You Think you know Pop-tarts? Their surprising history, celebrity fans, global reach, and cultural moments say otherwise.
Think you know Pop-Tarts? Think again. The frosted rectangle lurking in your pantry has a longer, stranger, and more culturally loaded history than most people realize—and it’s still very much alive in 2026.
Pop-Tarts were born in 1964, the result of a corporate pastry arms race. Kellogg’s beat rival Post to market with a shelf-stable toaster pastry inspired by new food-processing techniques originally designed for military rations. The first flavors were modest—strawberry, blueberry, brown sugar cinnamon—but the idea was revolutionary: breakfast could leap from box to toaster to mouth in minutes. Americans bought them by the millions, often eating them cold, untasted by heat or parental supervision.
By the 1970s and 80s, Pop-Tarts had become less about breakfast and more about identity. The introduction of frosting in 1967 turned the pastry from practical to indulgent. By the time the neon colors and dessert flavors arrived—chocolate fudge, s’mores, wild berry—Pop-Tarts had fully embraced their role as a sugar-forward comfort food masquerading as a meal.
Their cultural footprint is surprisingly deep. Pop-Tarts have appeared in movies, sitcoms, rap lyrics, and museum exhibits. In 2014, a strawberry Pop-Tart sold for thousands of dollars on eBay after appearing to resemble a religious icon. More recently, the brand’s self-aware marketing and absurdist mascots have made it a recurring meme presence, beloved by Gen Z for its irony and by millennials for nostalgia.
Celebrities openly admit their loyalty. Jerry Seinfeld has referenced Pop-Tarts as a childhood staple. Billie Eilish has mentioned them as a tour snack. Post Malone has declared strawberry his favorite, while Chrissy Teigen has confessed to keeping them around despite knowing better. They sit at the intersection of guilty pleasure and cultural shorthand.
Pop-Tarts are also enjoying an unlikely renaissance in the culinary world. Chefs like Christina Tosi have nodded to them as inspiration for playful desserts. Dominique Ansel has referenced them when discussing American snack nostalgia. Even high-end bakeries have produced “chef-y” versions—handmade toaster pastries filled with seasonal fruit or brown butter ganache—proof the format has culinary legs.
Globally, Pop-Tarts have quietly spread. Canada and the UK are longtime fans, while flavors tailored to local tastes appear in markets like South Korea and Japan. American snack culture, amplified by social media, has made the Pop-Tart a recognizable symbol of U.S. indulgence abroad, even where it’s considered more novelty than breakfast.
Today, Pop-Tarts sell billions annually and continue to roll out new flavors while reviving old favorites. They’re not pretending to be health food. They’re not chasing trends. They’re simply doing what they’ve always done: offering a sweet, weird, comforting bite of Americana which somehow keeps surviving every food revolution.
So yes, you know Pop-Tarts. But you probably didn’t realize just how much history fits inside that shiny foil pouch.
Tom Hanks in This World of Tomorrow at the Shed. Photo: Marc J. Franklin/Courtesy The Shed
Whatever is happening at the Shed right now, it’s not really a play. It’s play-shaped, and actors put on costumes and wander around onstage for a couple of hours, repeating words they’ve memorized. But I’d be more comfortable calling the staging of This World of Tomorrow — starring Tom Hanks, written by Hanks and his collaborator James Glossman, directed by Kenny Leon, and based off elements of Hanks’s short-story collection, Uncommon Type — something more along the lines of “a flight of fancy,” “a doodle on a napkin,” or “a college-drama-club project with the express purpose of making one person happy.” There are plenty of talented folks around Hanks who have been roped into making this, and plenty of people in the audience who might be paying a lot to see him, but they don’t factor into the equation. This thing is entirely about admiring its star. Hey, at least there are some fun hats.
This World of Tomorrow is not malicious in its intent. Tom Hanks, the moral nice-guy mayor of Hollywood, is the closest thing the film industry has to a Jimmy Stewart, and I’m happy to believe that his forays into writing have developed out of genuine artistic interest in good-hearted Americana. (Inevitably, a character speaks admiringly about a typewriter.) Whether a theater company should spend its time and resources developing and staging what he has written is another question. (No.) This World of Tomorrow, largely based on the Hanks story “The Past Is Important to Us,” has him playing Bert Allenberry, a rich tech titan from around the year 2100 who keeps taking expensive daylong trips to the 1939 New York World’s Fair via a company called Chronometric Adventures. He justifies the cost by telling his colleagues that he’s enthralled by the way the past imagined a better future than the one we got, but it becomes clear very quickly that he’s really doing it because he’s infatuated with a winsome divorcée named Carmen Perry (Kelli O’Hara, at home in any role where she wears gloves). Carmen is visiting the fair with her spunky niece, Virginia (Kayli Carter, fumbling for any texture to play and landing on “loud”), and Hanks runs into her by accident, then comes back again and again. In each time loop, Carmen doesn’t remember Bert, he so keeps reseducing her, using a little more information each time, an unsettling dynamic that’s a blend between Groundhog Day, Midnight in Paris, and maybe even the deranged sci-fi drama Passengers, all films that aren’t known for their sensitivity toward women’s agency.
There’s where you might expect a play to develop some dramatic friction, perhaps as a commentary on the dangers of nostalgia or on one extremely rich man’s sense of entitlement. Any such turn might be a current, if obvious, direction for a play like this. But one thing you can say about This World of Tomorrow is that it doesn’t do much of what you might expect. There’s little tension anywhere or really any significant attempt to undercut Bert’s rosy gaze on the past. Hanks and Glossman have written a few throwaway lines that acknowledge the racism of the 1930s — Black members of the ensemble are often called upon to roll their eyes at Bert’s cheeriness about 1939 — and in the play’s announcement, Alex Poots, the Shed’s artistic director, told the New York Times that “there is reference to the rise in authoritarianism,” which I can translate as “there is a line about how Bert should have used time travel to kill Hitler.”
I wouldn’t say that This World of Tomorrow embraces Bert’s nostalgia, either, so much as it just lets his quest for Carmen happen. The script is too rudderless to navigate toward any specific theme, and Leon, who has become the go-to director for soggy celebrity-drivendrama, hasn’t pushed his cast toward any specific idea. (According to a conversation in your program, Leon said the play is about “time and love”; one is a concept an actor can’t play, and the other is something no one is convincingly playing.) Somehow, despite what must have been a substantial budget, the set looks cheap. Derek McLane’s design resembles a cybernetic wilderness, a spare set of moving columns that indicate new locations and settings through screens and projections. If Bert’s so enamored with the innovations of the World’s Fair, couldn’t we see re-creations of a few of them onstage? Why not show us the famous robot or the celebrity cow?
Instead, in the space of where it could allow for wonder and enthusiasm, This World of Tomorrow tends toward overexplanation. The script is remarkably heavy on the technobabble and the scenes in which Hanks’s colleagues from the future throw nonsense time-travel-related nouns around while wearing Star Trek outfits. I couldn’t care less about the acids that supposedly accumulate when you go back and forth in time. The script’s most engaging indulgence is a series of scenes that occur in the second act as Bert and Carmen meet in the 1950s at a Greek diner, which is run by a grumbly Jay O. Sanders. Sanders almost convinces you that you’re watching a real play about a real man, commanding the stage with a gruff bark and mining humor from his character’s insistence on teaching everyone Greek vocabulary as he picks up some English. I’m not sure how his presence is supposed to relate to the rest of the story or why Hanks felt it was necessary to include it — perhaps his wife, the Greek American actress and producer Rita Wilson, had his ear — but at least it’s an interestingly idiosyncratic gesture.
