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Episode 8 - The Full Smoke on 'Asteroid City'
42 Plays2 years ago
Fasten your seatbelts and prepare for lift-off! In this episode of The Study Pipe, we venture into Wes Anderson's 'Asteroid City.' This comedy-drama, set in a retrofuturistic 1955, narrates the tale of Augie Steenbeck, a bereaved father whose world changes forever at a junior stargazing event. With a star-studded ensemble featuring Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Edward Norton, and more, the film juxtaposes the whimsical with the surprising. How does this eccentric sci-fi journey rate on our unique 'Puffs of Approval' scale? Tune in to find out!
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Transcript
Introduction to the Show and Movie Discussion
00:00:03
Speaker
What's up, guys? This is Zach. And this is Andrew. We invite you to discuss the movies, have some good conversation, blah, blah, blah, all that normal stuff. You know the drill. They know the drill by this point. What are we talking about today? We are talking about Wes Anderson's new movie, Asteroid City. And this is the full smoke on Asteroid City. I like that. Full smoke. The full smoke.
00:00:32
Speaker
We still need to do some condensed, I think, quick puff on, you know, some of these films. But today, full smoke, I think. I'm curious if we can keep this one under the 45 hour 45 minute mark.
Pacing and Cast Overview
00:00:49
Speaker
I hope not 45 hours. That's overtime, baby. Yeah, that's a lot of talk on an hour 45 minute movie.
00:00:55
Speaker
Yeah, which I think felt, you know, watching it, I think it felt at pace, you know, I wasn't in there thinking it was going longer or shorter than what it was. Yeah, that was a, it was a, it's a very interesting movie. I'm a, you know, I'm a big Wes Anderson fan. And there's a lot of things this movie does, right? Like a lot of things, it just nails. And then in just a few areas, it's like it completely falls apart, if that makes sense.
00:01:24
Speaker
Yeah, it does. So, you know, before getting into it, I guess, Asteroid City, as you said, Wes Anderson's newest flick has the typical ensemble cast really leading this one and kind of shepherding the whole plot or film along, at least the person with the best performance I thought was Jason Schwartzman.
00:01:52
Speaker
But we have Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Jeffrey Wright, Tilda Swinon, Bryan Cranston, Ed Norton, Adrian Brody. We've got all the usual suspects and a couple kind of minor new characters or actors who pop in, right? Yeah, if you would then, then you have a couple that are continuing on.
00:02:17
Speaker
from the French dispatch. That would be like Stephen Park. Yeah. I loved the French dispatch too. I love the French dispatch. So that's a movie that I would give like four and a half puffs of smoke to. Yeah, four, I guess to kind of calibrate the scale here, right?
Rating and Critique of 'Asteroid City'
00:02:34
Speaker
For those listening. Yeah, I'd put French dispatch at like four puffs of smoke.
00:02:41
Speaker
And I'd put Grand Budapest, you know, in the world of Wes Anderson, um, I would put Grand Budapest at five puffs out of five. And, uh, this one, you know, I guess to spoil it maybe a little earlier upfront, I'm, I'm dropping three puffs of smoke on this one. I did enjoy it, but I thought, uh, there were some, yeah, had its issues and we'll get into that, of course.
00:03:11
Speaker
Yeah, I'm right there with you. I met three puffs of smoke. I mean, if we broke it down into different categories, you know, cinematography, you know, the color correction, or not the color correction, color selection, acting, there's a lot of things I'd give four, but as a package, I'm giving you the three. Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's that weighted score, right?
00:03:34
Speaker
Yeah, or this one, it's like, it's less than the sum of its parts.
Key Plot Elements and Science Camp
00:03:38
Speaker
So it's like, I would give almost every piece of it a four, some of it's even four and a half, but as a whole, it just doesn't quite work together as a package. Yeah, and so the plot at a high level,
00:03:53
Speaker
is really, you follow the main character, Jason Schwartzman and his kids, what, two daughters, a son. The son has been invited to this like science camp competition kind of retreat out in the middle of the desert. And they show up there with a bunch of other students of the same age, families who are all there
00:04:21
Speaker
competing for a scholarship, right? Yeah. Yeah. It's played by Jake Ryan who has been a minor character in a few different Wes Anderson movies coming into this. I believe the voice acting in Isle of Dogs and he was one of the scout members at Moonrise Kingdom. Oh, okay. I didn't realize that. This is kind of him graduating.
00:04:43
Speaker
I thought he did a fine job. I wouldn't be surprised if he's in future movies with Wes. Yeah, I think he fit the aesthetic very well.
