Hacker Cinema
Asteroid City
2023 · Film · 105 min
Directed by Wes Anderson
In an American desert town circa 1955, the itinerary of a Junior Stargazer/Space Cadet convention is spectacularly disrupted by world-changing events.
6 positive4 negative2 mixed7 neutralfrom 19 commenters
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20 comments on Hacker News
Good actors do bring their own emotion in. (At least some do)
They might not feel anything about their acting partner, but they feel about other persons and bring that emotion into the play, to make it more real.
Similar to how the best lies are those that contain as much as truth as possible.
I know that I cannot watch anything with mechanical acting that is obviously fake (probably the majority of productions).
Speaking of it, Asteroid City is a very good movie that explores this theme.
"Memoryless" nostalgia is a real effect, and the word for it is anemoia:
https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-body/anemoia-nostalgia
I watched the film Asteroid City last night, and the setting gave me this exact emotion.
> Asteroid City (a really tough watch, like eating a 3 day old biscuit without water to wash it down)
A great way to describe it, unfortunately. I love Wes Anderson movies, but my patience with Asteroid City ran out when the (spoiler alert) quirky-looking stop-motion alien landed.
I agree. While overall not my favorite, Asteroid City was definitely his most emotional impactful film for me.
It's very odd. I thought Asteroid City (a really tough watch, like eating a 3 day old biscuit without water to wash it down) and Isle of Dogs were the most stilted. I didn't like Darjeeling Limited when I first saw it. It's visually and musically beautiful but maybe was too close to home so I was bored of the brothers relationship, also, I don't really think Wes Anderson can do sex scenes. Scenes of intimacy sure, but not sex scenes. I found it very awkward on the first viewing, I've grown to like it more but... idk, it has some issues still I think outside of that. Pretty much every deeper aspect of that film I don't like, even the brothers character arc I find meh. More than most of his movies I think it showed that he can't really enter into the headspace of the economically disadvantaged.
The Roald Dahl short stories on Netflix were very dysfunctional but so obviously in the spirit and tone of Roald Dahl that I thought they were actually very faithful to his writing, I think Wes Anderson did a rare thing in transliterating those stories to screen, the good and the flaws in tone are directly from Roald Dahl who I really enjoyed as a kid because the absurd and ironic detachment, the odd meanness of spirit, was rare in childrens books at the time (maybe still is, idk). I didn't enjoy them as film but I did enjoy their faithfulness to the authors work.
Dispatches felt like basically Wes Anderson explaining his own personal feelings of his life, being an ex-pat enamored but disconnected from his new home country, I could be wrong but it felt like it was the closest he'll ever have to an autobiography. It was effectively a short story format as well. I mean the guy went from being a Texas rube / self manufactured dandy dreaming of exotic locations through the lens of the fucking new yorker (what a weirdo right?) to living in Paris, what an odd personal life arc, the film felt like it was all exploring that. As someone who has lived in these kinds of personal cultural displacements and unexpected life arcs it felt very obvious, and I really enjoyed that part. This could all be projection of course.
I don't know, I wonder if he has the pathos required for long form any more, maybe he is just bored with the traditional arcs they require (I'm getting older and it's very easy to get bored of any consumptive activity) but he can't really seem to find his footing on short stories either. Maybe he's happy and resolved trauma and can't speak to it in that subtly authentic way anymore. I loved Life Aquatic, I loved the exploration of an unsympathetic main character who didn't want to realize why he had become unsympathetic, I already loved Seu Jorge and so the soundtrack is perfection to me as well.
Data point for you: Asteroid City is my favorite, I've watched it like eight times now? and I could barely get through Rushmore.
All the commenters in here complaining that new Wes doesn't have what old Wes had.. Maybe they're missing what new Wes is doing? The newer movies are full of emotion, they're not monotone at all.
The stylistic evolution of Picasso and Godard over time is undeniable, but I think it’s also worth considering that Anderson is working in a medium that isn’t just visual, but also narrative, thematic, sonic, and performative. His evolution as an artist is not truly represented by his shifts in color palettes, framing, or editing technique, but you can see it in the emotional territory he explores, the narrative structures he experiments with. While he stays within his own unique aesthetic framework, he is pushing against the boundaries within it.
Asteroid City, for example, is doing something genuinely different, not just in tone, but in structure, layering fiction and grief in a way that feels disorienting and profound. And while his style is often imitated or parodied, nobody else is actually making movies like his with that particular blend of rigor, melancholy, humor, formality, and precision. We should celebrate having a unique voice and perspective, he's a major part of the diversity of creation, he's way outside the boiled-down average the rest of the industry pushes towards.
I get that reaction, and Anderson’s style can definitely create a sense of emotional distance for some. Throughout this thread - and I want to jump in to so many comments - you can see it.
