Utopia-ception

This evening I treated myself and my boyfriend to a night at the movie theatre. We decided to see Oblivion, starring Tom Cruise, because we had no idea what any of the other movies were. Oblivion is basically an end-of-the-Earth movie, where the moon has been blown up by an alien population, which caused earthquakes and tsunamis, making the planet virtually uninhabitable. The whole Earth population had been relocated to Titan, one of Saturn's moons. Tom Cruise's character John is based on Earth with a partner, Victoria, to help repair the machines that harness sea water for energy. Along the way, John gets a little too curious and learns that the plan for life on Titan is not what it seems to be. 

It is a little bit of a stretch, but I can definitely see utopian concepts in this film. When Earth was rendered uninhabitable, a plan needed to be formulated, thus Titan. At his home on Earth, John and Victoria's lives are dictated in every aspect. They rely on their higher-ups to send them all supplies and take orders from them for missions each day. Their house is streamlined and almost antiseptic how clean and white it is. Adhering to all the rules, Victoria is afraid to bring anything from outside into her house, fearing contamination. John blindly takes orders to kill off any aliens that he comes in contact with, because they are still the enemy despite looking exactly like a human being. 

John and Victoria's home

One of the more utopian aspects that I found was the fact that the society, in the end, could not hold together. In the texts that we have read for this class, the utopian plan does not make everyone content and there is some type of disintegration of the community or an attempt at a revolt. 

Even during the previews I was bombarded with another Utopian film, Elysium. First of all, it looks really cool and stars Matt Damon, so I'm definitely going to see it. From what I could tell from the preview, Elysium is essentially a big space station that is where all the best people go. There's nothing bad on Elysium (the preview showed a woman being scanned and showing trace amounts of cancer and then having it taken away immediately). But, back on Earth, life is a different story: the planet is in shambles and there is a rogue group of people, Matt Damon's character included, that feel the need to take down Elysium if they want to save the human population. The preview left a lot to the imagination, but it definitely got me hooked.

These two films show me that we are fascinated with utopias and dreaming of another way of life. Also, because utopias can be a commentary on things in our current world, it sure seems that film writers have some issues with the way things are going. I do not ever see a time when utopian literature or films will not exist, they are simply too compelling.