Film / Asteroid City

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Asteroid City is a 2023 sci-fi-romantic-dramedy film directed by Wes Anderson. It boasts a massive ensemble cast made up of Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Jeffrey Wright, Tilda Swinton, Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Adrien Brody, Liev Schreiber, Hope Davis, Steve Park, Rupert Friend, Maya Hawke, Steve Carell, Matt Dillon, Hong Chau, Willem Dafoe, Margot Robbie, Tony Revolori, Jake Ryan, Sophia Lillis, and Jeff Goldblum. Once again, Alexandre Desplat composed the soundtrack. The film released in theaters on June 16th, 2023.

Asteroid City is about the titular town, a tiny place in 1955 that sprung up on the interstate highway in the southwestern United States. It consists of a small luncheonette, a gas station, a motel, and not much else - aside from the large impact crater outside city limits, around which a scientific research facility has sprouted. It is here where the annual Junior Stargazers ceremony is held, celebrating the achievements of five teenaged scientists and awarding a scholarship to one of them.

The occasion brings an assortment of people to Asteroid City, including Augie Steenbeck (Schwartzman), a war photographer mourning his late wife, and his Junior Stargazer son Woodrow (Jake Ryan); Midge Campbell (Johansson), a famous but disillusioned Hollywood star, and her Junior Stargazer daughter Dinah (Grace Edwards); June Douglas (Hawke), a Christian schoolteacher bringing her class on a field trip; and several other families of Junior Stargazers. A generally pleasant occasion becomes fraught with cosmic significance when, during an "ellipses event", the people of Asteroid City have a genuine extraterrestial encounter, shaking their belief systems and putting them in government quarantine...

Except Asteroid City is also a play written by one Conrad Earp (Norton), to be performed on national television for an anthology show with an unnamed host (Cranston). As a framing device around the story proper, we watch as director Schubert Green (Brody) puts on a show with the help of a crew of actors and a very passionate acting coach (Dafoe).

Previews: Official Trailer

"Isn't there supposed to be some kind of trope, out there in the cosmic wilderness?"

• Abusive Parents: One of the "violent men" Midge refers to in her past is her father.
• Actor Allusion: The actress who was supposed to play the late Mrs. Steenbeck is dressed in Elizabethan garb for a Period Drama when Jones Hall meets her again. Margot Robbie previously played Elizabeth I in Mary, Queen of Scots (2018). Also, the audience first image of Mrs. Steenbeck is a photo of her in a bathtub, echoing Margot Robbie's well-known scene.
• Actually Quite Catchy: When Dwight announces he's written a song about the alien, June immediately tries to stop him from singing it and get the lesson back on track. Then he starts singing, and she almost immediately starts dancing a little. And then Montana steps in and starts dancing with her.
• Adorably Precocious Child: Dwight, one of the children who is part of June's class, is caught smoking with the cowboys, is seen considering the motel manager's real estate proposal and even writes a song about the alien which he performs with the help of the cowboys.
• Aerith and Bob: Augie's teenage son is Woodrow... and his girls are named Andromeda, Pandora, and Cassiopeia.
• Affably Evil: The measured and stalwart General Gibson isn't much of a villain, but he and his inner circle are just a little too giddy at the prospect of suppressing knowledge of the alien sighting by quarantining and hopefully gaslighting all the civilian witnesses into silence.
• Affectionate Nickname: Saltzburg Keitel refers to Conrad Earp as "Connie", and he refers to Saltzburg as "Saltzy".
• Alliterative Name: General Grif Gibson.
• Alliterative Title: In-universe. The play that Hall mentions to Earp (wherein he played GI Number 3) is called "Bugle Boy Blows The Blues".
• Amicable Exes: Schubert Green's wife, Polly, has left him for a baseball player, but they're still on very good terms with each other. She stops by for a conversation and gives him advice on the production, even leaving him with a (chaste) kiss.
• Anachronism Stew: A couple examples.
