Film / Asteroid City

Asteroid City does not exist. It is an imaginary drama created expressly for this broadcast.

"You can't wake up if you don't fall asleep."

— An acting class exercise late in the film, and in some ways its central message.

Asteroid City is a 2023 sci-fi romantic dramedy film directed by Wes Anderson. It boasts a massive ensemble cast made up of Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Jeffrey Wright, Tilda Swinton, Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Adrien Brody, Liev Schreiber, Hope Davis, Steve Park, Rupert Friend, Maya Hawke, Steve Carell, Matt Dillon, Hong Chau, Willem Dafoe, Margot Robbie, Tony Revolori, Jake Ryan, Sophia Lillis, and Jeff Goldblum. Once again, Alexandre Desplat composed the soundtrack. The film released in theaters on June 16th, 2023.

Asteroid City is about the titular town, a tiny place in 1955 that sprung up on the interstate highway in the southwestern United States. It consists of a small luncheonette, a gas station, a motel, and not much else - aside from the large impact crater outside city limits, around which a scientific research facility has sprouted. It is here where the annual Junior Stargazers ceremony is held, celebrating the achievements of five teenaged scientists and awarding a scholarship to one of them. The occasion brings an assortment of people to Asteroid City, including Augie Steenbeck (Schwartzman), a war photographer mourning his late wife, and his Junior Stargazer son Woodrow (Jake Ryan); Midge Campbell (Johansson), a famous but disillusioned Hollywood star, and her Junior Stargazer daughter Dinah (Grace Edwards); June Douglas (Hawke), a Christian schoolteacher bringing her class on a field trip; and several other families of Junior Stargazers. A generally pleasant occasion becomes fraught with cosmic significance when, during an "ellipses event", the people of Asteroid City have a genuine extraterrestial encounter, shaking their belief systems and putting them in government quarantine...

Except Asteroid City is also a play written by one Conrad Earp (Norton), to be performed on national television for an anthology show with an unnamed host (Cranston). As a framing device around the story proper, we watch as director Schubert Green (Brody) puts on a show with the help of a crew of actors and a very passionate acting coach (Dafoe).

Previews: Official Trailer

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Asteroid City contains examples of the following:

