Ariel: Okay, so to start with, I didn't think this movie was bad for the reasons that got it yelled at, but it was pretty bad.
Sasha: Wait, wait, we haven't even said what the movie is, and we haven't warned anybody we'll be spoiling parts of it.
Ariel: Oh! Gosh, you're right. I'm just half asleep I guess from it being SO BORING.
Sasha: It was pretty boring, but we should still warn people, don't you think?
Ariel: Sure, I guess. People, listen, we're going to talk about "The Midnight Sky," and if you don't want to find out that it's full of dumb stuff and is super boring besides that, you should stop reading now. That's not a spoiler to tell them it's dumb and boring, is it?
Sasha: If it is, it's kind of too late, don't you think?
Ariel: Well, if they haven't watched the movie yet, it's not to late for them to not watch it!
Sasha: True. So where should we start?
Ariel: We should tell them if they know any science, they should apparently stay far, far away from this movie.
Sasha: Yeah, I don't even know all that much science, and even I was like, "Wait, what?" a couple of times.
Ariel: Really? I didn't hear you say that.
Sasha: They were the same times the boyfriend was saying things like, "You've got to be kidding" and Elle was saying, "Literally WTF." Really loudly.
Ariel: There was a lot of that. And I guess at the start I was sitting pretty cuddled up with Elle and could probably hear her a lot better than I could hear you.
Sasha: The two of you looked very cozy at the start.
Ariel: I know! I was all settled in for a nice snuggly movie watch and then pretty soon she was face-palming and pulling her hair out.
Sasha: I guess we should cut to the chase about why, or our readers are going to get as bored as we were watching the movie.
Ariel: Well, the first part where it started to go wrong, as far as undermining my cuddle time, was when the Vulcan guy from that one Star Trek with Captain Schoolmarm was saying goodbye to the main character, All Beard Dude.
Sasha: I thought it was a good sign there was a Star Trek person in the cast, but he didn't last very long.
Ariel: Which was probably good, since his whole purpose seemed to be telling All Beard Dude things the guy already knew.
Sasha: "Well, All Beard Dude, the whole crew of this astronomy station is leaving now, are you sure you're not going to go with us, seeing as how you're terminally ill and you'll die in less than a week if you don't keep up those infusion treatments?"
Ariel: On the one hand, it did tell us a lot of information quickly.
Sasha: Yeah, but we probably could have figured out a lot of it ourselves from all the coughing and taking pills and performing blood infusion treatments on himself that All Beard Dude did.
Ariel: ...
Sasha: What?
Ariel: You just stole my "On the other hand" point. Now I've told everybody on the one hand, and I don't have an other hand to follow it up with.
Sasha: Aers, this movie had so many other hands. Just pick a different one.
Ariel: Okay, give me a sec ... oh, got it. The on the other hand was, they told us this information right away, but they never actually told us any more information. Like, what exactly was he sick with? Why were all the other people leaving, other than there was an "event" three weeks earlier? There wasn't even one other person who was like, "You know, if All Beard Dude is staying, maybe I'll stay too, seeing as how it's going to take longer for the unspecific catastrophe to get up here to this unspecific place in the Arctic Circle where we've set up our astronomy station for unspecific reasons?"
Sasha: I knew you could do it.
Ariel: It was like, if they're giving us this little bit of information now, it must be because the real lots-of-detail information would come along here and there until we had the whole picture. But no.
Sasha: We did find out a little more about the unspecific catastrophe.
Ariel: I mean, if, "It was an accident from something else someone was trying to do," counts as more.
Sasha: Also that there was radiation and some problem with the air.
Ariel: Right, that spread out in perfect circles from all the major cities at once so that All Beard Dude could watch its progress on his astronomy-can-show-you-anything screen.
Sasha: That was a handy screen, all right.
Ariel: The more I'm thinking about this, the more I understand why Elle and the BF were yelling at the TV.
Sasha: Well, I kind of understood the thing about Jupiter having a previously undiscovered moon.
Ariel: I guess. Aren't they always discovering more moons of Jupiter?
