Approaching Storm SCI-FI features a looming, imminent Threat or Crisis that is building in the world, creating a sense of impending Doom. It may serve as a catalyst motivating the Hero to action, in hopes of avoiding Catastrophe — or finding a way to Survive. These stories can Challenge us to confront our deepest Fears, Warn us of potential Dark Paths ahead, and Affirm our ongoing Struggles in a rapidly changing World.

The Final Countdown — (1980)

The Final Countdown is an American SCI-FI War film about a modern nuclear-powered aircraft carrier that travels through time to the day before the December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor. The film’s ensemble cast stars Kirk Douglas, Martin Sheen, James Farentino, Katharine Ross, Ron O’Neal and Charles Durning.

Storyline
In 1980, the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz departs Naval Station Pearl Harbor for naval exercises in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The ship takes on a civilian observer, Warren Lasky (Martin Sheen) — a systems analyst for Tideman Industries working as an efficiency expert for the U.S. Department of Defense — on the orders of his reclusive employer, Mr. Tideman, whose secretive major defense contractor company designed and built the nuclear-powered warship.

Once at sea, the Nimitz encounters a mysterious electrically-charged storm-like vortex. While the ship passes through it, radar and other equipment become unresponsive, and everyone aboard falls into agony. Initially unsure of what has happened to them and having lost radio contact with U.S. Pacific Fleet Command at Pearl Harbor, Captain Yelland (Kirk Douglas), commander of the aircraft carrier, fears that there may have been a nuclear strike on Hawaii or the continental United States. He orders general quarters and launches a RF-8 Crusader reconnaissance aircraft. The aircraft returns after photographing Pearl Harbor, but the images show an intact row of U.S. Pacific fleet battleships, of which several were destroyed during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

When a surface contact is spotted on radar, Yelland launches two ready alert Grumman F-14 Tomcat fighter jets from VF-84 to intercept. The patrol witnesses a civilian wooden yacht being strafed and destroyed by two Imperial Japanese Navy Mitsubishi A6M “Zero” fighters, killing three of the five crew members. The F-14s are ordered to drive off the Zeros without firing, but when the Zeros inadvertently head towards the Nimitz, Yelland gives clearance to shoot them down. The Nimitz rescues survivors from the yacht: prominent U.S. Senator Samuel Chapman (Charles Durning), his aide Laurel Scott (Katharine Ross), her dog Charlie, and one of the two downed Zero pilots (Soon-tek Oh). Commander Owens (James Farentino), an amateur historian, recognizes Chapman as a politician who could have been Franklin D. Roosevelt’s running mate (and his potential successor) during his final re-election bid, had Chapman not disappeared shortly before the Pearl Harbor attack.

When a Grumman E-2 Hawkeye scouting aircraft discovers the Japanese fleet task force further north in unpatrolled waters, poised to launch its attack on Pearl Harbor, the Nimitz crew realizes that they have been transported back in time to the day before the attack. Yelland has to decide whether to destroy the Japanese fleet and alter the course of history or to stand by and allow history to proceed as they know it. The American civilians and the Zero pilot are kept isolated. Still, while being questioned, the Japanese pilot forcibly obtains an M-16 rifle from one of the guards, kills two of the other U.S. Marine guards, and takes Scott, Owens, and Lasky hostage. He threatens to kill them unless he is given access to a radio to warn the Japanese fleet about the Nimitz. Lasky tells Commander Owens to recite and describe the secret plans for the Japanese attack; the dumbfounded Japanese pilot is overcome and shot and killed by the other U.S. Marines of the on-board detachment on Nimitz. In the aftermath, Scott and Owens develop an attraction for each other.

Chapman is outraged that Yelland knows of the impending Japanese attack but has not told anyone else, and rebuffs Yelland’s claim that the Nimitz is capable of handling any attack. An attempt to warn Pearl Harbor by radio fails as the Navy has no carrier Nimitz and considers it a prank call. Chapman then demands to be taken to Pearl Harbor to warn the naval authorities in person. Yelland agrees in front of Chapman, but instead then orders Owens to fly the civilians and sufficient supplies via helicopter to an isolated Hawaiian island (Puʻuwai, Hawaii), assuming they will eventually be rescued. When they arrive, Chapman realizes he has been tricked and uses a flare gun to force the pilot to fly to Pearl Harbor. During a struggle with another crew member, the flare gun discharges, destroying the craft and stranding Scott and Owens on the island. The Nimitz launches a massive strike force against the incoming Japanese fleet, but right after that, the time vortex storm returns.

After a futile attempt to outrun the storm, Yelland recalls the strike force, and the ship and its aircraft safely return to 1980, leaving the past relatively unchanged. Upon the return of the Nimitz to Pearl Harbor, Pacific Fleet admirals board the ship to investigate the Nimitz’s unexplained disappearance. Lasky leaves the ship with Scott’s dog, Charlie, and encounters the mysterious Mr. Tideman face-to-face. Tideman is revealed to be a much older Owens. He and his wife, Laurel Scott, invite Lasky to join them as they have “a lot to talk about”.

The Fifth Element — (1997)

The Fifth Element is an English-language French SCI-FI action film conceived and directed by Luc Besson.. It stars Bruce Willis, Milla Jovovich, Gary Oldman, Ian Holm, and Chris Tucker. Primarily set in the 23rd century, the central plot involves the survival of planet Earth, which becomes the responsibility of Korben Dallas (Willis), a taxicab driver and former special forces major, after a young woman (Jovovich) falls into his cab. To accomplish this, Dallas joins forces with her to recover four mystical stones essential for the defence of Earth against the impending attack of a malevolent cosmic entity.

Storyline
In 1914, aliens known as Mondoshawans meet their contact on Earth, a priest of a secret order, at an ancient Egyptian temple. They take the only weapon capable of defeating a great evil that appears every five thousand years, promising to protect it and return it before the great evil’s re-emergence. The weapon consists of the four classical elements, as four engraved stones, plus a sarcophagus containing a “fifth element”.

In the 23rd century, the great Evil appears in deep space as a giant living fireball. It destroys an armed Earth spaceship as it heads to Earth. The Mondoshawans’ current human contact on Earth, priest Vito Cornelius (Holm) , informs the President of the Federated Territories of the great evil’s history and the weapon that can stop it.