Yet the audience isn’t at the Shed for idiosyncrasies. Hanks is the be-all and end-all of This World of Tomorrow, and, sure, when you’re sitting in the audience a few dozen yards away from him, it’s hard to deny his loping movie-star magnetism. He has something of the energy of a beloved and aging family dog, padding up to you to lay his paws on your lap. It’s hard to judge Hanks’s strengths as a stage actor given that this script gives him so few challenges, but when he delivers several jokes about Bert’s discovery that they have real milk at the World’s Fair — presumably, an unspoken environmental collapse has eliminated dairy — he is deeply charming. In those moments, the audience lets out a sigh of relief, as if to say, Ah, yes, the celebrity we’re here to see is giving us the performance we wanted. It’s his own persona he’s performing, not a character. We come to see plenty of stage actors for a taste of their familiar forms, from Kristin Chenoweth to Laurie Metcalf, but perhaps putting a movie star onstage and asking them to actually perform in a play is an extra hurdle we needn’t ask them to clear. Why not just revert to something more direct, more medieval and churchy? Do away with the scripts, with the directors, with the rest of the ensemble, with the pretense. Have them stand there, in pristine and golden-lit silence for two hours at the center of the stage, and bask in the awe and admiration. Audiences could think of it as a pilgrimage to visit a holy relic — or its own act of sacramental theater. He’s not performing, after all. You are.
This World of Tomorrow is at the Shed through December 21.
Tom Hanks is returning to the stage for a play he co-wrote, “This World of Tomorrow.” Hanks stars in it with Kelli O’Hara. The two, along with director Kenny Leon, spoke to “CBS Mornings” about the play and what they want people to take away from it.
In many ways, Ken Burns is the Van Halen of historical documentary directors.
Before you jump, hear me out.
Watching the acclaimed filmmaker’s upcoming The American Revolutionwith some apprehension, it became clear that the six-part PBS series is the soulmate to Van Halen’s seminal but commercially disappointing 1981 album Fair Warning – in a very good way.
Debuting Sunday on PBS stations, the often-languorous American Revolution has all the slow pans across paintings and maps that appear in all of Burns’ work from 1981’s Brooklyn Bridge to The Civil War, 2009’s National Parks, biographies of Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, 2011’s Prohibition, 2017’s The Vietnam War and last year’s Leonardo da Vinci.
Along with Burns and his and co-directors David P. Schmidt and Sarah Botstein’s use of evocative locations and out-of-focus re-creations, American Revolution has narration by Peter Coyote, and high-definition but measured sit-down interviews with historians.
With techniques made famous and mockingly infamous by The Civil War and subsequent Burns projects, American Revolution uses letters and meticulous examination of the time to represent ordinary men and women in extraordinary situations. Like so many Burns projects, there are those celebrity voice-overs from the likes of Samuel L. Jackson, Meryl Streep Tom Hanks, Paul Giamatti (playing, you guessed it, John Adams), poet Amanda Gorman, Hamiltonvet Jonathan Groff (not playing who you think) and Michael Keaton to name but a handful.
(L-R) Tom Hanks, Paul Giamatti, Amanda Gorman, Michael Keaton, Meryl Streep, Samuel L. Jackson and Jonathan Groff
Getty Images/Rich Polk for Deadline
Yes, there is a lot of the Burns tried and true in American Revolution. Add to that the fact that you know how it all turns out and, even as a student of American history, you get my trepidation going in.
So, let’s get back to that Van Halen comparison for a second.
Similar to the fourth album release from the David Lee Roth-fronted rockers, Burns’ take on the war that created America does stick to the decades-old methods and formats that have worked for him since The Civil War exploded on the small screen in 1990. When Fair Warning came out in 1981, some critics noted that it too had all the hallmarks of previous Van Halen albums and no real evolution.
Yet, some also acknowledged “Eddie [Van Halen]’s latest sound effects” and the submerged introduction of synthesizers to the band’s palate. The latter revelation was a game changer obvious to anyone who over the years followed the band after its synth-heavy blockbuster 1984.
In that context, when it comes to the quietly ambitious American Revolution, you don’t need to look too hard to notice something different going on under the surface from previous Burns works. Let’s put it this way: You don’t need to look too hard at a calendar, your local defunded PBS station or much else to see 2025 is almost as far away from 1990 as it is from 1981 or 1776.
The world has changed, the medium has changed, America has changed, and the stakes have definitely changed.
‘The American Revolution’
PBS
On the most integral level, the past decade in our frayed Republic has seen a domination by MAGA madness and the largely toxic discharge of social media. So, to put it mildly, there’s a lot of blood in the water in the culture and our sense of our collective history.
Having spent most of the past decade making American Revolution, Ken Burns clearly knows that. To that, like Van Halen’s Fair Warning, there is an urgent undercurrent that wasn’t in Burns’ previous films. Something is stirring in him, and in us — and the saga of the creation of this often unruly nation has something to tell us about what is happening now.
How that manifests itself for viewers likely depends on your own patience with the long series, and your voter-registration card.
Regardless of where you stand on the political spectrum or regarding Flat Earthers, there is no denying the inviolable sense of time and place in American Revolution. It’s as if Eddie Van Halen, without telling anyone, added an extra two strings on his guitar to reverberate through his Marshall stack, and the ages.
Eddie Van Halen
AP Photos
This is not the kind of American history MAGA loyalists like, and not just for the reasons you might think. To that, with the almost last breath of the Van Halen analogy, part of the success of The American Revolution is how it is loud and proud in a quiet way.
For another thing that perhaps won’t land well with MAGA crowd: it’s also complicated and quite diverse.
Which is to say, if you are looking for the Founding Fathers and their friends to be the guys in the white hats, you might want look somewhere else. For instance, not all the good guys are white (the David Oyelowo-voiced Olaudah Equiano is one example), and not all of them are guys (the Maya Hawke voice of Betsy Ambler).
Burns’ American Revolution also burns to a crisp the prevailing notion of the Great Man of American History.
Sorry George Washington and Alexander Hamilton fans, but there’s a lot more going on in the taverns where much of it happens than those infectious Lin-Manuel Miranda tunes tell you. Opening up the aperture, American Revolution often stares straight into the ugly and unsavory realpolitik of nation creation, with broken and bumbling men and women, well-meaning or not, stumbling into an idea of a better tomorrow.
Between the incomprehensibility and the incompetence on the side of the British Empire and the side of the American rebels that Burns outlines in American Revolution, the chaotic colonists’ attempts to free themselves from the rule of George III could have had all the hallmarks of a prequel to The Poseidon Adventure, with more boats.
As the losses and bodies pile up for the rebels (I’m not saying Battle of Long Island, but I’m saying Battle of Long Island), you many even wonder why they just didn’t give up to fight another day — you won’t be alone. That feeling and, dare I say it without seeming too fancy, the contemporary subtext, is part of Burns and gang’s genius with American Revolution.
You want to look away because it is almost painful to be so deep in the muck, and you know how it ends, so why must we be stuck in this muck? Can’t we get to the glories of Independence Hall? Yet despite those typical barriers to belief, you should keep watching.
Why?
Truth be told, with all the mishaps (to put it politely) and egos among the deeply divided rebels, as the episodes move along something delightful and insightful emerges over the talking-head historians, history lessons and trivia.
Even in this dank decade for American democracy that we are living in now, the recently neglected sense of the near universal inspiration created by our centuries-old revolution springs to life anew. Turns out, the tale of the wild American dogs chasing the Brits back over the pond and beginning one of the greatest leaps of faith in human history still makes for pretty damn good history, on the small screen and otherwise.