Sasha: Yeah, but only itty bitty ones, I think. That's why the BF said, "Ooh, I guess Galileo just missed that one."
Ariel: I was going to ask what he meant about that, but I was trying to watch the movie right then. Galileo was some kinda satellite they sent to Jupiter, wasn't it?
Sasha: That's what I thought too, but I asked Hettie later and she said the satellite was named after the first dude who ever looked at Jupiter in a telescope, and even with his crappy-ass I-just-invented-this telescope, he could see all the big moons Jupiter had.
Ariel: That's what I like about Hettie. She has the scoop about those kindsa things, but she doesn't shout it at the TV during bad movies.
Sasha: She knows how to be annoyed better than Elle and the BF. Like, keeping it low-key.
Ariel: I think she and Claire are better TV watchers than Elle and the BF.
Sasha: Boy, did Claire ever have it right when she just said, "I think I'll go watch some old Star Treks in the other room" after the 4th or 5th time Elle said, "Oh. Come. On."
Ariel: Actually, I think it was right after Elle was like, "Is any of this supposed to be interesting?!? At all???" when the guy who played Mr. Pointy Ears on Star Trek: Very Disco got dumped by his girlfriend.
Sasha: Oh yeah, you're right. Hey! I just realized that's two different actors who played Vulcan dudes on Star Treks and also showed up in this movie.
Ariel: I guess that shows that just because you can play a Vulcan doesn't mean you make logical decisions in real life.
Sasha: Logic was not high on the list of anybody involved in this project.
Ariel: No, that's for sure.
Sasha: Or the people who designed the space mission in the movie, either, if all the yelling in our living room was any indication.
Ariel: "How have they been out of communications range for weeks and weeks? We can still talk to the Voyagers, and they're all the way out of the solar system!"
Sasha: "Why is the airlock the size of a bus when there are only five people in the crew and nothing bigger than a human could fit through either airlock door?"
Ariel: "Seriously? Three men and two women on a two-year mission and they didn't think to give them birth control?"
Sasha: "How did their radar get taken out by a meteor swarm without warning them they were approaching a meteor swarm first?"
Ariel: "If he was imagining the little girl the whole time, why were there scenes of her walking around looking at things when he wasn't even there?"
Sasha: Well, that one wasn't about the space mission.
Ariel: No, but it was one of the things they were yelling at the TV that I remembered. And even I knew All Beard Dude wouldn't be imagining a little girl poking around outside a plane wreck while he was busy shooting plane-wreck survivors. Or at least, I knew once Elle pointed it out after we found out he had been imagining her the whole movie.
Sasha: Traumatically having to put frostbitten plane-wrecked human beings out of their misery while also daydreaming about a cute little girl finding other bodies outside does seem like kind of a multi-tasking stretch.
Ariel: Were there any other interesting things they yelled about?
Sasha: There was that "Sweet Caroline" song the spaceship crew sang along with during the spacewalk.
Ariel: Oh yeah, one song and so many things to yell about about it!
Sasha: "It's 2049! Why would any of these people know the words to 'Sweet Caroline?' Much less all but one of them?"
Ariel: "And if the dude had it in his library and loved to play it, how could even one of them not know the 'bum-bum-baaah!' part after two years cooped up with him?"
Sasha: "How much of this song do we have to listen to before one of these people gets killed on this spacewalk?"
Ariel: "Is it really going to be the black girl who's never spacewalked before who gets killed on the spacewalk?"
Sasha: Again, that last one wasn't really about the song.
Ariel: I thought it was. When she started bleeding all over the place, I was like, "Welp, should have learned the words to the song, girl."
Sasha: Not sure that would have helped her, but okay.
Ariel: So do you think our readers have got the idea by now?
Sasha: Yeah, people around our house like to yell at the TV when movies get unbelievably dumb. I think we've gotten that across.
Ariel: And also that "The Midnight Sky" was really, really boring on top of unbelievably dumb.
Sasha: That too. So how do we want to wrap this one up?
Ariel: Maybe with an inappropriately cheerful song?
Sasha: Good call. One, two, three, four ...
Ariel and Sasha: Sweeeeet Caroline ... bum-bum-baaah ... !
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