  • Despite the play taking place in September 1955, a few songs from the near-future are used in its staging, such as Last Train to San Fernando and Chas. McDevitt Skiffle Group's version of Freight Train (both released in 1957) and Tennessee Ernie Ford's version of Sixteen Tons (released October 1955, a month after the events of the film). Most egregiously (if we're assuming both the film and the Framing Device are set in the 1950s) is the inclusion of Island of Dreams by the Springfields, which wouldn't be released until 1962.
  • One of the names in the "name game" is Jackie "O", who was the unknown wife of a Senator in 1955, but moreover, wouldn't be given that nickname until her marriage to Aristotle Onassis in 1968.
• Apocalyptic Gag Order: One step of the First Contact protocol the military is following is to take all of the information about it having occurred and keep it secret for no less than 100 years. The genius students defy this order by sending out a call and the pictures Augie took to a school newspaper and soon enough the cordoned Asteroid City is surrounded (temporarily) by a fair full of onlookers.
• Armor-Piercing Question: Rather than give him yet another yes or no answer to his dare provocations, Clifford's father just asks him plainly why he keeps doing such reckless, self-imposed challenges. This sobers the relentlessly puckish young man, who realizes that it's a very labored way to prove that he exists to those around him. Thankfully, this prevents him from climbing a tall, pointy cactus.
• Artistic License – Chemistry: When Shelley Borden is awarded the Distant Nebula Laurel Crown for synthesizing "an extaterrestrial element which is going to be added to the periodic table next year", said element with the chemical symbl Sz is placed on the periodic table behind Shelley right next to element 101, Mendelevium. Actually, element 102 is Nobelium, which wouldn't be discovered until 1965. That's an artistic license indeed, as Mendelevium was discovered just in 1955.
• Artistic License – Geography:
  • The desert around Asteroid City looks like Arizona but dialogue places the town on the California/Nevada border where the desert would look distinguishably different.
    • It's even lampshaded by Conrad Earp when he refers to it as the "California/Nevada/Arizona desert", meaning even he doesn't know.
• Artistic License – Space: The name of the place, the play and hence title of the film. In astronomy, an asteroid is a minor celestial body that orbits a star. The rock of celestial origin which gives its name to the city and thus to everything related to the movie is more precisely called a meteorite.
• Art Shift: The Framing Device is in black-and-white, fitting for a '50s television program, while Asteroid City itself is in full color.
• Ascended Extra: In-Universe.
  • The understudy for Woodrow Steenbeck takes on the role full-time after successfully convincing Mercedes Ford not to quit Asteroid City on the eve of the play's premiere.
  • It is also mentioned that Jones Hall used to be in the wardrobe department of his theatre, before making his way up through minor roles and finally being cast by Conrad Earp as Augie Steenbeck.
• Asian and Nerdy: Ricky Cho, one of the Junior Stargazers, is Asian.
• Aspect Ratio Switch: The Framing Device is in a tight, boxy aspect ratio since it's supposed to be airing on a 1950s-model TV set, but Asteroid City itself is in ultra-widescreen.
• Atomic Hate: A given with the film's '50s setting, bombs are set off throughout the film with barely any reaction from the characters, implying this is part of a normal day for them.
• Bait-and-Switch: Late in the story, it looks like Midge has committed suicide by overdose. But no, she's just playing a character who commits suicide by overdose.
• The Big Damn Kiss: After the Quarantine being ended is reversed and the camp devolves into chaos, Woodrow and Dinah have one after he projects their initials together onto the Moon.
• Birth-Death Juxtaposition: A rather obtuse example, fitting for such a layered and jagged narrative. Augie is quite attached to the memory of how he first met his wife, who was having a soak in an improvised basin she had set up on their apartment building's fire escape. He is disturbed by how this Meet Cute moment he treasures so much parallels Midge's Bath Suicide staging for her movie scene rehearsal for the end of a film.
• Bookends:
  • The story begins with the Steenbecks being towed into town, and ends (along with the film) with the Steenbecks piling into Stanley's car with their things and driving off.