Or, in the words of Van Halen: “Change, nothin’ stays the same/Unchained, and ya hit the ground runnin’.
You also get some unconventional wisdom from American Revolution amidst stories you’ve heard a million times before — great stuff to show off at your kids’ school recitals and soccer practices.
The motivations behind Benedict Arnold’s turn to the British side, for example, actually turns out to be much more about the heart and of the divine than they ever taught us in school. Gen. Arnold (voiced by Keaton, who you are kinda dying for him to say “I am a traitor” in a “I am Batman” way) was all too human, it seems.
To be honest, especially when it comes to the American rebels partnering with the French and their despotic monarchy against George III and the Redcoats, Arnold’s betrayal of Washington (the latter voiced by the once George W. Bush-portraying Josh Brolin) and alliance with the British makes some degree of sense, at least from his perspective.
Which is to say, if you are interested in real people, real battles (literal, social, racial and political) and the messiness of what 1776 was and is all about, American Revolution is a tome well worth sticking with until the end – even though we all know how it ends.
Or do we?
To paraphrase that great American poet and hopefully future Ken Burns subject Gil Scott-Heron: The American Revolution will be televised, and it will be well worth watching.
The lurid 1950s comic books were investigated by the U.S. Senate
Long before the Crypt Keeper was on T-shirts and toys, and way before Tales From the Crypt was a creepy 90s TV show, it was a comic book. EC Comics began publishing their acclaimed horror anthology books starting in 1950. A couple of years later, they were facing complaints from parents and an investigation by a U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency on the lurid comics.
On October 26, the L.A.-based performance group Captured Aural Phantasy Theater will bring the shocking worlds to life in their live-read stage show based on the comic book series. The troupe will revisit several stories in a live show at Dynasty Typewriter on October 26, featuring projections, live music, magic and haunting songs just in time for Halloween.
The original Crypt Keeper figure from TV’s Tales From the Crypt in a private collectionCredit: Photo by Chris Nichols
The original Tales From the Crypt comics (not to be confused with the TV series featuring famous guest stars like Tom Hanks and Arnold Schwarzenegger) were published by William Gaines, who inherited his dad’s comic book company at age 25. Gaines hired renowned artists like Will Elder, Jack Davis and Frank Frazetta to illustrate tales of the supernatural, comeuppance and revenge, all with outrageous plot twists.
Many pearls were clutched after an article titled “Horror In The Nursery” was published in Collier’s magazine, exposing parents to the monstrous things kids loved reading about. After enduring much grilling, Gaines gave up on the shock horror and turned his attention to shock humor by founding Mad magazine.
Gaines’ exploits are at the heart of troupe founder Ben Dickow’s other project, Comic Book Crackdown, a new musical recently staged during Banned Books Week at L.A.’s Central Library. Seventy-plus years after politicians tried to outlaw these comics, book bans haven’t gone away. PEN America reports that A Clockwork Orange was the most banned book in schools this year, in a list that also includes Wicked, A Handmaid’s Tale, and Forever… by Judy Blume.
A new image promoting Toy Story 5 has now been released and shares the first look at Buzz and Woody in the upcoming film. View it below, via The Disney Beat on Twitter.
What else do we know about Toy Story 5?
“The toys are back in Disney and Pixar’s Toy Story 5, and this time around, it’s Toy meets Tech,” the official synopsis reads. “Buzz, Woody, Jessie, and the rest of the gang’s jobs get exponentially harder when they go head to head with this all-new threat to playtime.”
Pixar’s Pete Docter further told People about the plot, “If you remember from Toy Story 4, Woody has left the kids’ rooms for a life of adventure…helping lost toys in need. Sheriff Jessie is now in charge of Bonnie’s room, with the recently deputized Buzz as assistant deputy. And the rest of the toy crew is still around with their same sassy attitudes, like Hamm, Rex, Slinky, and Mr. Potato Head. But Bonnie is now 8, and she’s become more concerned about being socially connected and making friends, which is why her parents agreed to get her this Lily Pad. It’s a new tech tablet that allows Bonnie to chat with her friends and play games and other things, too. But Lily can also be a bit sneaky and prickly to be around — because in her mind, it’s a lot better to be socialized, and Bonnie needs to move on from toys.”
The film is co-directed by McKenna Harris, while Jessica Choi serves as a producer.
In addition to Allen and Hanks, the voice cast of Toy Story 5 includes Joan Cusack as Jessie, Ernie Hudson as Combat Carl, Tony Hale as Forky, Conan O’Brien as Smarty Pants, and more.
Toy Story 5 will be released on June 19, 2026, from Disney and Pixar.
Tom Hanks, the celebrated star of Forrest Gump, recently expressed admiration for Aamir Khan’s Laal Singh Chaddha, the Hindi adaptation of his iconic film. Despite Laal Singh Chaddha’s mix box office performance, Hanks called it a “glorious thing to behold.” He spoke about the film during a recent interview, highlighting the blend of unique cultural elements that made it special.
Hanks praised Laal Singh Chaddha for showcasing both similarities and differences in storytelling across cultures. “Look at the differences and yet look at the similarities,” he remarked, pointing to how films often share common themes even when crafted by distinct filmmakers from various backgrounds. For Hanks, Laal Singh Chaddha stands as an example of how cinema can transcend boundaries, offering fresh perspectives while maintaining universal messages.
Aamir Khan’s ex-wife, Kiran Rao, also shared her thoughts on the film’s release. Reflecting on its reception, she revealed that Aamir took the setback to heart, choosing to step back from films to focus on family and personal growth. Rao emphasized the importance of this break, saying it was a time of introspection and that the family rallied around him for support.
“It is this extraordinary amalgam that stands completely on its own and never has to be repeated,” he said of the movie. “And thank God we never bothered trying to make another one. Why put a hat on a hat?”
Forrest Gump, which saw Hanks play the titular character, was based on late author Winston Groom‘s 1986 novel. The film follows the life of Forrest Gump, an Alabama man with an IQ of 75 who yearns to be reunited with his childhood sweetheart, and his experiences from the 1950s to the 1970s
While a sequel was never adapted for the big screen, Groom did publish a 1995 sequel, Gump & Co., following the success of Forrest Gump.
Hanks said on the Happy Sad Confused podcast in 2022 that they “did take a stab at talking about another Forrest Gump,” however, it “lasted all of 40 minutes.” He added, “And then we never… we said, ‘Guys, come on.’”
Elsewhere in his interview with the Times, the Asteroid City actor added that he enjoys seeing how special the movie still is for people.
“I still get letters all the time saying, every year the family gets together, we do what we did back in 1995, when it first came out on home video. We all watch it, from beginning to end,” he said. “Right now, someone is watching that movie from beginning to end somewhere in the world. And it’s landing with that same sense of comfort and familiarity.”
Tom Hanks isn’t looking to go back and re-live his 30s.
The 68-year-old actor, who plays a wide range of ages in director Robert Zemeckis’s new movie Herethanks to de-aging technology, was recently asked by Entertainment Tonight if there was a specific age he enjoyed going back to in the movie.
However, Hanks said that “the hardest for us was when we were playing 35. That time when your metabolism stops, gravity starts tearing you down, your bones start wearing off. You stand differently.”
The Oscar winner added that he thinks he’s “in better shape now” than when he was in his 30s.
“You know why? Because my kids are grown up, I’m getting decent exercise, and I can eat right,” he explained. “You can’t do that when you’re 35. Life is such a burden!”
