Guest essay by Phil Salmon (“ptolemy2”)
“When science had no shame, Part 1: Why are nearly all sci-fi movies fire-and-brimstone anti-science dystopia?”
(I repeat the title since on the mobile phone WUWT page, titles of articles appear to disappear after the first click – at least on my iPhone.)
This is the first of two articles under the title “When science had no shame”, which looks at how the movie genre of SciFi has transitioned balefully from celebrating science to damning it with fire-and-brimstone dystopia. The second article under the same title will look at the remarkable nineteenth century poem “Passage to India” by American poet Walt Whitman which looks back at an era when science had no shame and it was OK to be excited by humankind’s technological progress and the prize of a connected and united world.
A new Prohibition?
Are we living in a new prohibition era? A generation of straight-laced environmental puritans have been teaching us and our children to be ashamed of science and technology. The internal combustion engine, instead of an empowering transport technology connecting the world, is a guilty emitter of a demonized CO2. We are forbidden to take pride in rockets to space, which instead of being a fulfilment of an age old dream to soar and fly to other worlds, are connected to nuclear warheads and threaten our survival. We flip-flop absurdly between favoring petrol then diesel then petrol again for vehicle fuel as the pantheon of hero pollutants sashay and process in and out of fashion. Even light bulbs have become ensnared in a morass of guilt-laden virtue signaling.
For the self-appointed guardians of our environmental rectitude, technology is the new sex, business is the new gambling and CO2 the new alcohol. All strictly finger-wagging no-no’s. An eco-puritanical army pervading the political, academic and media establishments lash themselves into unceasing moral outrage in order to drive forward an agenda outlawing all three of these new moral evils.
In the above image (right) from the recent WUWT post about the “March for Science”, the 500 women (remember that “every measurement is a model”, and the image above input into an ensemble of multiparametric crowd-counting models gave us 500 – just saying…) marched, apparently, for science. They marched bearing placards purporting to show their respect and devotion to the scientific method. Although these placards broadcast intellectual snobbery and superiority – everyone disagreeing with us is an idiot – it is on one level still refreshing to see what looks like popular support for science and technology.
But how many of these (no doubt mostly well-meaning) ladyfolk realize how profoundly anti-science the AGW movement is, that they are supporting? Marching for science and at the same time for climate change alarmism, is as profound an inconsistency, even impossibility, as the 
in one of the placards. It really doesn’t add up.
While we can have fun with images like the ones above recalling prohibition zeal, it is notable that women often play a special motivating role whatever our society’s morality-de-jour happens to be. Often this is good, of course, when one thinks about the suffragettes campaigning for the female vote and anti-slavery campaigners. However the likes of Carrie A. Nation (image right) who liked to descend on saloons and bars with a hatchet pursuing her agenda of righteous indignation against alcohol, perhaps took moral crusading a little too far. We can only hope that we do not see an equivalent rise of what today would be rightly called terrorist acts, in support of protests against oil and gas pipelines, coal and nuclear power stations and scientists holding views skeptical of climate alarmism.
Prohibition’s history shows that, no matter how persuasive the moral case behind comprehensive censure, if in practice it proves unrealistically disruptive of economy and society, it will soon be discarded. The carbon prohibition is likely to go the same way as the alcohol one.
Why is nearly all Sci-Fi dystopian?
Anyway so much for pre-amble. For me and no doubt many here at WUWT, Sci-Fi is one of my favorite film genres. For that reason I find it deeply annoying that such a large majority of SciFi movies, when special effects veneer is peeled away, are little more than anti-technology Luddite tracts. Can’t we celebrate science anymore? Has SciFi become LuddFi? The blasted dystopian future-scapes that we view with monotonous regularity through theatrical off-stage blown mist, all communicate a not-so-subtle political message: if you don’t pay attention to our endless protest movements that are anti-science, anti-technology, anti-vaccine, anti-energy, anti that atom with the atomic number of the Beast, then look at all the bad stuff that’s heading your way! Only a small minority of SciFi movies rise above the rest and actually fulfil SciFi’s purpose, that is, to inspire us with the possibilities of science and technology – while also addressing its dangers and ambiguities but in a positive and hopeful spirit.
