. Now, Netflix has scooped it up for the international release on the streaming service, with a June 18th release date. It will be available with its original Mandarin audio alongside subtitle options.
There haven’t been many reviews for the new sci-fi movie, but those who did review it have been positive. There are three critics’ reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, all positive. One critic said that this “zippy odyssey of mind-melding maximalism is the ultimate trip.” Another said that “every new dreamworld is an intricately detailed masterpiece of someone’s imagination, and a wonder to behold.” Finally, a third review wrote that it’s “a super fun thrill ride about the importance of people over machines.”
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