Here, which sees Hanks star opposite Robin Wright, is a generational story about families and the special place they inhabit, sharing in love, loss, laughter and life.
The Forrest Gump star also previously told People that while it was “good to look young again,” he admitted that he would “rather be as old as I am.”
At the film’s AFI Fest premiere in Los Angeles last week, Zemeckis spoke with The Hollywood Reporter about the technology they used to track the actors over the story’s decades. The team worked with AI studio Metaphysic on a tool called Metaphysic Live, which created face swaps and de-aging effects on top of actors’ performances in real-time.
The filmmaker explained that it was basically “digital makeup” and allowed the cast to see themselves 20 or 30 years younger while filming the scene, rather than waiting for visual effects to be added later.
Zemeckis added, “They look at it and they go, ‘Oh, I’ve got to be a little bit more spry, I have to move a little quicker, I have to raise my voice a little bit.’ It was important for them to see it.”
There’s something quintessentially American and straight out of Norman Rockwell about centering a survey of multiple generations around the living room, with idealized themes of home and family reinforced by scenes around the Christmas tree or the dining table, fully extended to accommodate the ever-expanding clan at Thanksgiving. But relatable doesn’t always mean interesting, even if the moments of joy don’t hide the vein of sadness and disappointment that runs through Here.
The same goes for the idea of shooting everything — reaching back to prehistory and right on up through contemporary times — from the same fixed point and using the same wide angle. In terms of technical craft, it’s a daring experiment, but one perhaps less geared to a dynamic narrative than an art installation. Narrowing the frame constricts the storytelling, no matter how many times a Significant Life Moment is shoved up close to the lens for emphasis.
Here
The Bottom Line
Bristling with centuries of life, and yet mostly inert.
Venue: AFI Fest (Centerpiece Screening) Release date: Friday, Nov. 1 Cast: Tom Hanks, Robin Wright, Paul Bettany, Kelly Reilly, Michelle Dockery, Gwilym Lee, David Fynn, Ophelia Lovibond, Nicholas Pinnock, Nikki Amuka-Bird Director: Robert Zemeckis Screenwriters: Eric Roth, Robert Zemeckis, based on the graphic novel by Richard McGuire
Rated PG-13,
1 hour 44 minutes
Reuniting with his Forrest Gump screenwriter Eric Roth and stars Tom Hanks and Robin Wright, director Robert Zemeckis takes his visual cues from the source material, Richard McGuire’s 2014 graphic novel of the same name, expanded from a six-page comic strip published in the late ‘80s.
The interdisciplinary artist pushed the boundaries of the comic format by sticking to the exact same location in every panel. Framed through the living room of a house constructed in 1902, his story spans millennia but is focused predominantly on the 20th and 21st centuries. Most of those panels include one or more smaller panes that show the same space at different, non-chronological points in time.
By replicating the graphic novel’s approach three-dimensionally, Zemeckis’ film becomes like a living diorama with insets providing windows into the past and future. Purely from a craft standpoint, it’s mesmerizing, even beautiful, for a while. Until it’s not.
Zemeckis for years now has been fixated on technology and its visual capabilities, to the point where he neglects the rudiments of story and character development. The vignettes here return frequently to the same families at different moments in their lives, but rarely settle in for long enough to sustain narrative momentum or give the characters much depth.
In addition to the self-imposed rigidity of the visual scheme, Here will draw attention — probably in divisive ways — to another technological element that’s even more of a distraction. The director uses a generative AI tool from VFX studio Metaphysic to de-age Hanks and Wright as Richard and Margaret, the characters whose arc, traced from high school through old age, dominates the film. Using archival images of the actors, the program spits out digital makeup that can be face-swapped onto the cast as they perform.
It’s more advanced and convincing than the de-aging in Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman five years ago, allowing for greater elasticity and facial expressivity — even if the physicality of the actors’ bodies isn’t always a perfect match, notably with Hanks in the teenage years. But there’s also something inherently creepy about the process, particularly at a time when many of us are apprehensive about screen acting going down an ever more dehumanizing digital road.
The movie begins with the house under construction. This introduces the concept of panes depicting various elements as they come together, with furnishings from different periods and the first glimpses of people representing various threads that will be elaborated on throughout, some more substantially than others. The opening scenes also plant the central idea in Roth and Zemeckis’ screenplay of houses as receptacles for memory, both lived experience and history.
The frame then jumps way back in time to when the area was a primordial swamp, replete with dinosaurs — until that landscape is razed in a fiery mass-extinction event, forming first into rock and gradually into a verdant clearing bursting with flora and (CG) fauna. A pair of young Indigenous Americans (Joel Oulette and Dannie McCallum) share a kiss there, before another time leap reveals enslaved people building a colonial mansion.
We get fragments of life in the house over different periods: Pauline (Michelle Dockery) is an anxious wife and mother in the very early 20th century, fearful that the obsession of her husband John (Gwilym Lee) with aviation will end in tragedy. Leo (David Fynn) and Stella (Ophelia Lovibond) occupy the house for two decades starting in the mid-1920s. Unencumbered by children, they are a pair of fun, frisky quasi-bohemians who get lucky with Leo’s invention of the recliner. More of their levity would have been welcome in a film often weighed down by its earnestness.
The least developed strand covers a Black family, parents Devon (Nicholas Pinnock) and Helen Harris (Nikki Amuka-Bird) and their teenage son Justin (Cache Vanderpuye), who purchase the house in 2015, when the asking price of $1 million is considered “a steal.”
Their presence serves to show how neighborhoods evolve and become more inclusive. But there’s a nagging feeling that the Harris family’s function is largely representational, especially when their most fleshed out scene shows Devon and Helen sitting Justin down for a serious talk about the rules he must observe to stay safe if he’s pulled over by a cop while driving. Their scenes also touch on the frightening first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic through the fate of their longtime Latina housekeeper (Anya Marco-Harris).
But the bulk of the story centers on Richard’s family, starting with his parents, Al (Paul Bettany) and Rose (Kelly Reilly), who buy the house in 1945. Al is fresh out of the Army and suffering from what appears to be undiagnosed PTSD, which causes him to drink. A child of the Depression, he dwells on money worries, concerned that his salesman job won’t cover the bills.
The first-born of their four children, Richard (played by younger actors until Hanks steps in), brings home his high school sweetheart, Margaret, to meet the family. When she reveals her intention to go first to college and then law school, Al asks, “What’s wrong with being a housewife?” He’s even more blunt when Richard, a keen painter, reveals that he wants a career as a graphic artist: “Don’t be an idiot. Get a job where you wear a suit.”
Richard and Margaret marry at 18, after she becomes pregnant. In a heavy-handed nod to sons dolefully following their fathers’ paths, Richard packs up his paints and canvases. He takes a job selling insurance to support his family, though they continue to live with his parents. Margaret never gets comfortable in a house that doesn’t feel like hers, creating festering problems in the marriage. But Richard has also inherited his dad’s financial fears, which prevents them from taking a risk on a place of their own.
I wish I could say I got emotionally invested in the changes this family goes through, but everything feels lifted from the most routine playbook of aging, declining health, death, divorce and, most insistently, deferred dreams, sometimes to be taken up by the next generation. At Margaret’s surprise 50th birthday party, Wright gets stuck with a melancholy speech about all the things she had hoped to achieve by that age. It feels like a pale shadow of Patricia Arquette’s analogous — and far more economically articulated — scene in Boyhood.