00:04:54
Speaker
Yeah, his character is kind of a little quirky, more reserved. Not quite introverted, but definitely, I mean, I got lone wolf kind of vibes from him, but Intelligent Smart has that initiative and his invention. So they're all here at this
00:05:17
Speaker
you know, science kind of competition to win the scholarship.
Meta Narrative and Thematic Exploration
00:05:21
Speaker
And I thought his invention was kind of the funniest. It was kind of like the most weird one. I think there were, I think there were five kids, right? And each had a different invention. And so you had one with like a ray gun that would just disintegrate anything. You had another that had that used radiation to
00:05:46
Speaker
grow plants very quickly. And she demonstrates this by growing a flower in like two seconds, this poisonous tea. And then what were the other ones? Oh, gosh. Was there a jet pack or no? Yeah, there was a jet pack. Yeah, jet pack. Yes, the jet pack that I've already drawn a blink on the fourth one. But I mean, most important invention was Jake Ryan's characters who had a
00:06:14
Speaker
He had this device where he could project an image onto the moon from Earth. Yeah, like any image. Yeah. And he demonstrates this by throwing the American flag up on the moon. Don't they ask him why? And he's like, I thought it would be patriotic and non-offensive or something. Yeah. Non-offensive, but the Soviets and the Chinese might have had an issue at the time.
00:06:37
Speaker
Yeah, probably. But yeah, his invention was pretty cool. It was like the bat signal on steroids. Yeah, I thought he did fine. So the plot is really, I guess, at a high level without getting into spoilers. Just this father with his children are going to this science convention in quote unquote, asteroid city.
00:07:05
Speaker
And they all meet up. They get together a bunch of different cast of characters, students, kids who have these inventions, family members. And the father is a recent widow. So Jake Ryan's character and his sisters find out in the beginning of the movie that they're
00:07:28
Speaker
mother recently passed away and it kind of shades, I guess, the emotional kind of anchor of the film for the rest of the story. That's actually how Tom Hanks, his character, the grandfather kind of gets pulled into the mix.
00:07:47
Speaker
Yeah, it's interesting. And it follows a play within like a film format, a play within a play. It's almost three layers like Inception. So you have Bryan Cranston that comes on TV as a TV host. And he says everything you're about to see is fictional. And then you see actors coming on to play this fictional play production. And that fictional play production
00:08:15
Speaker
which has Edward Orton, Adrian Brody, and then all the cast of Asteroid City in it. They're putting out a play for Asteroid City. And then when they start to put on that play, all of a sudden you're transported to Asteroid City. So you're on the third level deep in this meta story.
00:08:31
Speaker
Yeah, it's very meta. And basically what you see in the trailers is the second nested story within this. The color shots of the film are the play being acted out in front of our eyes. The production of the play is in black and white. So throughout the movie,
00:08:56
Speaker
The contents of Ashford City and the film are spliced with these black and white shots of
00:09:05
Speaker
you know, the behind the scenes, if you will, of the story, which adds a layer of comedy to the film. But ultimately, you know, I didn't think it didn't work well for me. What it actually ended up doing was it made the narrative feel more disjointed and it interrupted the flow and momentum for me. So I thought it actually took away
00:09:31
Speaker
you know, in aggregate, there were some funny moments using that plot device, you know, to really like, you know, get the audience to laugh and sit there and engage. But all in all, I thought the cutaway, the break of the fourth wall, if you want to call it that, to the production of the story itself, you know, it got it took me out of the flow of the film. Yeah, it kind of, I don't know, muted the emotional impact of the characters, because you can see the
00:10:00
Speaker
the actors kind of developing the roles to play those characters one layer above. So I don't it's almost like when you're watching a magic trick and they show you how the magic trick is done as before performing the magic trick. Yeah, I think what Wes Anderson does well in his films is take some things that are like, I don't know, they have their their heavy subjects, you know,
Balancing Themes and Incomplete Storytelling
00:10:24
Speaker
matter. They're very emotional or very
00:10:27
Speaker
consequential like events in people's lives and is able to really put like a nice quirky light spin on it where it impacts you but you're somewhat hopeful you know you're not you don't you can see these very upsetting kind of things happen to people in his films but you're left simultaneously with this like I don't know
00:10:52
Speaker
optimism, you know, this sense of like, it'll work itself out or there there's better, you know, pastures out there or whatever it may be. But with the film structured in this way, where you know, like you said, Brian Cranston opens the film saying, none of this matters really, right? And obviously, we really emphasizes, don't take any of this as real.
