The Big Picture

The Midnight Sky
, directed by George Clooney, is a beautiful sci-fi film with stunning visual effects and an existentialist theme.
Based on the novel
Good Morning, Midnight,
the film explores humanity’s survival instinct and the importance of teamwork in reaching a collective goal.

The Midnight Sky
showcases Clooney’s growth as a filmmaker, offering a unique narrative structure and challenging topics like extinction and depression.

Ever since his scene-stealing role in E.R., George Clooney seemed destined to be a major force to be reckoned with in Hollywood. Batman & Robin may have put a brief hold on his career, but through a series of collaborations with Steven Soderbergh, Clooney soon proved he was more of a versatile character actor than his good looks would suggest. While Clooney’s versatility led to positive working relationships with legendary filmmakers like Joel and Ethan Coen and Alexander Payne, he also became an ambitious director in his own right. A majority of his directorial work fell in the biopic genre, but Clooney also directed the heartbreaking post-apocalyptic space movie The Midnight Sky.

The Midnight Sky seemed to come and go without much attention, but it’s not hard to see why. It’s a film that features beautiful works of visual effects (which even received an Academy Award nomination), yet wasn’t available to be seen in theaters due to the theatrical shutdowns related to the COVID-19 virus. Additionally, audiences may have been skeptical about a cold, realistic version of a post-apocalyptic event when they were dealing with their own mental health issues during the height of the lockdown. Factors out of Clooney’s control prevented the film from getting the rollout it deserved. But The Midnight Sky is a beautiful examination of human achievement that shows just how grandiose the science fiction genre can be.

The Midnight Sky Release Date December 23, 2020 Runtime 118 minutes Main Genre Sci-Fi Writers Lily Brooks-Dalton , Mark L. Smith Expand

What Is ‘The Midnight Sky’ About?
Based on Lily Brooks-Dalton’s novel Good Morning, Midnight, The Midnight Sky centers on a reclusive scientist who serves as the last man on Earth as humanity searches for a new home. A disastrous event has obliterated the majority of life on Earth, forcing the few survivors to board experimental vessels and travel deep into the Solar System to seek out a new home. However, the awkward academic Augustine Lofthouse (Clooney) has dedicated his entire life to looking for life on other planets and knows that he will only be able to do his best work when he has all of Earth’s resources at his disposal. There’s also an emotional reason for Augustine’s self-imposed isolation; he broke up with his ex-lover, Jean Sullivan (Sophie Rundle), and has never met his daughter Sully (Felicity Jones).

The Midnight Sky is brilliantly structured, allowing the film to depict two very different aspects of humanity’s survival instinct. Much of the film focuses on Augustine as he befriends the young girl Iris (Caoilinn Springall), who lives in his bunker and subsequently looks to him as a paternal figure. However, there’s also a subplot involving Sully and the astronauts Adewole (David Oyelowo), Maya (Tiffany Boone), Sanchez (Demian Bichir), and Mitchell (Kyle Chandler) traveling through space, and occasionally calling Augustine for advice. Clooney does a great job at showing the dichotomy of responsibility that the two groups face; while Augustine is fighting to find a solution for humanity’s predicament that he will never benefit from, Sully and her team know that any failure on their part could result in the devastation of their entire species. It’s a dynamic depiction of heroism that shows the importance that teamwork plays in reaching a collective goal.

Netflix Was Aiming To Give ‘The Midnight Sky’ a Major Push, But the COVID-19 Pandemic Struck

Much of The Midnight Sky’s tone and structure is due to George Clooney’s approach to the material. Having previously starred in two sci-fi films, Gravity and Solaris, Clooney knew he had to deliver something different. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Clooney discussed how he convinced then-Netflix chief Scott Stuber to play along: “I said, ‘You know, Scott, I think I know how to do this one.’ And he said, ‘Really?’ And I said, ‘Look, yes, I would like to play the part, but I think I have a different take on it.’ A lot of it was about taking out a lot of the dialogue, because I felt like it was more of a meditation.” Clooney also underwent a physical transformation to play Augustine, including shaving his head and losing 25 pounds. The effect is startling; Clooney’s appearance in The Midnight Sky is a far cry from the usual suave characters he plays, but it shows that he was attempting to make his performance believable.

Netflix also threw its weight behind Clooney; the streamer intended to give The Midnight Sky a theatrical release in IMAX, with Clooney even shooting on specialized cameras in addition to using the StageCraft technology that The Mandalorian pioneered to create the snow-covered frontier where Augustine’s stationed. But the COVID-19 pandemic hampered those plans, with a muted theatrical release followed by an official Netflix debut. Clooney felt that The Midnight Sky, like any good sci-fi story, was timely due to its release date. “I wanted there to be some hopefulness in a fairly bleak story about the end of mankind,” he told Vanity Fair. Indeed, the movie does end on a hopeful note as Augustine plots a course for K-23, with his last moments dedicated to a vision of what the planet looks like.

‘The Midnight Sky’ Is an Existentialist Science Fiction Epic
Image via Netflix

It’s unfortunate that The Midnight Sky did not receive the theatrical distribution it deserved, as Clooney’s film is packed with gorgeous cinematography from Martin Ruhe that seemed destined to be seen in IMAX theaters. That being said, there was never any guarantee that The Midnight Sky was going to be a seismic box office hit either. Those expecting a rousing space opera in the vein of Star Wars or Guardians of the Galaxy may have been disappointed because The Midnight Sky is a much more contemplative style of science fiction, and feels closer in tone to 2001: A Space Odyssey or Clooney’s earlier work with Soderbergh on the 2002 remake of Solaris. At its heart, The Midnight Sky is an existentialist drama that questions why humans persevere when the odds are stacked against them.

While it’s a film that deals with challenging topics like extinction, depression, and broken families, The Midnight Sky shows how hopeful the sci-fi genre can be. The relationship that Clooney forms with Iris as they attempt to pass the time turns into a great way of injecting humor into the story; her role becomes more profound when it’s revealed that she is little more than Augustine’s vision of Sully, the daughter he will never meet. Although the notion of the two being separated is sad, the film finds an empowering way of showing how Sully is continuing her father’s legacy of experimentation and boldness.

‘The Midnight Sky’ Shows George Clooney’s Improvements as a Filmmaker

While his directorial debut, Good Night, and Good Luck, was met with universal acclaim, Clooney’s subsequent work as a director received more critical backlash. The overarching issue with his films Leatherheads, The Ides of March, Leatherheads, and The Monuments Men is that they told somewhat intriguing stories in the least interesting way imaginable. It would have been disappointing if Clooney spent the rest of his career working on generic biopics, but The Midnight Sky proved that he could be inventive when it came to form and structure. It hopefully won’t be the last time he dares to make a project with an ambiguous ending.

The Midnight Sky also marked a return to form for Clooney as an actor. While he often plays supporting roles in the films that he directs, his performance in The Midnight Sky was far more self-contained and obsessive than the more comedic roles he’s generally associated with. It’s great to see that The Midnight Sky was a project that challenged Clooney on two fronts.

The Midnight Sky is streaming on Netflix in the U.S.

Watch on Netflix