Of the many moments in which characters step right up to the camera to say Something Important, the most embarrassing might be Richard on foreshadowing duty, noting “a moment we’ll always remember” while Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s “Our House” plays on the soundtrack. This feels straight out of a Saturday Night Live sketch.
It’s possible that people with an enduring fondness for Forrest Gump will be sufficiently captivated by seeing Hanks and Wright back together, making their characters’ outcomes affecting. But others are likely to remain stubbornly dry-eyed, despite Alan Silvestri’s syrupy score troweling on the sentiment.
For a movie covering such an expansive passage of American life, Here feels curiously weightless. It’s no fault of the actors, all of whom deliver solid work with characters that are scarcely more than outlines. No one fully manages to get out from under the movie’s preoccupation with visual technology at the expense of heart.
Historical detours zip back to colonial times when English Loyalist William Franklin (Daniel Betts), conveniently parked in a horse-drawn cart, grumbles to his wife about the radical politics of his father Benjamin (Keith Bartlett). (The less said about the cut to Richard and his younger brother at a costume party as dueling Benjamin Franklins, the better.) There are brief scenes from the Revolutionary War. And there’s a sketchy account of the Indigenous couple’s pre-settlement life, raising their own family and suffering their own losses.
But it’s characteristic of an episodic screenplay that finds no opportunity to belabor its themes too trite, no clichéd line of dialogue too platitudinous, that even the Native American thread gets tied up in a neat bow. That happens when archeological society members stop by and ask to poke around the garden a bit, suspecting the house might be built on an important site. Lo and behold …
Only at the very end does DP Don Burgess’ camera move from its fixed point in the living room, venturing outside the house to take in the tidy suburbia that surrounds it. But a glaringly fake CG hummingbird is the final reminder that almost everything about Here is synthetic.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Former first lady Michelle Obama will headline a rally in Atlanta a week before the Nov. 5 election alongside celebrities and civic leaders focusing on engaging younger and first-time voters, as well as voters of color.
The Oct. 29 event will be hosted by When We All Vote, a nonpartisan civic engagement group that Obama founded in 2018 to “change the culture around voting” and reach out to people who are less likely to engage in politics and elections.
The rally is likely to help the campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, in a closely contested state. Obama is one of the party’s best-known figures and gave a speech boosting Harris’ candidacy at the national convention in August.
It is unclear which celebrities will attend the rally but organizers noted that the group’s co-chairs include professional basketball players Stephen Curry and Chris Paul; musical artists Becky G, H.E.R., Selena Gomez, Jennifer Lopez and Janelle Monáe; beauty influencer Bretman Rock; and actors Tom Hanks, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Kerry Washington.
The group has hosted more than 500 “Party at the Polls” events across the country focused on increasing voter registration and turnout. The events have ranged from pop-up block parties in Las Vegas, Phoenix and Philadelphia to voter registration partnerships with professional sports leagues and music festivals over the past year.
“The goal is to take the energy and momentum at the rally to the ballot box,” said Beth Lynk, executive director of When We All Vote. “We want to bring the culture, the energy and the momentum together in one big space.”
Lynk said the group chose Atlanta because of the state’s diversity and the impact that only a handful of voters can make in Georgia. About one-third of Georgia’s electorate is Black alongside rapidly growing Asian American and Latino communities. When We All Vote is focused on engaging college students on campuses in the metropolitan Atlanta area, Lynk said.
“Something that we have been hearing from young voters is that a lot of people don’t believe that their votes have power. But they do, plain and simple,” Lynk said. “We know that democracy has to work for all of us and that’s what we will be stressing at this rally.”
The rally will take place just before early voting ends in Georgia on Nov. 1, less than a week before Election Day.
Joe Dante is a bit surprised that his movie The ‘Burbs is getting the series-remake treatment.
Dante recently spoke to The Hollywood Reporter to promote the Max animated series Gremlins: The Wild Batch returning this week for its second season. Dante directed the 1984 feature Gremlins and its 1990 sequel, and he serves as consulting producer on the prequel show.
The filmmaker also helmed the 1989 dark comedy The ‘Burbs, which starred Tom Hanks, Bruce Dern and Carrie Fisher in the story of a family man who becomes convinced that his new neighbors are hiding a spooky secret. The movie received renewed attention with the news last month that Keke Palmer is set to star in a series version for Peacock from executive producers Brian Grazer and Seth MacFarlane.
Dante took to X (formerly Twitter) at the time of the series announcement with the message, “Call me maybe,” in response to a post about the news.
When asked how he feels about the remake, Dante tells THR with a laugh, “I think my actual comment was, ‘How are they going to make a whole TV series out of that story?’ As opposed to, ‘I want to be the one to do it.’”
He continues, “Good luck to them. It’s kind a one-off story.”
Dante confirms that he has not been contacted by the series’ team about being involved. As for how he feels about his film from 35 years ago spawning a new project, Dante says, “It’s always nice when things have a shelf life.”
During the conversation about Gremlins: The Wild Bunch, Dante also discussed the chances for a third Gremlins movie. “That’s up to the audience,” he said about the possibility of another film. “The fact is that it’s too big a property for somebody not to make something.”
The filmmaker added, “But it’s been difficult for people to wrap their heads around, ‘Exactly how are we going to do this?’ This series is a brilliant answer to that problem because it’s a prequel, and it’s animated, and it’s the perfect next step in the Gremlins saga.”
If you are looking for escapism, You’ve Got Mail should be your first port of call. The opening montage alone has become a sort of soothing tonic for me in times of stress — a fail-safe recipe to lull me into a state of calm and, at least for a moment, whisk me away into a world of fantasy.
It goes something like this: as the cheery, nostalgic beat of “Dreams” by The Cranberries picks up, Meg Ryan skips serenely out of her Upper West Side brownstone, gazing contentedly up at the autumnal leaves that line her perfect little street — never has anyone been so happy to walk to work!
As she strolls through her charming little neighbourhood, a cheerful bounce in her step, businesses are opening their doors around her: the bagel shop, the bakery, the pharmacy, the locksmith, the shoe repair, the nut shop. Finally, she makes to her shop — an utterly adorable children’s bookshop that is oh so whimsically named The Shop Around the Corner.
Since You’ve Got Mail‘s release (25 years ago this weekend), the film has only become more and more popular. In fact, in the past few years, the rom-com has found a new cult following. As one of the core films of the social media phenomenon Meg Ryan Fall, You’ve Got Mail has come to symbolise a certain kind of romanticised retro aestheticism. Each autumn, fans tout out stills of a happy Meg Ryan with a pumpkin. In the winter, the stills are swapped out and a wholesome Meg Ryan with a Christmas tree.
Directed by Nora Ephron and starring Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks, the film is actually a remake of the Jimmy Stewart-led Shop Around The Corner, which was in turn a 1940 adaptation of a Hungarian play. While the original saw two bitter enemies falling in love over snail mail, Ephron updates the story for the dawn of the digital age: Kathleen (Ryan), aka ShopGirl, and Joe (Hanks), aka NY152, have been chatting online. The only problem? She runs a delightful children’s bookshop and his family owns Fox Books, the Barnes & Noble knock-off that is determined to put her out of business. When they meet in the real world, unaware that they are, in fact, internet pen pals, they become instant sworn enemies. Joe’s nonchalance about the caviar at a party is the last straw. As they continue to feud in the real world, online, they each help each other with their mysterious “work problems”.
With Pretty Woman,Notting Hill, and My Best Friend’s Wedding,Julia Roberts has starred in some of the best romantic comedies of all time. But as fate would have it, she could have added another to her impressive roster: 1998’s You’ve Got Mail.