• Abusive Parents: One of the "violent men" Midge refers to in her past is her father.
• Actor Allusion: The actress who was supposed to play the late Mrs. Steenbeck is dressed in Elizabethan garb for a Period Drama when Jones Hall meets her again. Margot Robbie previously played Elizabeth I in Mary, Queen of Scots (2018).
• Adorably Precocious Child: Dwight, one of the children who is part of June's class, is caught smoking with the cowboys, is seen considering the motel manager's real estate proposal and even writes a song about the alien which he performs with the help of the cowboys.
• Aerith and Bob: Augie's teenage son is Woodrow... and his girls are named Andromeda, Pandora, and Cassiopeia.
• Affectionate Nickname: Saltzburg Keitel refers to Conrad Earp as "Connie", and he refers to Saltzburg as "Saltzy".
• Alliterative Name: General Grif Gibson.
• Amicable Exes: Schubert Green's wife, Polly, has left him for a baseball player, but they're still on very good terms with each other. She stops by for a conversation and gives him advice on the production, even leaving him with a (chaste) kiss.
• An Aesop: There are many things in life, some major and some minor, that we just don't have the answer for; the key to happiness is to accept the unknown and let it carry you forward. After all, "you can't wake up if you don't fall asleep."
• Anachronism Stew: A couple examples.
  • Despite the play taking place in September 1955, a few songs from the near-future are used in its staging, such as Last Train to San Fernando and Chas. McDevitt Skiffle Group's version of Freight Train (both released in 1957) and Tennessee Ernie Ford's version of Sixteen Tons (released October 1955, a month after the events of the film). Most egregiously (if we're assuming both the film and the Framing Device are set in the 1950s) is the inclusion of Island of Dreams by the Springfields, which wouldn't be released until 1962.
  • One of the names in the "name game" is Jackie "O", who was the unknown wife of a Senator in 1955, but moreover, wouldn't be given that nickname until her marriage to Aristotle Onassis in 1968.
• Art Shift: The Framing Device is in black-and-white, fitting for a '50s television program, while Asteroid City itself is in full color.
• Ascended Extra: In-Universe, the understudy for Woodrow Steenbeck takes on the role full-time after successfully convincing Mercedes Ford not to quit Asteroid City on the eve of the play's premiere.
• Aspect Ratio Switch: The Framing Device is in a tight, boxy aspect ratio since it's supposed to be airing on a 1950s-model TV set, but Asteroid City itself is in ultra-widescreen.
• Asian and Nerdy: Ricky Cho, one of the Junior Stargazers, is Asian.
• Artistic License – Geography:
  • The desert around Asteroid City looks like Arizona but dialogue places the town on the California/Nevada border where the desert would look distinguishably different.
    • It's even lampshaded by Conrad Earp when he refers to it as the "California/Nevada/Arizona desert", meaning even he doesn't know.
• Atomic Hate: Asteroid City is not terribly far away from a nuclear testing site, and mushroom clouds can be periodically seen in the distance.
• Bait-and-Switch: Late in the story, it looks like Midge has committed suicide by overdose. But no, she's just playing a character who commits suicide by overdose.
• The Big Damn Kiss: After the Quarantine being ended is reversed and the camp devolves into chaos, Woodrow and Dinah have one after he projects their initials together onto the Moon.
• Bookends:
  • The story begins with the Steenbecks being towed into town, and ends (along with the film) with the Steenbecks piling into Stanley's car with their things and driving off.
  • The film is also capped off by Train Songs, starting with "Last Train to San Fernando" and ending with "Freight Train".
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: The cargo on the train at the beginning of the film is shown to include cattle, gravel, grapefruit, avocados, artichokes, pecans, almonds, John Deere tractors, Pontiacs and a 10 megaton warhead.
  (Painted on the warhead) CAUTION: DO NOT DETONATE without Presidential Approval
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: This happens in-universe a few times, most memorably when the Host accidentally ends up in frame during Asteroid City before hastily making his exit.
• The Cameo: During one Production Narrative scene, it's revealed that the alien is played by Jeff Goldblum — or rather, a nameless actor played by Jeff Goldblum — in a monster suit on stage.
• Car Chase Shootout: One appears as a Running Gag throughout the movie (see Hero of Another Story).
• Casting Gag: Jeff Goldblum has some prior experience with playing an alien and performing in a monster suit.
• Character Catchphrase:
  • "Of course, I understand" - the motel manager.
  • "You dare me?" - Clifford.