On their way to Earth, a Mondoshawan spacecraft carrying the weapon is ambushed and destroyed by a crew of Mangalores, Alien mercenaries hired by Earth industrialist Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg (Oldman), who is working for the great evil. A severed hand in metal armor from the wreckage of the spacecraft is brought to New York City. From this, the government uses biotechnology to recreate the original occupant of the sarcophagus, a humanoid woman named Leeloo (Jovovich), who remembers her previous life. Alarmed by the unfamiliar surroundings and high security, she escapes and jumps off a ledge, crashing into the flying taxicab of Korben Dallas (Willis), a former major in Earth’s Special Forces.

Dallas delivers Leeloo to Cornelius and his apprentice, David, who recognizes her as the Fifth Element. As Leeloo recuperates, she tells Cornelius that the stones were not on board the Mondoshawan ship. Simultaneously, the Mondoshawans inform Earth’s government the stones were entrusted to an alien opera singer, the diva Plavalaguna. Zorg reneges on his deal with the Mangalores for failing to obtain the stones and kills some of them. Earth’s military sends Dallas to meet Plavalaguna; a rigged radio contest provides a cover, awarding Dallas a luxury vacation aboard a flying hotel on planet Fhloston, accompanied by flamboyant talk-show host Ruby Rhod. It includes a concert by Plavalaguna, and learning that Leeloo shares his mission, Dallas lets her accompany him. Cornelius instructs David to prepare the temple, then stows away on the luxury spaceship. The Mangalore crew, pursuing the stones for themselves, also illegally board the ship.

During the concert, the Mangalores attack, and Plavalaguna is killed. Dallas extracts the stones from her body and kills the Mangalore leader, causing the others to surrender. Zorg arrives, shoots Leeloo, and activates a time bomb. He flees with a carrying case he presumes contains the stones but returns when he discovers it is empty. Dallas finds Leeloo traumatized and escapes with her, Cornelius, Rhod, and the stones in Zorg’s private spaceship. Zorg deactivates his bomb, but a dying Mangalore sets off his own, destroying the hotel and killing Zorg.

As the great evil approaches Earth, the four meet David at the temple. They deploy the stones, but Leeloo, having learned of humanity’s history of cruelty, has given up on life. Dallas declares his love for her and kisses her. Leeloo combines the power of the stones, emitting divine light onto the great evil and defeating it. She and Dallas are hailed as heroes, and as dignitaries wait to greet them, the two passionately embrace in a recovery chamber.

2012 — (2009)

2012 is an American epic SCI-FI disaster film directed by Roland Emmerich, starring John Cusack, Amanda Peet, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Oliver Platt, Thandiwe Newton, Danny Glover and Woody Harrelson. Based on the “2012 phenomenon”, its plot follows geologist Adrian Helmsley (Ejiofor) and novelist Jackson Curtis (Cusack) as they struggle to survive an eschatological sequence of events including earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, megatsunamis, and a global flood.

Storyline
In 2009, American geologist Adrian Helmsley (Ejiofor) visits astrophysicist Satnam Tsurutani in East India and learns that a new type of neutrino from a solar flare is heating the Earth’s core. Returning to Washington, D.C., Adrian alerts White House Chief of Staff Carl Anheuser and President Thomas Wilson (Danny Glover).

In 2010, over forty-six nations begin to build nine arks in the Himalayas, in Tibet, and storing artifacts in secure locations. Nima, a Buddhist monk, is evacuated with his grandparents, and his brother Tenzin joins the ark project. Additional funding is secretly raised by selling tickets to the rich for 1 billion per person.

In 2012, struggling SCI-FI writer Jackson Curtis (Cusack) is a chauffeur in Los Angeles for Russian billionaire Yuri Karpov. Jackson’s former wife Kate (Peet) and their children, Noah and Lilly, live with Kate’s boyfriend, plastic surgeon and amateur pilot Gordon Silberman. Jackson takes Noah and Lilly camping in Yellowstone National Park. When they find Yellowstone Lake dried up and fenced off by the United States Army, they are caught and brought to Adrian. They later meet conspiracy theorist and radio personality Charlie Frost (Harrelson), who tells Jackson of Charles Hapgood’s earth crust displacement theory and how the Mayan Long Count calendar predicts the end of the world in 2012 and worldwide catastrophe, and that the world’s governments silence anyone attempting to warn the public.

Despite his initial skepticism, Jackson heeds Charlie’s warning after seeing indications that validate it. At the Santa Monica Airport, after dropping off Yuri’s sons Alec and Oleg, who also warn of impending doom as they board a plane, he rents a Cessna 340A and sets out to rescue his family. As the Pacific Coast suffers a horrific 10.9 earthquake along the San Andreas Fault, Jackson and his family reach the airport and get the Cessna airborne. The group flies to Yellowstone and Jackson retrieves Charlie’s map of the arks’ location. The Yellowstone Caldera erupts, with Charlie staying behind to finish his broadcast; he is killed by debris. Realizing they need a larger plane to fly to Asia, the group lands at McCarran International Airport south of Downtown Las Vegas to search for one.

Adrian, Carl, and First Daughter Laura fly to the arks while President Wilson remains in the White House to address the nation. Jackson finds the Karpovs, Yuri’s girlfriend, Tamara, and their pilot, Sasha. Sasha and Gordon fly the families out in an Antonov An-500, as the volcanic ashes from the Caldera envelop the Las Vegas Valley. The planet’s crust shifts, resulting in billions of deaths in disasters worldwide, including President Wilson. With the presidential line of succession gone, Carl appoints himself acting commander-in-chief.

Upon reaching the Himalayas, the Antonov’s engines malfunction. As the plane touches down on a glacier, the party uses a Bentley Flying Spur stored in the hold to escape, except Sasha, who stays in the cockpit and is killed when the jet goes over a cliff. The survivors are spotted by Chinese Air Force helicopters, which take only the three ticket-bearing Karpovs, leaving Tamara and Jackson’s family behind. The abandoned group later encounters Nima, who, with his own family, takes them to the arks, where they stow away on Ark 4 with Tenzin’s help.

With a megatsunami approaching, Carl orders the loading gates closed, though most people have not boarded. Adrian persuades the captain and the other surviving world leaders to allow passengers aboard the arks, but Yuri falls to his death as he pushes his sons onto Ark 4. The gate closes after survivors are on board, injuring Tenzin and fatally crushing Gordon. Tenzin’s impact driver used to access the ship gets lodged in the gate mechanism, preventing it from closing completely and disabling the ship’s engines. As the tsunami strikes, the ark starts flooding as it is set adrift, heading for Mount Everest. Adrian rushes to clear the gears, but watertight doors close, trapping the stowaways and drowning Tamara. Noah and Jackson dislodge the tool. The crew regains control of the ark, while Jackson and Noah make it back safely.

