Science goes to new heights (for the time) in The Aeronauts, the latest from director Tom Harper.
Mixing together a few real-life people and events with a large dose fantasy, the film is attempting to make old-timey science as exciting as our modern space adventures. Just switch out the spacecraft for a gas balloon and you basically have it. The people are still risking it all for knowledge, any slight mishap still means disaster, and there’s still the never-dying expectation that men are better at this than women. The latter point is brought up in no uncertain terms by having a woman as the balloon expert, who must guide and lean on an adventurous scientist to survive their boundary-pushing trip.
Harper may not be the most familiar name in the business, but he’s certainly on an upward trajectory after a series of successful TV gigs and his other acclaimed film from this year, Wild Rose. The Aeronauts is a much bigger affair, though, promising the kind of breathtaking action we haven’t seen from him before. It will be an interesting step for the up-and-comer, and luckily he got a hell of a duo as his leads.
Felicity Jones and Eddie Redmayne are no strangers; they co-starred together in The Theory of Everything, which earned Redmayne an Oscar and Jones a nomination. This likely won’t generate that kind of attention, but their chemistry should help keep this adventure film rooted in some honest emotions. It’s an oddity, to be sure, but with such a strong group behind it, The Aeronauts just might surprise us.
The Aeronauts is directed by Tom Harper and stars Felicity Jones, Eddie Redmayne, and Himesh Patel. It will be released in the UK on November 6th, 2019 and in the US on December 6th, 2019. For international release dates, click here.
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