Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Wild Wild Space’ on Max, a Documentary Deep Dive Into the Private Commodification of Earth’s Orbit

The rock-solid consistency of HBO’s documentary features continues with Wild Wild Space ( now streaming on Max ), which follows three Idea Guys as they and their companies try to conquer the satellite-strewn realm of low Earth orbit. Director Ross Kauffman (Oscar winner for 2006 doc Born Into Brothels ) profiles Chris Kemp of Astra, Peter Beck of Rocket Lab and Will Marshall of Planet Labs, all of which are privately owned orgs operating in territory so new and innovative, there’s no governmental oversight telling them what they can and can’t do, hence the title of the movie. These scrappy little companies overtook NASA in terms of ambition and innovation, to the point where the governmental agency contracts them to launch satellites into orbit. Of course, there’s myriad implications to their endeavors, good and bad – and, inevitably, a bit terrifying.

Will The Failure of ‘Rebel Moon’ Earn Zack Snyder a Trip to Director’s Jail?

The Gist: Kemp is described as “Silicon Valley in human form,” which I’d translate to mean as “he’s probably Patrick Bateman.” We first meet him as the film crew hops in his car and he discloses that he has no driver’s license, no insurance and the car isn’t registered. “Most people are confused when you do illegal things,” he says. (He’s right: Is he such a “Silicon Valley disruptor”-slash-anarchist that he foregoes the very simple and relatively affordable task of driving a car legally? We’re left to ponder that.) We’ll follow Kemp over the course of a few years as he tries to make Astra – one of his career’s many entrepreneurial startups – a competitor of Elon Musk’s Space X in the realm of non-governmental space exploration. By the end of the doc, his hair will be significantly grayer.

Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Rebel Moon Part Two: Director’s Cut’ on Netflix, Where Zack Snyder Amplifies The Violence On His Way To The Conclusion For His Lengthy Space Epic

Kemp is a cocky, high-energy, positive-spin-jockey capitalist who struggles mightily over the course of this movie – his rockets keep blowing up, he finally gets one in orbit, then the next one crashes, and the company’s stock shares follow suit. Amusingly, he’s longtime friends with one of his key competitors: He and Marshall met while in college. Kemp is about moneymoneymoney and successsuccesssuccess while Marshall is a hippie nerd with environmental-stewardship goals. Marshall formed Planet Labs to gather data on climate change, deforestation, crop production and other lofty, noble ideals. We watch as Planet Labs successfully launches dozens satellites the size of a loaf of bread – computers on satellites aren’t much more complicated than those in smartphones, Marshall points out – squadrons of which circle the planet and transmit countless photos back to the ground every day. The info helps farmers and environmentalists, which is great! It also raises major privacy concerns, which is not great!

CLICK HERE TO GET EMAILS FROM DECIDER

On the other side of the planet is Beck’s New Zealand-based Rocket Lab. Beck’s story is the stuff of a dream-it-and-do-it hit comedy movie: He has no formal education. He had no money. He built DIY rockets and literally strapped them on his back, launching himself on rocket bikes and jetpacks. He came to the U.S. to try to rustle up a job, and when that inevitably failed, he started his own thing and was so good at it – 43 successful rocket launches out of 47 attempts – Rocket Lab nabbed NASA contracts, and its valuation was a few billion dollars. Planet Labs enjoyed a similar success story. Compare those to Astra, which became famous for its fail-meme-worthy “sideways rocket”; when launch after launch fizzled and then they finally got one rocket in the air for 20-odd seconds before it went kablooey, we see Kemp on the phone spinning the launch as “spectacular” when it was anything but.

Meanwhile, Kauffman gets into the what-does-this-all-mean-ness of these endeavors. He interviews experts and journalists – most notable among the former is Pete Worden, who spearheaded President Reagan’s “Star Wars” missile-defense program and became a mentor for Kemp and Marshall, and most notable among the latter is Ashlee Vance, whose book ‘When the Heavens Went on Sale’ inspired the making of this doc. Eventually, discussion turns to troubling topics, e.g., how Musk’s ability to shut down satellites on a whim can directly affect the Ukraine-Russia war, how AI is being integrated into observational technology, how low Earth orbit is increasingly cluttered with debris and could end up being a war zone. Hooray for the unsettling repercussions of scientific innovation!

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: History will determine if the privatization of space will be an Oppenheimer -type moment, I guess.

Performance Worth Watching: Beck’s first successful rocket launch finds him wearing a white lab coat in a New Zealand field like a true weirdo nerd scientist cliche, the blastoff causing herds of sheep to scatter. He’s far more endearing than Kemp, who tries to impress or shock (or baffle?) people by literally licking lead paint while taking them on a tour of the dilapidated warehouse space that became the Astra facility.

Memorable Dialogue: One talking head comments on the big picture, re: technological innovation: “The track record of the human species is not that great. All of these issues that cause us trouble here on Earth? They’re gonna export them into space.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Wild Wild Space uses the story of the “celestial land grab” as, if you’ll forgive the pun, a launching point to discuss age-old conflicts: Where scientific innovation butts heads with commerce, where well-intentioned technology can be used for nefarious purposes. Kauffman pieces together an entertaining, fleet-of-foot documentary, using the trio of narratives here to Frogger from topical lily pad to topical lily pad, outlining the details of the 21st-century space race.

We start to feel countdown fatigue as the film shows scene after scene of CEOs and their employees sweating the moments before rocket launches, followed by cheers and/or groans of dismay, depending on the results. It becomes a running gag via Astra’s many failures, and we sense Kemp’s keep-it-positive M.O. really straining under the stress (again we note his graying hair). You might feel bad for the guy if he wasn’t so monumentally off-putting, with his helmet-haired Aryan features and greasy-slickster vibes. You kind of want to root for Kemp and, especially, Marshall, the latter seeming like a more stable and responsible tech steward than the big dog in this industry, Musk and Space X.

I was frustrated by Kauffman’s lack of follow-up with some of his subjects, e.g., how does “tech hippie” Marshall feel about the subversion of his inventions? What’s his net worth now? Has he changed his views at all now that his company is worth billions? Third-party commentary doesn’t quite fill in those blanks. The director does indulge some of the doom and gloom inherent in these kinds of narratives, as technology, business, politics and ever-problematic human nature intermingle and point to an uncertain future. But that’s just responsible journalism isn’t it?

Our Call: Wild Wild Space is yet another good one from HBO’s documentary division. Three… two… one… STREAM IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

For more entertainment news and streaming recommendations, visit decider.com