00:11:18
Speaker
Yeah, and so what stakes are there when you're watching, you know, these characters and of course you're there watching a movie that's not real so there there aren't stakes but when you're watching it, a movie within a movie or you know this play within the movie.
00:11:34
Speaker
it to me at least to undermine the severity of the plot and what these characters are doing because you know you're not watching these characters actually experience these things first and foremost you're watching the actors prepare and execute the play and you're reminded of that a little too much where it takes away the emotional gravity of the film.
00:11:57
Speaker
Yeah, it's weird because it's the way they handle the execution. If you were to go in thinking that the execution of the play and being transported as if you were to watch the story being told to you is the actual plot itself, instead of where they put a lot of focus on the play itself, that's the main emotional storyline. The execution part of it, it's really fantastic. There's just a lot to love there.
00:12:24
Speaker
But it's not a complete story. No, it's not. And even what you gain by the time the film ends, yeah, the play itself wraps up with a bow. There's no question marks of where the characters end up and what they're up to next or what's to come next in their lives. But the play itself, you're kind of left, or at least I was, left thinking like, OK, so what?
00:12:53
Speaker
You guys put on this production and now the production's over. And yeah, a couple of the actors kind of struggled with how they wanted to deliver maybe some lines in the scene or this and that. But there wasn't any change or challenges presented at that level of the story in the production of the play where I felt invested. I thought the film would have been stronger
00:13:23
Speaker
if he cut out the whole meta reference, the whole production of the plane, it was just simply, you know, this story of Asteroid City set in the quirky universe that is Wes Anderson and his films. I agree. And it's, but then I was thinking, like, maybe there's like 50 minutes a story in Asteroid City. I don't think there's a complete movie there. Yeah, but is that an excuse, you know?
00:13:50
Speaker
No, no. And he's coming out his second movie this year. I forget the name of it. It's a 37 minute film. So he's obviously willing to go there with a shorter story. Yeah. I mean, I, I respect that he, he tried to do something that was very meta in this way, but it just, it didn't connect for me. I think the movie would have worked a lot better if he had cut that, that whole section. Even Brian Cranston, like,
00:14:19
Speaker
His character had no purpose, really. I mean, he was the narrator. And you had this talent, this great talent and actor there. And it's kind of wasted. And dare I say the same thing with Tom Hanks, you know? I thought, Tom, I don't know how you feel about it. We try not to talk details of any of these films before we get in here and record.
00:14:44
Speaker
I was disappointed with Tom Hanks. I thought he did what he had to do, of course. He's a fine actor, one of the best, but he could have put anyone in that role. He didn't bring anything to that role that I was like. I actually thought he did really poorly. I think there was a lot of humor in there that maybe he didn't get, or he wasn't able to deliver it in a proper way. I could imagine Bill Murray in that role, and it's just being so much better.
00:15:12
Speaker
Yeah, I agree with that. Bill Murray can deliver those dry, very awkward kind of matter of fact lines. Yeah, I think he fell on his face completely. I was not impressed. No, I wasn't. I was going to fault Wes Anderson and the screenplay more than I was going to fault Hanks, but it sounds like you're faulting Hanks more than Wes Anderson. I think that Wes Anderson's got that dry humor down so
00:15:42
Speaker
Well, and everywhere else in the movie, that same type of dry humor was playing. But it's like every time Tom Hanks did it, it's like his timing was off. It just didn't work. He didn't know how to do it. Yeah, I mean, that's interesting. I left kind of pissed off with Wes Anderson not really using Hanks's character that well. But when you bring it up, I mean, when you point it out in that way,
00:16:06
Speaker
I guess that is right. Because overall, the screenplay, everyone was kind of working with the same, you know, stuff, the same ingredients, and Hanks. So, you know, kind of getting into a little bit more of the spoilers now for those who may not want to. I apologize. We spoiled the shit out of this movie already.
00:16:30
Speaker
I feel like we've only really covered the first like 15 minutes. I mean, you get pretty quick that there's the play within the movie or play within the play, whatever you want to call it. We didn't even talk about the whole Mars attack sequence. And we haven't talked about it.
00:16:45
Speaker
the alien or anything like that.
