The Aeronauts Review

Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones reunite for the first time since starring in the Oscar-winning film The Theory of Everything. This time they play Victorian explorers in The Aeronauts.

James Glaisher (Redmayne) is a meteorologist who’s sneered at by the scientific community because he believes studying the weather can lead to predicting it. Amelia Rennes (Jones) is a grieving widow whose husband died during a ballooning accident. Despite there being a mutual animosity between the pair they agree to go up in the air to break the ballooning world record and study the atmosphere.

The Aeronauts is loosely based on the true story about James Glaisher and balloonist Henry Coxwell. Director Tom Harper and writer Jack Throne used this basic idea as a jumping-off point for a fictional story. They highly dramatise the events to make them cinematic.

The Aeronauts is a visually dazzling film that used fantastic special effects. It is basically a survival/exploration film in the vein of Gravity and Adrift, where characters have only their wits, experience, and whatever they have on hand to survive. With The Aeronauts the characters are going up in the air instead of being stranded in space or the ocean.

The Aeronauts is Harper’s biggest film to date and he shows he can make a wider scale film. There were awe-inspiring moments when the balloon was high in the air above London, whimsy when the characters find butterflies in the air, peril as Amelia climbed the ice-covered balloon, and disorientation when James suffers from altitude sickness.

The Aeronauts had a fantastic visual design. The film opened with a carnival that was grand in spectacle and brightly coloured. Its closer to how I envisioned the world of His Dark Materials than the TV series so far. It was a great showcase for Harper’s talents and it is easy to see him handling a big franchise like Harry Potter or Pirates of the Caribbean.

Redmayne and Jones have natural chemistry as exhibited in The Theory of Everything. On the ground James wants to be taken seriously by other scientists and despairs that Amelia performed like a circus act. This dynamic changed when they go up in the air because James wants to keep going higher and risk their lives so they could discover more, whilst Amelia was more cautious because of their experience.

The Aeronauts was a relatively short film. The runtime was only 101 minutes. Yet the film still felt stretched. The balloon ride only lasts around 90 minutes so Throne extends the film out with some subplots. The storyline with Amelia suffering her grief and having doubts about going up in the air was a logical one, but James’ subplot where his dad suffers from Alzheimer’s felt like padding. And the film could have easily have expanded by looking at how the pair got funding, prepared for the flight, and looked at James and Amelia’s strange relationship.

It is refreshing to see a big special effects film that isn’t a superhero or action film. The Aeronauts acts out an old-fashioned adventure due to the type of story and the setting. It’s just a shame the script was so thin.