  • "Head count!" - June.
• Character Tics: Jones Hall, Augie's actor, has a habit of putting the collar of his shirt over his nose.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Woodrow's little sisters are a...strange bunch. So is Clifford, one of the Junior Stargazers.
• Comically Inappropriate Funeral Urn: After Augie finally breaks down and tells his children that their mother succumbed to her illness four weeks ago, he reveals she was cremated, and shows them the ashes - which are being kept in a Tupperware bowl with a sealed lid.
• Cowboy: Montana is a Singing Cowboy, and makes use of his talents in one memorable scene.
• Crisis of Faith: Downplayed. June Douglas, a Christian schoolteacher (possibly Mormon, as she & her students refer to God as "Heavenly Father") bringing her class on a field trip to Asteroid City, is quite shaken by the arrival of an alien that throws her entire belief system into question. Although she never stops believing in God, as far as we know, she is troubled by her new uncertainty.
• Dawson Casting: In-Universe the actors playing the Junior Stargazers are implied to be much older than their 14-year-old characters, as the Framing Device shows them in the same acting class as the other adult actors, and in the case of the actor playing Woodrow, he is shown to be old enough to be sent after Mercedes Ford on his own to deliver a message and talk her into coming back.
• Deleted Role: In-universe, Augie was supposed to have a conversation with his dead wife during a dream sequence on an alien planet, but it was cut for time. Margot Robbie plays the actress who was supposed to have played the wife, and ends up providing good advice for Jones Hall when he's unsure of what to do with Augie.
• Did Not Get the Girl: Zigzagged with Augie - after quarantine ends, Augie wakes up and goes to the cabin bathroom hoping to see Midge only to find the Motel Manager inside instead, who informs him he slept late, and Midge checked out earlier that morning. However, when Augie, Stanley, Woodrow and the girls head to the diner for one last breakfast before departing, the diner owner slips Augie a note from Midge with her address, asking him to write. It's only a PO Box, but it's something.
• Famed In-Story: Midge Campbell is a famous actress in the world of Asteroid City.
• Fanservice: At one point, Midge asks Augie if he would like her to reenact a nude scene she did for one of her films. This involves her dropping her towel in front of him, resulting in viewers seeing a glimpse of Scarlett Johansson's^note  body double's naked body.
• Foreshadowing: Jones Hall has a discussion with Conrad Earp about why Augie burns his hand on the hotplate when talking to Midge in Act III - during an interlude that happens way before in Act I.
• Framing Device: The framing device is a TV program from the '50s showing the televised production of the play Asteroid City.
• Funny Background Event: During the prayer scene in the epilogue, the motel manager can be seen in the background with Augie's tomato juice, and shortly after can be seen taking off his visor out of respect.
• Giant Novelty Check: During the announcement of the Junior Stargazers Award, Gen. Gibson's Aide-de-Camp is seen holding a giant check for the award amount - $5,000. When Woodrow wins the award at the end of the movie, he gets a normal-sized check, noting that the giant one is just for show.
• Hero of Another Story: Every now and then, a frantic police chase will zoom down the highway through Asteroid City, suggesting a dramatic crime narrative happening off-screen.
• Humanoid Aliens: The Alien resembles a greenish-black humanoid with abnormally long legs and googly eyes; this turns out to be an exaggeration of his actor's appearance.
• Killed Offscreen: Conrad Earp, the in-universe playwright of Asteroid City, is killed in a car accident just before the play closes.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Asteroid City does this a few times in-universe as well. For instance, when Augie burns his hand on the griddle, Midge's startled response ("You really did it! That actually happened!") is implied to be Mercedes Ford's reaction upon seeing that Augie's actor Jones Hall actually burned himself.
• Leitmotif: A high jingling can be heard in just about every original song in the movie.
• The Lost Lenore: The death of Augie's late wife has clearly left a lasting effect on him, despite his stoic front: he didn't tell his kids for weeks after the fact, more to shield himself from admitting it than to protect them.
• Missing Mom: The death of Augie's wife also leaves Woodrow and the three daughters without a mother, something Augie has managed to not tell them for three weeks after the fact.
• Motor Mouth: General Gibson tends to be both very quick and also very straightforward when he speaks.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Particularly in the framing device.
