But when Gardner arrives on Earth, everything goes upside down-Nathaniel wants to observe him Kendra wants him to have a normal life and all Gardner wants to do is find his online chat buddy, Tulsa (Britt Robertson, of “A Dog’s Purpose”), who he has crushed on from afar. He’s so unhappy that astronaut Kendra Wyndham (Carla Gugino, of “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice”) encourages Nathaniel to let him come to Earth, even though his body, acclimated to life on Mars, may not survive the trip. “Keeping this a secret saves the company,” but it makes Gardner feel unloved and unwanted, desperate to escape Mars for a different life. When Sarah dies in childbirth, Gardner is kept a secret, raised by scientists on Mars and aware that no one on Earth knows about him back on Earth, Nathaniel withdraws from public view. When it was determined that she was pregnant, two months en route to Mars, the Genesis Space Technologies company led by visionary Nathaniel Shepherd (Gary Oldman, of “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes”), quick to criticize Sarah for behaving “irresponsibly,” decide to keep the pregnancy to themselves so that the PR whirlwind doesn’t tank the mission. “The Space Between Us” tells the story of 16-year-old Gardner Elliot (Asa Butterfield, of “Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children”) who was born on Mars his mother, lead astronaut Sarah Elliot (Janet Montgomery, of “Black Swan”) was part of a groundbreaking mission to East Texas, a development on Mars that was supposed to explore whether the planet could support long-term human life. Instead, this is a narrative about unworthy, duplicitous men ending up with intelligent, self-hating women and pretending it’s “love.” Young female viewers-weirdly the targeted demo for this movie, even though the plot seems to have been envisioned by a 12-year-old boy with aspirations of space grandeur-deserve better than stories where their entire identities are obliterated by guys who are so blandly, insidiously nice that they fall into bed, no questions asked. Similar to last year’s “Passengers,” this is a “sci-fi” movie with practically no interest in science. It’s difficult to determine the point of “The Space Between Us.” The film has so many plot holes, so many logical inconsistencies, and so many terrible characters that watching it is a particular kind of aggressively unyielding tedium. Men act irresponsibly and women are around to clean up their messes in this horrendously forgettable teen romance pretending to be a sci-fi movie. ‘The Space Between Us’ is basically 12-year-old-boy wish fulfillment, in every clichéd, frustrating way. This film about a boy who is born on Mars and dreams of a life on Earth is full of frustrating gender stereotypes: a woman who becomes pregnant is called “irresponsible” and her pregnancy a “mistake,” with no blame discussed for the father of the child a teenage boy lies to a girl he likes and belittles her beliefs, but they start a relationship anyway a teen romance with some kissing and an implied sex scene teens steal and lie a foster father is depicted as a hopeless drunk and a subplot about the boy’s health, with a surgery scene and a prevailing threat of death.
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