Humanity’s quest for knowledge has brought us to the farthest ends of the Earth, the darkest depths of the deepest oceans, and the distant shores of outer space. Whether for science or adventure (usually a bit of both), human beings possess an uncanny knack to seek out the limits of their existence and push past those limits, into new frontiers of discovery. The new movie, The Aeronauts, pays tribute to the potential of mankind by dramatizing the 1862 hot air balloon flight that saw scientist James Glaisher (Eddie Redmaybe) and his pilot (Felicity Jones) reach heights in excess of 36,000 feet and make scientific breakthroughs that changed humanity’s knowledge of planet Earth forever.

The Aeronauts is an uplifting adventure and a harrowing thrill-ride, replete with beautiful imagery of the sky as seen from above the clouds, as well as the white-knuckle terror that comes with guiding a delicate hot air balloon through the eye of a storm, with bolts of lightning whipping past like bullets, thousands of feet above the ground.

While promoting the American release of The Aeronauts, director Tom Harper sat down with Screen Rant to discuss his work on the film, from its magnificent special effects to the difficulty of crafting a story which is set almost entirely within the tiny basket of a hot air balloon. He also talks frankly about the perceived “wokewashing” of replacing Glaisher’s real-life pilot with a fictional composite of several different historical women, and what that says about the online critics who are quick to point out that particular historical liberty without expressing any scorn towards the other changes made in crafting an entertaining motion picture experience that everyone can enjoy.

In today’s landscape of blockbuster action movies, we take cutting-edge special effects for granted. And this is a movie that really uses this technology to tell the story. I don’t think it would be possible to make this movie in any earlier era.

Can you talk a little bit about that approach, of having, I don’t know… Is it like, the set of the basket just completely surrounded by blue screens? What was that set like?

I think that’s right.

That’s movie magic!

Lots of it was shot like that, in a great big bluescreen room where we built a big chunk of the balloon, but we did also shoot a significant degree of it for real. That was the starting point for it. I think that’s where… Visual effects are funny things; we’ve reached the point, now, where almost anything is possible. But that doesn’t mean it’s always believable. With this film, I wanted to embrace visual effects in a real way, or as real of a way as we could. Therefore, when looking at the reference material, such as real people jumping out of planes, parachute landings, people up in balloons… The thing that’s most noticeable about it is the camera imperfections. There are a few things you notice; there are restrictions. If you’re flying in a balloon, you’re in a basket, and there’s no moving outside of that basket. There’s no hovering just outside to get a better camera angle. So you embrace those things. It’s either shot from a helicopter, or inside the basket, or attached to the balloon in some way. If you’re in the confined space of a balloon, you do get the knocks and bangs, it’s not all perfect. You can’t necessarily have lots of filters and things to block out flares. Those imperfections really add to the sense of how real the visual effects feel. So that, combined with the fact we did some of it for real. We did climb in a balloon, we took Eddie and Felicity up to 3000 feet, and Felicity did climb out of the basket. That was her! You can’t always tell what’s real and what’s not.

Was that ever a fight with the studio? Like, that 3D camera stuff is really hot right now, but exactly like what you said, it really takes away from the believably of it.

For the stuff that wasn’t real, we tried to recreate the ‘real’ as much as we could. Just because anything is possible doesn’t mean the audience will buy it. And we tried to use all the restrictions that reality imposes to make the visual effects more believable?

Were you ever thousands of feet in the air with a camera thinking, “What the heck am I doing up here? I want to go home!” Obviously, you don’t have a fear of heights now, but did you before?

We definitely explored those routes. But again, right from the beginning, I was like, “We need to build our own balloon. We need to take the actors up into the sky, even if we can’t get insurance.” We needed to get everyone making the film to go up in a balloon to see what it’s like, so that’s what we did. Even before we knew we were going to get to film in the sky, George Steel, my cinematographer, and I went up in a balloon with a camera. We filmed and worked out what we could do and what we couldn’t do. We looked at it and analyzed it and worked out what things we could take and put into the film. Then, when we did it with the cast, we embraced all those things. I think the studio realized, very quickly, this was something that gave the film a different feel. We didn’t want to make a superhero movie, or something…. While those visual effects are fantastic, it sort of becomes… There’s less jeopardy for the characters the more heightened it is. We really wanted to ground the look in reality as much as possible.

The action in this movie is so exciting, so harrowing, I was white-knuckled on the edge of my seat. I imagine that action wouldn’t be as exciting without the amazing pairing of Eddie and Felicity. They’re amazing. Did you cast one and then the other? Did they audition together? What was that casting process?

No. I think I was just like, “We’re up in the sky! I’m in a balloon! And it’s beautiful!” It was just so exciting. I love balloons and I love ballooning. They’re majestic things. To have the privilege to build your own 19th century netted gas balloon, fill it with gas and sail away, not knowing where you’re going to come down or what’s going to happen, it’s glorious. That was a wonderful thing. Having said that, ballooning, I love. Helicopters? Less so. There are so many moving parts.