But rather than ranting on with my own prejudices, the purpose here is to set out my own list of forty or so SciFi movies of the last half century. These are somewhat randomly chosen from memory, and I have given my own brief assessment of the movie in terms of its underlying attitude to science, whether positive, negative or ambiguous. To this end I have divided them into three categories: the dystopian, which are anti-science and imply that science is leading us to a bad place; the hopeful, which show positive idealism toward science, and those I would describe as “half-and-half” – dystopian yet ambiguously hopeful in their message about science. Perhaps I am wrong about some of these films – I have not seen all of them. I hope that this provokes a discussion about people’s views on films, ones you love and hate, the important ones I have missed, and on their philosophical messages in relation to science, technology and human curiosity.
Category 1: Dystopia (science is leading us to a bad place).
| Soylent Green. | Trail-blazing dystopia. This 1973 classic is ahead of its time in positing fantastical CO2 global warming carnage to the environment. For the “science” story behind its blasted future-scape it plays with atmosphere and ocean like a baby playing with bricks. The moral of this story is that CO2 will turn us into cannibals. |
| James Bond | I have entered this as a single SciFi film since all the Bond movies ever made, with the exceptions of “On her majesty’s secret service” (both versions) and “Skyfall”, have one and the same story. MI6 sniffs something suspicious, Bond meets Dr Evil at a high-class social event, Bond finds and then trashes Dr Evil’s temple of doom. The Temple of doom always symbolizes high technology, perverse scientific idealism, clean efficient organization and psychopathic evil. Routine dystopia. |
| Children of Men | Routine dystopia, in an apocalyptic future becoming pregnant makes you an outlaw. |
| Avatar | Routine dystopia; brilliant future technology for space travel and mind transfer end up in the hands of corrupt corporate hacks. The protagonist returns heroically to the stone age. Corporations are bad, military is bad, technology is bad, trees are good. Fantastic effects and some decent acting but Luddite brainwashing nonetheless. |
| Minority Report | Routine dystopia; in this Tom Cruise vehicle paranormal future-seeing technology is exploited by a repressive totalitarian regime, which needless-to-say TC takes on and defeats single-handed. |
| Ex Machina | Nice movie but routine dystopia, a synthetic human kills and escapes. Mobile phone technology attacks. But at least it generates sympathy for the robot, and humans can be bad too. |
| Mad Max | Routine dystopia, a post-nuclear future, the earth turns into a ruined degenerate anarchic wild-west. |
| Gravity | Routine dystopia. Orbiting satellites and space craft destroyed in an urban-legend disintegration cascade, Hollywood racism alive and well in the 21st century as the Russians are the obligatory bad guys again. |
| Looper | Routine dystopia, future society is disintegrated, anarchic and crime dominated, the highest technology – time travel – in the hands of criminals. Cool roles by Bruce Willis and Emily Blunt and a clever time dichotomy, but reinforcing the technology-is-evil message. |
| Jurassic Park | Routine dystopia. Brilliant science rampages out of control immediately with mind-numbing predictability. |
| Transcendence | Routine dystopia and a criminally bad movie – literally. A blonde femme-fatale who murders scientists in protest against artificial consciousness becomes heroine. Advocates murder to stop technology. |
| Dr Strangelove | Routine dystopia, fountain of a generation’s technophobic one-liners. |
| Hunger Games | Routine dystopia with the added gruesome spectacle of gladiatorial fights by children. A post-nuclear dystopia in which a rural underclass is ruled by an urban elite with criminal hairstyles. Only Jennifer Lawrence can save the world. |
| Alien (all films including Prometheus series) | Dystopic with Oedipus complex. Psychopathic aliens with telescopic dentistry turn out to be the creation of an advanced race who also, it turns out, created us in the first place. Confused? I hate the unphysicality of aliens growing from the size of a prawn to the size of a cow with no apparent source of food to sustain such growth. Grrr! |
| Deja-Vu | Routine dystopia, albeit a great movie. Here the sense of technology-shame is tangible. Scientists who develop a method to loop time backwards by 4 days confess their guilty discovery under moral inquisition. Time travel technology saves the day but somehow remains the villain. |
| Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind | Routine dystopia. Zany Jim Carrey dystopia about memory editing technology, the little guy takes on the evil machine. |
| Surrogates | Routine absurd dystopia not even saved by Bruce Willis. |
| Never let me go | Routine dystopia, but artistically melancholic and good quality film-making. In a future society organs harvested from an underclass give the elite eternal life. |
| Dawn of the Planet of the Apes | Routine post-apocalyptic dystopia but great visual effects and story, newly sentient chimpanzees take on humans for world domination. |
| Arrival | Much heralded big budget SciFi turned out to be another dismal tract. Aliens show up and do nothing, but this is nowhere near the class of District 9. After a protracted quiz show about circular symbols, a bomb appears for no apparent reason. Anti-war cliché, preciously introspective, and pointless. |
| The Arrival | (Not the later “Arrival”); I had to include this as the worst ever sci-fi movie. Routine dystopia, aliens disguised as Mexicans try to heat up the world to their advantage by pumping CO2 into the atmosphere. (Yes, seriously!) |
| Brazil | Routine dystopia. The little guy against a future techno-totalitarian state flees persecution picking up leading lady en-route. |
| Empyrium | Routine dystopia. In yet another AGW-blasted future-scape, a rich elite inhabit an orbiting space station while an underclass inhabit a contaminated earth’s surface. Predictable, as bad cinematically as scientifically. |
| The 100 | OK a Netflix series not a film, but essentially the same story backdrop as Empyrium, with a similar verdict. Routine dystopia. Cinematically better but scientifically even worse; astonishing ignorance and inaccuracy about radioactivity, fallout and biological effects of radiation (“they’ve evolved to filter radiation out of their blood!”) A young cast easy on the eye but a plot of endless formulaic jumping between contrived dichotomies. |
| Event Horizon | Routine dystopia. In a bizarre mix of anti-science sci-fi and medieval religion, a spaceship approaches the event horizon only to pop unexpectedly into hell. Yes hell – complete with punishment for sin, Gothic decor and Sam Niell. |
| I am Legend | I am Will Smith. Routine dystopia. A bio scientist with posh London accent develops a cancer curing virus which turns most of the world’s population into demented killing machines. Another day in the office for Will Smith, saving the planet after technology goes disastrously out of control. |
| I, Robot | I, Will Smith. Routine dystopia. One more Will Smith ego-trip with the most clichéd anti-technology dystopian script imaginable. Robots attack, Will Smith saves the day, the end. |
| Moon | Routine dystopia; a corporation clones astronauts manning a lunar helium mine, until a heroic escape by one to earth leads to every progressive’s dream, the public damnation of the evil corporation in front of Congress. Technology bad, corporations bad, media hacks good. |
| V for Vendetta | Routine dystopia with – like transcendence – the disturbing sub-plot that terrorism is OK if the targets are “right wing”. Euro-leftist wishful thinking of an American collapse is combined with a formulaic virus apocalypse unleashed with wretched predictability by the go-to-movie-Satan USA. (Who did all this bad stuff? OMG what a total surprise it’s a secret branch of the CIA-US military!) The left are trying to get intellectually creative with this near-future right wing dictatorship under “Adam Sutler”, while in the real world the risk of dictatorship from the “progressive” left is demonstrably much greater. |
Category 2: Hopeful: SciFi positive about technology
| AI (Artificial intelligence) | A personal favorite, a powerfully refreshing break from routine sci-fi dystopia and an exception that proves the rule. Human society is failing to adapt to robots and becomes seized with violent anti-technology prejudice in a highly realistic portrayal of threatened human societies. Robots good, humans bad. A poignantly evocative role by the boy robot David and a great ending tinged with beauty and sadness. |
| Star Trek (all films) | Boldly going where no SciFi has gone before or since – wonderfully refreshingly positive and imaginative science-technology idealism, penned by the great Gene Roddenberry. |
| The Martian | An exception and great movie – realistic technology and a rarity for Hollywood, a gripping and highly believable sci-fi adventure. Based on real and good science and technology practically all accessible today. |
| District 9 | Cool movie, visiting high-tech aliens are the victims, humans doing what humans do are the bad guys. The portrayal of the MSM being swept up passively in politically driven prejudice and violent repression is noteworthy. Great twist at the end, hope there’s a sequel. |
