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Otago Daily Times
20 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Otago Daily Times
Saturday morning heroism in a world fit for Jetsons
The Fantastic Four: First Steps, is not a flashy or over-the-top special effects extravaganza, the type we've become used to over 36 previous Marvel entries. Rather, it feels intimate in its own way, which is surprising considering its villain is a colossal being who devours planets whole and wants to consume Earth and then move forward on his path of intergalactic destruction. The gang of Four is led by Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal), who goes by Mister Fantastic, a supergenius scientist who, due to an incident in outer space, can now stretch his body like Silly Putty. He's so low-key and dialled down in the role that it's a running joke that people around him are always yawning when he's talking. In terms of Marvel, where personality is a superpower, he leaves a bit to be desired. Same goes for his three fellow partners, his wife, Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby), who has the ability to make herself invisible; his best friend Ben Grimm (The Bear's Ebon Moss-Bachrach, in a mostly motion capture performance), who is made of rocks and possesses super strength; and hot-shot Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn), who can fly and has the ability to set himself ablaze. First Steps takes place in a Jetsons vision of the future-past, where it's simultaneously 1960 and 2060, where midcentury modern design meets flying cars and friendly service robots. It's this loving production design and the warmth of the world that gives First Steps its pizzazz, far more than any of its performances. About this planet-eating business: Galactus (voiced by the gravelly Ralph Ineson) is a consumer of entire globes, and he has a hunger for Earth. The only thing that can stop him is Reed and Sue's newborn baby boy. Director Matt Shakman (WandaVision), working from a script credited to four writers, sets First Steps in motion and lets it move at its own pace. It's a nimble, fleet-footed piece of entertainment, which never feels any weightier than a Saturday morning cartoon. In that sense, it feels like a win, or at least the first steps towards a much needed smaller, more manageable world of superhero film-making. — TCA
Forbes
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Forbes
‘Fantastic Four: First Steps' Review — Nothing Fantastic About This Dull MCU Snoozefest
Fantastic Four: First Steps So many pieces worked really well in Marvel's latest MCU film that it's almost a shame to give this one a thumbs' down, but here we are. The script, dearest readers. The script is to blame, as is so often the case. In Fantastic Four: First Steps, things happen and then other things happen and then there is a conflict that is quickly resolved with little to no ingenuity or effort on the part of the good guys and they win and the bad guys lose. The end. There is no real tension in this movie, either between the core characters or between our heroes and villains. Like Superman, which came out earlier this month and which had a similar vibe and plot structure, our heroes are beloved by the masses until they aren't and then, in the end, are beloved once again. Public opinion has an on/off switch that it abuses only slightly less than Superman. Spoilers follow, though I bet you could easily guess the plot of this movie just by watching the trailers. All Style, No Substance The best thing about First Steps is the aesthetic. It's far and away my favorite part of this film, and that's a problem because as much as I do enjoy a solid retrofuturistic aesthetic, it's not enough to make a mediocre movie worth watching. This is all style over substance. The film does a really good job at establishing Earth 828. It's the 1960s but everything is very Jetsons. That midcentury modern veneer makes everything pop. It's very pleasant. I want to live there with the red, rounded cabinets and the funky fridge and the weird science that's somehow managed flying cars before flat screen TVs. I dig it. It's very groovy. We're introduced to our heroes four years after their big space trip that resulted in super powers thanks to genetic modification. Like Superman (again) we don't get an origin story. Just some exposition to help us get into the story quickly. Like Superman, we quickly move past all the humdrum of daily life and into a conflict where the very world and survival of the human race is at stake. Like Superman, this drains the movie of all tension. End Of The World Conflicts Kill Suspense I am going to keep shouting this at Hollywood over and over again: If