Per Aspera Ad Astra

My Rating: ★★★★★

Per Aspera Ad Astra (星河入梦) is a blockbuster science fiction movie from China that was released on 17th February 2026.

About

While travelling through space the crew on the ship are in suspended animation hooked up to a virtual reality AI mega-verse where their dreams can come true. Xu Tianbiao is woken up all alone on the ship when some issues occur in which he needs to wake up another crew member, however, this can only be done by going into their dream.

Cast

Dylan Wang (王鹤棣) as Xu Tianbiao
A busy actor mainly in TV series with 4 films to his name, so I understand. Everything he does is usually very highly rated. He has also gotten into music too.

Victoria Song (宋茜) as Li Si Meng
Very sought out actress that has appeared in many TV series and films, she even has her own record label Victoria Song Studio associated with Yuekai Entertainment.

Review

“Per Aspera Ad Astra” means something like “to the stars” or “through hardship to the stars”, a very apt title for the film.

The special effects in this movie were completely mind blowing, they must have put so much effort into it. In order to appreciate the level of work they went to we would need to watch it a couple more times. To get the actors into the correct position to generate so much special effects around them must have been pain staking work. I understand the film was released later than expected due to the amount of post production work involved.

The story was good and definitely had a message given people’s concerns about AI. As a result the film was released at a very opportune moment in history.

The actors certainly did an amazing job with a fast script especially giving Dylan Wang and Victoria Song to act as numerous characters.

Of course, it had elements that you would expect from China. For example, the militaristic manner of those on the spaceship. It wasn’t a Star Trek or Star Wars type movie. The emblem on their suit looked similar to a Star Trek communicator badge. The spaceship looked like the one from the TV series The Arc.

Up to now I have never really seen a Chinese sci-fi that I enjoyed but this is a definite mind-blowing first.