Unpacking the Nonsensical - Aliens and Car Chases in 'Asteroid City' Movie Review

Wes Anderson's probably my favorite director, and this movie was fun, but I found it was also pretty confusing. It was hard for me to follow up points. Did you feel that way at all? Like, what do you think the alien meant to the movie? It was kind of, that's kind of something I was a little confused about. Like, what is it trying to represent? It was just a random, inexplicable element. So, he came down, everybody looked at the ship, like close encounters, right? The ship came down, and then I loved it. Later on, the ship was in a box, like in the prop department. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, just thrown in a box, like spaceship, and the guy's wife, who's divorced from him, she says, did you make the green spaceship? Yeah, we shot that the other day. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's funny. But, they come down, everybody's in awe, they're all looking at him, the military's there, the whole town's there, and it's the space cadet kids. So, they're in their element. When they first showed the asteroid in the steel cage, I thought the asteroid was the size of this table, and the steel cage was this big. Right, it turned out it was like a little, like the size of a softball. So, he comes down, he just takes the cage off. So now, everything's completely different. I like how he did it to you, so like, he knows everyone's watching him. Yeah, like really sneaky. But, why? But, that was the Jeff Goldblum part. Like, he would do that, like, nobody look, everybody don't look, you know, look over there. And, he takes the cage off, and he takes the little asteroid, what was it, was it the Arid City Asteroid, or something, I think they called it. And, he takes it, and then the ladder just goes back up on the ship. Everybody's just standing there frozen, and he leaves, and they're like, the kids are like, he took the asteroid. Like, was it his? Like, what? It doesn't explain, that's what I'm saying. What, what does it mean? And then, he brought it back. Yeah, and then he brought it back, and he engraved it, right? Yeah. You don't think, in Wes Anderson's mind, that meant anything. Maybe because it was so meta, everything is a thing within a thing. I try to start thinking, like, maybe Archie's referencing, like, the death of his wife. Maybe it had something to do, and you were saying, unexpected events. I try not to read stuff in. I try not to make up, like, my own idea, and then inject it in, as if it's the idea. So, that's just an unexplained thing for me. And, same with the reoccurring chase scene. Oh, yeah. What do you think that, do you don't think it represented anything, or it was meant to? I'll tell you what made it great. In the beginning of the movie, there's a guy in a getaway car, in a cop car, chasing him, and they're shooting each other, and there's a motorcycle cop behind him, in a very spielbart. The 1950s, bing, bing, like, yeah. 1955, right? And, you know why, this thing took place in September of 1955. I took place in August of 1955. So, that's why it was like, oh, yeah. So, I was a month old, right? But, they showed it in the beginning. It was just a silly side thing. But then, in the middle of the movie, with all of this going on, they ride through the city again, and they're still shooting at each other. And then, after it's all said and done, and everybody goes home, and the place completely returns to normal. One more time, the guy goes through, and they're shooting at him. And, for their perception, all they were doing was the cop in the getaway car. Like, all the rest of this stuff didn't matter to them. And, I thought that was interesting. And, the same thing with the roadrunner. The little roadrunner, right? And, they had the sign break for roadrunners, and beep, beep, beep, beep, went running across. And then, like I said, the cartoon coloring of the movie. I mean, look at that. That's a scene. Those clouds, and that blue sky, and everything. That's a real roadrunner. I mean, look at the landscape. It totally looks like Wally Coyote. And then, they actually had a real bird roadrunner, like, run by. So, yeah, that was miraculous. Look at the paint job. Oh, and then, there's the highway to nowhere. The overpass to nowhere, out in the middle of the desert. A perfect, because there's a government research facility that's on the side of the road. There's no sidewalks, or you would just turn off the road. There's no reason to put this, but yet, there they are. So, what we glossed over, and it's, when we get involved like this, it's easy to gloss over giant elements, but they were having a convention there to celebrate the asteroid, and they had the group of people, the space cadets. What was the other word? Brainiacs. Yeah, the Brainiacs. Right, the kid had Brainiac embroidered on his shirt. My mother did that. So, they had this half a dozen kids that made these incredible inventions. Like, way more advanced than anything we have now. One kid had like a disintegrator. Yeah, and like a laser. And they'd throw something up in the air. And the military guys, everything they were doing was Brainiac stuff. They were, like when the kid jumped off the roof. It's an experiment that he jumped off the roof. And then the one kid had the projector on the moon. Right, yeah, he was able to print anything. It was the ultimate marketing thing. And at the end, when he had the affair with his teacher, he put a heart with their initials on it. Like, he carved that into the moon. Thanks again for watching, guys. As always, please like, comment, and subscribe. Leave us a comment. Let us know what you thought about Asteroid City. And leave us some recommendations for what we should review next. Thanks again for watching. We'll catch you at the next one.