Reactions to Performances and Plot Moments
00:16:50
Speaker
Even the mother dying and driving the characters into this situation where Hank's character comes in, that's all revealed within the first couple. Should we just spoil it by saying what we didn't spoil? We're 18 minutes in, three puffs out of five for me. I guess you agree, right? Three puffs? Three puffs out of five. If you like
00:17:14
Speaker
the Wes Anderson humor, the Wes Anderson aesthetic, and you're okay with the disjointed story, go see this, you're going to like it. I really enjoyed the movie, regardless of its faults. So my, I mean, similar kind of takeaway, but I'd say
00:17:33
Speaker
I like Wes Anderson a lot. I probably don't like him as much as you do. And, you know, maybe the current like meme culture, you know, all these Instagram rules and TikToks that are kind of copying or paying respect to his style lately. But, you know, I love Grand Budapest Hotel. I like the French Dispatch. I love Tenenbombs. You know, I dig most of his work, but
00:17:59
Speaker
This is one I, you know, I wasn't upset that I saw it or anything like that, but I thought it was one of his weaker entries. And I probably will not rewatch it ever again. Never say never, but this isn't going to be a film in his collection that I go back to and go, oh, you know, I want to be entertained right now. Let me just throw on Asteroid City. So it's worth checking out to see what the guy's up to.
00:18:26
Speaker
But it has no staying power for me. You know, I agree with you. You just gave me a great idea if I win that little bet we have about who gets more right on the rock tomatoes and what we like.
00:18:40
Speaker
list. I shouldn't choose really bad movies. I should choose three very disappointing movies. Yeah, that just make me sad and depressed, you know, not miserable, but like, three movies that had so much promise that, you know, just didn't live up. You know, it's like when your parents say I'm not I'm not upset. I'm not mad at you.
00:19:02
Speaker
I'm just disappointed. I'm disappointed. That cuts deeper than the others. So yes, that's the 20-minute mark, the full, almost full smoke on Asteroid City. Three puffs out of five. Now the spoilers. What do you want to spoil? There's an Alien. It's played by Jeff Goldblum.
00:19:25
Speaker
Yes. And he's the best person in the entire world to play him. And he doesn't even really do much with the role. It's just the fact that he is the man in the costume. It's a great joke because it's a stop motion alien. And there's definitely not anyone playing him. And so when you go up to the play level, all of a sudden you see Jeff Goldblum in the costume. He's talking about his performance in the role. Yeah. And you're like, oh, yeah, that would be Jeff Goldblum.
00:19:55
Speaker
But no, I'm glad you mentioned that because the actual scene when the alien arrives and drops down out of the ship, I thought was so cool. It looked so legit. It looked so 1950s, 60s, sci-fi, these films back then. I thought it was awesome. And it was so funny because
00:20:19
Speaker
when the alien actually arrives. So they're all gathered in the bottom of the asteroid crater. This science convention is taking place in asteroid city, where a meteor had hit the Earth at some point. And there's this crater. So they're in the bottom of this crater. The actual meteorite that hit the Earth is sitting there in the bottom. They have, what, in this lake?
00:20:49
Speaker
container kind of like it's like a middle page. Yeah, like a you know, like a shrine or something like a yeah, you know, they're paying respect or you know here you can look at the actual thing that impacted creating this crater little what you wrote off with it. Yeah. And so this is going on. They're having like a meeting announcement. They're announcing like, you know, everyone all these students who are winning awards for you know, the work they did their inventions and
00:21:19
Speaker
Aren't they about to announce the winner of the scholarship? Yeah. So, so, um, Jeffrey writes there, he's in general and there, they have a $5,000 check and this is a lot. This is taking place in the 1960s. And one of those five kids with the five inventions are going to win a $5,000 scholarship. And so it's during this, uh, actually, no, it's not, it's when there is the eclipse, the triple eclipse.
00:21:49
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Scratch all that. We're going to head that out later. Just kidding. No, no, no. That's fine. Don't cut that. Don't cut that. This is constant stream of consciousness. Yeah. So there's earlier in the day- I mean, God damn it. It's been three days. It has been three days. We're supposed to record it that night. Yeah. We saw this on a Thursday. You put so much butter on your popcorn.
00:22:18
Speaker
I know it's way too much better on the part. AMC take away the butter machines. I have no self-control. I can't do this. My belly hurts. My tummy, please. All right. So they're in the bottom of the crater and basically, you know, they're gathered there.
00:22:43
Speaker
And this, was it flying saucer? Yeah, so they all have this cardboard box over their head. So they'll go blind looking at this eclipse. And they're supposed to see, what is it, three single dots to show this planetary alignment. And so everyone's looking through the box. Then all of a sudden, everyone sees a fourth dot. It's just a green dot. And everyone takes the cardboard box off their head. They look up.
