Spoiler Alert

Big spoiler alert, because I’m totally going to reveal the ending of this movie, because that’s my biggest beef with it. The Midnight Sky, with George Clooney, is a good movie in many respects. It’s beautiful, both visually, and in it’s study of human nature, and in its respect for science. The ship making its way back from a totally colonizable moon of Jupiter, which they showed in one scene that turned out to be a dream but it was very pretty, was a very believable cross between what is actually achievable with current technology and Star Trek. So, if you think this film might be something you’d like to watch, read no further.
They were super vague about the ecological disaster which was destroying all life on Earth, and the whole idea that everybody would abandon the arctic research stations to go back home and die quicker strikes me as a Hollywood interpretation of human nature. I reckon the flood of refugees would be moving the other direction, trying to stay one step ahead of their ultimate doom.
But, it was a plot device to put George Clooney all by himself as the last lone voice that could save humanity by contacting the ship and telling them to turn around. It reminded me a bit of ‘Silent Running’ with Bruce Dern slowly going crazy alone in outer space saving the trees. That was a great movie.
But, oh, wait, he finds a little girl hiding under a table, and she never talks, but she helps him through. I couldn’t see anything but a tragic ending. It wasn’t bad to think of George Clooney dying, because he was an old man, with a terminal disease (a totally unnecessary addition, because everybody was dying anyway), but it was sad to think of the little girl either dying, or else being the last living human on Earth, somehow surviving to old age alone, in the frozen north.
But, no, she was just a figment of his imagination, his daughter who he’d never known because he was, despite being a brilliant scientist, a shit father, and his actual daughter was all grown up and on the colony ship and pregnant (that’s important). He contacts them and she and her husband turn the ship around (gravity slingshot) and head back to colonize K-23, I think they called it, I’m sure there was a K in there.
The old Adam and Eve ending, so popular in apocalyptic movies, and so unbelievable. Even assuming they have several more kids, they are going to grow up with only siblings for mates and the species is going to degenerate and probably die out due to lack of diversity. One couple is just not a big enough gene pool. They should have just had a bigger crew on that ship, and the problem would have been solved.