Wait, I thought this was a prequel to that. It’s not?

We drew up a list of who we thought would be best for each character. At the top of the James list was Eddie and at the top of the Amelia list was Felicity! Our first thoughts were, is that going to be a problem? Because they had relatively recently worked opposite each other in The Theory of Everything.

I love how, not to spoil too much, their relationship is not a hackneyed romantic thing. They get to know and understand an respect each other in a way that we really don’t see that often in movies today. Especially big budget blockbuster type movies.

Yeah, exactly! (Laughs) But we thought, you know, that shouldn’t stop us from offering. There’s a tradition in Hollywood of actors working with each other again and again, so we sent them the script at the same time, and I think they sent a few text messages backwards and forwards. And they loved working with each other last time, they had great chemistry, so they embraced it. Fortunately for us, they were up for working with each other again, and we were able to reap the benefits of that.

I always have the image in our heads of a studio executive being a big scary bald guy with a pinstripe suit and a cigar, someone who goes, “Why aren’t they kissing? They’re both pretty, have ’em kiss!”

There was never anything romantic in the script. I was interested in it, actually, because they both… I think we were interested in exploring the fact that both of these characters were trying to escape from their lives, and they both were able to give each other what they needed at the time, to help them rediscover their place on Earth. That was interesting, these two people, who were outcasts for different reasons, being able to provide support. If that leads people to think it’s romantic or whether they’re just meant to be friends wasn’t really important. It was about the meeting of minds, if you like.

It’s such a relief to learn this, because there’s so many horror stories about directors having their movie ripped away from them, often to disastrous results. Justice League and Fantastic Four are two examples that are especially infamous, particularly on Screen Rant.

There was that conversation. As you can imagine, it’s two people in a basked for 90 minutes who have great chemistry. It’s not surprising that question came up. The truth is, we shot two endings. We shot one version and another. The script was always one way, but you don’t quite know until you get there. It quickly became apparent, though, it wasn’t the right version of this movie. I think I was expecting a bit more resistance to that. The studio were very supportive. I think they realized, right from the beginning, it wasn’t right, either. The relationship between them came about, as I say, for that meeting of minds. It came to its natural conclusion, and it didn’t feel right at all that it became romantic at the end. So it felt like the right way to approach a story like that. It felt quite organic, rather than any studio exec imposing their version of what should happen. I think that, overwhelmingly, we haven’t really had anyone who disagreed with that… Wait, actually, that’s not true. When we were testing the movie, we did ask a few questions, we did a Q&A after showing it to friends and family. We did a Q&A and I said, “did anyone feel there should be a romance, or a kiss, or anything like that?” We always did not have the kiss in there, but we had it in our back pocket and we were interested to know what audiences thought. One woman went (raises hand), and she looked around, and then… (slowly lowers hand again). It was hilarious. But that’s what I like about it! By the end of the movie, if you want to take that away from it, you can.

The quality of the movie speaks for itself. I loved it, by the way, if I haven’t made that clear! What was the process of deciding on the historical accuracy of the film? Particularly, having Eddie’s character be based on the real man but having Felicity be a fictionalized composite of several different people?

Right. You didn’t set out to make a documentary. If you were, well, then you have made a documentary!

As the movie’s coming out, that question has come up more and more. It was always established from the get-go. This flight was a remarkable flight, in 1862, where they went to 36,000 feet, which is higher than anyone’s been, before or since. But they took measurements every two seconds. The actual flight, and what they achieved was remarkable, but the cinematic reality was that it was two men in a basket, not speaking to each other, and that obviously doesn’t make for the most interesting movie. We always knew we were going to draw from many different flights. The whole film is a complete composite, a sort of “greatest hits of ballooning.” We thought, great, let’s find another character who is going to provide the most interesting dynamic character relationship with James Glaisher, and there was this incredible female aeronaut called Sophie Blanchard, and we thought… And why wouldn’t we?

Yeah, especially for a science-minded engineer type of character, which is still such an oddity in Hollywood, and the frequent subject of, like, weirdos online.

I think, for so long, there’s been a gender bias in film, but also in science; if there’s an opportunity to put a great female in a strong lead in a movie, then great! There’s been a criticism that we’re whitewashing, or wokewashing, or whatever it is, and I just think… It does say, “Inspired by True Events” at the beginning of the movie, and almost everything that happens in the film did happen, just at different times. We’re certainly not trying to pretend this movie actually happened; we’re just saying it’s the essence, a compilation of some of the things that happened. We were trying to distill that sense of wonder and adventure. That was the ambition, rather than a documentary or a museum piece. Hopefully, people are inspired by the movie and they will go pick up Falling Upwards, the book that really inspired the movie, and read about Henry Coxwell, who was the original pilot with James Glaisher. He was remarkable, and I hope people read the book because it’s a fantastic book, or James Glaisher’s memoirs. It’s all there. I don’t think this movie affects that in any way. I do feel really strongly that we need to think about representation in cinema; for too long, we haven’t. There haven’t been enough strong female characters, and if we have an opportunity to do that, then great!