I found Asteroid City to be one of his most emotionally raw films. Beneath the precise framing and deadpan delivery that characterizes his work, the movie is wrestling with true grief, uncertainty, and the need to keep performing your role (in life, and in a metafiction sense, in the movie). This driving need is there even and perhaps especially when you don’t "understand the script", and when you feel isolated and other-ed.
The scene with Margot Robbie is the fulcrum of the entire movie, it’s brief, but devastating, and probably the most emotionally exposed Anderson has ever gotten. I think this scene is also in part in dialogue with the audience. If you ever do revisit it, I think there’s a lot simmering under the surface worth your time. But it's not my intention to try and convince someone to enjoy a movie that doesn't click for them.
He has put out 5 films in the last 7 years. Wes Anderson might just be a victim of his own productivity, his work could benefit from some scarcity.
Anderson nonetheless is still quite inventive and experimental in his films, he's always doing new things, and usually those new things are in the details, and of course, those new things tend to play into his trademark style. Asteroid City played like an excuse to play around with clever camera movements. Isle of Dogs did weird things where the image and sound were providing diverging narratives that would come back together.
Anderson's trademark style is annoying to me only when my interest in the characters and story is lacklustre, but for every Anderson film I'm not that into I know at least one person who loves it.
I think it would be unreasonable to expect him to reinvent his filmmaking style dramatically. There are other filmmakers out there making movies for those who've had their fill of quirky Wes Anderson flicks.
For better or for worse, Anderson is very much an auteur [0], like Godard or Woody Allen. Almost certainly in a self-conscious way.
Complaining that Anderson movies feel like Anderson movies seems almost to miss the point: do we look at Picasso's works and complain about the consistent style he developed? The self-imposed constraints of his own style give him a framework to build his art from (it's often said that constraints foster creativity after all) and a particular craft to master.
Conversely, the form might always be an Anderson movie, but the function of each film can be quite different. By sticking with and mastering a particular aesthetic he frees himself to explore things besides aesthetic wildly. What does The Royal Tenenbaums have in common with, say, The Grand Budapest Hotel, besides Futura?
That said, I do feel like Asteroid City in particular was a stretch for him: there's nothing quite like "you can't wake up if you don't fall asleep" anywhere else in his filmography. It felt like along with the more extreme artifice came a more extreme intensity of feeling: to me it's a film that really came from a very anguished and grieving place. I haven't read the article or seen the new film yet, but based on the headline it sounds like this might be the overall direction his work is heading.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auteur
I like Wes Anderson movies in general, but I was unable to finish Asteroid City at home. It felt emotionally monotone. I probably need to go back and rewatch it.
Hope this one is a bit more exciting.
Rushmore is my favorite. The yearbook montage is awesome: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMyh6ptegko
>His films are the same thing repeated in different circumstances with different characters.
I am not sure what you mean, Asteroid City with its complex structure utilizing metafiction to explore things mostly removed from the characters and the story does not have much in common with The Royal Tenenbaums other than aesthetic with its fairly simple and direct use of character to explore the individual and family. Do you want him to make a superhero or action movie or something?
You reminded me of the Meisner workshop scene in Asteroid City (you can't wake up if you don't fall asleep). The more I think about it, the more the Meisner Technique seems like a central theme of the whole movie. The scene with Margot Robbie and Jason Schwartzman drives home the difference between recitation and acting. Cool stuff.
OpenAI could have had a neat and legitimate crossover promotion between Her and ChatGPT if Scarlett had played along. It doesn't cost her anything, and they likely could have produced the voice they wanted with some material from her, maybe 10 minutes of talking?
However, the lady doth protest too much.
Actors and big media companies are doing their damnedest to prevent any progress, because technology is encroaching on their craft. It seems that entirely AI generated media at Hollywood blockbuster levels of audiovisual quality are a matter of engineering at this point.
Let's not impede progress so that we can play a pretend game that we need humans to do work that AI or software can do at the same level of quality.
Actors like Scarlett shouldn't be able to license or protect their voices or appearance, regardless of how distinctive. Someone's doppleganger shouldn't be limited in their own rights based on what they decide with regards to appearance in media. Someone that looks like Scarlett Johansson shouldn't be able to decide for her that they don't want to appear in any video.
If Scarlett decides to get plastic surgery and radically alters her face or body, should she retain any rights over how she used to appear? What about twins separated at birth? Can I get plastic surgery to appear like 1980s Tom Cruise and start an acting career?
What if I want to copy Bradley Cooper's nose from Maestro, Scarlett's eyebrows from Asteroid City, and Legolas' ears from Lord of the Rings? Should I have to pay royalties for visual styles of individual components of a look? What about shades of hair - Demi Moore's hair is the same color as my own. Should she pay me royalties for copying "my" style?