  • The film is also capped off by Train Songs, starting with "Last Train to San Fernando" and ending with "Freight Train".
  • Also, death marks the beginning and the end of the narrative. Augie's wife is Killed Offscreen prior to its start, while Earp is dead after the play's premiere. Notably, they are the only characters of the entirety of Asteroid City to die.^note Unless you also count the coyote that was mentioned to have become roadkill.
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick:
  • The cargo on the train at the beginning of the film is shown to include cattle, gravel, grapefruit, avocados, artichokes, pecans, almonds, John Deere tractors, Pontiacs and a 10 megaton warhead.
    (Painted on the warhead) CAUTION: DO NOT DETONATE without Presidential Approval
  • A minor example occurs in the Framing Device when the host skips over Conrad Earp's writing process:
    The Host: Skip ahead then past the lonely, agonized months of composing, revising, polishing, editing, rewriting, cutting, pasting, pacing, doodling and solitary drinking.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: This happens in-universe a few times, most memorably when the Host accidentally ends up in frame during Asteroid City before hastily making his exit.
• The Cameo: During one Production Narrative scene, it's revealed that the alien is played by Jeff Goldblum — or rather, a nameless actor played by Jeff Goldblum — in a monster suit on stage.
• Captain Obvious: What does Augie say when the Alien just stole the asteroid right in front of everyone?
  Augie: The, err, alien stole the asteroid.
  • Apparently justified. As everyone watching the scene just was perplexed, by stating this Augie just speaks out the fact that what everyone saw was real. Also, in taking a photograph of the Alien he was the only one in the audience to actually act in this situation, and of course by this Augie also produced the photographic proof of the event.
• Car Chase Shoot-Out: One appears as a Running Gag throughout the movie (see Hero of Another Story).
• Casting Gag: Jeff Goldblum has some prior experience with playing an alien and performing in a monster suit.
• Catchphrase:
  • "Of course, I understand" - the motel manager.
  • "You dare me?" - Clifford.
  • "Head count!" - June.
• Character Tics: Jones Hall, Augie's actor, has a habit of putting the collar of his shirt over his nose.
• Closed Circle: Most of the story takes place within Asteroid City after it had been cordoned off by the military. The only method of communication not affected by the Apocalyptic Gag Order we see at one point is a two-way video feed to the families of the school trip students (which is probably heavily policed in its own way). The search of ways to get around the lack of communication and the rising amounts of Cabin Fever amongst the quarantined people are two plot points.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Woodrow's little sisters are a... strange bunch. So is Clifford, one of the Junior Stargazers.
• Comically Inappropriate Funeral Urn: After Augie finally breaks down and tells his children that their mother succumbed to her illness four weeks ago, he reveals she was cremated, and shows them the ashes - which are being kept in a Tupperware bowl with a sealed lid.
• The Comically Serious: Ricky Cho in his interactions with the government agents.
  Interrogator: This is a microfiche of your school newspaper. Your byline accompanies an article criticizing the principal's disciplinary methods. Who were your sources?
  Ricky: I was in the sixth grade-
  Interrogator: Just answer the question!
  Ricky: And I will NOT name names!
• Cowboy: Montana is a Singing Cowboy, and makes use of his talents in one memorable scene.
• Crisis of Faith: Downplayed. June Douglas, a Christian schoolteacher bringing her class on a field trip to Asteroid City, is quite shaken by the arrival of an alien that throws her entire belief system into question. Although she never stops believing in God, as far as we know, she is troubled by her new uncertainty.
• Dawson Casting: In-Universe the actors playing the Junior Stargazers are implied to be much older than their 14-year-old characters, as the Framing Device shows them in the same acting class as the other adult actors, and in the case of the actor playing Woodrow, he is shown to be old enough to be sent after Mercedes Ford on his own to deliver a message and talk her into coming back.