I completely understand. It was a thing I saw come up when I was researching, and I thought, “I bet he’s got some more he’d like to say on the matter,” and I think I was right.

We didn’t start at the beginning, and through some sense of political correctness, go, “Okay, let’s swap him to a woman.” It came out of a genuine reason, of how to create the most interesting character dynamic within the basket. Nobody ever asks about all the other things we changed in the film. It makes me wonder, what does that say about us, that the action where they fall out of the balloon, or the butterflies are a different flight, or all the stuff we made up about James Glaisher, you know… Almost every event in the film is drawn from somewhere else. But the only thing people ask about is, “Why did you put a female character in?” Anyway… It’s a good conversation to have! I think it’s healthy, but I do find it a bit frustrating.

Like you said, people won’t complain about the spectacle action where they’re fighting to keep from falling out of the balloon, and I think we kind of glossed over the action before. But it’s gotta be said, there is some high-adrenaline excitement in this movie! It must be a thrill to be like, we’re making a quote-unquote science movie, but also they’re going through a storm and holding on for dear life, having this amazing adventure. What’s the process of going, like, “Okay, we’ve got a movie in a balloon, how are we gonna come up with insane setpieces?”

(Laughs) Yes! Yeah.

I was going to ask you about that next! When that happened, I was like, “I don’t like this movie anymore!” But then the little doggy parachute opened up, and I was like, “Phew! Those Victorians were nuts!”

That is actually not too far from the truth! It’s like, how can you take science, and some of the facts, and present it in a way that is entertaining and thrilling, and is hopefully going to stimulate people? So we did say, okay, what can we take, what can we throw at these characters? How can we have the most fun with it? How can we put them in the greatest amount of jeopardy? What can go wrong for them? So that’s exactly what we did! We went through a number of different stories and flights, and took all of the worst things that happened to people, and went, alright, we’ll take this, how are we going to overcome this? That was one of the things I found really exciting. And one of the things I do think is amazing, even though it is an amalgam, a lot of these things did happen. They did go through a storm. All of these things… They did throw a dog out of a basket!

They had amazing style, though.

Victorians were insane! (Laughs)

My favorite kinds of movies are without peer. They’re not like other movies. The Aeronauts isn’t like other movies. I don’t know, Castaway? Life of Pi? No, I can’t compare this movie to anything else. But when you’re gearing up to make a movie, or even in the midst of it, and people go up to you and say, “I don’t know how you’re going to do that,” or even worse, “You can’t do that,” is that a challenge? Is that a trigger that makes you think, well, now I’m morally obligated to do that, as an artist?

They had an urge to go out and explore and break boundaries. We still have it, actually. With this film, we wanted to celebrate the wonderful things humans can achieve. You know, you read the newspapers, and often it can feel depressing, but if you look beyond the headlines a little bit, you realize that people are achieving amazing things, all the time. There are great breakthroughs. The things we can achieve when we put our minds together are astonishing. If we use that to combat some of the challenges that we face, I have great hope in many things. Very specifically, about the weather and climate change, which links back to this film. One thing they discovered in these flights in 1862 is that our atmosphere runs out. You can’t go any higher, because you will die. All of life is contained within this thin band of air, just seven miles high. As such, it’s all we’ve got, and it’s precious. And we need to protect it.

When you started making this movie, did you think you would actually get to finish it? I mean, I imagine any director has an idea and wistfully muses, “It’d be great if I had $40 million to make this,” but at some point, someone’s gonna cut your funding and you have to do it for radio instead. Get a fan blowing. That’s your FX budget now.

Yeah. Not just as an artist or as a filmmaker. As a person! I agree with you. I love films that are completely unlike anything else you’ve seen. My favorite was The Favourite, last year. Or Parasite, perhaps, this year. I’m constantly on the lookout. They’re really hard to find. You need those moments, when you stumble across something like that, or you find something like that, it’s a wonderful thing. The other problem of it is, you do need to consider what will get made. Maybe it might be easier to come up with… There is an industry side to this as well. The more outlandish the idea, the harder it is to get financed, often. But that’s what’s wonderful about cinema, when you find these bits of things that can reveal entirely new bits of someone’s mind or experience or thoughts or whatever it may be.

More: Watch The Aeronaut Official Trailer

(Laughs) If you asked me in the beginning, if I thought we’d get to make it in the way we have, I’d say, “probably not.” But I always believe, if you feel passionately about something, you’ll find a way to get it made. I always felt passionately about this movie. The hard thing is finding things you feel really passionately about. It’s rare to find things you’re creatively passionate about. But with this one, I always knew, by hook or by crook, we were going to get there in the end.

  • The Aeronauts Release Date: 2019-12-06