{"id":284682,"date":"2019-12-06T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-12-06T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/b1100406"},"modified":"2019-12-06T16:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-12-06T23:00:00","slug":"how-the-aeronauts-drastically-changed-the-real-life-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kidn\/music-news\/how-the-aeronauts-drastically-changed-the-real-life-story\/","title":{"rendered":"How The Aeronauts Drastically Changed the Real-Life Story"},"content":{"rendered":"
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“Women don’t belong in balloons!”<\/p>\n

If you’ve heard that phrase and\/or it makes you laugh, it’s likely because you listen to Who? Weekly<\/em>, the pop culture podcast, with that lines from The Aeronauts<\/em> trailer instantly becoming a running joke for the hosts and their listeners. But it’s also an ironic line to be featured in the trailer for the new Eddie Redmayne<\/a><\/strong> and Felicity Jones<\/a><\/strong> film, which came out on December 6 and tells the incredible real-life story of James Glaisher <\/strong>(Redmayne), a British man who soared higher in the sky than any person before him in a hot air balloon in 1862.<\/p>\n

Jones plays Amelia Wren, a rare female aeronaut and Glaisher’s co-pilot for the history-making ascent. It’s an inspiring tale…but it’s also not true, as Wren is not an actual person, with the creative team behind The Aeronauts<\/em> choosing to not including the the actual person who worked by Glaisher’s side (and saved his life): Henry Tracey Coxwell<\/strong>. So yeah, a woman really didn’t belong in The Aeronauts<\/em>‘ movie balloon!<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n

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In an interview with USA Today<\/a>, the film’s director Tom Harper<\/strong> defended the major change to the real-life, explaining, “We change all sorts of things all the time. There would never have been an Indian man [played by Himesh Patel<\/strong>] in the Royal Society. But representation is important, and we are cutting this film for a modern audience.”<\/p>\n

Jones also addressed the creation of Amelia, revealing she was a “an amalgamation” of the best female pilots, and was inspired by one specific French aeronaut named Sophie Blanchard<\/strong>. <\/p>\n

“She was the first woman to fly solo and fly at night and she used to set off fireworks from her balloon,” Jones. “So I very much had her in my mind as I was making it.”<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n

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it was also who Harper and his co-writer Jack Thorne<\/strong> had in mind for Amelia when they made the decision “very early on” to make the character a woman and someone who was “quite different” from the real-life meteorologist.<\/p>\n

“She was such a flamboyant firecracker. She was driven, primarily, by instinct,” he explained to Forbes<\/a>. “So, I thought if I took those two characters, it could be something quite remarkable.”<\/p>\n

Plus, as Harper succinctly put it to THR<\/a>, “Two men in a basket not talking to each other was not going to fly.”<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n

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He does have a point, as history (and its retelling through movies) tends to favor male protagonists. <\/p>\n

“I think the problem with telling historical dramas is there’s kind of a bias towards men because there’s a gender bias in so many fields\u2014science and the film industry for sure,” he told The Hollywood Reporter<\/a>. “So given the opportunity to work towards better representation, I think it’s something that we embraced and, I think, we all need to do much more of. When you’re not trying to make a documentary, why wouldn’t you take a great female character and put them in the basket as well as a male character?”<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n

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Still, the decision to completely remove Coxwell, who actually continued their trek 38,000 feet in the air when Glaisher passed out, essentially saving their mission. <\/p>\n

“It’s a great shame that Henry isn’t portrayed because he performed very well and saved the life of a leading scientist,” Keith Moore<\/strong>, the Head of Library at the Royal Society, told The Daily Telegraph<\/em><\/a> about the change.  <\/p>\n

As reported in their piece<\/a>, Coxwell ended up saving Glaisher’s life, as well as his own, when he climbed up to release a trapped valve in the balloon’s rigging when they were just seven miles above sea level and at -29C. And the BBC reported<\/a>, “Mr. Coxwell’s hands were black with frostbite, so he used his teeth to release the gas valve.” <\/p>\n

Talk about dramatic. <\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Eddie<\/p>\n

Todd Williamson\/Invision for Hennessy\/AP Images<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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Aside from adding in a female empowerment storyline into the film, the decision may also have been made to reunite Redmayne and Jones, who starred together in 2014’s critically acclaimed The Theory of Everything<\/em>, which earned them both Oscar nominations and a win for Redmayne for his portrayal of Stephen Hawking<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

“The thought of building on what we’d already established in Theory of Everything<\/em>, I think, gave us an enormous confidence,” Jones, who is expecting her first child with husband<\/a> Charles Guard<\/strong>, told THR<\/a> <\/em>of re-teaming with Redmayne. “To go on that adventure with someone that you already had built a trust, a love, an affection with and the ability to admit mistakes\u2014I think it’s when you can take the ego out of a creative dynamic and make it so much more personal that you get a grateful, strong working relationship.”<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n

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The film is based on Richard Holmes<\/strong>‘ 2013 book Falling Upwards: How We Took to the Air<\/em>, and actually combined a few real-life events from the history of ballooning to put together the epic flight depicted in the film. <\/p>\n

“I read some more stories and decided we could combine a number of different flights into one so we could have this white-knuckle, roller coaster ride where you get to see all these amazing things happen,” Harper told Forbes<\/a>. “Pretty much everything that happens in the film is real, it just so happened at different times.”<\/p>\n

In conclusion: sorry to this man, Henry Coxwell, but this woman did belong in this balloon after all. <\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n

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The Aeronauts<\/em> is now playing in theaters and will be available to stream on Amazon Prime on Dec. 20. <\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n

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Watch the 2019: What E! Year<\/i> end-of-year special Tuesday, Dec. 17 at 10 p.m.! E! News<\/i> returns Monday morning, Jan. 6 at 7 a.m.!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

via:: E! Online<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Women don’t belong in balloons!” If you’ve heard that phrase and\/or it makes you laugh, it’s likely because you listen to Who? Weekly, the pop culture podcast, with that lines from The Aeronauts trailer instantly becoming a running joke for the hosts and their listeners. But it’s also an ironic line to be featured in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-284682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-music-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-10-09 17:43:50","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KIDN - The Lift FM","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kidn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kidn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kidn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kidn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kidn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kidn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kidn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284682\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kidn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kidn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kidn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}