The Case for Remaking Tomorrowland
Jun. 23rd, 2015 03:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wingedbeastI don't usually make these cases this fast. After seeing Tomorrowland in theater yesterday, I can safely say that this is a premise and a basic moral that needs to be rescued from its execution.
Tomorrowland is one of few movies I can honestly say has a fractal wrong. Take any of several examples and you have a basic wrongness that you can extrapolate to the vast majority of the rest of the movie.
Example 1: The little brother of the protagonist asks why they're decommissioning a NASA launch site. The protagonist's answer, which the movie takes as the true answer, is "It's easier to give up than to have ideas."
Example 2: A quick series of teachers teaching about things that will end the world ends off with an English Teacher discussing how dystopias were once about the future but are now coming to pass.
Example 3: In a discussion of the premise of the movie, there's a discussion of the world's best scientists (and, presumably, engineers) creating a society where they can create whatever they want without politics of bureaucracy.
Almost the entire movie is filled with oversimplification to an insulting degree. Yes, I mean insulting even considering a target audience aged 12 to 15.
The reason NASA is losing funding is because we have a significant population, and resultant members of Congress, that believe that the best thing the American government can do is as little as possible, otherwise getting out of the way of private businesses. Now, I have criticisms of that philosophy, but a lack of ideas or hope isn't one of them.
The dystopias were never about the future. Brave New World, 1984, and The Handmaid's Tale (what I consider to be the three legs upon which all modern dystopia fictions rest), are all about the present. Each one is about the flaws in the society of the time (and yes, flaws that persist to today) that were discussed in a story that's set in the future. Set in the future, but about the present. The same, by the way, is true of the more optimistic futures, such as Star Trek.
And, you just don't have a society without politics or bureaucracy. As much as we may find them annoying, galling, even enraging at times, they are how people come together for anything bigger than a small band of hunter-gatherers.
Even as I say all of this, the theme isn't bad. It's just over simplified. The potential for better application happens in Hugh Laurie's monologue towards the end. (I won't advocate for paying money to see this, but check out the speech when the movie comes on cable or when somebody puts just the speech on Youtube.)
The theme is hope versus fatalism. Hugh Laurie's monologue expresses that in more depth than the entire rest of the movie. The short of it is that, after convincing everybody in the world that they're driving themselves off a cliff, society seemed to respond by putting the pedal to the metal.
So, to fix this, I think we shouldn't make Tomorrowland a real place. Sure, have a few vista-shots, some holograms, some paintings, get the visuals out there. But, Tomorrowland should be what it is in the real world, an idea.
At first, it was the idea that we can make the future a better, more exciting, more convenient, more amazing place to live. But, it also expands beyond just the hard science and technology to making the future a more inclusive place, more celebratory of diverse cultures that each make their contributions to the current. That's a good idea, and one that makes for ever more impressive visualizations.
Instead of having Tomorrowland be a physical place to which one can travel, have it be a network of scientists and engineers, but over history expanded to include activists and artists and, yes, bureaucrats. Because, regardless of how none of us like bureaucracy and the fact that there can be too much of it, it is still a necessary tool. The thing that should collect these Tomorrowlanders should be hope, a vision for the future that doesn't have to be specific, doesn't have to be one that they'll take over to make happen, but that, in so many ways, it can be better than today.
But, for all their vision and, yes, for all their advanced science, they aren't dealing with an evil. They're dealing with their own world-weariness. They're dealing with the projections they've made of a multitude of ways in which human beings are on the road to causing their own destruction.
They're also dealing with a humanity that, in many cases, hopes for the apocalypse. There are the religious that long for the coming of God and the destruction of those who don't have the right religion. There are those who "prep" for the end of the world, while longing to live it. There are those who long for a cozy apocalypse or even one that would serve their political ideology.
An example of the last one being that, while having lunch at a bar a few years back, someone nearby made the statement, nigh out of the blue, that "there should be an ice age", the reasoning that he explained being that it would kill all the lazy people.
It isn't just hope versus fatalism. It's hope for the future versus hope for the future's end.
