The Aeronauts

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.

I watched this on Amazon Prime streaming. While it was inspired by a real person, James Glaisher who set the early groundwork for understanding and predicting weather, the story told here is a highly fictionalized account of his 1862 ascent by balloon to perhaps 36,000 feet.

Felicity Jones as the fictional pilot and Eddie Redmayne as James Glaisher are both good. Being a scientist myself I was a bit put off by such things as climbing the exterior of the balloon at above 30,000 feet where the air temperature would be somewhere between -50 and -65F, and without gloves! What is depicted here is fantasy.

But what about the good? The production values are high and the action interesting. Plus how many have even heard of Glaisher and his pioneering meteorological studies at a time when other British scientists laughed at him? He was a very important scientist in the history of weather forecasting and contributed to changing the world.

So yeah, it has lots of things it can be legitimately criticized for but still it is an entertaining movie if you are in the right mood. I mostly enjoyed it.

The Aeronauts is a very tense and technically brilliant film. Some of the visuals this movie manages to pull off were incredible and the visual effects, stunts, and camera work were so good, I didn't doubt for a second that the characters were in that balloon and one second away from falling to their death. Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones also have a very natural chemistry, and while the scenes that take place outside of the balloon were formulaic, they weren't completely insufferable. As far as historical accuracy goes, if I wanted historical accuracy I would read a Wikipedia article. I watch movies for thrills and entertainment, and this move delivers a lot of thrills.

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.

We've got two posh people with a dream. They have a balloon, they fly in it.

Obviously they nearly die a few times, because people don't fly in balloons when there is blue sky and no wind they choose a cloudy day with isolated storms, makes sense. In those days they didn't have weather forecasts so that meant people couldn't look up and see what it was like, lol.

They also seem to get up to at least 39,000 feet, but of course a thin jacket that will be enough at -30c or more, hat or gloves? Not me mate. They also have Indian and other friends of different ethnicities to fill in a token diversity quota, it's not as if people were fighting inequality in those days. Also in real life the woman in the story was a man. Where does 'based-on real events' end and 'completely made up twaddle' begin? Why not make it totally fictional rather than air-brushing fake characters into and real ones out of history? What's next a story about the first climbing of Everest with Emily Hillary the bee-keeper from Nigeria and her Sherpa lesbian transgender lover Tina-zing?

Obviously the in-basket tension isn't enough so they cut in and out to flashbacks with rich people being posh and rich to help rope-in some of the Downton Abbey market, the whole story could have been told in the balloon without the need to play dress-up.

It's an stupid airbrushed version of history, what's even more stupid that they could have made it totally fictional and about people actually fighting discrimination, but they just pretend everyone is thinking as 2019, but wearing top hats. People fought for trade unions, the womens right to vote and not being spat at in the street because their skin had the incorrect pigment. How does this airbrushing help anything? It's the worst kind of denial, like saying the holocaust didn't happen because it's depressing and disturbing. We can't let truth get in the way of fun times. This movie is for smiles on faces bums on seats and money in our pocket.

Might be good to pass an few hours on a long haul flight. The acting is good, the music is good, the visual effects are stunning, could have been much better, but it wasn't terrible. A marshmellow of a movie, nice to look at and to eat, but nutritionally lacking and can make you feel sick if you over indulge.