| The Fifth Element | This Luc Besson film is a heart-warming extravaganza of exotic techno-futurism wonderfully devoid of political messages except that “love is the fifth element”. Another with Bruce Willis – his films are in all three of our categories. |
3 Half and half (dystopia but with some positivity about technology)
| 2001 a Space Odyssey | While human technical progress is apparently celebrated, with a famous musical score and inspiring visual effects, once the plot gets going technology is the villain, as Hal the computer is evil and kills people. |
| Star Wars | Classical cinematic story-telling that is great for all ages, and clever enough for the dystopia to be subversive. On one level it creates an inspiring and attractive galaxy-scape of shiny technology and an interplanetary community. But why does every Empire spaceship look so sleek and cool, while every rebel craft appears to have been make of cereal boxes and toilet rolls? The more technology, the more evil. And the repetitive kill-the-death-star endings are mere James Bond fare. |
| 12 Monkeys | Classic Bruce Willis, dystopia but with a twist. Biological warfare nearly annihilates humanity but with time travel there is a chance to save it. |
| Blade Runner | The backdrop is routine dystopia, a technology-blasted futurescape. However the film, increasingly recognized as one of the best SciFi of all time, develops another dimension in which the question emerges “are humans really any better than replicants?” In the end a very cool movie, rich in ambiguity, in which robots are treated sympathetically as they are hunted down by humans including one – Harrison Ford – who it turns out might actually be replicant. |
| Interstellar | Ambiguous. The backdrop is routine dystopia, humans killed the earth by climate change (yawn). However interstellar space-craft technology provides possible salvation. We find out that a black hole is actually a supermassive library. |
| Terminator | Routine dystopia but with a sting in the tail: Computers go self-aware and try to destroy humans but some robots (especially ones looking like Arnold Schwarznegger) change sides to help out their human friends. |
| Robocop | This Paul Verhoeven cyberpunk SciFi is set in a dystopic crime-ridden future, however the protagonist is a prosthetically recreated human – the robocop – who is portrayed sympathetically as the hero lawman who tries to reconnect with a former humanity. |
| Tomorrowland | Mix of routine dystopia with positivity and optimism about technology. An amusing introduction parodying manic dystopia and technology-phobia in teachers and society at large, probably guaranteed this film damning reviews in a climate of anti-technology puritanism. Schrödinger-like, reality flickers between a bright optimistic technological future and a darkly dystopic techno-apocalypse. With two wonderful child-teenager acted roles as well as quirky acting by George Clooney and High Laurie. |
Final Score:
Dystopia: 29
Positive: 5
Half-and-half: 8
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I nominate Waterworld; In the year 2500 the sea level has risen by 7600 meters and the entire earth is covered by water. The opening of the movie implies climate change as a cause by showing a time lapse view of the earth from orbit with the ice caps melting and the sea level rising until no land remains.
The people live a peaceful but meager life of fishing and trade on small, isolated, artificial islands of ramshackle construction known as ‘atolls’. Dirt, vegetable plants, fresh water, and paper are valuable commodities. It is a disputable myth that people once lived on dry land but some believe that the tattoo on the back of the adopted daughter of a beautiful shopkeeper is a map to ‘dryland’.
The islanders are harassed by pirates who are known as ‘Smokers’ because, unlike the sailboats used by the islanders, they drive jet skis. [450 year old jet skis apparently run great but do emit a lot of smoke]. The Smokers are cruel scavengers living a life decadence and excess on the hulk of, drumroll please, the Exxon Valdez. They have heard of the girl with the tattoo map and they seek to kidnap her and to use the map to find ‘dryland’.
A drifter arrives at the atoll to trade and treats the beautiful shopkeeper kindly. Subsequently, the atoll is attacked by the Smokers and the drifter reluctantly helps the beautiful shopkeeper and the girl escape.
Much action ensues during which the Smokers are defeated. The drifter, the beautiful shopkeeper, the girl, and a few other survivors finally find ‘dryland’. Dryland turns out to be the peak of Mt Everest which has been transformed into a utopian tropical island rising only a few hundred meters above seal level.