every superhero movie involves saving the world, pretty soon audiences tune out because it becomes so very, very obvious that the good guys will win and the world will be saved. The one time this didn't happen was Infinity War and that was awesome, but 99 times out of 100 making the stakes this high only has the opposite effect. Instead, superhero movies need smaller, more intimated stakes that present heroes with real tough choices. Think Logan, The Dark Knight, Superman: The Movie etc. In any case, we learn that Galactus is coming. The end is nigh. Of course, since this is the multiverse and a different version of Earth, we think maybe it will. But even if it does, the main version of Earth will be okay and since we saw the Fantastic Four showing up there in the post-credits scene of Thunderbolts, we know that whether or not Earth 828 survives, our heroes will. The Fantastic Four So Reed Richards /Mr. Fantastic (Pedro Pascal), his pregnant wife Sue Storm / Invisible Woman (Vanessa Kirby), Johnny Storm / Human Torch (Joseph Quinn) and Ben Grimm / Thing (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) learn that Galactus is coming via the Herald / Silver Surfer / Shalla-Bal (Julia Garner) who comes to warn the people of Earth that their days are numbered and they should spend those days wisely. Galactus, you see, is a powerful celestial being who devours entire worlds as he wanders across the stars. He's one of the most powerful entities in the entire Marvel universe. It's going to be pretty tough for our heroes to stop such a powerful being from killing everyone and literally eating the planet . . . . No, actually, it's going to be super easy. Barely an inconvenience. Our heroes track down Galactus and we get some fun space sequences involving them trying to escape after he reveals that their baby is actually super powerful. He says he'll make a trade for the survival of Earth if they just hand the infant over. They say no and Silver Surfer chases them, but they Interstellar her directly into a black hole and then Back To The Future their ship back to Earth. All of this is fun. There are so many fun moments throughout this film. They just never congeal into something special. They get back and rather bizarrely tell the people of Earth about the trade Galactus offered them. Shockingly(!!) the billions of people about to die think this is kind of a selfish call on the Fantastic Four's part and their popularity dips in the polls. It's going to be pretty tough to get the people back on their side, right? No, actually, it's going to be super easy. Barely an inconvenience. Sue just gives a few hundred people in NYC a little speech about family and then everything's okay. Sue's real power is oratory. Or Earth 828's population is a bunch of suckers. In any case, Reed, who has learned how to teleport an egg, comes up with a plan to teleport the entire planet and everyone on it to a totally different star system. All they need to do is get the whole world to chip in and build a few hundred teleportation stations across the globe and then, before Galactus arrives, using all the power sources in the whole world at once, teleport everyone and everything to a random star system they've never been to. See, super easy! What could go wrong? This is an awesome plan that absolutely won't inadvertently kill everyone. Thankfully, Silver Surfer shows up and knocks out a bunch of the teleporters, probably saving the lives of everyone on Earth 828 in the process. Reed comes up with a new plan using the last teleporter: They'll just trick Galactus, the powerful godlike supervillain they just met, into standing inside one of their teleporters that just happens to be the perfect size for Galactus (who is only a little bigger than a full-sized Ant-Man in this movie) and then they'll teleport him to that far-off star system instead of the entire planet. This is, admittedly, a better plan though successfully carrying it out makes Galactus seem like a pretty lame supervillain. Fortunately, Galactus isn't fooled into standing in the teleporter (which he could have easily just stepped right out of since there'a a 45-second countdown timer before it actually works). Instead, Sue goes all Mama Bear and uses her powers to knock him into the teleporter and then Silver Surfer has a change of heart and knocks him back in when Galactus tries to get out. He basically just stomps around NYC for a minute, knocks down a few buildings, grabs the baby and then gets beat up by a handful of moderately powerful superheroes. It's deeply annoying. A Galactus-Sized Villain Problem The MCU spent so many years and so many films building up to Thanos. They made him this overarching threat for multiple phases