While promoting her latest film, the psychological thriller Leave the World Behind, on Thursday’s episode of Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen, Roberts was asked to reflect on any roles she regretted turning down. Instead, the Oscar winner shifted the question to share two movies she passed on that “maybe wouldn’t have been as great and wonderful” with her in them.
One was 1992’s The Last of the Mohicans, starring Daniel Day-Lewis. The other? You’ve Got Mail, in which she would have acted opposite Tom Hanks and played Meg Ryan’s part as hopelessly romantic bookshop owner Kathleen Kelly. Instead of Roberts, who went on to star with Hanks in 2007’s Charlie Wilson’s War and 2011’s Larry Crowne, Ryan reunited with her Sleepless in Seattle love interest. That same year, Roberts opted to coheadline the domestic tearjerker Stepmom alongside Susan Sarandon.
Nearly a decade prior, it was Ryan who was originally cast as Shelby in 1989’s Steel Magnolias, a part based on screenwriter and playwright Robert Harling’s sister, Susan. “The day after we cast her, she came to us in tears and said, ‘I’m sorry, but I just got offered this film, and I’ll be a leading lady with Billy Crystal…’” Harling recalled last year. “So you know we said, ‘Of course, go make When Harry Met Sally.’”
It was Sally Field, who plays Shelby’s mother, M’Lynn, in the film, who suggested producers meet with Roberts, according to Harling. “Sally said, ‘You know, there’s this girl and she’s been off making some movie about a pizza. She’s Eric Roberts’s sister,’” he told Southern Living, referencing her breakout role in 1988’s Mystic Pizza. “We brought her in, and she was Julia Roberts, so she was magic. She just walked into the room and lit it up, and I thought, That’s my sister.”
On WWHL, Roberts also mentioned the Steel Magnolias switch, which helped earn her the first of four Academy Award nominations. She noted that she also nearly missed out on her earliest project with the late filmmaker Mike Nichols. “Cate Blanchettwas supposed to be in Closer, but she got pregnant, and so then I got that part,” Roberts said of the 2004 romantic thriller costarring Natalie Portman,Jude Law, and Clive Owen. “So I’ve lucked into some good stuff.”
Hanks shared a screenshot of the ad to Instagram with the caption, “Beware!! There’s a video out there promoting some dental plan with an AI version of me. I have nothing to do with it.”
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The AI-generated Hanks appears to have been aged down in the advertisement.
Hanks did not reveal the company name or where the advertisement was being shown, and his representatives have declined comment.
Gayle King issues a similar warning
Only one day after Hanks’ warning, Gayle King also shared a message warning her followers about a fraudulent video advertisement using her likeness. The CBS Mornings host said malicious advertisers used AI to manipulate a legitimate video of King promoting her radio show in August.
“People keep sending me this video and asking about this product and I have NOTHING to do with this company,” King wrote. “They’ve manipulated my voice and video to make it seem like I’m promoting it.”
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King posted the AI weight loss advertisement to Instagram, with the words “Fake Video” stamped overtop. She also included footage from her original radio show promotion to prove that the advertisement had been doctored.
“I’ve never heard of this product or used it! Please don’t be fooled by these AI videos,” she concluded.
King did not specify where the advertisement was being shown.
Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, told the New York Times in an email that it is “against our policies to run ads that use public figures in a deceptive nature in order to try to scam people out of money.”
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“We have put substantial resources towards tackling these kinds of ads and have improved our enforcement significantly, including suspending and deleting accounts, pages and ads that violate our policies,” the statement continued.
‘Disturbing’ AI recreations
Even after death, celebrities are not immune to AI manipulation.
Zelda Williams, the daughter of iconic comedian and actor Robin Williams, on Sunday said her father’s image and voice had been replicated by AI and shared online.
In a statement posted to her Instagram story, Zelda called AI-generated content featuring her father’s likeness “disturbing.”
“I am not an impartial voice in SAG’s fight against AI,” Zelda wrote. “I’ve witnessed for YEARS how many people want to train these models to create/recreate actors who cannot consent, like Dad. This isn’t theoretical, it is very very real.
“I’ve already heard AI used to get his ‘voice’ to say whatever people want and while I find it personally disturbing, the ramifications go far beyond my own feelings,” Zelda continued. “Living actors deserve a chance to create characters with their choices, to voice cartoons, to put their HUMAN effort and time into the pursuit of performance.”
Zelda called AI-generated versions of actors “at their worst, a horrendous Frankenstein monster, cobbled together from the worst bits of everything this industry is, instead of what it should stand for.”
This is far from the first time actors like Hanks have expressed worry about the use of AI in the entertainment industry.
Earlier this year, Hanks voiced his concern about AI and internet deepfakes when he appeared as a guest on The Adam Buxton Podcast. Hanks said he first began to worry after starring in the 2004 Christmas film The Polar Express, which saw Hanks and a cast of others animated using motion-capture technology.
“We saw that there was going to be this ability in order to take zeros and ones inside a computer and turn it into a face and a character,” Hanks said in the interview. “Now, that has only grown a billion-fold since then and we see it everywhere.”
On The Adam Buxton Podcast, Hanks said there were “discussions going on in all of the guilds, all of the agencies and all of the legal firms in order to come up with the legal ramifications of my face and my voice — and everybody else’s — being our intellectual property.”
Hanks said the technology could allow studios to perpetually create movies starring AI versions of him at various, younger ages. He said he could be “hit by a bus tomorrow” and still have his likeness star in future performances.
“Outside of the understanding that it’s being done by AI or deepfake, there’ll be nothing to tell you that it’s not me and me alone — and it’s going to have some degree of lifelike quality,” he said. “That’s certainly an artistic challenge, but it’s also a legal one.”
The WGA strike was declared over this month after board members approved a contract agreement with studios. The agreement prohibits studios from using AI to write or rewrite material.
Hollywood writers, studios reach tentative deal to end strike
SAG-AFTRA members are still on strike.
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In Canada, the Liberal government last year introduced legislation that proposed new rules for the use of AI. The proposal came as part of a federal privacy bill to give Canadians more control over how their personal data is used by commercial entities.
Government introduces new privacy bill to give Canadians more control over online data
Numerous civil society organizations, experts and academics have called on the government to amend its proposal so that AI is considered separately. Advocates have argued the existing AI section of the bill fails to protect the rights and freedoms of people from the risks of AI.
Tom Hanks has warned fans that a dental advertisement seemingly featuring the actor’s likeness is not actually him — it’s artifical intelligence.
“BEWARE!! There’s a video out there promoting some dental plan with an AI version of me,” Hanks wrote on Instagram Sunday, including an image of himself that, he said, was computer-generated using artificial intelligence.
“I have nothing to do with it,” Hanks added.
The “Asteroid City” star is one of many voices within the film and television industry now speaking openly about the use of AI in media.
“This is something that is literally part and parcel to what’s going on in the realm of intellectual property rights right now. This has always been lingering,” Hanks said on The Adam Buxton Podcast in May, noting that the rise of artificial technology poses “an artistic challenge” as well as “a legal one.”
“Right now, if I wanted to, I could get together and pitch a series of seven movies that would star me in them, in which I would be 32 years old, from now until kingdom come,” he said. “Anybody can now recreate themselves at any age they are, by way of AI or deepfake technology. I could be hit by a bus tomorrow and that’s it. But my performances can go on and on and on and on, and outside of the understanding that has been done with AI or deepfake. There’ll be nothing to tell you that it’s not me and me alone.”
