“Inspired by true events” may as well read “This is complete and utter fiction and has no basis in reality, nor does it pertain to any real-life historical events” because that’s exactly what’s taking place with Amazon’s The Aeronauts, which is an original movie about the aeronautical exploits of ballooning pioneers James Glaisher and Henry Coxwell. Only, Coxwell has been gender-swapped and his role is now being occupied by Rogue One‘s Felicity Jones.
The new trailer for Amazon’s The Aeronauts dropped, and it’s a far cry from the real story, which in itself didn’t need much dramatization to make it worthwhile viewing on the big or small screen.
However, Amazon thought that turning the aeronautical adventure into a pseudo-romance flick between Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones. You can check out the trailer below courtesy of Movieclips Trailers.
There are some rather obvious changes to the portrayal of the characters beyond the gender-swap. Both the leads are considerably younger than what Coxwell and Glaisher were when they took their voyage many miles above the Earth’s surface, and the over-dramatization seems a bit silly given that in real life Coxwell had to brave the colds and a slight malfunction on the equipment’s end to sully death’s machinations for ending both their lives.
As recounted in a BBC piece from April, 2016, it describes how Coxwell had to climb outside of the carriage and use his teeth to pry the valve free so that they could eventually descend back to the Earth. This occurred when both he and Glaisher began losing consciousness due to how high up they were; nearing the troposphere.
Of course, Amazon thought to romanticize the piece by gender-swapping Coxwell.
The real tragedy here was that Coxwell was really the hero of the story, and even The Telegraph did a piece on how Amazon’s The Aeronauts was doing a huge disservice to real-life history by erasing Coxwell from a story fictionalizing the achievements he rightfully deserved.
A lot of the commenters on YouTube also had similar qualms, pointing out how the movie tries to side-step the criticism by saying it was “inspired by true events” rather than “based on true events”. You can read some of the comments below.
This reminds me a lot of how EA and DICE completely rewrote the real-life events surrounding the Norwegian special forces team that destroyed a heavy water facility in order to thwart the Germans from utilizing the facility to their advantage. The real-life mission would have made a great campaign story in Battlefield V, as well as offer gamers a look at some real historical heroism. However, since EA and DICE were intent on using the game to push feminist agitprop, the only thing they managed to do was piss off everyone who actually knew about the real mission and how it helped turn the tide in the war.
Amazon seems to be heading down the same route, attempting to rewrite history to force more female empowerment onto audiences, but we all know what happens when companies decide to get woke… don’t we?
Then again, it could have been worse. “Worse how?” you ask. Well, Amazon could have kept Coxwell a male… and then turn both Coxwell and Glaisher into gay lovers in space.
Such a deplorable thing would have borne a conniption worthy of catastrophic proportions.
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