![]() All inhabitants work the land and agree on population control (“After the harvest, we decide how many babies to make”). La Belle Verte’s farcical humour eases into a strong message about a self-sufficient community with no leaders, where the days consist of strengthening acrobatic play and exercises in telepathy. Writer-director Coline Serreau plays Mila, an alien from a utopian community who comes to 90s Paris and is comically horrified by the pollution, smoking, meat eating and overcrowding. Photograph: Allstar/MGMĪ plant-based diet also features in the cult French comedy La Belle Verte (The Green Beautiful, 1996). Simon Amstell’s pointed TV mockumentary, Carnage, painted a picture of a harmonious, sustainable future where the only pain was the memory of their elders murdering animals.įood for thought: Charlton Heston was plunged into a nightmare world in Soylent Green. Meanwhile veganism – on the rise in real life – features in several onscreen utopias. ![]() Silent Running does emphasise the difference between fresh, locally grown food and bland, artificial meals, while Soylent Green takes the idea to a more sinister extreme. ![]() ![]() “I and other biospherians would laugh, because in almost all science fiction movies, there are hardly any green plants or other lifeforms around – yet no one asks: ‘How are they getting their oxygen, water regeneration, clean food?’” Biospherian Mark Nelson, however, finds few of them are believable. Newman describes these as being, “collectivist, contemplative … with tamed natural spaces”. The idea of a contained, peaceful community is prevalent in onscreen utopias. Not everything in the garden was rosy, but at least it grew. They wanted to see if self-sufficient life was possible on Mars, so they tried it – or at least, as close as they could get. They formed a theatre company and performed avant-garde shows. Far from being stereotypical hippies, the members of this commune built a huge houseboat to travel the world, forging partnerships with likeminded financiers. Such optimism is reminiscent of Spaceship Earth. “It can be enjoyed as video games, as TV shows, books, movies – the entire world wholeheartedly embraced the apocalypse, and sprinted towards it with gleeful abandon.” But hopeful heroine Casey (Britt Robertson) still went in search of “dreamers” to build a better future.Ī secret world: the future looks bright in Disney’s 2015 film Tomorrowland. “They didn’t fear their demise, they repackaged it!” he laments. Brad Bird’s film directly addressed the subject of how we respond to dystopian images: inventor David Nix (Hugh Laurie) tried to warn humanity by broadcasting images of impending doom. The 2015 Disney film Tomorrowland struck a more optimistic note, depicting a secret world built by “all the geniuses, the artists, the scientists, the smartest, most creative people … in a place free from politics and bureaucracy, distractions, greed”. More recently, the young adult genre has been dominated by pure dystopias: children were forced to hunt and kill each other in the Hunger Games series (2012-2015). Wonder Woman’s Themyscira is disrupted by the arrival of men. Comic-book adaptations are full of these, from Loki in the Thor series to Killmonger in Black Panther. Then you learn how terrible things really are.” Many fictional future worlds are divided between rich and poor, such as Metropolis (1927) and Soylent Green (1973). Utopias that turn dystopian are common in cinema, as noted by the novelist and critic Kim Newman: “The first act shows you everyone having a good time, but you notice the cracks. A seemingly harmonious world conceals hidden horrors in Logan’s Run, the 1973 film with an upcoming remake. In the family animation WALL-E (2008), lazy humans live on starliners, having trashed the Earth. It begs the question: what other lessons can we learn from sci-fi movies, post lockdown? In the past, many films have depicted a post-apocalyptic world where artificial communities have been created in an attempt to save at least some of the planet. Matt Wolf’s film is a fascinating watch that vividly recalls classic sci-fi cinema: the “biospherians” wear designer space suits and their mission references 1972’s Silent Running, in which a botanist astronaut tries to save a biosystem orbiting in space. Back in 1991, eight people moved into the huge vivarium as a dress rehearsal in case humans had to repopulate to Mars. The new documentary tells the story of Biosphere 2, an Earth system science research facility located in the Arizona desert. It’s what the subjects of Spaceship Earth were hoping to create when they locked down voluntarily for two years as part of an experiment around communal, self-sufficient living. As we emerge blinking into the sunlight after lockdown, many of us will be daring to dream of a more harmonious, ecological future.
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