00:23:10
Speaker
And there's this green crystal looking UFO floating above their head. And it hovers there for a second and everyone's just kind of looking in a basement, not really sure what to do. And then the trap door opens. And this
00:23:27
Speaker
dark figure and stop motion alien pops out of the bottom with big white eyes. Almost looks like a dark colored Gumby from back in the day. Yeah, I'd say that's pretty accurate. That's pretty close. So he drops the ladder all the way down to the base and everyone's just looking at him in amazement. And the aliens looking at them like, oh shit, there's supposed to be this many people here.
00:23:54
Speaker
Yeah, I thought I was coming back to do a quick mission here. Yeah. And so he just drops the ladder down, steps by the meteor that's in this little cage. The meteor is the size of the basketball. And he just looks at everyone awkwardly and pulls the cage up, grabs the meteor, looks around and then grabs the ladder and gets taken back up into the spaceship and flies off back into space.
00:24:21
Speaker
And before he does that, Jesus Horseman, who's a photographer, he's the grieving father, takes a photo of him, snaps a photo of the alien, and everyone is just kind of in shock. Like their entire worldview was just upended. No one really knows what to do. And of course, Jeffrey Wright, who's a general, contacts the president, and the president's just basically like shut down everything. He goes full Madagascar in that pandemic game, if you guys played that one.
00:24:49
Speaker
Yeah. They go pretty hard. Yeah. So they shut down the whole city. No one's allowed to enter out. And it's a one-week quarantine. And they're basically like, we're going to brainwash everyone into having to cover stories so we don't have to tell this to the public. And that is kind of the setup for the plot of the third layer of the movie, Ashford City, is everyone's stuck in this quarantine. And it kind of gives comparisons to the COVID quarantine and the isolation of everyone. Yeah, I can see that. I mean,
00:25:19
Speaker
It was filmed during the pandemic, right? I mean, the height of the pandemic, I thought was this 2020, 2021 timeframe? Yeah, yeah.
00:25:31
Speaker
So I think he started writing this in September 2020. I would say even if he wasn't writing it during the pandemic, when it came time to shoot and film, I'm sure just what was going on.
00:25:49
Speaker
in the real world inform this because you get a sense that, you know, these people are just kind of dealing with it. And, you know, it's definitely there are aspects of COVID-19 kind of sprinkled in there, not directly, not like in a political way or anything like that. Just I could tell like, yeah, this this movie was made post pandemic with how people are behaving.
00:26:14
Speaker
Yeah, and I actually got a direct quote here from Wes Anderson from May 2023. He says, I don't think there would be a quarantine in the story if we weren't experiencing it. It wasn't deliberate. Writing is the most superficial part of the whole process relies on having nothing. So he's saying that that quarantine probably did come from the pandemic, but it was a deliberate process just like you said. Oh, nice. I was paying attention even though the popcorn was heavily buttered.
00:26:44
Speaker
It was a lot better. We could pour it out by the time the bucket was empty. OK, yeah, that makes sense. That's pretty interesting. What else really stood out? I mean, the alien was really cool, Jeff Goldblum. I knew there was buzz around Scarlett Johansson and her nude scene in this.
00:27:08
Speaker
Um, which, you know, for those of you people who want to go watch it to see her nude, you're going to be disappointed, I guess. Yeah. It was more of an artistic take. It was, uh, kind of a blurry in a, in a mirror view. And it was, it wasn't like a exploitative, exploitative or, I mean, yeah, it's, it's out of focus. So you see her on camera, um,
00:27:35
Speaker
drop her clothes, you know, she's doing it for what a photo from Jason Schwartzman's character, who's a photographer. You know, you had said that he captured the alien earlier in the film, he captures all kinds of photos. He's kind of, you know, he's a professional, right? Yeah, to set this up. He's a wartime professor, photographer, very established, well,
00:28:01
Speaker
like to imply that he's famous in the industry. And asteroid city, I guess we need to give a little bit more description what the town looks like. It's not really a city at all. It's a bunch of maybe 200, 300 square foot, little bungalows that are set up almost like an RV park.