• Deface of the Moon: Woodrow's invention is a device capable of projecting images onto the moon, which he demonstrates at the Junior Stargazers event using an image of the American flag. He claims that it may have applications in interstellar advertising; the Stargazers later attempt to use it to communicate with the alien, but can't decide on a universal symbol to use. Woodrow ultimately ends up using it again during the climactic riot to project a love heart with his and Dinah's initials.
• Deleted Role: In-universe, Augie was supposed to have a conversation with his dead wife during a dream sequence on an alien planet, but it was cut for time. Margot Robbie plays the actress who was supposed to have played the wife, and ends up providing good advice for Jones Hall when he's unsure of what to do with Augie.
• Did Not Get the Girl: Zigzagged with Augie - after quarantine ends, Augie wakes up and goes to the cabin bathroom hoping to see Midge only to find the Motel Manager inside instead, who informs him he slept late, and Midge checked out earlier that morning. However, when Augie, Stanley, Woodrow and the girls head to the diner for one last breakfast before departing, the diner owner slips Augie a note from Midge with her address, asking him to write. It's only a PO Box, but it's something.
• Different States of America: Downplayed, and only in-universe. The Greyhound Bus seen in the movie has several license plates similar in design to ones in the real world, but with different state nicknames. They are "The Ash Can State", "America's Cereal Bowl", "The Grass Is Greener State", "The Silver Screen State", "The Not Now State" and "The Barren State".
• Famed in Story: Midge Campbell is a famous actress in the world of Asteroid City.
• Fanservice: At one point, Midge asks Augie if he would like her to reenact a nude scene she did for one of her films. This involves her dropping her towel in front of him, resulting in viewers seeing a glimpse of Scarlett Johansson's^note  body double's naked body.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Jones Hall has a discussion with Conrad Earp about why Augie burns his hand on the hotplate when talking to Midge in Act III - during an interlude that happens way before in Act I.
  • In the same scene, Hall's rehearsal as Augie in front of Earp already gives it away that the alien will steal the asteroid.
• Framing Device: The framing device is a TV program from the '50s showing the televised production of the play Asteroid City.
• Funny Background Event: During the prayer scene in the epilogue, the motel manager can be seen in the background with Augie's tomato juice, and shortly after can be seen taking off his visor out of respect.
• Giant Novelty Check: During the announcement of the Junior Stargazers Award, Gen. Gibson's Aide-de-Camp is seen holding a giant check for the award amount - $5,000. When Woodrow wins the award at the end of the movie, he gets a normal-sized check, noting that the giant one is just for show.
• Hero of Another Story: Every now and then, a frantic police chase will zoom down the highway through Asteroid City, suggesting a dramatic crime narrative happening off-screen.
• Humanoid Aliens: The Alien resembles a greenish-black humanoid with abnormally long legs and googly eyes; this turns out to be an exaggeration of his actor's appearance.
• Hollywood Atheist: Referenced in an bleakly comic and deadpan fashion when Augie is talking to his children about his wife passing away. He casually mentions that "there is no Heaven for him" but there will be for them because they (and his wife) are Episcopalian. And then he hugs them.
• Inscrutable Aliens: The Alien arrives, takes the asteroid and leaves and returns it one week later via dropping it like yesterday's news with some alien writing carved on it. General Gibson says that the asteroid was inventoried. Why the alien did all of this remains unknown. The alien's performer himself makes an appearance at one point and he says he does not knows that himself but he theorizes the appearance of the alien is supposed to represent a shock in the status quo.
• Instantly Proven Wrong: Just as General Gibson announces that the quarantine is over and everybody is allowed to leave with no further incident, the alien arrives to drop the asteroid back where he picked it up. The General's rapid-fired statement that the quarantine is back on is the moment everybody snaps.
• Instant Mystery, Just Delete Scene: Part of the titular play's climactic riot and how it was resolved takes place while Jones Hall steps away from the stage to have a talk with the actress who was supposed to play his wife about him still being annoyed about how he does not knows why Augie burnt his hand on the stove, so we don't see it.
• Insufferable Genius: Augie, a hardened, loquacious, and arrogant war photographer who originally intended to dump his kids with his father-in-law, enjoys showing pictures of himself, and frequently frustrates those around him with his default contrarian nature.