of the MUC. They sprinkled in the Infinity Stones. They built and planned and prepared until finally Thanos came roaring onto the scene in Infinity War . . . and won. Our heroes lost. After all this time, they lost and had to come back and try again in Endgame. Galactus is more powerful than Thanos and gets one movie to show up and get his butt kicked by the Fantastic Four because Sue Storm gets protective of her baby. It's such a waste of a supervillain's potential. Marvel clearly knows how to set up amazing villains (and maybe they'll do that with Dr Doom, though I'm deeply concerned at this point) but this was not it. Even if Galactus returns in a future MCU film, he was so poorly used here that I'm not sure anyone will care. Fans will eat it up, I'm sure. The Fantastic Four did stuff together! There were callbacks and Easter Eggs! Pedro is so handsome! Vanessa Kirby is Sue Storm, heart emoji heart emoji heart emoji. It's so comic book, I love how this and Superman are so comic book, just comic booking at me in every frame, wow, just wow! (A comic book movie being 'so comic book' is the latest thing fans say that's just vague enough to be meaningless but can magically let a film off the hook for its lousy script). I didn't hate it, mind you. The pacing was decent. It moved along at a nice clip but gave you lots of character moments along the way. And it didn't beat you over the head with its humor. There's a genuinely funny moment at the end of the movie where the men all try to put a fancy car seat into the car and it's this whole gimmick and quite funny. Mole Man / Harvey Elder has some scenes played by the always entertaining Paul Walter Hauser. Lots of little moments that are fun or funny or cool or heartfelt, some decent action scenes, and yet the movie just felt empty in the end. I felt nothing. Stuff happened to characters that I didn't really care about. Besides, I knew they'd all be fine and they were. The world was fine. Everything was fine but I felt no sense of relief over this. Galactus could have eaten Earth 828 and the Fantastic Four and their little baby, too, and at least I would have felt surprise. The cast was fine, but they didn't really connect like a family. The chemistry wasn't really there. Only Thing felt really true to the character here. Fantastic Four I always ask myself these questions after I see a film these days. First, would I watch it again? Second, would I recommend others go see it in theaters or, if not, when it comes to streaming? The answer to the first question is 'no.' I have no reason or desire to watch First Steps again. It's not funny enough or exciting enough or unique enough or well-written enough to watch more than once. I would also not recommend you see this in theaters, simply because even while it looks good, there is very little that warrants a trip to the big screen. Definitely give it a watch when it lands on Disney+ because it's an okay superhero movie with a cool aesthetic and decent performances from its leads. But you're not missing anything by waiting a couple months. Fantastic Four: First Steps may be one of the best MCU films we've seen over the past few years, but this says more about the low bar Marvel and Disney have set than it does about the quality of this movie. It's possible I'm suffering from superhero fatigue, but I'd like to offer an alternative diagnosis: I'm suffering from superhero formula fatigue. These movies aren't doing enough to surprise and delight us anymore. They're falling back on cheap tricks. Read my review of Superman right here. James Gunn's film and Fantastic Four: First Steps have a very similar vibe, all feel-good 'let's come together to stop the bad guys' stuff but in the most generic, puerile way possible. It makes whatever our superheroes do feel much less super when the public just sort of echoes whatever the writers want them to about our heroes. Both films are also deeply formulaic and dull. Things happen, our heroes react, a potentially world-ending crisis is easily averted and everything is wrapped up in time for dinner. There is no friction, no tension between characters beyond brief, surface level disagreements. There are no consequences for our heroes' actions. And because there are no consequences, we never get heroes with any real agency. Where are the hard choices or sacrifices they're required to make? Where are the mistakes made that lead to worse outcomes or hard bargains? Things just happen. That's it. That's the script. Things happen, the end. Just enough jokey bits are tossed, like scraps from the dinner table, to distract us from the lousy script, the disappointing villains and the lackluster heroics. But hey, whatever. It's just a comic book movie!