00:28:21
Speaker
It's owned by Steve Correll and there's no population besides Steve Correll every all the Grocery stores everything like that. It's all just a series of like vending machines. We can buy anything from cigarettes to deeds of land Yeah out of the vending machines and the vending machines were cool. They were like Japanese vending machines, but 1950s America. Yeah, I love those
00:28:45
Speaker
And so, you know, keep in mind all these little bungalows are kind of tightly packed, tightly packed together. Maybe you might be able to fit a car in between them, but that's how tightly packed they are. So Scarlett Johansson and Jason Schwartzman's families, their bungalows are right across from each other. Their windows are lined up directly. So as they're in quarantine, they're opening the windows and talking to each other through the windows. Jason Schwartzman kind of turned one of the little rooms into a dark room for photography and
00:29:15
Speaker
It's across from Scarlett Johansson's bathroom where she is practicing a new scene for one of her new movies that's coming up where she's playing a scarlet who finally gives it to her demons and overdoses on drugs in the bathroom. And so as she's practicing this role in the shower, Jason Schwartzman is doing his photography and doing pictures and they're kind of just bantering back and forth and building up this initial romantic attraction.
00:29:44
Speaker
And so it's at this point that Jason Schwartzman starts taking pictures of her and she's just, you know, she's his famous actress and, you know, they're kind of teasing each other where some of them he's like, I'm going to sell these and some of these is like, these are for personal collection. And, you know, and eventually she says, Hey, I'm going to do the scene where I'm stepping out of the shower. And so she steps out of the shower, starts doing your scene and she's wearing a towel and they kind of look at each other nervously and she drops the towel. You don't see anything.
00:30:14
Speaker
except they pan to this tall mirror inside of the room, and you see her naked out of focus, and that's the whole setup. Yeah, and I thought Scar Jo did a good job. I thought she was fine. Yeah, she did a great job, and it would have felt really out of place if they just showed her naked, if that makes sense. Yeah, it was done well, I thought. Yeah, I mean, it kind of played on the whole relationship. They had her and Jason Schwartzman's character. It was very playful.
00:30:43
Speaker
Uh, they even sleep together, don't they? They get like romantically involved. Yeah, exactly. So it was very, I mean, it was playful. It was, yeah, I, you know, I thought it worked well. Um, I thought really everyone did their assignment. They all did their assignment. Well, the only one who didn't was Tom Hanks.
00:31:08
Speaker
Fuck you, Forrest. It almost felt like sacrilegious to say that when we first started, you know? But when you really think about it, he did suck. Yeah, he sucked. Yeah, I mean, I don't know if it's the hazy IPA brought to you by North Park in collaboration with Gleancheek up in Costa Mesa.
00:31:32
Speaker
You know, I don't know. Just as I'm sitting here trying to really think about the faults of the movie and the strengths. Yeah, I mean, Tom Hanks, the acting was fine. The acting was great. I mean, it was as great as any other Wes Anderson movie. But I think what this boils down to is this review by who is this Owen Gleiberman of Variety. He says, asteroid city looks smashing.
00:32:01
Speaker
But as a movie, it's for Anderson diehards only, and maybe not even too many of them. And I think, for me, I'm not an Anderson diehard. I like him a lot. But my takeaway, like I said kind of at the beginning here, it was a fine movie. But it was self-indulgent. It was very Wes Anderson and his use of this play within a play.
00:32:27
Speaker
kind of the meta aspects of it, I think was just him kind of not believing his own bullshit, because I don't think any of it was done in excess, but it was just like, you know, I wish someone would have rained them in a little bit to say, hey, there's a better way to tell this story, or at least one that would have hit better with me. But yeah.
00:32:49
Speaker
And you said earlier that they tied up the asteroid city with a little bow, but I didn't think it really did.
Confusion Over Narrative and Opening Weekend
00:32:58
Speaker
I'm trying to think into the characters and I didn't get the sense that maybe anyone but the sun had any character growth.
00:33:08
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, I think the overall plot of Asteroid City, right? I mean, you have a convention, the alien shows up, he takes the asteroid away, he brings it back, and they make a joke that he basically just cataloged it and ran off. So it was kind of inconsequential, the whole alien
00:33:32
Speaker
and what the aliens served to the story, which I thought was kind of funny. That's very different than War of the Worlds and all these movies about aliens. This one was like, hey, I'm just here. I'm just kind of doing my job. I'm just out here as an alien scientist cataloging things, and I'm going to be on my merry way. I can't be bothered by you all.
00:33:57
Speaker
Um, and then, you know, they, they deliver the scholarship, the characters get out of quarantine and they go on with their lives. So yeah, that's right too. Like there's no, like, like there's a big thing where we're releasing you from quarantine. Then the alien shows up and like, we'll put you back in quarantine. Then Jason Schwartzman wakes up in the morning and everyone's gone. Like, oh, we lifted the quarantine.