Nobody needs to die at the end. Certainly not Hugh Laurie's character, which is about the only character I actually felt anything for after his monologue. And, victory isn't certain at the end. It's just... more hopeful that, maybe, just maybe, together, we can all make the world a better place.
Tomorrowland is one of few movies I can honestly say has a fractal wrong. Take any of several examples and you have a basic wrongness that you can extrapolate to the vast majority of the rest of the movie.
Example 1: The little brother of the protagonist asks why they're decommissioning a NASA launch site. The protagonist's answer, which the movie takes as the true answer, is "It's easier to give up than to have ideas."
Example 2: A quick series of teachers teaching about things that will end the world ends off with an English Teacher discussing how dystopias were once about the future but are now coming to pass.
Example 3: In a discussion of the premise of the movie, there's a discussion of the world's best scientists (and, presumably, engineers) creating a society where they can create whatever they want without politics of bureaucracy.
Almost the entire movie is filled with oversimplification to an insulting degree. Yes, I mean insulting even considering a target audience aged 12 to 15.
The reason NASA is losing funding is because we have a significant population, and resultant members of Congress, that believe that the best thing the American government can do is as little as possible, otherwise getting out of the way of private businesses. Now, I have criticisms of that philosophy, but a lack of ideas or hope isn't one of them.
The dystopias were never about the future. Brave New World, 1984, and The Handmaid's Tale (what I consider to be the three legs upon which all modern dystopia fictions rest), are all about the present. Each one is about the flaws in the society of the time (and yes, flaws that persist to today) that were discussed in a story that's set in the future. Set in the future, but about the present. The same, by the way, is true of the more optimistic futures, such as Star Trek.
And, you just don't have a society without politics or bureaucracy. As much as we may find them annoying, galling, even enraging at times, they are how people come together for anything bigger than a small band of hunter-gatherers.
Even as I say all of this, the theme isn't bad. It's just over simplified. The potential for better application happens in Hugh Laurie's monologue towards the end. (I won't advocate for paying money to see this, but check out the speech when the movie comes on cable or when somebody puts just the speech on Youtube.)
The theme is hope versus fatalism. Hugh Laurie's monologue expresses that in more depth than the entire rest of the movie. The short of it is that, after convincing everybody in the world that they're driving themselves off a cliff, society seemed to respond by putting the pedal to the metal.
So, to fix this, I think we shouldn't make Tomorrowland a real place. Sure, have a few vista-shots, some holograms, some paintings, get the visuals out there. But, Tomorrowland should be what it is in the real world, an idea.
At first, it was the idea that we can make the future a better, more exciting, more convenient, more amazing place to live. But, it also expands beyond just the hard science and technology to making the future a more inclusive place, more celebratory of diverse cultures that each make their contributions to the current. That's a good idea, and one that makes for ever more impressive visualizations.
Instead of having Tomorrowland be a physical place to which one can travel, have it be a network of scientists and engineers, but over history expanded to include activists and artists and, yes, bureaucrats. Because, regardless of how none of us like bureaucracy and the fact that there can be too much of it, it is still a necessary tool. The thing that should collect these Tomorrowlanders should be hope, a vision for the future that doesn't have to be specific, doesn't have to be one that they'll take over to make happen, but that, in so many ways, it can be better than today.
But, for all their vision and, yes, for all their advanced science, they aren't dealing with an evil. They're dealing with their own world-weariness. They're dealing with the projections they've made of a multitude of ways in which human beings are on the road to causing their own destruction.
They're also dealing with a humanity that, in many cases, hopes for the apocalypse. There are the religious that long for the coming of God and the destruction of those who don't have the right religion. There are those who "prep" for the end of the world, while longing to live it. There are those who long for a cozy apocalypse or even one that would serve their political ideology.
An example of the last one being that, while having lunch at a bar a few years back, someone nearby made the statement, nigh out of the blue, that "there should be an ice age", the reasoning that he explained being that it would kill all the lazy people.
It isn't just hope versus fatalism. It's hope for the future versus hope for the future's end.
Nobody needs to die at the end. Certainly not Hugh Laurie's character, which is about the only character I actually felt anything for after his monologue. And, victory isn't certain at the end. It's just... more hopeful that, maybe, just maybe, together, we can all make the world a better place.