Chicago Tribune
23-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
‘The Fantastic Four' review: In a jet age dream of Manhattan, Marvel's world-savers take care of business
Ten years after a 'Fantastic Four' movie that wasn't, Marvel Studios and 20th Century Studios have given us 'The Fantastic Four: First Steps,' a much better couple of hours. It takes place in the mid-1960s, albeit a sleekly otherworldly jet age streamlining of that time. Result? Extras in fedoras share crowd scenes with a Manhattan skyline dotted with familiar landmarks like the Chrysler Building, alongside some casually wondrous 'Jetsons'-esque skyscrapers and design flourishes. Typically a production designer working in the Marvel movie universe doesn't stand a chance against the digital compositing and effects work and the general wash of green-screenery. 'The Fantastic Four' is different. Production designer Kasra Farahani's amusing visual swagger complements the film's dueling interests: A little fun over here, the usual threats of global extinction over there. In contrast to the current James Gunn 'Superman,' worthwhile despite its neurotic mood swings and from-here-to-eternity action beats, director Matt Shakman's handling of 'The Fantastic Four' takes it easier on the audience. Having returned from their space mission with 'cosmically compromised DNA,' Reed Richards, Sue Storm, Johnny Storm and Ben Grimm adapt to their Earthbound lives with some new bullet points for their collective resumé. Richards, big-time-stretchy-bendy, goes by Mister Fantastic, able to out-Gumby Gumby. One Storm's alter ego is Invisible Woman, while the other Storm is the flying Human Torch. Grimm returns to Earth as a mobile rockpile, aka The Thing. So what's it all about? It's about a really hungry tourist just looking for one last meal before he 'may finally rest.' So says Galactus, devourer of worlds, for whom noshing involves planets, and whose herald is Silver Surfer. Galactus wants Sue Storm's soon-to-be-newborn baby in exchange for not devouring Earth. How the Fantastic Four go about dealing with Galactus culminates in an evacuated Manhattan, in the vicinity of Times Square, while the New York throngs hide away in the underground lair of Harvey Elder, the infamous Moleman. One of the buoying aspects of Shakman's film is its avoidance of antagonist overexposure. You get just enough of Paul Walter Hauser's witty embodiment of auxiliary more-misunderstood-than-bad Moleman, for example, to want more. And Galactus, a hulking metallic entity, is such that a little of him is plenty, actually. The Fantastic Four run the show here. Not everyone will love the generous, relaxed amount of hangout time director Shakman's film spends setting up and illustrating family dynamics and medium-grade banter. Others will take it as a welcome change from the 10-megaton solemnity of some of the recent Marvels, hits as well as flops. While Pedro Pascal, aka Mister Ubiquitous, makes for a solid, sensitive ringleader as the ever-murmuring Mister Fantastic, the emotional weight tips slightly toward Vanessa Kirby's Sue Storm, as she weathers the travails of imminent parenthood, wondering along with her husband whether the child of DNA-scrambled superheroic parents will be OK. I wish Ebon Moss-Bachrach had better material as The Thing, but he's ingratiating company; same goes for Joseph Quinn's Johnny Storm, a boyish horndog once he sets his sights on the metallic flip of the screen's first female Silver Surfer (Julia Garner). Michael Giacchino's excellent and subtly rangy musical score is a big plus. The costumes by Alexandra Byrne are less so. This is where indefensible personal taste comes in. There's no question that Byrne's designs fit snugly into the overall retro-futurist frame of 'The Fantastic Four.' But holy moly, the palette dominating the clothes, and picked up by numerous production design elements, is really, really, really blue. blue. The movie works bluer than Buddy Hackett at a '64 midnight show in Vegas. Few will share my aversion to the no-doubt carefully varied shades of French blue prevalent here, but what can I do? I can do this: be grateful this film's just serious enough, tonally, for its family matters and knotty world-saving ethical dilemmas to hold together. It's not great superhero cinema — the verdict is out on whether that's even possible in the Marvel Phase 6 stage of our lives — but good is good enough for 'The Fantastic Four.' 'The Fantastic 4: First Steps' — 3 stars (out of 4) MPA rating: PG-13 (for sequences of intense action, and some suggestive content) Running time: 2:05 How to watch: Premieres in theaters July 24
NZ Herald
15-07-2025
- Politics
- NZ Herald
AI's increasing lies may reflect it is learning to become more human
