Tomorrowland

Tomorrowland is ten years old, and we are all now living in the times foretold by President Nix, lost in tragedy and despair.
It’s hard to argue with Hugh Laurie’s character: we have known about climate change since the eighties (or earlier?), and still there are people - rich and powerful people - arguing that it isn’t real. And, indeed, post-apocalyptic narratives haven’t reached our hearts deep enough to make us fight to prevent them: we were just entertained.

Still, Tomorrowland¹ wants us to be optimistic. To stay positive. To believe we have the power to bring up a change. To react.
This is also a message we can agree with.
If we don’t trust that we can make an impact, that we can fight, we will sink deeper and deeper into our couches, filling our senses with junk food and ‘content’, amusing ourselves to death.

So, stripped to its components, everything is good with Tomorrowland. There are two wolves. Which one will prevail? Hope or despair?

But this is a film, not a philosophical essay. It needs a story. It needs an interesting plot, and a conclusion. And Lost’s co-creator Damon Lindelof, supported by Lost’s staff writer Jeff Jensen, is not known for being good with answers to the thousand questions he raises.
That’s why this film feels so unsatisfying.
There’s magic/amazing technology, and androids, and men in black, and Jules Verne, and steampunk, and the Wizard of Oz but, finally, each of these elements feels disconnected from the others, like they don’t belong to a consistent vision.

And the ending - besides proposing essentially the same solution that already failed at the beginning of the film - is infused with the tech optimism that maybe was still persistent in 2015.
“Our world is failing, let’s build a different one somewhere else, let’s populate it with the best people”.
Does it remind you of something?

Tomorrowland’s resolution is the distillation of the Disney/Pixar/Apple connection that was so strong in the first decade of this century.
It’s like one of those celebratory videos that open Apple keynotes.
It’s the visual translation of Steve Jobs’ Think Different speech:

“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. […]. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

But ten years later, thinking of Apple is not as inspiring as it used to be. It only contributes to the bleakness of the current world.
We need something more than optimism to save the world.

Thanks to Tantek for hosting this month’s edition of the IndieWeb Movie Club and giving me a reason to rewatch Tomorrowland