The Space Between Us

The Space Between Us (2017) is about the first person born on Mars. His astronaut mother dies giving birth, he grows up inside the colony, and he has never seen Earth by the time he is sixteen. He talks to a girl he met online and eventually gets himself to Earth. The problem is that his body was formed in low gravity, and Earth's pull strains his heart. The film rests on that medical constraint and it is a good idea: the hero cannot stay where he wants to be, because being there is killing him. Peter Chelsom directed. Asa Butterfield plays the boy, Britt Robertson the girl, and Gary Oldman the founder of the colony programme. It failed commercially and its release was pushed back several times, from August 2016 to December and then to February 2017. It runs 121 minutes. Good for: young adult romance, space flavoured melodrama, and Asa Butterfield. Less good for: the scientific premise is abandoned entirely after the first half hour and the film becomes an ordinary road movie. The characters make irrational decisions repeatedly and the revelation at the end is visible from the start.