How artificial intelligence is used in media became a significant point of contention as unionized actors and writers went on strike this year, amid contract negotiations with Hollywood studios. When the writers strike ended in late September, the Writers Guild of America said it had reached a deal that included provisions regarding the use of artificial technology in productions covered by the union’s collective bargaining agreement.
Hanks discussed the negotiations in an interview on “CBS Sunday Mornings” shortly after the strike began in the spring.
“The entire industry is at a crossroads, and everybody knows it,” he said at the time, adding that “the financial motor has to be completely redefined” to benefit content creators rather than studios alone.
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As the Oscar-winning actor told him, “‘You have immersed yourself so deeply in Elvis that, for your mental health, it would be wise to go straight into something else,’” Butler recalled in a recent interview with The Times of London. “‘If you just jump off the train, you might have emotional whiplash…and, you know, I’ve got this thing I’m producing.’” That very project was AppleTV+ miniseries Masters of the Air, a follow-up to World War II epics Band of Brothers and The Pacific in which Butler plays Major Gale Cleven alongside Barry Keoghan and Callum Turner.
Butler only had a week to himself between wrapping production on Elvis in Australia and beginning Masters of the Air in London, he previously told Vanity Fair for our 2023 Hollywood cover. “It was a—looking back—‘what was I thinking?’ kind of thing,” Butler said. “But it was a great group of people, and I’m really fortunate I got to be a part of it because I think it’s going to be a great show. But for my own sanity, I think I could have used some more time to just decompress.”
After that series, Butler went on to roles in The Bikeriders and Dune: Part Two, both films out later this year that required a reset. “I was stretching myself and living within the shoes of somebody else for a bit that’s very, very different from Elvis,” Butler told VF. “I never want to say I shed Elvis or washed it off because it makes it sound like something that I want to leave me. It was such a gift and it was such an amazing time. But as far as the thing where you’re all consumed with something, my mind couldn’t think about anything that wasn’t Elvis-related—and I didn’t want to for over two years.”
As Butler explained to The Times, his Oscar-nominated performance in Elvis was a once-in-a-career endeavor. It made him “go to the very edge of what is possible, and not every experience will be like that,” the actor said. “I don’t think I’ll ever have an experience like that again, but if I have to really dig, it makes me feel alive.”
“The movie was fine, but it didn’t feature nearly enough discussion of the immense suffering caused by people who throw horseshoes at bars and hit someone in the head, giving them a concussion and making them spill their beer all over themselves. This happened to me, and it could happen to you.”
One of the essential skills of a successful actor is the ability to shape-shift into characters far removed from oneself. Sometimes, that character has been meticulously crafted by the screenwriter — but other times, it’s pulled directly from the pages of history. Perfecting a portrayal of a real person is no easy feat, however. While there’s certainly a set of guidelines to follow, embodying someone from recent (or not so recent) history comes with all sorts of pitfalls and expectations.
An actor’s main challenge when playing a real-life person on screen is avoiding mimicry. Obviously, the audience is supposed to suspend disbelief and imagine that the actor is that historical figure. But simply copying one’s mannerisms and vocal inflections isn’t enough to craft a compelling performance. It’s one thing to coincidentally look like someone from history, and it’s another to embody them from the inside out. There needs to be an element of surprise, a revelation of the iconic figure’s spirit. It’s not all about striking every pose or hitting every mark. When the actor is feeling the essence of the character, we can tell.
Throughout the years, there have been countless biopics and dramas that bring some of history’s most famous figures to life. While many are serviceable, few stand out as truly extraordinary. And with talks of Cillian Murphy’s groundbreaking performance in Oppenheimer — which hits theaters July 21 — let’s take the time to review 10 of the best portrayals of real-life people to ever grace the silver screen.
The Best Onscreen Portrayals Of Real-Life People
These actors pulled off incredible transformations to play real-life figures from history.
12 Actors Who Did Crazy Things To Get Into Character
These actors stopped at nothing to transform into their onscreen roles.
A palpable shift has occurred in Wes Anderson’s style and tone since the release of 2021’s The French Dispatch. One doesn’t want to use a cliché like “mature” to describe what’s been happening since that perceptible tonal pivot in his filmography, so perhaps the better way to “define” what’s happening to Anderson and his storytelling is that it’s gotten, as Cher Horowitz would note, “Way existential.” Not to say there wasn’t that element to some degree in previous films, but now, it’s amplified—ratcheted up to a maximum that was never there before. Some might proffer it’s because Anderson has transitioned to a new era of his life, therefore possesses a greater concern with mortality; others could posit that our world and society has become so fragile in the years since 2020, that even privileged white men have been rattled by it enough to let it color their work. Whatever the case, the increased focus on mortality and “the meaning of life” in Anderson’s oeuvre is no surprise considering one of his greatest directorial influences is Woody Allen. Yes, he might be cancelled, but that doesn’t change the effect he’s had on Anderson.
Of course, Anderson has managed to take the puerility of Allen’s lead characters and render them “quirky,” “oddball” and “postmodern” instead. What’s more, Anderson has the “marketing sense” not to make his characters come across as “too Jewy,” lest it “scandalize” the often white bread audiences he tends to attract. Some might argue that Asteroid City is his whitest offering yet—which is really saying something. And yes, like Allen, Anderson has begun to favor the “screenwriting technique” of setting his movies in the past, so as not to have to deal with the “vexing” and “unpleasant” complications of trying to address post-woke culture in his casting and narrative decisions. Defenders of Anderson would bite back by remarking that the director creates alternate worlds in general, and should be left to do his own thing without being subjected to the “moral” and “ethical” issues presented by “modern filmmaking requirements.” For the most part, that’s remained the case, even as occasional hemming-and-hawing about his “movies so white” shtick crops up when he releases a new film. But to those who will follow Anderson anywhere, the trip to Asteroid City does prove to be worth it. If for no other reason than to show us the evolution of an auteur when he’s left alone, permitted to be creative without letting the outside voices and noise fuck with his head.
In many regards, the “town” (or rather, desert patch with a population of eighty-seven) is a representation of the same bubble Anderson exists in whenever he writes and directs something. To the point of writing, Anderson returns to the meta exploration of what it means to create on the page (as he did for The French Dispatch), anchored by the playwright Conrad Earp (Edward Norton). Although he’s not one of the more heavily featured characters, without him, none of the characters we’re seeing perform a televised production of Asteroid City would exist. If that sounds too meta already, it probably is. With the host (Bryan Cranston) of an anthology TV series serving as our guide, the movie commences in black and white as he stares into the camera and proceeds to do his best impersonation of Rod Serling at the beginning of The Twilight Zone. Indeed, it’s clear Anderson wants to allude to these types of TV anthology series that were so popular in the post-war Golden Age of Television. And even on the radio, as Orson Welles showcased in 1938, with his adaptation of The War of the Worlds. A broadcast that caused many listeners to panic about an alien invasion, unaware that it wasn’t real. In fact, Cranston as the host is sure to forewarn his viewers, “Asteroid City does not exist. It is an imaginary drama created expressly for this broadcast.” That warning comes with good reason, for people in the 50s were easily susceptible to being bamboozled by whatever was presented to them on the then-new medium of TV. Because, “If it’s on TV, it must be true.” And the last thing anyone wanted to believe—then as much as now—is that there could be life on other planets. Sure, it sounds “neato” in theory, but, in reality, Earthlings are major narcissists who want to remain the lone “stars” of the interplanetary show.