00:34:19
Speaker
Yeah, very quick. So I mean, there's a beginning, middle and end of of asteroid city, but to your point, there's not a whole lot of character development outside of the sun, which is true. I mean, you spend the most time and then maybe that's the point. And I think.
00:34:38
Speaker
you know as you say it maybe that's what's going to get me a little more worked up here is that when you jump out of the the plot of the play which is asteroid city to the production you can't spend as much time with these other characters and watch them grow yeah so i'd argue he sacrificed the goddamn character growth at the the play level in order to give us some story about the production of the play which once again
00:35:08
Speaker
It was kind of pointless. I had no takeaway from the production. It was cool seeing the production, but now that I said that it was great earlier, there's one thing that confused me. Maybe it's because I'm not up to date on my plays.
00:35:21
Speaker
and how the whole production works. I should learn more about that. But I was confused for a minute on the difference between Adrian Brody's character and Edward Norton's character, because it seemed like they were both playwrights. But I'm guessing Adrian Brody was a play director. Yeah, I mean, they're working together. Yeah, my takeaway was that he was
00:35:41
Speaker
Like, so Ed Norden, he, as you said, I don't know if we got into this earlier, he is the playwright. So he wrote Asteroid City. That's what we're seeing with Scarlett Johansson, Jason Schwartzman, Tom Hanks. We're seeing his characters come to life in the film. But in the production, yeah, Adrian Brody, I think, is the stage manager or whatever the hell you want to call him, play director. He's out there like,
00:36:09
Speaker
moving and shaking behind the scenes, giving people advice on maybe the producer even. Yeah, I think that might be the case. I don't know if I missed a line. I just thought they were introduced with the same role in the beginning, but they definitely were doing different things as the movie went on.
00:36:27
Speaker
So that part wasn't confusing. Yeah, but even Adrian Brody's character and him being the director of this play, he's kind of just like half in half out. I thought he was very laissez-faire about everything. Yeah, his wife left him for New York Yankees player. Yeah, he's just kind of like... He's like, Oh, I guess that makes sense. Yeah.
00:36:48
Speaker
Just very lukewarm. He doesn't really have a whole lot of motivation. No. I guess our original conversation, a little bit, we did talk about the movie, because they're doing this in the second level, on the play level. There's a moment where
00:37:07
Speaker
Edward Norton's character has kind of a writer's block and he's trying to develop these characters. And you see the cast of Asteroid City in all this acting classroom amongst a bunch of other people that aren't in the movie otherwise. And he's talking about being, he needs to kind of rock the audience to sleep in a way.
00:37:27
Speaker
Like he wants this to be like a dreamlike fatigue. And, and so everyone in the room basically is, uh, pretends to go sleep. So there's kind of this comedic slapstick moment where people are just flying on the ground to sleep because they're so committed to their part. But it felt like very important to how they were describing the overall theme of the film as to like what the purpose was of what he was trying to do. But.
00:37:52
Speaker
you know, I've been thinking on it, and it must be a little bit too abstract for me to really get my my hands on on it, you know, and really wriggle wrestle with it. Or maybe I'm missing some pieces. But it didn't quite click for me exactly what you're trying to accomplish and if he accomplished it. Yeah, I mean, I'll wait and see, I guess maybe the buzz will enlighten me and some other aspects of this film. But it's not not something I
00:38:21
Speaker
I'm like dying to go rewatch to kind of pick up these gaps in what I may have missed. One outing was fine. I'm kind of writing it off, but I know what you mean. There may be more to this that I'm missing or I'm not giving it a fair shake.
00:38:41
Speaker
You know, I think even with a film like that, where you do have to rewatch it to really have the full impact of the film, to fill that, to have it hit you.
00:38:52
Speaker
at least leaves you wanting to return to it and this movie didn't do that for me it did not give me this like oh let me go back and like check it was very plain you know very plain matter of fact what was going on i just don't think the narrative for the the plot of the production side of the story was as tight as it could have been it was too disjointed and abstract for me
00:39:16
Speaker
Yeah, he kind of got the sense that he did it this way to get as many of the people, the big names, as he got into it. I could see that. Here, come in and play this part, because my primary cast has already filled out. Yeah, exactly. Here's a good way to like... Yeah. I'm impressed with that. Inflation said everything, but it hasn't hit when it's Sanderson movies. You go back to his last three movies, he's all had a $25 million budget. Did they really? Yeah.