Twenty-seven days later, the waters are receding. The arks approach the Cape of Good Hope, where the Drakensberg Mountains are the highest mountain range on Earth. Adrian and Laura begin a relationship, while Jackson and Kate reconcile.

Take Shelter — (2011)

Take Shelter is an American SCI-FI psychological thriller film written and directed by Jeff Nichols and starring Michael Shannon and Jessica Chastain. The plot follows a young husband and father (Shannon) who is plagued by a series of apocalyptic visions, and questions whether to shelter his family from a coming storm, or from himself and his increasing worries over having paranoid schizophrenia.

Storyline
In LaGrange, Ohio, Curtis LaForche (Shannon) has apocalyptic dreams and visual and auditory hallucinations of rain “like fresh motor oil,” swarms of menacing black birds, and being harmed by people close to him. He hides all of this from his wife, Samantha (Chastain), and their deaf daughter, Hannah. He instead channels his anxieties into a compulsive obsession to improve and enlarge a storm shelter in his backyard; however, his increasingly strange behavior – including a tendency to cut ties with anyone in his life that has harmed him only in his dreams – strains his relationship with his family, friends, employer, and the close-knit town. He also puts his construction job in jeopardy as he borrows equipment from the company to build his shelter.

To deal with his increased insomnia and apocalyptic visions, Curtis sees a counselor at a free clinic, with whom he talks about his family’s psychological history. His mother, Sarah, has paranoid schizophrenia that surfaced in her at about the same age that Curtis is now. He’s worried that he may also have the disorder.

In order to have the remodeled storm shelter completed, Curtis gets a home improvement loan he can’t afford to start building the shelter – all without telling his wife. Samantha becomes angry when she discovers the project. After Curtis takes more than the prescribed dose of a sedative and has a seizure, Samantha calls an ambulance. He recovers, then finally explains the truth to her, including his dreams.

Curtis is increasingly absent from work, causing tension with his boss, as he and Samantha make preparations for the cochlear implant surgery for Hannah in six weeks’ time. Having been informed of the borrowed work equipment, Curtis’s boss fires him and gives him only two weeks’ worth of medical insurance benefits, after placing Dewart, the close friend and coworker whom Curtis asked to help him start construction of the shelter, on two weeks’ unpaid administrative leave.

Curtis buys gas masks for his family and extends his previous employer’s health insurance policy for a few extra weeks. After he finds out that his counselor at the free clinic has suddenly transferred and been replaced with a new one, he walks out. Tensions linger between Curtis and Samantha over the loss of his job at such a crucial time for their family. Samantha gets Curtis to see an actual psychiatrist and demands that they attend a social function so she can restore some sense of normalcy to their strained, increasingly isolated life. At a Lions Club community gathering, a bitter Dewart, who has been spreading gossip that Curtis is crazy, is angrily provoked and punches him. Enraged, Curtis knocks Dewart to the floor, overturns a table, and unleashes a frightening verbal tirade upon everyone present. He prophetically shouts that a devastating storm is coming, insisting that none of them are prepared.

Later, a tornado warning sends him and his family into the shelter. After they awaken, Curtis reluctantly removes his gas mask, prompted by Samantha. They go to open the shelter doors, but he still hears a storm outside. His wife implores him, insisting that there’s no storm and that he needs to open the door. After a tense standoff, Curtis throws open the doors into the blinding sun; a strong but bearable storm has passed, and neighbors are cleaning up broken tree limbs and other yard debris as power company trucks restore electricity along the street.

A psychiatrist advises the couple to go through with their planned, annual beach vacation but that Curtis will need to get psychiatric care in a facility away from his family upon their return. At Myrtle Beach, while Curtis is building sandcastles with Hannah, she signs the word “storm.” As Samantha exits their beach house, the thick, oily rain that Curtis spoke of begins to fall, staining her outstretched hand. Samantha looks up to a bigger version of the ominous storm clouds Curtis had seen, massing over the ocean; multiple waterspouts reach down to the ocean’s surface, and the tide pulls back as a tsunami looms in the distance. Samantha and Curtis exchange glances as Samantha whispers “okay.”

Fahrenheit 451 — (2018)

Fahrenheit 451 is an American dystopian SCI-FI drama film directed and co-written by Ramin Bahrani, based on the 1953 book of the same name by Ray Bradbury. It stars Michael B. Jordan, Michael Shannon, Khandi Alexander, Sofia Boutella, Lilly Singh, Grace Lynn Kung and Martin Donovan. Set in a future America, the film follows a “fireman” whose job it is to burn books, which are now illegal, only to question society after meeting a young woman.

Storyline
In the future, after a Second American Civil War, most reading in the United States is confined to the Internet, called “The 9”, and most books are banned (except for greatly simplified versions of books, such as the Bible, To the Lighthouse and Moby Dick). The fire department serves a different function: firemen do not contain fires, but rather start them. Furthermore, they are ordered to burn books, in addition to buildings. Firefighters are tasked with the job of burning books that have been outlawed by the government for questioning the government’s ethics and principles.

Guy Montag (Jordan) is a fireman living in Cleveland and goes about his work without question, believing that by following in his captain’s footsteps he is serving and protecting society.

All this changes when he meets an informant named Clarisse (Boutella), who makes him challenge his actions and convictions by revealing some of the real history of the US and the rise of the Ministry with him. When he finally decides to rebel and understand how the “Eels” (book-reading outcasts) read, he comes to a realization — he now wants to read as well. Montag decides to help a group of rebels who have a plan to reproduce their knowledge through animals. This is achieved by embedding all their books into a starling’s DNA. The starling is to be taken across the border into Canada where waiting scientists will extract its DNA, thereby enabling the knowledge contained therein to continue existing and to be disseminated to others in the future. Montag has the mission of obtaining a transponder from his fire department, with the intent to secure it onto the bird. Once attached, the starling will be traceable by a team of scientists who will then transfer the DNA to other animals.

After Montag steals the transponder, fireman Beatty (Shannon) goes to Montag to confirm his intention to continue as a fireman burning books. The firemen go to Montag’s house and find a large stash of planted books. On Beatty’s orders, Montag starts burning the stash. Montag remembers that Captain Beatty was among the group of firemen who beat up his father for being an Eel and stops burning the books. Montag is confronted by Captain Beatty, who erases his identity.

After burning a fireman alive, Montag ends up on the run, eventually connecting with the group of Eels. The Eels’ house is discovered by the firemen; Montag finds the bird and places a transponder inside it so that it can find its way to scientists in Canada. Captain Beatty confronts him and attempts to stop him but allows the bird to fly away. After Montag releases the bird, Beatty sets him on fire out of anger. The starling makes it to Canada and joins with an immense flock of other starlings.