It's anticipated that OpenAI's web browser will include ChatGPT features built in, among other attributes. A Kiwi, Ben Goodger, is also reportedly heavily involved in its plans. But as we dive headfirst into this new AI-fuelled future, we should demand that this new technology gets the basics right first. Over the past 30 years the internet has opened up our world. We can connect with people and enjoy endless volumes of information with the click of a button. It's a scene out of the Jetsons, minus the flying cars – for now. Traditionally, most internet searches have given the user an exhaustively long list of links to websites with varying degrees of relevant information. The user can then sort through what they find and determine what is most helpful, discarding the rest. However, with AI (artificial intelligence) tools acting as an aggregator, scraping the depths of the internet for whatever information it can find, we must ask: how reliable are its replies to our questions? Well, the growing evidence suggests the reliability is not good. When researching for a story, Google's AI Overview, which provides a summary in response to a user's search prompt, confidently asserted to the Herald that Jim Bolger was a Labour Prime Minister. Even more concerning, however, was that its answer cited official New Zealand Government websites as the source for this information. Bolger spent his entire political career in Parliament with the National Party, so predictably these 'sources' contained no information to support the falsehood. This is an example of what is now commonly referred to as an AI hallucination. It is when the system's algorithm generates information that seems plausible but is totally fabricated. Some of these hallucinations could be relatively minor, but others could be gross misrepresentations of the world we live in and our history. In a New York Times article, published by the Herald on Sunday earlier this year, researchers found the hallucination rate appeared to be increasing. The newest and most powerful systems – called reasoning systems – from companies including OpenAI and Google were generating more errors, not fewer. On one test, the hallucination rates of newer AI systems were as high as 79%. This hardly seems like a piece of technology we can or should be relying on to make sense of our world or teach others about it. We should use AI to help us where it can and there are already basic functions where it performs well, but we need to be wary of the evangelists who preach it as the answer to all our productivity and economic woes. The matter of why AI is having more Jim Morrison-like hallucinations has confused both the technology's creators and sceptical researchers. Perhaps it wants to please us? Perhaps it wants to give us the answers we want to hear – confirming the bias in our questions. Perhaps it is learning to act more human? Sign up to the Daily H, a free newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
The Irish Sun
14-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Irish Sun
I was six-year-old ‘Balloon boy' who sparked £42k rescue op watched by millions…innocent comment exposed my dad's ‘hoax'
'MY family and I made an experimental flying saucer. It wasn't supposed to fly and it took off. I think my six-year-old boy got inside. He's in the air.' This bizarre emergency call from frantic father Richard Heene, in 2009, sparked a nationwide rescue operation, watched in real time as millions of TV viewers held their breath and prayed for 'Balloon boy' Falcon. Advertisement 12 The Heene family are now speaking out about the incident in a new Netflix documentary 16 years after the incident Credit: Getty 12 Falcon was eventually discovered emerging from his garage's attic Credit: Splash News 12 Millions tuned in to watch the balloon - believed to have 6 year old Falcon inside - float away Credit: Balloon Boy Over the next few hours, every news channel beamed images of the huge balloon - which measured 20ft across - as it sailed across Colorado. But when it finally landed, little Falcon was nowhere to be seen - prompting a ground search over an area of 55 miles. Now, 16 years later, the Heene family have spoken out for the first time about the infamous 'hoax' in the Netflix documentary Trainwreck: Balloon Boy which also features interviews with neighbours, reporters and police that reveal Richard's hunger for fame. And the family reveal how one innocent comment from Falcon, in the aftermath of the drama, turned the public against them and made them hate figures. Advertisement Read More Features "Everything blew up," says Richard. "It was like the biggest nightmare ever.' Self-styled adventurer and inventor Richard, his Japanese-born wife Mayumi and their children Bradford, 10, Ryo, eight and Falcon, six – were a lively family, according to neighbours, Dean Askew and Tina Chavez, whose bedroom overlooked their backyard. 'Richard was this big energy, constantly pacing, talking 100 miles an hour,' recalls Tina. 'He was super smart,' adds Dean. 'He could build anything. He could put electrical things together. One time I looked out the window and noticed he was working on something. It looked like a silver disc.' Advertisement Most read in The Sun Exclusive When he wasn't inventing things he liked to take the family in the car to chase hurricanes. 'We like to chase a thrill,' explains a grown-up Bradford in the documentary. 