00:39:46
Speaker
Damn. And this, so I'm seeing here, you know, in the buzz as I look into the film and after we've seen it that this is his biggest opening weekend, right? At nine million bucks? Is it really? Yeah. So I mean, we're sitting here kind of knocking the film. I don't know that I'd say knocking it. I gave it three out of five puffs, but you know, it's not, not his best, but it,
00:40:13
Speaker
Is his maybe most commercially successful or at least opening weekend? We'll see the legs on it. I bet that. I feel like he traditionally did a smaller openings for some of the films. But if I look at it, like Grand Budapest Hotel made $175 million.
00:40:33
Speaker
overall. I wonder if it's going to have those kind of legs. No, I don't think so. Grand Budapest had such good word of mouth. This may be the best opening weekend, but dude, I can't. I mean, maybe. Who knows? Maybe I'm out of touch. Maybe you're out of touch. I know I'm out of touch. Well, we got 43 minutes and 51 seconds, and we promised under 45. God damn it, we're doing it. We did. I mean, that's pretty good.
00:41:05
Speaker
Fast forward. You had mentioned something. I don't know if you want to get into it now. We cut it here. Save it for another one. But you had mentioned something about aliens and hearing a podcast talk about aliens. I don't know if you want to tie this in here and
00:41:25
Speaker
kind of go down that path. I think I hinted on it a little bit earlier. We did hit on it, and I didn't see a good jumping in point. I will say this. We will talk about it more in depth. If you want a little sneak peek of what it is, go listen to the June 25th This American Life episode. It's great. It's wonderful. And I kind of gave you an intro on it, but it segues into such a different topic than what we're talking about here.
00:41:53
Speaker
So what is the topic for those listening? So all right. So this American life, the recent episode, it starts off talking about how
00:42:02
Speaker
as a human race, right? We love alien movies, and almost all of our alien movies are invasion films, which that part does tie into how they handled the alien invasion in this. You know, we have someone here that's cataloging it. It's very different. Usually it's like Mars attack, right? Yeah. But even Superman with the Kryptonians coming. Pain and suffering and yeah. Yeah. So what this episode was talking about was how
00:42:29
Speaker
It's almost always destruction that we depict. And in almost every one of these movies, there's a scene where the US military or the UN or someone, they have an envoy that goes and meets the alien for the first time. And there's this tension. There's this moment before the military knows what movies it's going to be. Is it going to be the movie where they all get destroyed and they all die? Or is it going to be one of the rare ones, like the day they are stood still where they don't mean harm?
00:42:56
Speaker
and they're here to send a message or something.
Conclusion and Final Ratings
00:42:59
Speaker
And what he was tying that into were... Or a rival, huh? Yeah, or a rival. And so he was actually tying that into chat GPT and this AI. Say maybe chat GPT is something we made, but it's still almost an alien intelligence to how we understand intelligence and this is our own. And right now we're all kind of in this collective period where we're the US military or the UN or whatever military. And we're kind of waiting to see what movie this is going to be.
00:43:26
Speaker
That's interesting. Yeah. I haven't listened to that episode of their podcast, so I'll have to have to do that.
00:43:33
Speaker
We definitely need to talk AI on a future episode. I didn't think it was a good time this time. I didn't really give you the whole lead when I was describing it. I didn't really think it replied so much to this movie except for maybe how the alien was portrayed here. I think harping on that or zooming in, as I said earlier, it was refreshing to
00:43:59
Speaker
You know a movie about kinda aliens which is what this is kinda sold as from a trailer standpoint. Wasn't really about the alien or wasn't like negative it was very comical and just very. Light you know he was and he was out he came back in and out and that was that and everyone moved on with their lives so it was it was a cool take i appreciate that he did that in this film. I agree.
00:44:27
Speaker
All right, so with that being said, final review, the full smoke on Asteroid City was three puffs from me. Oh, I thought I was going to like the movie. I thought the critics were going to like it and users, you know, the audience score were going to like it. I think I'm right. I mean, I liked it. I guess I just was disappointed. So in terms of our running tally, I think we're both
00:44:57
Speaker
We both are okay. We put this one in the wind column. Yeah. I think it's like, like, like for me as well. Yeah. Okay. Three plus out of five. Cool. All right. With that being said, I guess thanks for listening. And next episode's what? What? Spoiler. What is it? Who? It's our favorite directors. Favorite directors. Get ready for that. Top 1260. Yeah, that's right. IMDB. Top 250, baby.
00:45:27
Speaker
Eat your heart out.