The Aeronauts is a100-minute long illustration of the rule in Ebert's Little Movie Glossary that teaches us, "no good movie has ever featured a hot-air balloon," though it takes it less than 10 minutes to show why — right about the point where a poor, defenseless dog is parachuted from a hot-air balloon; the animal makes a safe landing, which of course raises the question, how does a dog, lacking both the brainpower and opposable thumbs, successfully operates a parachute?

This film actually illustrates something else, and it’s that 'sex sells' has been replaced by 'gender sells.' The most significant balloon flight depicted here is based on the September 5, 1862 flight of British balloonists James Glaisher and Henry Coxwell.

However, while Glaisher appears in the film (played by Eddie Redmayne, who looks like he landed on his face after his own parachute failed to open), Coxwell has been replaced by Amelia (Felicity Jones), a purely fictional character.

The lesson seems to be that it's not enough to discredit a real person simply because they belong to the male persuasion, but on top of that they have to 'empower' a unnecessary character that the filmmakers have dreamed up because they can't be bothered to research the subject their film is supposed to be about — if they had, they would know that the history of aeronautics is not short on women; for example, Katharina Paulus, who invented the first collapsible parachute (and didn’t endangered a dog’s life in the process, I’m sure).