  • The Host is a suit-clad narrator with a sonorous voice that recalls Rod Serling.
  • Conrad Earp, a gentlemanly gay playwright with a rich Southern drawl, is similar to Tennessee Williams, although they write about very different things.
  • Schubert Green (born Shylock Grzworvszowski), a Jewish immigrant who became a renowned theater director, is a stand-in for Elia Kazan.^note Although Kazan himself was of Greek descent and an immigrant from the Ottoman Empire.
  • Saltzburg Keitel is a renowned acting coach in-universe who specializes in Method Acting, clearly modelled on Lee Strasberg.
  • The character of Midge Campbell, famous Hollywood starlet, who seems to be a pastiche of Ava Gardner and Marilyn Monroe.^note Funnily enough, Midge's actor has been frequently compared to Monroe
• Not So Stoic: Midge is a deadpan, blasé character, even for Wes Anderson, but she reacts with genuine surprise when she sees that Augie burned his hand - although this may have been her actress' in-universe response to seeing Augie's actor burn himself for real.
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: In-universe. Mercedes Ford speaks in a Southern accent, while her character, Midge, speaks with Scarlett Johansson's natural voice. When the Host accidentally interrupts Asteroid City, Mercedes is startled enough that she slips back into a Southern accent on her next line, "some people do," which she quickly corrects.
• People in Rubber Suits: The Framing Device reveals that this is how the Alien is realized on stage, whereas in the story proper it's presented as Starring Special Effects.
• Pluto Is Expendable: A justified aversion, given the '50s setting. June gives a lesson to her kids stating that there are still nine planets in the solar system. Pluto's downgrade to a dwarf planet would not come until 2006.
• Politically Correct History: During Act I, a Production Narrative interlude shows how Jones Hall convinced Conrad Earp to cast Hall as Augie Steenbeck. While it starts with a bribe of Earp's favorite flavor of ice cream and a discussion about the character of Augie, it ends with Hall taking off his pants and embracing Earp - implying heavily that Hall sealed the deal with a night together. While this might not even be eyebrow raising in 2023, to broadcast something like this on television in the '50s would likely have been seen as tantamount to broadcasting perversion, and almost certainly would not have made it to air.
• Punny Name: Midge Campbell's actress, Mercedes Ford, is just two automotive manufacturers. It's implied that this is a stage name, however, as Schubert's personal note to her is addressed to "Kim."
• Rage Breaking Point: Just as the quarantine is about to be over, the Alien suddenly returns to drop the meteorite back in its place, causing General Gibson to reinstate the quarantine making everyone present, children, parents and scientists alike, revolt.
• Raygun Gothic: The film's look is a love letter to the genre.
• Reading the Stage Directions Out Loud: Augie does this briefly during his rehearsal with Midge in Act 3.
• Riddle for the Ages:
  • Very little is actually revealed about the Alien, who arrives to pick up the asteroid that created the impact crater near Asteroid City and shows up again to drop it back off. What could it possibly want with an asteroid that crashed to Earth thousands of years ago? Is it friendly? Will it ever return to Earth, and if it does, will it be alone? We never find out. Backstage, the alien's actor (played by Jeff Goldblum) can be seen discussing his role with another worker, saying he believes the alien is intended to be more of a metaphor than a true character.
  • Why does Augie burn his hand on the Quicky-Griddle? Jones Hall, his actor, offers his own theory to Conrad Earp, who quickly accepts it, but he doesn't seem satisfied with the answer. In the end, he accepts the fact that he doesn't know and lets that carry his performance.
• Running Gag:
  • Clifford always asking someone if they dare him to do something stupid (i.e., eat a hot pepper, jump off a roof, pressing a button on some medical equipment), and immediately doing it anyway.
  • Whenever Midge Campbell's name is uttered in a group discussion, all the men in the vicinity immediately repeat her name in a hushed voice.
  • The recurring police chase, where a squad car and motorcycle try to shoot up a hot rod, that pops back and forth across the roads right up until the quarantine seals the road off. When the quarantine is finally lifted and everyone goes home, the chase is back on, showing that things have more or less returned to normal.
• Schizo Tech: All over the place within the "play" of Asteroid City. Sci-fi staples like ray guns and jetpacks (admittedly prototypes in both cases) and automated vending machines that can do anything from dispense normal goods to prepare cocktails exist in an otherwise stereotypical 50s setting. The fact that this is all in a Show Within a Show made in the 50s makes these anachronisms far more acceptable.
