Asteroid City
2023 · Directed by Wes Anderson
Woke Score
CriticCritic Score
Audience
Ultra Based
Critics rated this 72 points above its woke score. Among Ultra Based films, this critic score ranks #447 of 1469.
Representation Casting
Score: 25/100
The ensemble includes Jeffrey Wright and other non-white actors, but their presence appears incidental to the narrative rather than thematically significant. Diversity exists without commentary.
LGBTQ+ Themes
Score: 0/100
No LGBTQ+ themes, characters, or narrative elements are present in the film or evident in critical discussions of it.
Feminist Agenda
Score: 5/100
Female characters such as those played by Scarlett Johansson and Tilda Swinton exist within the narrative, but there is no explicit feminist agenda or commentary about gender dynamics.
Racial Consciousness
Score: 0/100
The film contains no racial consciousness, commentary on racism, or thematic engagement with race as a social issue. The 1955 setting is presented without historical interrogation.
Climate Crusade
Score: 0/100
No climate-related themes, environmental consciousness, or ecological commentary appears in the film.
Eat the Rich
Score: 0/100
The film contains no anti-capitalist messaging, critique of wealth inequality, or commentary on economic systems.
Body Positivity
Score: 0/100
No body positivity themes or commentary on body image standards are evident in the film.
Neurodivergence
Score: 0/100
No neurodivergence representation or themes are present in the film or critical discussions of it.
Revisionist History
Score: 0/100
While set in 1955, the film does not engage in revisionist historical commentary or reframe historical events through a contemporary lens.
Lecture Energy
Score: 0/100
The film maintains Anderson's characteristic lightness and avoids preachy moralizing or explicit social commentary. There is no sense of being lectured.
Synopsis
In an American desert town circa 1955, the itinerary of a Junior Stargazer/Space Cadet convention is spectacularly disrupted by world-changing events.
Consciousness Assessment
Asteroid City represents the apotheosis of Wes Anderson's formal obsessions, a film so committed to its own aesthetic universe that the wider world barely intrudes. Set in 1955 Arizona, the narrative unfolds as a television documentary about a stage play about a space cadet convention, a nested structure that allows Anderson to explore the mechanics of storytelling rather than engage with contemporary social questions. The film's concerns are fundamentally meta, focused on questions of authenticity, performance, and the constructed nature of narrative itself. One encounters a diverse ensemble cast, but this diversity appears to be simply the natural result of casting accomplished actors rather than a deliberate statement about representation.
The film's deliberate retreat from social engagement is almost the entire point. Anderson has long been indifferent to the cultural conversations that dominate contemporary film criticism, and Asteroid City doubles down on this posture by retreating into 1950s Americana and theatrical artifice. There are no lectures, no consciousness-raising, no explicit engagement with systemic inequity. The female characters exist as plot elements within Anderson's precisely calibrated formal framework, not as vehicles for feminist commentary. The film's only gesture toward anything resembling social awareness is its mere inclusion of non-white actors, but this occurs without any thematic emphasis or narrative weight.
Asteroid City is a work almost defiantly indifferent to the cultural anxieties of 2023. It is, in this sense, the opposite of what contemporary progressive sensibilities might demand from a major studio film. Anderson's commitment to style over substance, to formal experimentation over social engagement, to the 1950s over the present moment, results in a film that registers as almost aggressively apolitical. This is not necessarily a moral failing, but it does mean that Asteroid City has virtually nothing to say about the concerns that animate modern progressive cinema.
Analysis generated by our Consciousness Algorithm
Critic Reviews
“If all of Anderson’s movies are sustained by the tension between order and chaos, uncertainty and doubt, “Asteroid City” is the first that takes that tension as its subject, often expressing it through the friction created by rubbing together its various levels of non-reality.”
“In its own offbeat way, Asteroid City is an Anderson patchwork of Cold War paranoia and American family values in all their often hypocritical glory. It is every bit as arch as his best work, while still managing to tug hard on the heartstrings.”
“The audacity and beauty of Asteroid City lie in the way it connects the mysteries of the human heart to the secrets of science and the universe.”
“Like all Wes Anderson movies, it is enigmatic, artificial, infuriatingly self-indulgent and irrevocably pointless. ”
Consciousness Markers
The ensemble includes Jeffrey Wright and other non-white actors, but their presence appears incidental to the narrative rather than thematically significant. Diversity exists without commentary.
No LGBTQ+ themes, characters, or narrative elements are present in the film or evident in critical discussions of it.
Female characters such as those played by Scarlett Johansson and Tilda Swinton exist within the narrative, but there is no explicit feminist agenda or commentary about gender dynamics.
The film contains no racial consciousness, commentary on racism, or thematic engagement with race as a social issue. The 1955 setting is presented without historical interrogation.
No climate-related themes, environmental consciousness, or ecological commentary appears in the film.
The film contains no anti-capitalist messaging, critique of wealth inequality, or commentary on economic systems.
No body positivity themes or commentary on body image standards are evident in the film.
No neurodivergence representation or themes are present in the film or critical discussions of it.
While set in 1955, the film does not engage in revisionist historical commentary or reframe historical events through a contemporary lens.
The film maintains Anderson's characteristic lightness and avoids preachy moralizing or explicit social commentary. There is no sense of being lectured.