At this point the shopkeeper is in love with the drifter and the other survivors see him as their savior and beseach him to stay on the island. However, it is not to be because, alas, he is a drifter so he must take to the open ocean….
So many cliches.
I liked that demonstration of firepower the Quad-50 machinegun gave in the Water World movie. I have a fondess for Quad-50’s. One of them saved my life one night. In combination with a twin-barreled, 40mm, rapid-fire “Duster”. At one place I was stationed (Phu Bai), I had a Duster on my left about 50 yards away, and a Quad-50 on my right, about 50 yards away. They took care of business one night.
Google Earth used to have a picture marked of the very Duster I’m referring to on their map of Vietnam, but the last time I looked, I couldn’t find the picture.
Night of the Living Dead (1968)
The movie’s nod to science is only on backstory, but it’s definitely dystopian.
“Radio reports explain that a wave of mass murder is sweeping across the eastern United States. Ben finds a television, and they watch an emergency broadcaster (Charles Craig) report that the recently deceased have become reanimated and are consuming the flesh of the living… Experts, scientists, and the United States military fail to discover the cause, though one scientist suspects radioactive contamination from a space probe. It returned from Venus, and was deliberately exploded in the Earth’s atmosphere when the radiation was detected.” (Wikipedia)
Easily corrected in the end, though, by good old boys with shotguns. Predictive of Trumpsters?…
I will add ‘The Road’, ‘The Book of Eli’, ‘The Postman’, and ‘A Boy and His Dog’ to the list of apocalyptic science fiction movies.
‘The Road’ depicts an apocalypse preceded by a blinding light. The cause of the light is undefined and could be interpreted by the viewer to be from a meteor, an atomic blast, or something else, Being a cold war kid, I took it to be nuclear war. The movie centers on the story of a man and his son trying to survive in the desperate wasteland that results from the apocalypse. This is a pretty dark movie.
‘The Book of Eli’ depicts the aftermath of an apocalypse that is unknown to the viewer. However, my impression was that nuclear war had occurred (see above). The story centers on a loner who is travelling across post-apocalyptic America on a quest to deliver a book of great importance to the west coast. He stops at a settlement that, unbeknownst to him, is run by an ‘evil’ man, While he is there, he treats a beautiful girl kindly and then is forced to confront the evil overseer. The loner escapes from the settlement and is followed by the girl who was to be given to one of the overseer’s goons. The loner protects the girl while they both head west and the evil doers are subsequently killed. However, the loner is mortally wounded and subsequently dies when they reach his destination. She subsequently leaves the sanctuary they have found to return to the settlement with the loner’s book.
‘The Postman’ depicts a post-nuclear apocalypse in America. The survivors live in peaceful settlements having reverted to a preindustrial lifestyle. An organized group of marauders seek to subdue the peaceful settlements and to demand tribute from them. Meanwhile, a drifter who moves from settlement to settlement making his keep as a travelling minstrel comes to town. He catches the attention of a beautiful young woman but then the town is besieged by the Marauders. The drifter and the woman escape, much action ensues, the marauders are defeated, and the movie ends with a kumbaya moment somewhere on the Oregon coast.
‘A Boy and His Dog’ takes place in a post nuclear apocalypse. The war took place in 2007 and now, in 2024, the ‘boy’, a man in his 20’s, wanders the wasteland with his telepathic dog looking for food and women. The boy is lured into an underground vault inhabited by a society of people and robots emulating a twisted version of 1950s Kansas. Much action ensues and the boy and his dog gratefully escape to the wasteland.
To this list should be added https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy
It’s on Youtube in various places.
Nope. you can’t have Star Wars.
“A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away….” is a dead give-away. as to why not. And Rebel ships are way cooler looking, Flying into battle in a giant space dildo just seems more of a fun place to party than a giant angular arrow head with a golf ball on it.
You can have ‘Slipstream’ with Mark Hamill as a replacement though, even if it goes on the turd pile (also starred JP’s Bob Peck and Aliens Bill Paxton). The 70s and 80s were full of crappy dystopian sci-fi movies, probably far too many to list and most only memorable for just how bad they were.. Saying that, there is something enjoyable about watching Jan Michael Vincent avoid giant scorpions on the back of a dirt bike in a good bad way.