• Intermission (optional): Immediately after the alien steals the asteroid at the end of Act I.
• Irony: Midge insists that her nude scene is tastefully shot, cutting to a shot of her feet as the towel drops. The film does just that, but also shows her full body in the bathroom mirror.
• Jet Pack: Ricky Cho's invention that gets him considered for the scholarship is a jet pack that can lift people up to about 40 ft. in the air. His father insists that safety concerns are nonsense and happily would (and did) test it on an 8-year-old child. It gets used several times in the film.
• A.K.A.-47: Subverted with the nuclear warhead shown in the freight train during the opening credits. There indeed was a warhead designated XW-37, but it wasn't a 10-megaton warhead, but rather a 40 kiloton warhead designed for use on the Nike Hercules surface-to-air missile.
• Karma Houdini: While General Gibson threatens Ricky and his accomplices with criminal prosecution for leaking the news about the alien sighting, J.J. is confident that they will never make the charges stick. Later, Gibson describes the whole episode as mere "differences of opinion" between him and Ricky, suggesting that J.J. was right.
• Killed Offscreen: Conrad Earp, the in-universe playwright of Asteroid City, is killed in a vehicular wreck just before the play closes.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Asteroid City does this a few times in-universe as well. For instance, when Augie burns his hand on the griddle, Midge's startled response ("You really did it! That actually happened!") is implied to be Mercedes Ford's reaction upon seeing that Augie's actor Jones Hall actually burned himself.
• Leitmotif: A high jingling can be heard in Alexandre Desplat's score throughout the movie.
• The Lost Lenore: The death of Augie's late wife has clearly left a lasting effect on him, despite his stoic front: he didn't tell his kids for weeks after the fact, more to shield himself from admitting it than to protect them.
• Missing Mom: The death of Augie's wife also leaves Woodrow and the three daughters without a mother, something Augie has managed to not tell them for three weeks after the fact.
• Motor Mouth: General Gibson tends to be both very quick and also very straightforward when he speaks.
• Nested Story: It's a TV special on the production of Asteroid City and a performance of the play, with the color scenes representing how the play should look in the mind's eye.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Particularly in the framing device.
  • The Host is a suit-clad narrator with a sonorous voice that recalls Rod Serling.
  • Conrad Earp, a gentlemanly gay playwright with a rich Southern drawl, is similar to Tennessee Williams, although they write about very different things.
  • Schubert Green (born Shylock Grzworvszowski), a Jewish immigrant who became a renowned theater director, is a stand-in for Elia Kazan.^note Although Kazan himself was of Greek descent and an immigrant from the Ottoman Empire.
  • Saltzburg Keitel is a renowned acting coach in-universe who specializes in Method Acting, clearly modelled on Lee Strasberg.
  • Jones Hall (the actor who plays Augie) is based on Marlon Brando, and his meeting with Earp is loosely based on the first time Brando ever met Tennessee Williams.^note This does fall a bit into Artistic License – History, as Brando in reality fixed both Williams' toilet and a faulty electric fuse that had caused the power to go out. Also, while Brando did have affairs with other men, there's no evidence Brando and Williams ever did.
  • The character of Midge Campbell, famous Hollywood starlet, who seems to be a pastiche of Ava Gardner and Marilyn Monroe.^note Funnily enough, Midge's actress has been frequently compared to Monroe
• No Communities Were Harmed: While the dialog is vague about where Asteroid City actually is, it closely resembles the real-life Meteor Crater, a well-preserved impact crater in Northern Arizona which has a visitor center and not much else surrounding it. Like Asteroid City, Meteor Crater is located near one of the Southwest's most active freight rail lines, Route 66, and near Interstate 40, which started construction in the early '60s not long after the setting of the film, analogous to the unfinished freeway exit that goes through the town.
• Not So Stoic: Midge is a deadpan, blasé character, even for Wes Anderson, but she reacts in genuine shock when she sees Augie burn his hand on the Quickie-Griddle - although this may have been her actress' in-universe response to seeing Augie's actor burn himself for real.