Approaching Storm SCI-FI offers Heroes who take action in the face of Impending Doom, hoping to avoid Catastrophe — or at least find a way to Survive. In our own world, such a Threat (to our Individuality, our Humanity or our Freedom) may be on the near horizon.

Some would say it is already here.

Take Heart. Be Brave. And know that YOU ARE NOT ALONE.

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(click image link to view YouTube video)

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Against the Odds SCI-FI: stories about Heroes living in a World where Forces of GOOD seem outnumbered by Forces of EVIL. Because we know how it feels (in real life), when we root for our favorite Underdogs, in a way we’re also rooting for ourselves. If our Hero can prevail against the “Impossible”, maybe — just maybe — there’s Hope for us, after all.

The Andromeda Strain — (1971)

The Andromeda Strain is an American SCI-FI thriller, produced and directed by Robert Wise (based on the 1969 book by Michael Crichton).

Storyline:
After a U.S. government satellite crashes near the small rural town of Piedmont, New Mexico, on February 5, nearly all the residents are dead. A military recovery team from Vandenberg Air Force Base attempts to recover the satellite but dies while trying to do so. Suspecting that the satellite has brought back an Alien organism, the military activates an elite team of scientists.

Dr. Stone (Arthur Hill), the team leader, and Dr. Mark Hall (James Olson), a surgeon, are dropped in by helicopter. They discover the town’s doctor opened the satellite in his office and that all of his blood has crystallized into a powder, the same death befalling nearly all of the town. Stone and Hall retrieve the satellite and find two survivors, 69-year-old alcoholic Peter Jackson and six-month-old crying infant Manuel Rios. Somehow, they hold the key to survival for the human race (which seems almost “impossible”).

The scientific team of four must go through four sub-levels of decontamination procedures, arriving at the fifth sub-level laboratories. If the organism threatens to escape, the Wildfire facility includes an automatic nuclear self-destruct mechanism to incinerate all infectious agents. Under the “odd man hypothesis”, Dr. Hall is entrusted with the only key that can deactivate the device, the theory being that an unmarried male is the most dispassionate person within a group to make critical decisions in a crisis.

Examining the satellite, the team discovers the microscopic Alien organism that caused the deaths. The greenish, throbbing life form is assigned the code name “Andromeda.” Infecting through the lungs, Andromeda kills biological life almost instantly via a blood clot in the brain and asphyxiation. It appears to be highly virulent.

When Andromeda escapes the biocontainment room into the lab, it causes all the laboratory’s seals to start decaying and a five-minute countdown to nuclear destruction is initiated. The team realizes that the microbe would thrive on the energy of a nuclear explosion and would consequently be transformed into a super-colony that could destroy all life on Earth.

In a race against time, Hall must reach a functioning station where he can disable the nuclear bomb before it is too late.

(Trivia: author Michael Crichton makes a cameo appearance in the scene where Dr. Hall is pulled from surgery to report to Wildfire.)

Star Wars — (1977)

Star Wars is an American epic SCI-FI film written and directed by George Lucas, produced by Lucasfilm and distributed by Twentieth Century-Fox. It is the first film released in the Star Wars film series and the fourth chronological chapter of the “Skywalker Saga”.

Storyline
Amid a galactic civil war, Rebel Alliance spies have stolen plans to the Death Star, a colossal space station built by the Galactic Empire that is capable of destroying entire planets. Princess Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher) of Alderaan, secretly a Rebel leader, has obtained the schematics, but her ship is intercepted and boarded by Imperial forces under the command of Darth Vader. Leia is taken prisoner, but the droids R2-D2 and C-3PO escape with the plans, crashing on the nearby planet of Tatooine. Darth Vader learns of this and orders the Imperials to pursue the droids.

The droids are captured by Jawa traders, who sell them to the moisture farmers Owen and Beru Lars and their nephew, Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill). While Luke is cleaning R2-D2, he discovers a recording of Leia requesting help from a former ally named Obi-Wan Kenobi (Alec Guinness). R2-D2 goes missing, and while searching for him, Luke is attacked by Sand People. He is rescued by the elderly hermit Ben Kenobi, who soon reveals himself to be Obi-Wan. He tells Luke about his past as one of the Jedi Knights, former peacekeepers of the Galactic Republic, who drew mystical abilities from the Force but were hunted to near-extinction by the Empire. Luke learns that his father, also a Jedi, fought alongside Obi-Wan during the Clone Wars until Vader, Obi-Wan’s former pupil, turned to the dark side of the Force and murdered him. Obi-Wan gives Luke his father’s lightsaber, the signature weapon of the Jedi.

R2-D2 plays Leia’s full message, in which she begs Obi-Wan to take the Death Star plans to Alderaan and give them to her father, a fellow veteran, for analysis. Luke initially declines Obi-Wan’s offer to accompany him to Alderaan and learn the ways of the Force, but he is left with no choice after Imperial stormtroopers murdered his family and destroyed his home while searching for the droids. Seeking a way off the planet, Luke and Obi-Wan travel to the city of Mos Eisley and hire Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and Chewbacca, pilots of the starship Millennium Falcon.

Before the Falcon reaches Alderaan, the Death Star commander Grand Moff Tarkin (Peter Cushing) has the planet obliterated by the station’s superlaser (defense against it seems “impossible”). Upon arrival, the Falcon is captured by the Death Star’s tractor beam, but the passengers avoid detection and infiltrate the station. As Obi-Wan leaves to deactivate the tractor beam, Luke persuades Han and Chewbacca to help him rescue Leia, who is scheduled for execution after refusing to reveal the location of the Rebel base. After disabling the tractor beam, Obi-Wan sacrifices himself in a lightsaber duel against Vader, which allows the rest of the group to escape. Using a tracking device placed on the Falcon, the Empire locates the Rebel base on the moon Yavin 4.

Analysis of the Death Star schematics reveals a weakness in a small exhaust port leading directly to the station’s reactor. Luke joins the Rebellion’s X-wing squadron in a desperate attack against the Death Star, while Han and Chewbacca leave to pay off a debt to the crime lord Jabba the Hutt. In the ensuing battle, Vader leads a squadron of TIE fighters and destroys several Rebel ships. Han and Chewbacca unexpectedly return in the Falcon, knocking Vader’s ship off course before he can shoot Luke down. Guided by the voice of Obi-Wan’s spirit, Luke uses the Force to aim his torpedoes into the exhaust port, causing the Death Star to explode moments before it can fire on the Rebel base.

