Margot Robbie Asteroid City Explained

Asteroid City review: Wes Anderson’s new film feels like a pretty collection of actors in search of a movie In competition at Cannes, the director’s 11th feature is an aesthetic triumph. But Anderson’s trademark deadpan silences have seldom felt longer

Starring : Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Jeffrey Wright, Tilda Swinton, Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Adrien Brody, Liev Schreiber, Hope Davis, Stephen Park, Rupert Friend, Maya Hawke, Steve Carell, Matt Dillon, Hong Chau, Willem Dafoe, Margot Robbie, Tony Revolori, Jake Ryan, Jeff Goldblum

A train rattles across a dusty plain carrying atomic weapons and assorted 1950s insignia. On the highway, cops and robbers periodically appear and exchange gunfire, as if enacting an animation loop. A roadrunner, making something approximating a “meep meep” sound, occasionally wanders into the frame. A wall of vending machines offers cigarettes, soda and real-estate options.

Asteroid City, Ending Explained

From the get-go, Asteroid City – an exhibit of period-specific Americana – feels as if it ought to be one of Wes Anderson’s animated projects, without necessarily being as engrossing as its genre predecessors Fantastic Mr Fox and Isle of Dogs.

And if you thought French Dispatch plumped for style over substance, hold on to your hat for this metatextual collection of doodles and famous actors that wilfully refuses to yield to a narrative shape.

The largest matryoshka doll in the set is Bryan Cranston’s Rod Serling-ish monochrome television host. He introduces Conrad Earp (Edward Norton), a gay writer surrounded by erotic cowboy-themed art, and the author of a play set in the title’s very teal and orange locale.

Asteroid City' Premiere: Scarlett Johansson And More Looks From Star Studded Carpet

That pit stop, as defined by a 12-stool luncheonette, a one-pump filling station, a crater, a population of 87, and a motel, hosts various young boffins who have converged for a Junior Stargazer/Space Cadet convention.

The event brings together the tragic Marilyn Monroe-alike actor Midge Campbell (Scarlett Johansson), the Ernest Hemingway-alike war photographer Augie Steenbeck (Jason Schwartzman) and their various offspring, cowboys, military and whatever you’re having.

The occasion is doubly, triply interrupted by a UFO landing, a subsequent government lockdown and debriefing, and wall-breaking inserts concerning Jones Hall (Schwartzman, again) and Mercedes Ford (Johansson again), the actors who play Midge and Augie, and their cohorts back east.

Tom Hanks, Margot Robbie Join Wes Anderson's 'asteroid City'

As Asteroid City – that is to say, the cartoonish drama within the drama – opens, Augie’s car breaks down, and he calls his father-in-law, Zak (Tom Hanks), to pick up his young scientist son, Woodrow (Jake Ryan), and three daughters.

Augie has yet to tell their children that their mother has died. This smaller family crisis is surrounded by a dizzying number of characters. Blink and you might miss Jeffrey Wright’s general, Tilda Swinton’s astronomer, Jeff Goldblum’s alien and Maya Hawke’s Clementinian schoolmarm. Margot Robbie is a footnote and a photograph. Willem Dafoe’s Stanislavski-ersatz Saltzburg Keitel begs for an acting studio movie to call his own.

Anderson’s 11th movie is simultaneously furiously busy and curiously uneventful. The director’s trademark deadpan silences have seldom felt longer. Interesting self-reflexive ideas, including Johansson playing an actor playing an actor, feel underdeveloped. Tableaux in dialogue with Bus Stop and The Misfits add to the knot. A diorama overdose scene is emblematic of the carefully calibrated subplot.

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Against that, the film is an aesthetic triumph, a gorgeous gallimaufry of artefacts from the golden age of American technocracy, Looney Toons and westerns.

A lovely moment features Hanks’s grandpa and Augie’s near-feral daughters, Andromeda, Pandora and Cassiopeia. The girls’ overlapping dialogue and mad chatter about witches and vampires make for welcome anarchy in a very mannered world.

If you’re old enough to remember the giddy early days of Anderson’s career, you might see Asteroid City and think it would be nice to return to the engaging interpersonal dynamics of Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums. Diehard fans will be delighted, nonetheless.Wes Anderson has been remarkably productive of late. It was just over a year ago that the idiosyncratic American auteur debuted his last perfectly symmetrical, delightfully quirky drama, the zippy ensemble piece The French Dispatch – and now, he is poised to return with yet another heart warmer. Titled

Margot Robbie And Scarlett Johansson Attend The 'asteroid City' Premiere In Coordinating Looks

, his next project, per The Hollywood Reporter, is billed as “a poetic meditation on the meaning of life as it tells the story of a fictional American desert town in and around 1955 and its Junior Stargazer convention, which brings together students and parents from across the country for scholarly competition, rest and recreation, comedy, drama, romance and more.” So far, so Wes Anderson, then.

The revered director has not only helmed the film, but also co-produced and penned the script, which is based on an original story he conceived alongside Roman Coppola, his collaborator on 2007’s

Any new Wes Anderson film is, of course, cause for celebration but this one is doubly so thanks to its stellar (not to mention extensive) cast. It features many of his regular players – Jason Schwartzman, Adrien Brody, Willem Dafoe, Jeffrey Wright, Tilda Swinton, Jeff Goldblum, Edward Norton, Liev Schreiber, Stephen Park, Tony Revolori and Rupert Friend – but also a thrilling spate of newcomers to his candy-colored world. Among them is Margot Robbie, Tom Hanks, Rita Wilson, Maya Hawke, Steve Carell, Matt Dillon and Hong Chau. If that wasn’t enough, there’s also Scarlett Johansson and Bryan Cranston, who are set to make their live-action debuts in a Wes Anderson film after both voicing characters in

The Ending Of Asteroid City Explained

Would be released on June 21st, 2023, in French cinemas. More good news? Anderson aficionados won’t have to wait long to see even more from the director: he also has Netflix’s

In the pipeline, a Roald Dahl adaptation starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Ralph Fiennes, Dev Patel, Ben Kingsley and Richard Ayoade. Here’s hoping Anderson’s current bout of creativity doesn’t end there.