• Schoolmarm: June Douglas, who acts as the only chaperone to her students when they arrive in Asteroid City on a field trip and spends most of her time trying to keep them out of trouble and focused on the lesson she had planned.
• Sharp-Dressed Man: The unnamed radio host is a dapper middle-aged man who wears a brilliant blue suit (as seen during his "blooper" when he appears in Asteroid City itself).
• Shout-Out: As per usual with Wes Anderson:
  • This isn't the first time Slim Whitman's cover of "Indian Love Call" has shown up in a film with aliens.
  • One recurring gag involves a dancing blue roadrunner that says "beep beep." The school trip also notes they passed by a dead coyote on the way (left "flat as a pancake" after being run over by an eighteen-wheeler).
  • As this tweet shows, the scene wherein the Junior Stargazers are sitting around naming famous people and saying "out" is a direct reference to Satyajit Ray's Days and Nights in the Forest.
  • The model number of the train is "X6151", the same as the train from Bad Day at Black Rock (a film which also takes place in a small American desert town that was released in 1955, the year in which the events of the film transpire). In fact, the entire opening credits scene of that film is a very clear inspiration to the opening credits of this one.
• Show Within a Show: In the film's universe, Asteroid City is a televised production of a stage play of the same name. We get looks at the backstage drama, shot in black-and-white.
• Small Role, Big Impact: The Alien only visits the site twice, and then only briefly, but both times upend everything for the other characters. Jeff Goldblum is the last actor listed in the opening credits with this in mind. Further playing with the trope, he only appears as the Alien in the framing device, as it is realized via stop-motion animation in the story proper - but the animated creature moves and emotes like Goldblum does (the head animator followed him around for a day just to observe this).
• Southern Gentleman: Montana is incredibly courteous to those around him, especially to June.
• Split-Screen Phone Call: The conversation between Augie and Stanley at the start of the film is one of these. As is the phone call the Junior Stargazers make after the alien shows up.
• Starring Special Effects: In the story proper, the Alien is realized via stop-motion animation. (In the Framing Device, it's an actor in a suit.)
• Stellar Name: Of Augie Steenbeck's three daughters, Andromeda and Cassiopeia are famous constellations (and queens from mythology). Pandora is the peculiar exception, but her namesake is arguably the most famous one.
• Stock Desert Interstate: A long desert highway? Check. A gas station? Check. A 50s-era diner? Check! The Steenbecks even gets stuck there (at first) because their car breaks down and needs parts to come in.
• Stunned Silence:
  • When Midge asks if Augie wants to see her perform her nude scene, he just stares at her in silence before asking if he said yes, then explains that he tried to say yes but his mouth didn't work.
  • Everyone stands stock still and dead silent when the Alien shows up.
• Teen Genius: All five of the Junior Stargazers are incredibly gifted award-winning scientists in the making, capable of creating jetpacks and rayguns.
• Time Skip: There's a weeklong skip between acts 2 and 3.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Being as it is not far from an atomic testing site, Asteroid City has learned to shrug off the occasional earthquake and distant mushroom cloud.
• WPUN: The name of the channel broadcasting the story of Asteroid City and its creation is "WXYZ-TV".
• The Weird Sisters: Cassiopeia, Andromeda, and Pandora Steenbeck are a pint-sized (and downplayed) iteration of this trope. They are always seen together (to the point of veering on The Dividual) and early on they attempt a magic spell to resurrect their mother.
• Where the Hell Is Springfield?: As noted above next to Artistic License – Geography, the location of the titular city is never specified and this is arguably justified as it is noted as being fictional in the Framing Device.
  • The location of the Tarkington Theatre, however, which is the location of the framing device, is only noted as being at "345 South Northwest Avenue" with no city or even a state ever being mentioned. Although it is stated that Schubert does spend dark nights in the governor's suite at the Nebraska Hotel, so it possibly takes place in Nebraska.
• Zeerust: The story is based in 1955, yet there is surprisingly futuristic technology shown, albeit with a period appropriate design, such as a jetpack and a ray gun.

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