How the Alien in Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City Sums Up the Movie

While mysterious, the curious alien in Wes Anderson's Asteroid City is the key to understanding the film's entire philosophy and message.

Wes Anderson's filmography is as thought-provoking as it is visually immaculate. While characters and settings are perfectly framed -- leaving the audience no question as to what Anderson wants them to focus on -- the messages behind his films are usually much more difficult to pin down. Asteroid City is no exception to that rule. In fact, it's one of the more challenging films to analyze in recent memory.

That's because Asteroid City is able to be interpreted in a number of ways. This is illustrated by the film often breaking from the primary story to show the audience that the events taking place are actually just a stage play being produced by an entirely different cast of characters. Viewers are invited to watch as writer Conrad Earp struggles to understand the motivations of his own creation Augie Steenbeck -- until he meets The Actor who will bring Augie to life. It's this uncertainty yet resolve to continue that drives Asteroid City's many memorable characters... including the curious alien visitor who, as Augie puts it, "stole the asteroid."

Asteroid City Tackles a Very Important Question

Asteroid City's stage play is full of characters who seem content to carry on without direction, even after being quarantined in the film's dusty, yet charming desert town. Augie continues his work as a photographer, June maintains her attempt to educate her class about outer space (a subject she's decidedly unsure about) and the gifted "Junior Stargazers" pass the time by playing memory games. Each character has their own anxieties, heartaches and doubts -- but they all keep going along with their day-to-day, embracing the inevitability.

Meanwhile, many of the "real world" characters in the film are completely at odds with themselves. At one point during the climax, The Actor flees the stage to seek out director Schubert Green. When he's finally able to track Green down, The Actor asks a simple yet loaded question: "Am I doing him right?" Jason Schwartzman, the real-life actor behind the character, turns his gaze directly to the camera as he delivers this line, as if to acknowledge that this is a question every member of the audience has struggled with at one point or another. Life is, after all, an intimidating and often-times difficult path to navigate; it's never as simple or carefree as existing as a character in a stage play.

The Alien Illustrates Asteroid City's Philosophy Perfectly

After The Actor asks his director whether he should "just keep doing it" even if he doesn't understand the point of the play itself, Schubert offers his reassurance. This lesson can be applied to life in general and is reflected in the nonchalant demeanor that the characters of Earp's story display as they carry on with their work without understanding what -- if anything -- they're ultimately working toward. Jurassic Park star Jeff Goldblum's turn as The Alien embodies this concept, even though his appearance is extremely fleeting.

When the Junior Stargazers and their families observe an astronomical ellipses, Asteroid City is visited by this curious space traveler keen on studying the town's namesake. With minimal hesitation brought on by the stunned onlookers, The Alien takes the asteroid, poses with it for a photograph and leaves as quickly as he came. With no explanation or second thought as to the stir he caused in town, The Alien returns later to simply drop the asteroid out of his spacecraft, back into the spot where he found it.

Unlike most other alien creatures in Hollywood, Asteroid City's alien carries on without the audience ever seeing what the reasons for his actions are. As can often be the case in life, both the characters in the film and the viewers are expected to accept the unknown and simply keep moving forward. They are left with no option but to "just keep doing" what they had been doing prior to these extraordinary events. The Alien's calm assuredness can be used as a lesson to The Actor. He shouldn't worry so much about whether he's doing his character in the play "right," and focus more on the fact that he's "doing him" at all.

"You Can't Wake Up If You Don't Fall Asleep"

In a bizarre third act that likely helped mold many opinions regarding Asteroid City, Conrad Earp holds a meeting with the cast of his play in hopes of figuring out an effective way to write a dream sequence. The actors begin chanting the phrase "You can't wake up if you don't fall asleep." After The Actor diverted his attention directly to the audience earlier in the film, the cast of the Asteroid City play eventually do the same as they deliver their strange message.

To "sleep" in this context is to suffer from anxieties and doubt, while to "wake up" is to accept these feelings as inevitabilities and move past them. The Alien's appearance at the end of this sequence drives home the idea that the strongest way for someone to overcome their doubts is be to accept them and simply carry on regardless. This mirrors how the characters in Earp's play function despite not entirely understanding the motivations driving them, just like The Alien.

The jury is still out on where Asteroid City fits among Wes Anderson's films, but regardless of its overall reception, there's a lesson to learn from Asteroid City's alien visitor and his simple approach to life. This quiet and curious being avoids getting caught up in the inevitable worries that come with everyday living. Hopefully even critics of Anderson's offbeat investigation into the meaning of life can find some value in Asteroid City's advice to "just keep doing it" without sweating the point of it all. And The Alien is the most effective communicator of that message, as the character is literally above it all.