• Only Sane Man: Woodrow breaks down in the second act due to the apparent ambivalence of his father and grandfather have towards seeing an alien, which fails to get a rise out of either of them, much to his further consternation.
• OOC Is Serious Business: Midge having Augie help her rehearse her suicide scene in an upcoming production causes him to break down and express frustration and sorrow at the death of his wife.
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: In-universe. Mercedes Ford speaks in a Southern accent, while her character, Midge, speaks with Scarlett Johansson's natural voice. When the Host accidentally interrupts Asteroid City, Mercedes is startled enough that she slips back into a Southern accent on her next line, "some people do," which she quickly corrects.
• Parental Abandonment: When questioned by Woodrow, Augie confesses that he had planned to leave his children in the care of their grandfather Stanley; Stanley himself was unaware of this plan and is rather indignant upon hearing it ("I'm not their wet nurse, I'm their grandfather!"). Augie insists that it would only ever have been a temporary measure and that he has decided against it anyway; for his part, Woodrow forgives him for having considered it.
• People in Rubber Suits: The Framing Device reveals that this is how the Alien is realized on stage, whereas in the story proper it's presented as Starring Special Effects.
• Plot-Driven Breakdown: Augie's car breaks down right when he and his family get to Asteroid City, mostly so that he has to call his father-in-law to pick up his daughters after the Stargazers ceremony. A local repairman says he's seen a problem like it twice before, with the first occurence being easily fixed with a 75-cent part and the second requiring a complete rebuild of the drivetrain and even then the car had to be scrapped afterwards. After trying the first solution, the car seems to start up again fine and the mechanic is prepared to write it off as a free repair, but then all its tires blow up simultaneously and a mysterious part falls out of it that keeps twitching and sparking on its own, which the mechanic chalks up to a third type of issue he hasn't seen before and he hoses it down with water to make it stop. Near the end of the movie, the mechanic is keeping it in a box marked "unknown" and it sparks back to life when it falls out of the box during all the chaos.
• Pluto Is Expendable: A justified aversion, given the '50s setting. June gives a lesson to her kids stating that there are still nine planets in the solar system. Pluto's downgrade to a dwarf planet would not come until 2006.
• Politically Correct History:
  • During Act I, a Production Narrative interlude shows how Jones Hall convinced Conrad Earp to cast Hall as Augie Steenbeck. While it starts with a bribe of Earp's favorite flavor of ice cream and a discussion about the character of Augie, it ends with Hall taking off his pants and embracing Earp - implying heavily that Hall sealed the deal with a night together. While this might not even be eyebrow raising in 2023, to broadcast something like this on television in the '50s would likely have been seen as tantamount to broadcasting perversion, and almost certainly would not have made it to air.
  • While female scientists certainly existed in the mid-20th century, women were discouraged from pursuing science and engineering in the 1950s^note Caltech did not admit women undergraduates until 1970, while MIT's class of 1964 was 2% women, so having 2/5 Junior Stargazers be girls and the lead scientist running the program be a woman is not very realistic for the setting.
• Proscenium Reveal: During the scene of chaos in the crater following the alien's return, Auggie Steenbeck/Jones Hall walks into the background, opens a door in the crater wall, and walks backstage to confront the director about what the play is supposed to mean.
• Punny Name: Midge Campbell's actress, Mercedes Ford, is just two automotive manufacturers. It's implied that this is a stage name, however, as Schubert's personal note to her is addressed to "Kim."
• Quarantine with Extreme Prejudice: After the First Contact, Asteroid City is cordoned off by soldiers with rifles and everybody is subjected to a battery of tests and orders to keep quiet. Stanley wonders aloud at one point whether or not everybody should just break through the cordon and risk Gibson giving the order to shoot them.
• Rage Breaking Point: Just as the quarantine is about to be over, the Alien suddenly returns to drop the meteorite back in its place, causing General Gibson to reinstate the quarantine making everyone present, children, parents and scientists alike, revolt.
