The Aeronauts

This film was worth watching, but would challenge even the best director to capture such an inspiring story.However the true hero has been removed from this story. Why does this film not do justice to the true story, why is it full of hot air. The direction this film takes is good but, it starts of a little slow. This was such a triumphant moment in history discovering temperatures and humidity in upper atmosphere whilst breaking the world record. The question is why create Amelia Wren in The Aeronauts, she was "fictional", a character invented by screenwriter Jack Thorne. She is based on Henry Tracey Coxwell (a man), who saved Glaisher's life after the meteorologist passed out on their record-breaking ascent into the sky. Two men made history only for a complete idiot to omit their story, are we going to make a movies where women were first on moon just to sell tickets.

In a truly bizarre twist, the makers of The Aeronauts (2019) decided to tell the story about an 1862 hot-air balloon flight by scientsts James Glaisher and Henry Coxwell by dumping Coxwell and replacing him with a fictional female character. The resulting rewrite of history makes no sense at all and reduces what might have been an interesting story to rubbish. What we're left with is a bowdlerized historical event rendered in CGI to the max. Eddie Redmayne plays the real-life James Glaisher while Felicity Jones plays the fictional Amelia Rennes. The Victoran-Era story that we're left with is preposterous.

To add insult to injury, Jones' character is one of the most annoying females I've seen in a film in a long time ... well since BOOKSMART. Totally out of character for the Victorian Era, this shrieking harpy is loud and pushy and rude. Redmayne pretty much walks through his part. His parents, played by Tom Courtenay and Anne Reid, are way too old for their roles.

Another gripe is the racial parade of Blacks and Asians all done up in the Victorian finery. So there's another PC push that is not historically accurate, plus Redmayne's friend/assistant is Indian. Victorian England was not that culturally fluid.

Probably 90% of the film is dominated by CGI and green screen technologies that always seem to have that flat, unnatural look. And isn't it amazing how Jones can hang on to icy, frozen ropes and dangle in mid air. Total bosh!

The fact that the female character is completely fictional and was in reality a man is a disgrace.

You can just try to imagine the uproar if a true life female character had been tossed aside for a male actor.

If you want to watch a movie about the true events that "inspired" this movie, then go watch a documentary. If you want to watch a decent, family-friendly, period piece, with an interesting plot, then you may find this movie entertaining as I did.

I had no prior knowledge of the true events this movie is based on, but watching it piqued my interest to learn more.

While this does not hold to established history, it does show a fun view of what ballooning in the 1800's might have been like. An entertaining distraction for an evening.