The Sad Man in Space is back! He was last seen orbiting our cinemas five years ago, when the average big-screen astronaut was less inclined to explore strange new worlds or fight bug-eyed monsters than to sit in a tin can feeling sorry for himself. Ryan Gosling was grief-stricken in First Man, Brad Pitt had issues in Ad Astra, Robert Pattinson was in low spirits in High Life, and Matthew McConaughey sobbed his eyes out in Interstellar, to name just four of the men who were lost in space in more ways than one. Floated around in zero gravity, but weighed down by their woes, they were so common that critics coined the terms “Sad Man in Space”, “Sad Dad in Space”, and “Sadstronauts” to describe them, while various articles traced the sub-genre back to Tarkovsky’s Solaris via Duncan Jones’s Moon. Being thousands of miles from home, separated from every other living being by cold, dark emptiness … this, film-makers realised, was a handy metaphor for being a bloke.
Now another Sadstronaut is on the launchpad. Earlier this week, Netflix debuted the first trailer for Spaceman, a science-fiction drama that premieres at the Berlin film festival in February. Adapted from Jaroslav Kalfar’s novel, Spaceman Of Bohemia, it stars Adam Sandler as Jakub, the titular astronaut – and you know it’s one of Sandler’s serious outings, because he’s got a beard. Jakub is on a solo mission through the solar system to investigate a mysterious dust cloud, but his main preoccupations seem to be his aching loneliness, his existential angst, and his separation from his pregnant wife, played by Carey Mulligan. His malaise is so severe that he has to talk it over with an enormous super-intelligent spider which is either an alien or a figment of his imagination. “I wish to assist you in your emotional distress,” says the spider, an offer which was never forthcoming from the Klingons. Judging by the mood of the trailer, it’s not likely that Sam Ryder’s euphoric Eurovision anthem, Space Man, will be on the soundtrack.