• Raygun Gothic: The film's look is a love letter to the genre.
  • Adding to this, Clifford's invention, which earns him The Black Hole Badge Of Triumph, is an actual raygun.
• Reading the Stage Directions Out Loud: Augie does this briefly during his rehearsal with Midge in Act 3.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Despite being the closest thing the movie has to a main antagonist and a Greater-Scope Villain, General Gibson and the President of the United States of America deal with the alien visitation rather professionally with the former not firing upon the extraterrestrial even as it stole the asteroid. Their assessment contingency for just such an event is also layered in such a way that it concludes that the alien is likely not hostile to the point that despite having increased security and making them do combat drills in preparation for a second and possibly more aggressive visitation, the army does not shoot at the being when it comes back at the end of the movie. They are significantly less nice towards the witnesses, both residential and foreign to Asteroid City, and try to coerce them into staying quiet about the affair so as not to cause undue panic amongst the rest of the world.
• Reckless Gun Usage: The soldier guarding the phone booth casually hands his loaded rifle to Clifford while he puts his quarter in the phone; Clifford, of course, immediately looks right down the barrel.
• Red Scare: Notably, one of the steps of the First Contact protocol is to determine whether or not the alien is a Communist sympathizer (and everybody agrees it wasn't).
• Religious and Mythological Theme Naming: Augie Steenbeck's three daughters, Andromeda, Cassiopeia, and Pandora, are named after famous women from Greek mythology.
• Riddle for the Ages:
  • Very little is actually revealed about the Alien, who arrives to pick up the asteroid that created the impact crater near Asteroid City and shows up again to drop it back off. What could it possibly want with an asteroid that crashed to Earth thousands of years ago? Is it friendly? Will it ever return to Earth, and if it does, will it be alone? We never find out. Backstage, the alien's actor (played by Jeff Goldblum) can be seen discussing his role with another worker, saying he believes the alien is intended to be more of a metaphor than a true character.
  • Just why does Augie burn his hand on the Quickie-Griddle? Jones Hall, his actor, offers his own theory to Conrad Earp, who quickly accepts it, but even then, he doesn't seem satisfied with the answer. In the end, he accepts the fact that he doesn't know and lets that carry his performance.
  • In the end, Conrad Earp dies in a car crash, so all plot holes in the play will remain unexplained forever.
• Running Gag:
  • Clifford always asking someone if they dare him to do something stupid (i.e., eat a hot pepper, jump off a roof, pressing a button on some medical equipment), and immediately doing it anyway.
  • Whenever Midge Campbell's name is uttered in a group discussion, all the men in the vicinity immediately repeat her name in a hushed voice.
  • The recurring police chase, where a squad car and motorcycle try to shoot up a hot rod, that pops back and forth across the roads right up until the quarantine seals the road off. When the quarantine is finally lifted and everyone goes home, the chase is back on, showing that things have more or less returned to normal.
• Schizo Tech: All over the place within the "play" of Asteroid City. Sci-fi staples like ray guns and jetpacks (admittedly prototypes in both cases) and automated vending machines that can do anything from dispense normal goods to prepare cocktails exist in an otherwise stereotypical 50s setting. The fact that this is all in a Show Within a Show made in the 50s makes these anachronisms far more acceptable.
• Schoolmarm: June Douglas, who acts as the only chaperone to her students when they arrive in Asteroid City on a field trip and spends most of her time trying to keep them out of trouble and focused on the lesson she had planned.
• Set Behind the Scenes: The Framing Device is about the making of the play Asteroid City, including all the behind-the-scenes drama, and most of the scenes take place literally behind the scenes to the play. The director has taken to living there, and scenes about his relationship with his wife unrelated to the play itself take place backstage.
• Shady Real Estate Agent: Double subverted with the machine that sells real estate for a nickel. The whole thing is legit, including documents and the land actually existing, but Asteroid City is the true definition of a Middle-of-Nowhere Street so the land surrounding it is just that cheap and it probably won't gather value for an extremely long time to come.
