Felix the Cat in Space: Astronomeous Is Exactly As Weird As It Sounds

Is this worth watching today? Yeah, absolutely, if you’ve got a soft spot for really old, really weird cartoons. Folks who dig animation history or just enjoy seeing how early filmmakers just... went for it, they'll probably get a kick out of Astronomeous. But if you’re expecting snappy dialogue or anything resembling modern logic, you’ll likely be a bit confused. And maybe bored, honestly. This is a silent film, after all. 😬

Felix the Cat, our favorite little black cat, calls a meeting. He tells all the other cats they should live in space. The whole thing just kinda happens with no real build-up, which is classic for these old shorts.

So Felix, being Felix, just fires an arrow straight up. It's got a rope attached, naturally. You see it zip, zip, zip right out of frame.

And then, it hits a bicycle tire. On Saturn. Yeah, you read that right. A cyclist on Saturn. The pure inventiveness is something else.

This cyclist, who just happens to be pedaling along in space, pulls up the rope. And there’s Felix. They have a little scuffle.

The cyclist just kicks him off the planet, like it’s no big deal. ✨ The physics of it all is, well, non-existent, but who cares? It’s Felix!

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Astronomeous (1928) through its definitive frames.

Felix then crash-lands on Mars. Pretty quick trip from Saturn, I guess. He ends up saving the Martian king from a comet. Like, a full-on cartoon comet with a tail.

He does it with his usual cleverness, turning his tail into something useful, as he often does. The way he just solves the comet problem, it's so quick.

And then, he just throws a rope back to Earth. Inviting all the other cats to come join him on Mars. A whole new planet, just for cats. What a concept! 🚀

The animation itself? It’s Otto Messmer, so it’s got that distinctive Felix look. Simple lines, but full of movement. The characters are expressive, even without words. You can tell what’s going on just from their body language. It's really something.

There's this charm to how unhinged it all is. No explanations needed. Felix just does things. And it makes perfect sense in the context of the cartoon. You almost just accept the cyclist on Saturn. Almost.

It really feels like a bunch of animators just threw every wild idea they had at the screen. And it stuck. The pacing is super fast, too. Before you know it, Felix is on another planet. Then another.

You gotta appreciate the sheer audacity of these early cartoons. They weren't bound by much, just pure imagination. It's a short, but it packs so much strange into it. A real little gem for anyone curious about animation's wild beginnings.