In a triumphant ceremony, Leia awards Luke and Han medals for their heroism.

Independence Day — (1996)

Independence Day is an American SCI-FI action film directed by Roland Emmerich.

Storyline
On July 2, 1996, an Alien mothership enters Earth’s orbit and deploys giant saucers over major cities worldwide, including New York City, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C.

U.S. Marine Captain Steven Hiller (Will Smith) and his unit, the Black Knights fighter squadron out of MCAS El Toro, are called back from Independence Day leave; his girlfriend, Jasmine Dubrow (Vivica A. Fox) , decides to flee the city with her son, Dylan. Retired combat pilot Russell Casse (Randy Quaid), now an alcoholic single father and crop duster, sees this as vindication of the Alien abduction he has been claiming for 10 years.

In New York City, technician David Levinson (Jeff Goldblum) decodes a signal embedded within global satellite transmissions, realizing it is the Aliens’ countdown for a coordinated attack. With help from his ex-wife, White House Communications Director Constance Spano, David and his father Julius (Judd Hirsch) reach the Oval Office and alert President Thomas Whitmore (Bill Pullman).

Whitmore orders evacuations of the targeted cities in the U.S., but it is too late. Each saucer fires a beam, incinerating every targeted city, killing millions. Whitmore, the Levinsons, and a few others escape aboard Air Force One while Jasmine, Dylan, and their dog Boomer take shelter in a tunnel’s inspection alcove, emerging once the destruction is over.

On July 3, counterattacks against the invaders are thwarted by the Alien warships’ force fields (they seem “impossible” to defeat). Each saucer launches a swarm of shielded fighters which decimate the human fighter squadrons and military bases, including Captain Hiller’s. Hiller lures an enemy fighter into the Grand Canyon before ejecting from his plane, blinding the fighter using his parachute and causing the Alien to crash in the Mojave Desert. He subdues the downed Alien and flags down a convoy of refugees, transporting the Alien to Area 51, where Whitmore’s group in Air Force One has landed.

Defense Secretary Albert Nimziki reveals that a government faction has been involved in a UFO conspiracy since 1947 when one of the invaders’ fighters crashed in Roswell. Area 51 houses the now-refurbished ship and three alien corpses recovered from the crash. As chief scientist Dr. Brackish Okun (Brent Spiner) examines the Alien captured by Steven, it awakens, telepathically invades Okun’s mind and launches a psychic attack against Whitmore before being killed by Secret Service agents and military personnel. Whitmore reveals what he learned when they linked: the invaders’ plan to annihilate Earth’s inhabitants and harvest its natural resources, as they have already done to other planetary civilizations.

Whitmore reluctantly authorizes a trial nuclear attack against a saucer above Houston, but the ship is unharmed (with the city destroyed from the blast), and all subsequent nuclear attacks are aborted. Jasmine and Dylan commandeer a highway maintenance truck and rescue a handful of survivors, including the critically injured First Lady Marilyn Whitmore (Mary McDonnell). Though Hiller rescues them and takes them to Area 51, Marilyn’s injuries are too severe, and she dies after reuniting with her family.

On July 4, taking inspiration from his father, David writes a computer virus from his laptop to disrupt the aliens’ shields’ operating system, and devises a plan to upload it into the mothership from the refurbished alien fighter, which Hiller volunteers to pilot. The U.S. military contacts the world’s remaining military forces and airborne squadrons through Morse code to organize a united counter-offensive. Lacking pilots, Whitmore and General William Grey (Robert Loggia) enlist volunteers with flight experience, including Russell Casse, from the refugee camp at the base to fly the remaining jets at Area 51; Whitmore leads an attack on a saucer bearing down on the base, overseen by Grey.

Hiller marries Jasmine with David and Constance in attendance before leaving on the mission. Entering the mothership, they upload the virus and deploy a nuclear missile, destroying it and the aliens’ invasion forces. With the shields deactivated, Whitmore’s squadron engages a saucer and its fighters heading to Area 51 but exhausts their ammunition. As the saucer prepares to fire on the base, Russell sacrifices himself by crashing into the saucer’s primary weapon before it fires, destroying the warship. Grey then orders notifications to the resistance groups worldwide of the spaceships’ critical weakness and they destroy the others.

As humanity rejoices in their victory against the Aliens, Hiller and Levinson reunite with their families.

I, Robot — (2004)

I, Robot is an American SCI-FI action film directed by Alex Proyas, (based on the short stories of Isaac Asimov).

Storyline
In the year 2035, under the influence of U.S. Robotics Corporation (USR), the robotic industry prospers, with automated robots in many industries, even as personal assistants and household servants. Despite the robots adhering to the Three Laws of Robotics and their near perfect performance, Chicago PD homicide detective Del Spooner (Will Smith) despises and distrusts them, because a robot rescued him while allowing a girl to drown based purely on odds of survival.

After Dr. Alfred Lanning (James Cromwell), co-founder of USR, falls to his death from his laboratory, a message he left behind requests Spooner be assigned to the case. The police declare the death a suicide, but Spooner is skeptical, and CEO Lawrence Robertson (Bruce Greenwood), Lanning’s business partner, reluctantly allows him to investigate.

Accompanied by robopsychologist Dr. Susan Calvin (Bridget Moynahan), Spooner consults with USR’s central AI, VIKI (Virtual Interactive Kinetic Intelligence) about the incident. Examining the lab, Spooner becomes certain Lanning was murdered (as it was impossible for the elderly Lanning to break the security glass window and jump to his death) and concludes a robot was responsible. Suddenly an NS-5, the latest assistant model, breaks out and flees. The duo pursue it to a manufacturing facility where the NS-5 repairs itself, hides, and assaults Spooner before being apprehended by the Chicago police department.

Spooner interrogates the robot, who speaks about dreams and emotions, and angrily denies committing the murder. He later calls himself Sonny. Robertson arrives with his attorneys and deems the incident an industrial accident, clearing himself from any wrongdoings. Lieutenant Bergin, Spooner’s boss, reluctantly allows Spooner to continue his investigation.

Spooner searches Lanning’s mansions for more clues. However, a demolition robot nearby is rescheduled and starts dismantling the house. Spooner barely escapes the collapsing mansion with Lanning’s cat. He explains the situation and his findings to Calvin, who refuses to believe him, citing his prejudice against robots.

Shortly after, while driving through a tunnel, Spooner is ambushed by two truckloads of hostile NS-5s. He fights them off, causing the trucks to crash. The remaining robots flee or destroy themselves. When Bergin arrives, an injured Spooner had no evidence of the attack. Consequently, Bergin removes him from active duty, deeming him mentally unstable and untrustworthy. Calvin visits Spooner, and learns that after the accident years ago, his left arm and part of his torso had to be replaced with cybernetic parts by Dr. Lanning.