Can’t believe ‘Idiocracy’ didn’t make the list! Also, a h/t to The Matrix, if only for the concept of the red pill,
“idiocracy” wasn’t Sci-Fi, it was a documentary.
Luddfi is only part of the problem. Half of these movies have PhD savior-protagonists. — Like the physicist in Thor who goes up to Asgard and talks with the gods about how they are really doing things through quantum mechanics, and explains it to them.
And of course in Arrival the PhD deciphers the symbols of the elegant encephalopod visitors, but the backward American guy who watches alien-ophobic youtube videos plants a bomb.
So in the end of Arrival the PhD savior-protagonist realizes that a worldwide change to a new universal language will eliminate our differences and bring peace. If only I could get my $1 back.
Apparently PhDs are in a new catagory right up there walking with the gods, above even the enhanced humans who merely got in accidents with gamma rays or were bitten with irradiated insect bites.
You totally forgot Babylon 5
Scott “Dilbert” Adams’ favorite show.
Just remembered a good movie for time travel fans: Time Crimes. I think this is a good movie because of the reason the main character travels back in time. It is a real paradox. I cannot say more without revealing too much and spoiling it for those who have not seen it.
I would include the long-running BBC sci-fi series Doctor Who in “Category 1: Dystopia”. In the most recent episode “Oxygen”, workers on a mining space-station were being killed-off/zombie-fied by their spacesuits. Of course the not so subtle story-line had the evil capitalist bosses (“the suits”) limiting oxygen because the workers were not sufficiently productive, blah, blah, blah. The Doctor saves the day by convincing The Suits that killing workers is even less profitable, or something like that – ZZZZzzzzz.
The assessment of “Interstellar” is incorrect, as climate change is not mentioned at all; mankind’s downfall is due to a cascading series of crop diseases that kill off farmed crops, resulting in a severe food shortage and an inability to grow crops that are not susceptible to blight.
Less “global warming,” more “Irish potato famine.”
How can you get more PRO-science than Cooper’s disgust as the PC rewriting of whether we ever went to the moon (it’s covered as mere anti-Soviet propaganda in the new “updated” government textbooks) and the quote that best reflects society today:
“We used to look up at the sky and wonder at our place in the stars; now we just look down and worry about our place in the dirt.”
Or you could just say they are entertaining movies.
Event Horizon can easily be used as an introduction to the War-hammer 40k universe, just the first warp jump forgot to put in geller fields 😉
Kind of surprising no one mentioned “Metropolis” (but I admit I was able only to read the first half of this thread) as being a dystopia, albeit grandiose and with a hopeful ending. Then there is “When Worlds Collide,” which can only be construed as pro-science (without it, we die). “Total Recall” was a social dystopia, rectified by the application of advanced alien technology. “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea” was an unabashed romance with technology.
There is a lot out there. I’ve only mentioned a few items. I disagree with the dystopian take on 2001, because I saw it when it came out: this most gorgeous display of advanced technology is hard to surpass.
Wait, Star Wars in anti-technology? I disagree completely. I’m a huge Star Wars fan. I have watched all 7 movies, watched the Clone Wars and Rebels tv-series, played Star Wars video games and read Star Wars comics. I can say with certainty that Star Wars is not about anti-technology or anything like that. That is not the point or the overall theme. Say what you want about the prequels, but in those movies for example the protagonists repeatedly use advanced technologies to their advantage. The reason why Rebels don’t look so sleek and cool is probably because they are rebels, and don’t really have the resources of the Empire. Rebels don’t try to destroy the Death star because it represents “Evil Technology” but because it is, well, a Death star, intended to destroy planets and enforce the Empire’s will.
I’m also surprised you put AI – Artificial intelligence to “positive” category. That movie is pretty dystopian. Sure, people in that movie seem to hate robots (though im not sure if they hate all technology in general, or just robots), but doesn’t it also say that rising sea levels are threatening human civilization? It seems to be pretty typical “humans suck, we are all going to die” -movie. It’s not exactly very positive overall.