This is absurdist territory, and the entitlement is raw and kind of disgusting. I can get on board with protecting someone's creative work, allowing copyright that ensures a clean protection of that individual's ability to profit from their own efforts. Recordings of music or performances, copies of scripts or writings, those things are clear work product.
Granting someone any rights or protections based on the sound of their voice, or the shape of their face, or the color of their skin, or any other integral feature, regardless of how engineered or refined it might be, is crazy. They didn't earn and don't own the features they were born with. Don't validate the entitled assumptions and crazy rent seeking schemes of Hollywood middlemen.
As long as OpenAI didn't claim any association with work product, they'd have been OK. By Tweeting "Her," Altman potentially infringed on work product by trying to use the movie to hype his own product. There might have been a fair use argument, if there was more nuance. Altman wanted to associate ChatGPT with Her, however, and didn't necessarily have the legal right to do that, especially in a commercial context. With it being free, however, maybe not profiting from the potential infringement will mean they get a slap on the wrist and a little embarrassed?
There are some deep and convoluted discussions ahead with regards to licensing and copyright issues. We should steer clear of granting individuals rights to things they did not earn and that may be shared with others - people shouldn't be granted extra rights because they're pretty and famous, nor should pretty and famous people be limited by the rights of some doppleganger.
If some Harrison Ford lookalike wants to license their appearance, then they should be perfectly free to do so as long as they don't infringe on any of the real Ford's work product. Same deal for voices or any other output by any individual where there's a reasonable possibility of mistaken identity. That probably means deepfake porn will end up being legal, so long as the underlying work product or identity isn't infringed on.
OpenAI should be free to use any voice they want. The ethical thing is definitely to approach the individuals with voices they want to emulate, but as long as they don't infringe on protected work product or claim association with the original voice, there shouldn't be any limitation.
Asteroid City. Beau is Afraid. Dream Scenario. Medusa Deluxe. Poor Things. Saltburn. Skinamarink. Smoking Causes Coughing.
Barbie. Oppenheimer.
Soon, The People's Joker, which has been stuck in purgatory since last year given its unconventional telling of a mythos that (on the surface) seems similar to Batman's.
You don't have to like any of these movies, and they're all challenging, but all of them were unconventional and innovative and released to theaters in 2023. This has been a wildly unconventional year, and a fairly exciting one in mainstream cinema.
Oh, wait, what am I arguing against? I read the study, and it says that cinema remains innovative despite discourse arguing otherwise! Indeed.
This month, there were Oppenheimer by Christopher Nolan and Asteroid City by Wes Anderson.
It does show that HN is a website for techies and not for cinema enthusiasts; there's good stuff out there, but you won't get to it if you only scratch the surface.
People get pissed off because they often end up doing the opposite of what makes sense for the business and the users.
In advertising terms, subreddits are analogous to special interest magazines. Despite this, Reddit's initial approach was to spam subreddits with low quality ads that had nothing to do with the subreddit's purpose. Going to /r/golf I saw an ad for a Samsung phone and then:
> r/movies tell us who you’re most excited to see in ASTEROID CITY. In cinemas June 23
They've also made the ads barely distinguishable from regular posts.
> I've never understood how it was supposed to be profitable
Not hiring 2,000 people would've been a strong start. Improving long-standing issues with the platform rather than churning through poorly implemented and largely irrelevant features would be another.
They could easily have monetised the 3rd party apps with a much less negative reaction by requiring users to purchase Reddit subscriptions for access. Users that didn't want to pay would migrate to the official app and the subscription earns more than the API fees would.
> As two major movies about the atomic era hit screens
These 2 movies would be "Oppenheimer" https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15398776/ and "Asteroid City" https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14230388/
AFAIK, only the first is directly about the Atomic Bomb.
Their guerilla marketing techniques, such as paying botfarms to submit fake 5 star reviews to imdb or letterboxd is not really appreciated. This was going on for years. I have to catch those cheaters manually, and block them for my cannes ratings overview.
But just recently the Robert Rodriguez, Wes Anderson and Martin Scorsese marketing campaigns just did the very same, taking over the dirty tricks from A24. Ingenious Media I assume. Also someone is paying several real people money to submit fake 5 start reviews. All blocked.
https://letterboxd.com/film/hypnotic-2023/members/rated/.5-5/ https://letterboxd.com/film/killers-of-the-flower-moon/members/rated/.5-5/ https://letterboxd.com/film/asteroid-city/members/rated/.5-5/
Hate it
Watching the bright and beautiful trailer for Wes Anderson's Asteroid City reminded me how wonderful it is to have a director who isn't interested in a pointless pursuit of "realism" in an inherently unreal medium, and instead joyfully and unashamedly embraces its artificiality and creates his own style, instead of following the herd. I would take him at his quirkiest and most cliched over another dark and colourless movie.