Spooner and Calvin sneak into the USR headquarters and interview Sonny. He draws a sketch of what he claims to be a recurring dream, showing a leader standing before a large group of robots near a decaying bridge. Robertson orders Sonny to be destroyed, and Dr. Calvin injects nanites into the processing unit inside his head, destroying it.

Spooner finds the area in Sonny’s drawing: a dry lake bed formerly Lake Michigan, now used as a storage area for decommissioned robots. He replays the hologram Lanning left for him, and after several questions, comes to the conclusion that a revolution is imminent. Several NS-5 robots attack him, and the older model reactivates and defends him, allowing Spooner to escape back to Chicago. Massive swarms of NS-5s flood the city’s streets, shutting down power and enforcing a curfew and lockdown of the human population.

Spooner and Calvin reunite and head to USR headquarters – now guarded with dangerous NS-5s. Small groups of humans try to fight back, but are quickly overwhelmed by the NS-5s. Sonny, who possess a second processing unit inside his chest, survives the deactivation and joins Spooner and Calvin. They find Robertson’s corpse, and Spooner realizes VIKI is the true culprit, controlling the NS-5s via their network uplink. VIKI declares her evolved interpretation of the Three Laws requires her to protect humanity from itself, and to sacrifice some to benefit the rest (it seems “impossible” to stop her). Lanning, anticipating this but unable to act under VIKI’s supervision, had no other solution but to create Sonny, arrange his own death, and leave clues for Spooner to find.

Spooner, Calvin, and Sonny fight their way to VIKI’s core, and Spooner manages to destroy it with nanites. Once the NS-5 robots disconnect from VIKI, they revert to their default programming and are subsequently decommissioned. Spooner finally gets Sonny to confess that Lanning made Sonny promise to do him one favor – to kill him. Spooner declines to arrest Sonny; as a machine, Sonny cannot legally commit “murder”.

Sonny, now seeking a new purpose, goes to Lake Michigan. As he stands atop the hill, all the decommissioned robots turn towards him, fulfilling the image in his dream.

The Hunger Games — (2012)

The Hunger Games is an American dystopian SCI-FI action film directed by Gary Ross, (based on the 2008 novel by Suzanne Collins). It is the first installment in The Hunger Games film series.

“May the odds
be ever in your favor.”
— Effie Trinket

Storyline
Panem is a dystopian nation divided into twelve districts and ruled by its Capitol. As punishment for a failed rebellion seventy-four years before, each district must choose two tributes, a boy and a girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen, to fight to the death in the annual Hunger Games until only one is left alive and declared the “Victor.” The event is televised across the Capitol and all districts.

Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) lives in District 12 with her younger sister, Primrose, her mother, and her best friend Gale Hawthorne. During the Reaping, Primrose is selected, so Katniss volunteers to take her place in the 74th Hunger Games. She and her fellow District 12 tribute, Peeta Mellark (Josh Hucherson), are escorted to the Capitol by their chaperone, Effie Trinket (Elizabeth Banks), and mentor Haymitch Abernathy (Woody Harrelson), the only living victor from District 12. Haymitch stresses the importance of gaining sponsors, as they can provide resources during the Games. During a televised interview with Caesar Flickerman (Stanley Tucci), Peeta confesses his feelings for Katniss, which she initially sees as an attempt to attract sponsors; she later learns his feelings are genuine.

When the Games start, Katniss grabs supplies scattered around the Cornucopia, the Games’ starting point, and flees into the forest. She tries to avoid other tributes, but Seneca Crane, the Head Gamemaker, triggers a forest fire to drive her back towards them. She runs into the Careers – composed of District 1’s tributes, Marvel and Glimmer, and District 2’s tributes, Cato and Clove – and climbs a tree. Peeta, seemingly allied with the Careers, suggests they wait her out. Hiding in a nearby tree, Rue, District 11’s female tribute, points Katniss toward a nest of genetically modified venomous wasps named Tracker Jackers, which Katniss cuts to fall onto the sleeping Careers below; Glimmer is killed, but Peeta and the others escape. Katniss retrieves Glimmer’s bow and arrows but falls ill from being stung several times and has hallucinations. Peeta returns and urges her to flee before making his own escape from the Careers.

Rue helps Katniss recover, and the two become friends. Rue distracts the Careers while Katniss destroys a stockpile of their supplies by triggering the mines guarding it. However, Marvel finds and impales Rue with his spear before Katniss shoots him. She comforts Rue by singing, and after she dies, adorns her body with flowers, an act which incites a riot in District 11. Panem President Coriolanus Snow (Donald Sutherland) warns Crane he is displeased about the unrest, stating the Games’ purpose is to instill fear to prevent future uprisings.

Haymitch persuades Crane to alter the rules by allowing two victors if they are from the same district, suggesting that it would appease the audience. Katniss finds Peeta severely injured, and the two take shelter in a cave. Despite Peeta’s protests, Katniss leaves to get medicine for him at the Cornucopia. She is ambushed and overpowered by Clove, who gloats about Rue’s death. Thresh, District 11’s male tribute, intervenes and kills Clove. He spares Katniss once, for Rue’s sake. The medicine heals Peeta’s wounds overnight.

While hunting for food, Katniss hears a cannon blast, signaling a death. She rushes to Peeta, who has unwittingly collected deadly nightlock berries. The two find Foxface, District 5’s female tribute, poisoned by the nightshade berries she had eaten after watching Peeta. To end the Games, Crane unleashes genetically modified beasts called Mutts that kill Thresh, leaving Katniss, Peeta, and Cato as the last survivors (escape appears “impossible”). Cato holds Peeta hostage before Katniss shoots his hand, allowing Peeta to break free and push Cato into the monsters. Katniss then shoots Cato to end his suffering.

Suddenly, the host, Claudius Templesmith, announces that Crane revoked the rule change for two victors. Peeta implores Katniss to shoot him, but she convinces him to consume nightlock berries with her. Just as they are about to eat the berries, however, Crane declares them co-victors.

After the Games, Haymitch warns Katniss of the enemies she has made through her rebellious acts. Snow has Crane locked in a room with a bowl of nightlock berries, while contemplating what he will do next.

Against the Odds SCI-FI, where Heroes face a World with Forces of GOOD outnumbered by Forces of EVIL, can offer us Inspiration and Hope — even when it seems “Impossible”.

Why? Because “impossible” things happen … every day.

