Disappointing... Ultimately feels like an infomercial for Elon Musk.

Return to Space is less about the particular value of setting up shop on Mars than it is about mankind’s need to keep moving forward. It’s a heartening and hopeful film about inventors and dreamers.

It’s fabulously watchable, even at 128 minutes, because we learn more about these humans than about their machines. Returning to space is about the dream of a better humanity, not just money. On that level it is good to invest a little hope.

That I had to constantly remind myself that Return to Space is real life — and not a big-budget spectacle — is as much an ode to new-age film-making as it is a lament on the luckiness of new-age viewing.