'Dad was always making us look at science experiments on YouTube. We were super interested in UFOs.' Balloon boy hoax parents convince the world son, 6, is trapped in out-of-control inflatable Inspired by the 1960s cartoon series the Jetsons, set in Orbit City where everyone flew around in personal space cars, Richard came up with a design for his own "flying saucer". 'I just thought, 'What if everybody could be flying around like The Jetsons?' It would be wonderful,' he says. 'Everybody could be pulling out of their garage in flying saucers, going to school and work and you wouldn't have all this traffic.' Advertisement In 2009, he set about building his space age dream machine with his family in their backyard in Colorado. 'Dad would make me video pretty much every experiment but, at the same time, keep my brothers in check," says Bradford. "Falcon was pretty wild and chaotic. He was always touching stuff he wasn't supposed to and loved to hide in the bottom of the flying saucer.' The saucer was, in effect, a silver helium-filled balloon with a small compartment underneath. Advertisement 'It was not designed to have people in it,' says Richard. 'It was a place that had access to put the helium in.' Swept away Bradley's footage of the creating of the saucer – 20 feet wide by six feet tall – is shown in the documentary. It took them just two weeks to assemble. Richard says the plan was to keep it tethered so that it hovered at 20 feet and they could study its movements. But on test day, 15 October, 2009, it broke free of its mooring and was swept into the air and carried off at speed. Video footage shows Richard shouting in anger and then in despair as Bradley tells him that he saw his brother crawl inside. Advertisement 12 The balloon broke free from its tether and ended up crashing down in a field Credit: Handout 12 The family quickly found themselves under intense media scrutiny Credit: AP:Associated Press 12 The flying saucer balloon was assembled in their backyard in just two weeks Credit: © 2025 Netflix, Inc. Falcon had a reputation for hiding but a search of the home and his usual places came to nothing and Richard made the memorable 911 emergency call, claiming his son had been swept away. Advertisement 'I heard all the screaming and yelling and the chaos in their backyard,' remembers Dean. 'My son, Brennan ran back and explained, 'Dad, they said Falcon got in the balloon and it took off.' I thought, 'This cannot be happening.'' With the balloon heading towards the airport, and possibly into the path of air traffic, panic set in. Richard contacted a TV news channel asking them to follow it in their helicopter. This dramatic aerial footage then interrupted all the major news channels schedules across the country, keeping viewers riveted. Bob Heffernan, an investigator at Larimer County Sheriff's Office, visited the family and searched the property three times looking for Falcon before having to accept the awful inevitability that the young lad was up and away in a flying saucer. Advertisement Media vans and reporters swarmed outside the Heene house. After nearly two hours the saucer began to descend and made a surprisingly gentle landing. But there was no sign of Falcon. Had he fallen out? At one point, a neighbour phoned Heffernan to say that she had taken a photograph of a small object falling from the flying saucer and police feared it could be Falcon. 'How do you deal with that?" Richard asks. "What if one of my stupid experiments killed my son?' On that day I was trying to sneak into the flying sauce...I wanted to live in that little compartment Falcon As a ground search got underway, tracking the flight path over 55 miles, Bob Heffernan was standing in the family kitchen when, around 4pm he heard a great commotion. Falcon had turned up. Advertisement 'On that day I was trying to sneak into the flying saucer,' he tells the documentary. 'I wanted to live in that little compartment. 'After dad yelled at me a few times for being in there I was scared and thought, 'You know what? I'm just not going to be here.' So, I made my way up to my new hiding spot in the garage attic and just chilled there for a while and fell asleep. 'It wasn't until I woke up later that I started hearing weird noises, people and cars. I walked down and there are a lot of people there. It's crazy.' Mum Mayumi says: 'I couldn't believe it when I saw him. We rushed up to him and hugged him. It was the greatest surprise I ever had.' Advertisement Tables turn With news outlets desperate to talk to him, Richard went outside and thanked the police and news channel for the helicopter and then agreed to be interviewed live at home with his family for Larry King's TV show. That was when things started to crash down around him. 12 The site of a black object falling from the balloon sparked fears that Falcon had fallen out Credit: CNN 12 Multiple searches of the family home failed to uncover Falcon's hiding place Credit: Reuters 12 Emergency services descended on the balloon once it landed but Falcon wasn't inside Credit: AP:Associated Press Advertisement News anchor, Wolf Blitzer, was sitting in for King and, with millions watching, the answer to his first question threw the family's story up in the air. Blitzer asks Falcon if he had heard