🚀 Faster, Please! — The Podcast #27

I have many times written about the importance of the story we tell ourselves about the future, especially in big-budget science fiction films. But does all the doom and gloom from Hollywood even matter? And is it driven from creatives at the top or by audience demand? To discuss those questions and more, I'm talking with Sonny Bunch. Sonny is the culture editor for The Bulwark, where he hosts The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood newsletter and podcast. In This Episode * Netflix’s upcoming $200 million techno-pocalyptic movie (1:06) * Why is Hollywood obsessed with dystopia? (6:17) * The solutionism of The Martian (8:48) * Do sci-fi visions of the future even matter? (15:03) Below is an edited transcript of our conversation Netflix’s upcoming $200 million techno-pocalyptic movie James Pethokoukis: I write a lot about negative future-pessimistic media. Netflix has a big new movie in the works, a $200 million film directed by the Russo brothers, who you may know from the Marvel movies. They’ve got Millie Bobby Brown, Chris Pratt. Big production. It's called The Electric State. And this is a summary of this film: “A runaway teenager and her … robot travel west through a strange USA, where the ruins of gigantic battle drones litter the countryside heaped together with the discarded trash of a high tech consumerist society in decline.” And then it goes on about our “hollow core of civilization has finally caved in.” This might be a fantastic film, and I have a lot of confidence in the Russo Brothers and that budget. Here we are, we have a lot of interesting things cooking in the world from the Musk rockets and AI and huge breakthroughs in biotechnology, and that's the movie they're giving us for $200 million, about the decline of consumerist society. You've been writing a bit about this topic. When does it end? Sonny Bunch: It's interesting because I was thinking about this the other day: Really, what is the only truly utopian vision of the future? It's Star Trek. That's about it. In terms of mass popular entertainment, the only really, truly utopian ideal of the future is Star Trek. Now, there's still conflict in Star Trek. But it is at least a kind of post-scarcity society where folks are interested in exploring the world and bettering everyone. Look, part of this is it is easier to create tension and drama out of things that are bad. And what's the easiest way to look at how things might be bad? Look at what basically works about right now and say, “Well, what if this doesn't work? What if it's actually bad for us?” The idea of Netflix producing a stirring condemnation of consumerist society is kind of funny in and of itself. Netflix is the absolute peak of consumerism. Literally, the mission statement of Netflix is to sit on your couch and consume; consume so much you don't fall asleep. The initial argument for Netflix one of the creators the company made was, “We are trying to win the war against sleep.” They're not winning the war against sleep by encouraging people to create wonderful new advancements of society. It’s just to sit there and passively consume. So it's kind of funny. I like a good dystopian action movie. I can watch those all day long, so I'm probably as much of the problem as anything else. But it's definitely a thing. And it just doesn't seem that hard to me to have some sort of positive message, even if it's overall kind of dystopian or apocalyptic. I just don't see that there's any attempt. It's just full-throated doom. Remember when Interstellar came out? I love Interstellar. Great movie. It is hopeful in a certain way. It's about trying to find new places for Earth to live; it's on the edge of collapse. When Matthew McConaughey's character comes back about a hundred years later because of all the time dilation, humanity has moved up to the space stations that are orbiting and people have been saved. As far as these things go, it's actually a fairly positive message. Except there was an undercurrent from some critics who were like, “You know, this means that like billions of people died, right? They didn't save more than a handful of folks up on those space stations. Most of humanity is dead or dying.” And I was like, yeah, but they didn't focus on that. It's still pretty positive. I would counter argue that one of the themes of that movie is at some point we turned our back on progress. It's like society be has become anti-technology. To me, that movie says if we had not abandoned technological progress, maybe this huge disaster which has befallen the Earth, maybe we could have fixed it. But now it's too late. Now we have no other choice but to head to the stars, which is something we probably should have been thinking about anyways. I think a superficial viewing of that movie is that it is pessimistic. And I think you're right. I think, fundamentally, that is a future pro-progress film. Why is Hollywood obsessed with dystopia? But you mentioned Star Trek at the beginning. Why do you think Hollywood's sci-fi, at least, has become almost completely obsessed with the dystopian and apocalyptic? Is it just that it's easy to make that kind of film? Or is it reflecting something in our society? I don’t know. What do we like to say? Everybody likes to think they're living in the end times. Everybody likes to think that they are important enough to see the end of the world. This is a constant through human civilization. Everybody thinks that the end is just around the corner, and they're the last generation that will see the world. And now we have the technology and the filmmaking ability to actually realize that world we have; we have the ability to destroy the world on film. (In real life, too, if somebody really wanted to get crazy, but it's much easier and safer to do on film.) And it is easier. It's an easier story to tell. It's an easier story to portray because if you live in a post-apocalyptic society, there are a lot fewer of? Extras. You don't have to fill stadiums full of people. You don't have to have crowded streets with everybody walking around. You just have somebody, oh, You have empty streets and a little bit of trash, and you have a set. You’ve got empty streets. This is the Russo brothers. They're doing it all on green and blue screens. You’ve just got Millie Bobby Brown walking around, kicking over a trashcan every now and again, and it's fine. I do think that there's an inherent narcissism to all of this: We have achieved the peak of civilization. What's the line in The Matrix when Agent Smith is talking about how they designed the Matrix? We took the peak of civilization. We took the peak of human civilization, but really once we started thinking for you, it became our civilization. And what did they pick? They picked 1999, when that movie came out. That is the constant refrain in all of this stuff: We are the peak, things are to go precipitously downhill, enjoy it while it lasts. It is inherently dramatic, in a certain way, to imagine having to come back from a fall of a sort. But the fact that it is so constant just leads me to believe that it really is quite silly. The solutionism of The Martian You mentioned Star Trek, but I would also say a movie like The Martian, which I also view as positive, pro-technology, pro-solutions — we can solve problems. And to me, that's what's wrong with a lot of these other films: we end up not being able to solve any problems. Probably our attempts to solve the problems only make things worse. And that is, to me, a rare example of a problem-solving movie that's plenty dramatic. There's no obvious villain, other than perhaps the planet Mars itself and space. To me, it's just a fundamental lack of effort. And again, I don't know if it's easy, it's cheaper in some ways, it also kind of reflects the views of the people who make the movies. But it's just shocking that there's not more made, because we do have a few examples of being able… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fasterplease.substack.com/subscribe