Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones are about to rekindle their big screen romance in The Aeronauts and while the film is based on a true story it takes a fairly healthy slice of reimagining to create the on screen pairing.
AdvertisementHaving starred together in The Theory Of Everything to critical acclaim, they saddled up a hot air balloon and took to the skies for the Amazon Studios high-flying adventure. However, there are a couple of significant differences between it and the true story, so here’s everything you need to know about the film’s plot and where it parts ways with history.
The Aeronauts story
Felicity Jones plays ace pilot Amelia Wren and Eddie Redmayne stars as her balloonist compadre James Glaisher with the two heading out on pioneering flights in the name of science.
You can see in the trailer below that things get pretty hairy when they’re up up and away in their meteorological balloon, looking a bit like the aeronautical equivalent of Gravity. This should make it a fairy popular film when it arrives on the big screen and for its Amazon Prime Video release (details below). While there’s definitely an element of creative license with some of the sequences, there are accounts of danger in the true story that gives rise to this element of The Aeronauts.
The true story
The Aeronauts is based on the true story of the meteorologist James Glaisher who worked with co-pilot Henry Coxwell to study the earth’s atmosphere at its highest levels back in the mid-19th Century. The most significant divergence between the film and the historical events is that Henry Coxwell has been altered to the female role of Amelia Wren.
This has picked up some criticism, but the new characterisation is an amalgam of the James Glaisher story with other notable balloonists of the era, which seems like a nice touch. Pioneering aeronaut Sophie Blanchard, the first woman to work as a professional balloonist, is the most significant of these, taking to the skies early in the 19th Century with her husband Jean-Pierre Blanchard.
Glaisher and Coxwell were active balloonists between 1862 and 1866 when the two were 59-63 and 43-47 years old respectively. Eddie Redmayne is 37 and Felicity Jones is 36, so there’s a big age gap between the film plot and the true story on the Glaisher side. However, Blanchard was 26 when she first took to the skies, so when you view the film as having two inspirational people from history spliced together then the age of the cast seems more appropriate.
Finally, there’s the peril side of the film, which you can get a feel for from The Aeronauts trailer at the bottom of the page. When you look at both sides of the true story you get a ridiculous amount of danger and daring.
Coxwell is credited with saving Glaisher’s life during their ballon rides high into the atmosphere, which took them as high as 11,887 m, breaking the world record.
Blanchard had a raft of difficult situations to escape from during her career as a balloonist. Her husband suffered a heart attack whilst up alone and fell as a result, leading to his death a year later from the injuries he sustained. She then went on to die herself from an aeronautical accident when her hydrogen balloon caught fire. She crash landed into a house, and fell to her death at the age of 41.
The Aeronauts cast and how they fit in with the real story
The two main actors make up the lions share of the screen time for the cast, taking centre stage for large portions of the film from the confines of a balloon basket. However, the cast also includes Himesh Patel (Yesterday) as John Trew, Glaisher’s friend, who doesn’t appear to be based on anyone in particular from the true story, but it’s probably safe to say that the scientist had at least a few chums.
Vincent Perez (Alone In Berlin) plays Amelia’s husband Pierre Wren, which is clearly a nod to Jean-Pierre Blanchard, Sophie’s husbant and initial ballooning partner.
Anne Reid (AKA Valerie Barlow from Coronation Street) plays James’ mum Ethel and Tom Courtenay (Dad’s Army 2016) plays his dad Arthur. Glaisher obviously had parents, but that’s as far as things go with regards to the true story for these two.
Tim McInnerny (AKA Lord Percy Percy and Captain Darling in the Blackadder) plays Airy, who is English mathematician and astronomer George Airy. However, Rebecca Front’s (War & Peace) character Aunt Frances is far less historically accurate.
The Aeronauts release date
The Aeronauts will be out on the big screen in the UK on Monday the 4th November 2019, which is a slightly unusual day to come out on. It will then arrive in the USA and Canada on the 6th 2019 before it streams worldwide on Amazon Prime on the 20th December.
Visit our historical films section to see more true story adaptations and you can see The Aeronauts Twitter page at https://twitter.com/AeronautsFilm.