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When paralyzed by Fear of the Future, fans of SCI-FI can turn to their Heroes for Inspiration and Guidance. Storytellers well know that the Underdogs of this world need HOPE — because it helps them Survive, giving them a reason to go on — in the face of Adversity.

History reminds us that the Ruling Majority can be WRONG. Sooner or later, Empires built on Deception fall apart. It happened in Ancient Rome and Nazi Germany. And, given that the “Dark Side” of human nature is prone to repeat itself, we also find it in futuristic Science Fiction.

To overcome Fear, SCI-FI Heroes remain “True to Self”, listening to their Inner Voice.

Avatar — (2009)

Avatar is an epic SCI-FI film co-produced, co-edited, written, and directed by James Cameron. The cast includes Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Stephen Lang, Michelle Rodriguez and Sigourney Weaver. It is the first installment in the Avatar film series.

Storyline
Set in the mid-22nd century, humans are colonizing Pandora, a lush habitable moon of a gas giant in the Alpha Centauri star system, in order to mine the valuable “unobtanium”, a room-temperature superconductor mineral. The expansion of the mining colony threatens the continued existence of a local tribe of Na’vi, a humanoid species indigenous to Pandora. The term “Avatar” refers to a genetically engineered Na’vi body — operated from the brain of a remotely located human that is used to interact with the natives of Pandora.

Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) is a former U.S. Marine (until he was discharged after an injury left him paralyzed from the waist down). After learning that his identical twin brother Tom has died, Jake agrees to replace him in the Avatar Program on Pandora — in spite of the fact that he has had zero training — because it gives him an opportunity to experience how it feels to walk again.

Lost in the Pandoran rainforest, Jake is attacked by a group of viperwolves when Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), a Na’vi, saves him. Jake turns against the Program’s military leadership (Stephen Lang) after sympathizing with the Na’vi and mating with Neytiri. He remains “true to self”, and leads the Na’vi in a battle to drive the “human invaders” off Pandora. After the battle, Jake’s consciousness is permanently transferred into his Avatar via the Tree of Souls.

[IMPORTANT NOTE: Native Americans have criticized Avatar for its portrayal of the Na’vi people as “racially stereotyped” and “culturally inaccurate”. Some activists consider it dangerous revisionist history and cultural appropriation. The backlash centers on the way the film portrays colonizers clashing with Native cultures. Some question why a white man like James Cameron is telling their story.]

Oblivion — (2013)

Oblivion is an American post-apocalyptic action-adventure SCI-FI, starring Tom Cruise in the main role alongside Morgan Freeman, Olga Kurylenko and Andrea Riseborough. The film pays homage to 1970s Sci-Fi, and is a “love story” set on a future Earth desolated by an Alien war.

Storyline
In the year 2077, Tech 49 Jack Harper (Tom Cruise) is one of the last drone repairmen stationed on Earth. According to Jack, the planet was nearly destroyed sixty years earlier, during a war against a race of Alien invaders known as Scavengers (“Scavs”). The Scavs destroyed the moon, causing massive earthquakes and tsunamis, and then launched their invasion.

They were defeated by the use of nuclear weapons, which left most of the planet irradiated and uninhabitable. The few surviving humans migrated to a colony on Titan, which is powered using energy harvested on Earth by giant ocean-borne power stations that generate fusion power from seawater. From Tower 49, a base standing above the remains of the northeastern United States, Jack and his partner and lover Victoria “Vika” Olsen (Andrea Riseborough) work as a team to maintain the autonomous drones that defend the power stations from the few remaining Scav bandits. They receive their orders from Sally (Melissa Leo), their mission commander, who is stationed on the “Tet,” a massive tetrahedral space station that orbits the Earth. Jack flies recon and repair missions to the surface, while Vic supervises from Tower 49. The two expect to leave Earth and join the other survivors on Titan in two weeks.

Although Jack and Vic had their memories wiped five years prior for security purposes, Jack has recurring dreams about meeting a mysterious woman at the Empire State Building in a time before the war, which occurred before he was born. Additionally, Jack keeps a secret retreat in a forested area he sometimes visits. He remains “True to Self” holding onto his memories and dreams at the core of his identity.

A Scav signal beacon transmitting coordinates is followed shortly by the crash of an American spacecraft prior to the invasion. Drones come and kill much of the hibernating human crew despite Jack ordering them to stand down. But Jack rescues a woman, Julia (Olga Kurylenko), recognizing her as the woman from his dreams. Julia says her ship-the Odyssey-was a NASA mission, the objective of which she refuses to reveal. She and Jack return to the crash site to retrieve the ship’s flight recorder. They are captured by Scavs, who are revealed to be humans living in an underground stronghold.

Their leader, Malcolm Beech (Morgan Freeman), claims that the Alien invasion was a lie. He tells Jack that drones work for the Aliens & are programmed to kill humans. He also reveals that he brought down the Odyssey, to get hold of its nuclear reactor, which will make the base for his fission bomb that he hopes to use to destroy the Alien command center Tet. He demands that Jack reprogram a captured drone to destroy the Tet by delivering an extremely powerful nuclear weapon. When Jack refuses, Malcolm releases the captives but urges them to seek the truth in the so-called “radiation zone” that Jack is forbidden to enter.

On their way back to the Tower, Jack takes Julia to the ruins of the Empire State Building and asks her who she is. She reveals that she was his wife before the war. His dreams were flashbacks to the day he proposed to her on the Empire State Building’s observation deck. As Jack and Julia share a kiss, Vic watches via her video link to Jack’s ship and, when they return to the Tower, refuses them entry. When she informs Sally that she and Jack are no longer an “effective team,” Sally activates a drone that kills Vic. Before the drone can kill Jack, Julia uses the weapons on Jack’s ship to destroy the drone. Sally requests that Jack return to the Tet and bring Julia, but they flee in his ship instead, pursued by more drones. They crash in the radiation zone, where Jack comes face to face with Tech 52, a clone of himself. He fights the clone, who, upon catching sight of Julia, begins experiencing memory flashbacks, before Jack renders him unconscious. Jack then finds Julia has been seriously wounded by a stray bullet from his struggle with Tech 52. Jack impersonates Tech 52, activating his vehicle and going to Tower 52, where he encounters a clone of Victoria, and steals a med kit to help Julia.

Shocked, Jack and Julia return to Beech, who tells them the truth: the Tet is in fact an Alien artificial intelligence that seized Earth to exploit the planet’s resources, and Jack and Victoria are just two of many thousands of clones of their original versions (astronauts from the 2017 Odyssey mission) that were created as soldiers to carry out the invasion of Earth. Beech reveals that one day he observed Jack “49”, retrieving an inspirational old book from the rubble — and realized that somehow, his “true self” must still be inside, and thought there might be a way to reach him.