• Shout-Out: As per usual with Wes Anderson:
  • This isn't the first time Slim Whitman's cover of "Indian Love Call" has shown up in a film with aliens.
  • One recurring gag involves a dancing blue roadrunner that says "beep beep." The school trip also notes they passed by a dead coyote on the way (left "flat as a pancake" after being run over by an eighteen-wheeler).
  • As this tweet shows, the scene wherein the Junior Stargazers are sitting around naming famous people and saying "out" is a direct reference to Satyajit Ray's Days and Nights in the Forest.
  • The model number of the train is "X6151", the same as the train from Bad Day at Black Rock (a film which also takes place in a small American desert town that was released in 1955, the year in which the events of the film transpire). In fact, the entire opening credits scene of that film is a very clear inspiration to the opening credits of this one.
• Show Within a Show: In the film's universe, Asteroid City is a televised production of a stage play of the same name. We get looks at the backstage drama, shot in black-and-white.
• Shrug of God: In-universe. The actors aren't very sure what Asteroid City and those that live in it are about. The director likewise. The playwright, who probably could just explain the themes, takes his insights to the grave.
• Small Role, Big Impact: The Alien only visits the site twice, and then only briefly, but both times upend everything for the other characters. Jeff Goldblum is the last actor listed in the opening credits with this in mind. Further playing with the trope, he only appears as the Alien in the framing device, as it is realized via stop-motion animation in the story proper - but the animated creature moves and emotes like Goldblum does (the head animator followed him around for a day just to observe this).
• Southern Gentleman: Montana is incredibly courteous to those around him, especially to June.
• Split-Screen Phone Call: The conversation between Augie and Stanley at the start of the film is one of these. As is the phone call the Junior Stargazers make after the alien shows up.
• Starring Special Effects: In the story proper, the Alien is realized via stop-motion animation. (In the Framing Device, it's an actor in a suit.)
• Stellar Theme Naming: Andromeda and Cassiopeia are also the names of two constellations, and Pandora is the nickname of a giant galaxy cluster (Abell 2744)
• Stock Desert Interstate: A long desert highway? Check. A gas station? Check. A 50s-era diner? Check! The Steenbecks even gets stuck there (at first) because their car breaks down and needs parts to come in.
• Stunned Silence:
  • When Midge asks if Augie wants to see her perform her nude scene, he just stares at her in silence before asking if he said yes, then explains that he tried to say yes but his mouth didn't work.
  • Everyone stands stock still and dead silent when the Alien shows up.
• Tantrum Throwing: Augie mimes doing this while rehearsing a scene with Midge; in the midst of his pantomimed thrashing, he casually and deliberately smashes his bathroom lightbulb, then carries on reading lines like nothing happened.
• Teen Genius: All five of the Junior Stargazers are incredibly gifted award-winning scientists in the making, capable of creating jetpacks and rayguns.
• Time Skip: There's a weeklong skip between acts 2 and 3.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Being as it is not far from an atomic testing site, Asteroid City has learned to shrug off the occasional earthquake and distant mushroom cloud.
• The Weird Sisters: Cassiopeia, Andromeda, and Pandora Steenbeck are a pint-sized (and downplayed) iteration of this trope. They are always seen together (to the point of veering on The Dividual) and early on they attempt a magic spell to resurrect their mother.
• Where the Hell Is Springfield?: As noted above next to Artistic License – Geography, the location of the titular city is never specified and this is arguably justified as it is noted as being fictional in the Framing Device. It does bear some resemblance to Meteor Crater in Arizona, however.
  • The location of the Tarkington Theatre, however, which is the location of the framing device, is only noted as being at "345 South Northwest Avenue" with no city or even a state ever being mentioned. Although it is stated that Schubert does spend dark nights in the governor's suite at the Nebraska Hotel, so it possibly takes place in Nebraska.
• WPUN: The name of the channel broadcasting the story of Asteroid City and its creation is "WXYZ-TV".