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The True Story Behind The Aeronauts
The Aeronauts Official Trailer
The Aeronauts Official Trailer
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BY RACHAEL BUNYAN
UPDATED: DECEMBER 16, 2019 11:13 AM ET | ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: DECEMBER 9, 2019
Today, you can hitch a ride on a balloon anywhere in the world. The Aeronauts, a new movie directed by Tom Harper, takes audiences back to a time when aeronautical expeditions were just taking flight.
The Aeronauts follows the adventures of James Glaisher, a scientist, and Amelia Wren, a flamboyant aeronaut who lost her husband in a balloon accident. The pair, fighting against thunderstorms, wind, hailstones and rain as they ascend higher and higher, achieve something phenomenal: they travel to heights no man or woman has ever reached before.
“I hope the audience takes away a sense of wonder and a feeling of the amazing things that humans can achieve through science and through exploration when we put our minds to it and work together,” Harper tells TIME.
In order to convey that sense of wonder, Harper and co-writer Jack Throne drew on several real figures from history, and also took some creative license with their stories.
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The Aeronauts, which stars Felicity Jones and Eddie Redmayne, premiered in U.K. cinemas on Nov. 4 and opened in the U.S. on Dec. 6. The movie will be available to stream on Amazon Prime Video beginning on Dec. 20.
Here is everything you need to know about what’s fact and what’s fiction in The Aeronauts.
Who was James Glaisher?
In The Aeronauts, meteorologist James Glaisher (Redmayne) presents his theories of how a gas balloon expedition could be key to predicting the weather—a science still in its infancy in the 1860s—and asks for funding for the expedition. His peers respond emphatically: “We are scientists, not fortune tellers.” But Glaisher doesn’t give in. He eventually convinces Amelia Wren (Jones) to pilot the balloon he needs to take him on his expedition.
In real life, Glaisher was indeed an influential scientist—he made 28 ascents between 1862 and 1866, recording observations that were crucial to our understanding of weather. Among his discoveries were the fact that wind changes speed at different altitudes, and the way raindrops form and gather moisture. Science has, of course, advanced significantly since Glaisher’s time. The kinds of scientific measurements he performed using thermometers, barometers and hygrometers are now made in unmanned meteorological balloons.
Did James Glaisher and Amelia Wren really go on an expedition?
The Aeronauts follows the balloon expedition of Glaisher, whose life goal is to travel into the sky to predict the weather, and Wren, a character Harper describes as a “distinctive firecracker of a woman.” In the movie, the pair breaks the world record for altitude after reaching a height of 36,000 feet.
Glaisher did in fact exist, and he did break the record for traveling higher than any person, but he did so with fellow scientist Henry Tracy Coxwell rather than the fictional character of Amelia Wren. On Sept. 5, 1862, the two men, equipped with pigeons (as in the film), a compass and thermometers, took to the skies and broke the world record for the highest any human had been in a balloon.
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