Welcome to this Asteroid City Ending Explained. I love everything Wes Anderson has made, with my favorite movie being Rushmore. But recently, French Dispatch and Darjeeling Limited come very, very close. But for me, this was another level, and I was gripped throughout. While it was only in one small town, the lives of others were so very interesting. I avoided this as much as possible about this movie and adored the use of the framing narrative.
Essentially, Asteroid City is, well, a brightly colored widescreen story of Asteroid City, and The Alien Visit is a movie within a movie, almost within a movie or a play, to be specific.
But there is another layer of confusion; Brian Cranston is the host of a TV special. He informs us that nothing is real. The TV special explores the mind of Conrad Earp, an in-universe, famous playwright who created Asteroid City.
We also see the creative process of writing, casting, and the complications of the actors’ or players’ egos and emotions while also working out the wrinkles in the writing process, which are shown in fictionalized dramatizations that go back to an Academy ratio. At the same time, the rest is in native widescreen. But none of that is real, none of this except our TV host, who I imagine is a homage to the Twilight Zone Host, is supposed to be, quote, real.
Asteroid City Plot
Conrad Earp wrote Asteroid City and sadly died six months into it, which did remind me of the writer Jonathan Larson who I believe died the day before it showed on Broadway. Asteroid City itself is a wild story that mirrors our own in a Looney Tunes Esque world. We even saw The Road Runner as well, which did make me laugh.
The play follows the young junior stargazers and their parents, who all descend upon Asteroid City for Asteroid Day celebrations of science and space while a scholarship is given out. However, an alien appears, takes the meteor that landed thousands of years ago, and calls the tourist trap crater to have quarantined by the government.
The quarantine does hit home, as it’s essentially a metaphor for the COVID pandemic, as each person struggles to find their purpose in the world, like many of us. The junior stargazers are looking to make their way in the world and are amongst like-minded kids of the same age. They’re trying to find purpose and also be understood, as they’re so very different from their peers.
Auggie And His Struggles
One of the girls does say that she feels more at home in the Earth’s atmosphere out of space, which makes sense. Midge is also looking for a purpose as she juggles being a parent to a gifted scientist but just wants to be a star, and both of them are quite difficult.
The girl also says the same issues as Auggie, who has specifically dealt with trauma more blatantly with a wife who passed away, and he struggles with always wanting to have what’s next like Midge and wants to focus on his war photography career.
The guy who plays Auggie in the original play struggles with understanding the play as we saw at the end. The play itself opens with Auggie and his family dealing with a falsy car while the rest of the junior stargazers make their way to the town.
There is a problem with the car; there is a part that just flips around. I was wondering if that would ever actually be part of the alien. But it wasn’t, and that is the point. Don’t try and understand things and just let the story flow.
Auggie has to struggle with how to tell his kids that their mother died three weeks ago. I love the whole Wes Anderson characters who were just blunt, surreal, and just don’t act like normal people. They act with characters that I really like, but there is a semblance of reality in that caricature.
Auggie has to deal with that also while starting a flirtationship with the actress Midge, which blossoms into a quarantine-only Trist. But at the end, she gives him his PO Box, so it’s open as to how they would get on after that.
Alien Takes The Meteorite
But the group of kids all hang out and meet as we go to the Asteroid crater. The movie had me gripped seeing the motel guy, them all there, this small town. I can’t put it into words, but I just loved every minute of it.
I loved how the inventions the kids made were very 50-style sci-fi, and while everyone is being monitored by the government agents and the motel manager tries to sell land and expand the tiny town, we see as solar ellipses, which I think is supposed to be a take on solar eclipse as the kids wear the pinhole things on their heads. I remember the solar eclipse many years ago.
An alien comes and takes the meteorites, to the disbelief of the crowd. A typical U.S. government and military denial happen as the general takes control, and everyone in the town loses their mind. They’re unable to leave, and slowly they all have to come to grips with how they are. Simultaneous being locked down and having to deal with the fact that aliens exist.
The government controlled the information, similar to the pandemic, but the kids eventually get the truth out there, and the place turns into a circus, which is the whole thing with people trying to find out the real truth of what’s going on. No one understands why the alien arrived, took the meteorite, and left. They couldn’t understand the purpose of the alien, which mirrors the people locked down, questioning their own lot in life.
All the while this was happening, Conrad Earp meets the actor Auggie in a dramatization. He writes what comes to him and never questions why. The actor questions his motivation and everything and seems to be more like this eccentric actor. This makes sense later as the act is a crisis of faith as he doesn’t understand the play, and the director gives him advice to just be the play. Just be the character and let everything else flow.
Conrad also struggled with the third act and slept as he sought to get help from a panel of esteemed writers.
Astroid City Ending
Back in the play, the kids managed to get the news out there that aliens exist, and the photo also got out. The government is still keeping everyone locked down despite knowing the truth. And then later, the alien comes back. When they were supposed to have their quarantine lifted, it came back. So yeah, very much reminded me of the quarantines being lifted and coming back, more specifically in the UK. I don’t know exactly how it happened in America.
Everyone else, or at least have their problems dealt with, as though he comes to terms with not chasing being a war reporter and staying with his family and not running for the trauma.
Each one of the junior stargazers starts to understand themselves and their place in the world as they feel out of place and have become relevant in their own ways. Meanwhile, Auggie’s actor starts to realize that he never understood the play or the wider world, or even what the alien was there and why it came to Earth.
Astroid City Ending Explained
The alien coming to Earth lacked anything of purpose and was boring. We spent decades wondering what aliens would do when they came to Earth. It’s been mythicized and theorized. But the alien actually came barcode of the meteorite and brought it back.
If that means nothing, if the aliens are nothing, then what do any of our lives mean? It’s similar to religion finally being confirmed that “religion doesn’t exist, none of those stories were true. What would everyone think then?”
Here, most of the characters are atheists, so their coping mechanism or religion is science, which aliens would be the next step, and this is what this is about. It’s finally knowing yourself and accepting what your life is, and not worrying about what is next.
Now the director says, “Keep telling the story,” and that’s what we should do; just keep on going on. What I love is how Auggie’s character gets closure as he meets the original actress and talks about those scenes, and we get that closure for him as the actor. It’s all very Meta and very, very good. It shows that the play was going to go into more sci-fi madness but kept it simple because, at the end of the day, life is very simple.
Also Read: The Truman Show Ending Explained: The Dark Hidden Meaning Behind The Movie
