NEW YORK: Fantastic and innovative, excellent science fiction movies have both. They can transport viewers to a distant galaxy or dramatize real-world events on a fictitious version of Earth.
But according to Lisa Yaszek, professor of science fiction studies at Georgia Tech, the genre excels when it acts as a “fun house mirror to our present” and sheds light on our society.
According to Yaszek, who spoke to CNN, “As viewers, we love both pessimistic and optimistic science-fiction movies like these precisely because they are virtual laboratories where we can fictitiously experience the best and worst of our technologies in a safe and fun environment.”
As genome editing and artificial intelligence advance, movies like “Gattaca,” “Her,” and even the horror comedy “M3GAN” have anticipated what our future might entail. After Covid-19 dramatically altered the world in 2020, pandemic thrillers like “Contagion” seem much more believable than they did at their initial release.
Here is what several well-known movies get right about technology and science, as well as what is still the stuff of science fiction.
Gene editing in ‘Gattaca’ is now closer to reality.
“Gattaca” was inspired by actual events before it was released in 1997, such as the beginning of the Human Genome Project in 1990 and the successful cloning of Dolly, the sheep, according to Yaszek.
The movie imagines a civilization driven by and obsessed with genetic perfection. It appears to “eerily anticipate the current fascination of our society with at-home genetic tests like 23andMe,” according to Yaszek, as well as current developments in gene editing that show promise for improving human health.
‘M3GAN’ and ‘Her’ offer opposing views on AI.
Films depicting the potential of artificial intelligence to enable a better-developed way of life and the fictitious horror of AI erasing humans are abundant thanks to society’s preoccupation with AI. Our expectations and worries over our growing reliance on digital companions are often reflected in these films, according to Yaszek.
Theodore, a character played by Joaquin Phoenix in Spike Jonze’s “Her,” develops feelings for Samantha, a cutting-edge AI operating system, who claims to share his feelings. Samantha is not Siri; she has a human accent, views, and sentiments, or at least she is programmed to have them. It’s a rare sci-fi movie that doesn’t portray AI that can mimic or even actually sense human emotion negatively.