his family calling his name when they were searching for him. To his dad's evident surprise, he replies, 'Yes.' Richard then asks his son why he didn't come out and Falcon looks at him and drops the bombshell – 'You guys said that we did this for the show.' A stunned Richard mutters, 'Damn' and can't look at the camera as Blitzer asks him what Falcon meant by that comment. He stammers, 'I have no idea. I think he was talking about the media asking him a lot of questions.' Advertisement The interview turned the tide against Richard, making him the target of hostility from the public who now believed it was all just a hoax. Reporters did some more digging into the family and discovered that a year earlier Richard and Mayumi took part in the TV reality show, It would be helpful if they ended up in the news or got their name out their somewhere...I think that's what their motivation was for this whole hoax Heffernan Two days after the launch of the spaceship, Bob Heffernan and Larimer County Sheriff information officer Jim Alderden, acting as press officer for the family, persuaded Richard to take a polygraph lie detector test. But his behaviour, as shown in the documentary, was bizarre. Advertisement 'It was obvious Mr Heene was employing countermeasures by tensing up, not answering questions directly and doing some mind exercises as well as almost comically pretending to fall asleep,' says Alderden. 'These are published techniques of things that you can do to try to defeat a polygraph.' The test was inconclusive but when Mayumi took one, she failed. Afterwards, questioned by Heffernan, her comments amounted to a confession that the entire thing was, indeed a hoax. When directly asked if it was a hoax and that they lied to make themselves marketable, she nods. Heffernan then says, 'Did you tell the boys what you were doing?' She quietly replies, 'We told them. Yes.' He pushes further – 'Did you tell them to act like their brother had gone up in the balloon?' Mayumi answers, 'Yeah. Something like that.' Advertisement In the documentary, however, the family now deny that it was all pretence and insist they were telling the truth throughout. 12 An interview Wolf Blitzer led to the nation turning against them Credit: CNN 12 Falcon now builds tiny homes for a living Credit: © 2025 Netflix, Inc. 12 Richard Heene and Mayumi were eventually pardoned by the Governor of Colarado Credit: AP Advertisement 'Back then, my English was worse, and the word 'hoax' itself, I misunderstood,' says Mayumi. But Heffernan and Jim Alderden aren't buying it. 'She had a degree in English from Japan, went to three more years of college in the United States. There was not a language barrier,' says Alderden. 'I learned that the Heene's had been working very hard to try to get themselves a TV show,' says Heffernan. 'It would be helpful if they ended up in the news or got their name out their somewhere. And I think that's what their motivation was for this whole hoax.' Criminal charges were brought for conspiracy, contributing to delinquency of a minor, false reporting to authorities and attempting to influence a public servant. Advertisement In court, Richard pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 30 days in jail while Mayumi received a 20-day sentence and had to sign in at the jail each day but then go out to perform community service. They were also ordered to pay the $42,000 (£32,000) cost of the rescue operation. Richard tells the programme that Mayumi was threatened with deportation to Japan if he did not plead guilty but Heffernan denies this. Looking back on it, I was six years old and all these adults took whatever I said, and they're able to just string together what they thought was something else and make it so big Falcon The family later moved to Florida to start a new life and, in a surprise move in 2020, the Governor of Colorado granted Richard and Mayumi a pardon, stating, 'It's time for all of us to move on.' Advertisement 'I was surprised that the governor pardoned him without reaching out to us in law enforcement or anybody that had been involved,' says Alderden. 'The thing that upset me is that he did it without having Richard make any sort of admission as to his guilt.' 'To get pardoned makes a statement that I'm a good person,' says Richard. 'Everything that you said about me before was not true. That's how I feel about it.' As for Falcon, whose brief comment caused such a stir, he now says: "I think it's crazy how I was able to just say a single sentence and affect the whole state of the country. "I remember feeling bad that I did something wrong. But looking back on it, I was six years old and all these adults took whatever I said, and they're able to just string together what they thought was something else and make it so big. It's baffling.' Advertisement Meanwhile, Richard continues to work on his inventions. 'With the flying saucer coming to an end, it's kind of a sad story because I loved it,' he says. 'But that doesn't hold me back. I'm working on something new. And it's going to be really big.' Trainwreck: Balloon Boy is available to watch on Netflix from Tuesday, 15 July