Set in September of 1955, Asteroid City centers its narrative on a Junior Stargazer convention, where five students will be honored for their excellence in astronomy and astronomy-related innovations. Among those five are Woodrow (Jake Ryan), Shelly (Sophia Lillis), Ricky (Ethan Josh Lee), Dinah (Grace Edwards) and Clifford (Aristou Meehan). It’s Woodrow who arrives to town first, courtesy of his war photographer father, Augie Steenbeck (Jason Schwartzman). Although they’ve arrived to their destination, Augie still has to take the broken-down car to the mechanic (Matt Dillon). After much fanfare and tinkering, The Mechanic concludes that the car is kaput. Augie decides to phone his father-in-law, Stanley Zak (Tom Hanks), to come pick up Woodrow and Augie’s three daughters, Andromeda (Ella Faris), Pandora (Gracie Faris) and Cassiopeia (Willan Faris). Stanley doesn’t immediately agree, instead opting to remind Augie that he was never good enough for his daughter (played briefly, in a way, by Margot Robbie) and that he ought to tell his children that their mother died. Three weeks ago, to be exact. But withholding this information is just one of many ways in which Augie parades his emotional stuntedness. Something that ultimately enchants Hollywood actress Midge Campbell (Scarlett Johansson), who also happens to be the mother of another Junior Stargazer, Dinah.
All the while, the vibrant, almost fake-looking set seems there solely to reiterate that all vibrancy is belied by something darker beneath it. That was never truer than in postwar America. And talking of vibrant cinematography and explosions, if Barbie’s color palette had a baby with Oppenheimer’s explosive content, you’d get Asteroid City (which, again, features Margot “Barbie” Robbie herself). With regard to explosions, it bears noting that the intro to the movie includes a train plugging along, bound for Asteroid City carrying all manner of bounty: avocados, pecans and, oh yes, a ten-megaton nuclear warhead with the disclaimer: “Caution: DO NOT DETONATE without Presidential Approval.” So much about that wide array of “transported goods” speaks to the very dichotomy of American culture. Priding itself on being a land of plenty while also doing everything in its power to self-destruct all that natural wealth. What’s more, the presence of hazardous material on trains is only too relevant considering the recent tragedy that befell East Palestine, Ohio. And yet, these are the sorts of environmentally-damaging behaviors that were set in motion in the postwar economic boom of America. Complete with the “miracle” of Teflon.
Accordingly, it’s no coincidence that as the “progress” associated with modern life accelerated at a rate not seen since the first Industrial Revolution, some were concerned about the potential fallout of such “development.” After all, with technological advancement could arise as many inconveniences as conveniences (see also: AI). For those who came of age after the so-called war to end all wars, a natural skepticism vis-à-vis “advancement” was also to be expected. Perhaps the fear of modern existence, with all the implications of war and invasion being “leveled up” due to “better” technology (i.e., the atomic bomb), planted the seed of suddenly seeing flying saucers all the time starting in the 40s and 50s. A phenomenon that many government officials were keen to write off as being somehow related to atomic testing (this being why the Atomic Age is so wrapped up in the alien sightings craze of the 50s). The sudden collective sightings might also have been a manifestation of the inherent fear of what all this “progress” could do. Especially when it came to increasing the potential for interplanetary contact. For it was also in the 50s that the great “space race” began—spurred by nothing more than the competitive, dick-swinging nature of the Cold War between the U.S. and USSR. That was all it took to propel a “they’re among us” and “hiding in plain sight” mentality, one that was frequently preyed upon by the U.S. government via the Red Scare. Such intense fear- and paranoia-mongering does fuck with the mind, you know. Enough to make it see things that may or may not really be there (literally and figuratively). The term “alien,” therefore, meaning “foreigner” or “other” as much as extraterrestrial as the 50s wore on.
So it was that Americans did what they always do best with fear: monetize it! To be sure, Asteroid City itself only exists to commodify the terror of an asteroid hitting Earth and leaving such a great impact thousands of years ago. Then, when news of an alien infiltrating the Junior Stargazer convention leaks, a fun fair materializes to sell merch (“Alien Gifts Sold Here”) related to commemorating the “event.” As such, the train that goes to Asteroid City suddenly becomes the “Alien Special” and there’s now “Alien Parking,” as well as signs declaring, “Asteroid City U.F.O.” and “Spacecraft Sighting.” With this American zeal for exploitation in mind, plus the alien element, there’s even a certain Nope vibe at play throughout Asteroid City as well. And a dash of Don’t Worry Darling, to boot. Mainly because of the unexplained sonic booms that go on in the background while the housewives are trying to kiki.
Anderson extracts the paranoia element that might have been present in films of the day (like Flying Saucers Attack!) and instead relates the discovery of an alien life form to the added feeling of being insignificant as a human in this universe. To highlight that point, J.J. Kellogg (Liev Schreiber), father to Junior Stargazer Clifford, demands of his son’s escalating antics related to performing unasked dares, “Why do you always have to dare something?” He replies meekly, “I don’t know. Maybe it’s because I’m afraid otherwise nobody’ll notice my existence in the universe.” To be sure, the reason most people behave obnoxiously is to get the kind of attention that will convince themselves they matter. They mean something in this grand abyss.
Even Midge, a movie star, feels mostly unseen. So when Augie takes her picture in such an intimate way, she can’t help but feel allured by him. Seen by him. That, in the end, is what everyone wants. In the spirit of alluding to 50s Americana, Midge herself seems to be a loose representation of Marilyn Monroe, also prone to pills and alcohol, and constantly referred to as a brilliant comedienne despite flying under the radar as such. Then there’s another six degrees of Marilyn separation when Willem Dafoe appears as Saltzburg Keitel, an overt homage to Elia Kazan and his Actors Studio—a version of which we see when Earp shows up to a class to try to get insight on how to convey a certain scene. And yes, the concern with whether or not the acting in the play is being done “right” keeps coming up, reaching a crest as a metaphor for what Asteroid City is all about: what is anyone’s place in the universe? Does any of it mean anything? So yeah, again with the Woody Allen influence.
Toward the end of the play/movie, Jones Hall, the actor playing Augie, asks Schubert Green (Adrien Brody), the director, “Do I just keep doing it?” He could be asking about his performance as much as his very existence itself. Schubert assures, “Yes.” Jones continues, “Without knowing anything? Isn’t there supposed to be some kind of answer out there in the cosmic wilderness?” When Jones then admits, “I still don’t understand the play,” that phrase “the play” doubles just as easily for “life.” Schubert insists, “Doesn’t matter. Just keep telling the story.” In other words, just keep rolling the dice and living as though any of it means anything at all.
And maybe nihilism, for some people, is part of compartmentalizing that meaninglessness. This much appears to be the case for Midge, who tells Augie stoically, “I think I know now what I realize we are… Two catastrophically wounded people who don’t express the depths of their pain because…we don’t want to. That’s our connection.” But a connection is a connection—and that’s all anyone on Earth is really looking—starving—for…no matter how many decades fly by and how many according “advancements” are made. It’s likely the convention-interrupting alien could sense and see that desperation among the humans during his brief landing.
So it is that Augie tells Midge afterward, “I don’t like the way that guy looked at us, the alien.” Midge inquires, “How did he look?” “Like we’re doomed.” Midge shrugs, “Maybe we are.” “Maybe” being a polite euphemism for “definitely.” But even though we are, maybe the art will make sense of it all in the end. Even if only to “just keep telling the story.” For posterity. For whoever—or whatever—might come across the ruins and relics in the future. Hopefully, they’ll learn from the mistakes that we ourselves didn’t.