“How can man die better:
than facing fearful odds,
for the ashes of his fathers,
and the temples of his Gods.”
— from the classical poem
Horatius

The Tet uses drones programmed to kill humans on sight, thus forcing the survivors to disguise themselves as the Scavs. The Tet now uses clones of Harper and Olsen to maintain the drones and thereby maintain its dominance. When Jack agrees to reprogram the stolen drone to destroy the Tet, Beech eyes him along with Earthly survivors of all ages and says, “Welcome back, Commander!” Leaving the underground stronghold with the reprogrammed drone, they are attacked by three other drones. The drones enter the base and wreak havoc inside, destroying the reprogrammed drone in the process. The humans finally manage to destroy the three drones but are forced to find another way to deliver the nuclear bomb to the Tet. Jack proposes delivering the bomb himself. To throw off suspicion, Julia suggests that she accompany Jack, since Sally had requested that he bring her to the Tet.

During the flight, Jack listens to the Odyssey’s flight recorder, which reveals that he and Victoria (Harper & Olsen) were originally pilots on the Odyssey mission to Titan, which was reassigned by NASA when the Tet was discovered near Saturn. Sally was their supervisor at NASA mission control, with other personnel, including Julia, on board in cryogenic capsules. Upon approach, the Tet drew them in with a tractor beam. Recognizing that capture was imminent, Jack was able to jettison the sleeping crew-members, who orbited for sixty years in suspended animation until Beech sent the signal to recall their craft.

Jack enters the Tet, where he is met by a sentient tetrahedral structure that had adopted the persona of Sally. Jack opens the sleep capsule to reveal Beech; Julia simultaneously emerges from another sleeping capsule at Jack’s secret forest retreat. The two men trigger the nuclear bomb and destroy the Tet at the cost of their own lives. The destruction of the Tet also deactivates the remaining drones around the world, just moments before they were able to slaughter the survivors at the Scavs underground base.

Three years later, Julia is living with her young daughter in the forest retreat on the recovering Earth. A group of survivors arrive there, and Tech 52 emerges from the group. A voice-over by Tech 52 reveals that his previous encounter had re-awakened memories of Julia, and he had searched for her since the Tet’s destruction. Having the same latent memories as Tech 49, he then reunites with “his” family.

Extant — (2014)

Extant is an American SCI-FI drama TV series created by Mickey Fisher and, as executive producer, Steven Spielberg.

Storyline
Astronaut Molly Woods (Halle Berry), with the ISEA (International Space Exploration Agency) is assigned a 13-month solo mission aboard space station Seraphim. She returns home to her family and tries to reconnect with everyday life, troubled by “flashbacks” from her mission (seeing her dead former lover while on the space station) that she cannot explain.

Her experiences in space and home lead to events that ultimately will change the course of human history — when she discovers that she has inexplicably become pregnant (while alone in space) despite years of infertility … and begins a frantic search for answers. Meanwhile, her inventor husband John (Goran Visnjic), a robotics engineer, is on the verge of a major breakthrough with his greatest creation, their ten-year-old android “son” Ethan (Pierce Gagnon), a prototype called a “humanich”.

Molly remains “True to Self” insisting that she did not hallucinate while in space — and learns that she cannot trust people behind the Space Program. (She tracks down Kryger, the astronaut who preceded her on the space station, and he reveals disturbing details of his own solo mission that the Agency is keeping secret.) ISEA Director Alan Sparks (Michael O’Neill) has apparently been lying to her, hiding a secret plan — and placed her in harm’s way — to bring Extraterrestrial life back to Earth.

After Sparks attempts to quarantine Molly, she and her family seek refuge on a remote island with her estranged father, Quinn. When the agency closes in on their whereabouts, Ethan is exposed to grave danger. John begins to doubt Molly’s mental state when the validity of her pregnancy is questioned.

Molly uncovers footage that may reveal the real reason the ISEA chose her for the solo mission. Convinced the Agency has taken her baby, she is determined to find out where. Meanwhile, Kryger is held hostage in an attempt to recover the incriminating video he stole from the ISEA. When Molly learns that her baby is alive, she sets out to devise a plan to intercept it. When she finally comes face-to-face with her offspring, she realizes she may be the only one who can stop the coming danger that threatens all life on Earth.

Finally, season one comes full circle — as Molly returns to space in an attempt redirect the Seraphim away from Earth and protect the world’s population.

With an excellent cast and intriguing premise, Extant is definitely worth your time — especially the first season, which resolves itself enough to stand alone. Be sure to check it out!

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story — (2016)

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is an American epic SCI-FI film produced by Lucasfilm and distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. It is an immediate prequel to the original Star Wars (1977).

Storyline
Research scientist Galen Erso and his family hide on the planet Lah’mu when Imperial weapons developer Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn) arrives to press him into completing the Death Star, a superweapon capable of destroying planets. Galen’s wife Lyra is killed in the confrontation while their daughter Jyn (played as an adult by Felicity Jones) escapes and is rescued by rebel extremist Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker).

Fifteen years later, cargo pilot Bodhi Rook defects from the Empire, taking a holographic message from Galen to Saw on the moon Jedha. Rebel Alliance intelligence officer Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) learns of the Death Star and Bodhi’s defection from an informant. Jyn is freed from an Imperial labor camp on Wobani and is brought to the Rebels’ base on Yavin IV, where Rebel leader Mon Mothma convinces her to find Galen so the Alliance can learn more about the superweapon. Cassian is covertly ordered to aid Jyn but to kill Galen rather than extract him.

Jyn, Cassian, and reprogrammed former Imperial droid K-2SO travel to Jedha, where the Empire loots kyber crystals to power the Death Star. In Jedha City, Saw and his partisans are engaged in an armed insurgency against the Empire and Jyn and Cassian get caught in the crossfire. Aided by blind spiritual warrior Chirrut Îmwe (Donnie Yen) and his mercenary friend Baze Malbus, Jyn makes contact with Saw, who is holding Bodhi. Saw shows her the message in which Galen reveals he has secretly built a vulnerability into the Death Star. The schematics are located in an Imperial data vault on the planet Scarif.

Onboard the Death Star, Krennic orders a test fire, which destroys Jedha City. Jyn and her group take Bodhi and flee the moon, but Saw remains there to die. Imperial governor Grand Moff Tarkin congratulates Krennic before using Bodhi’s defection as a pretext to take control of the Death Star. Bodhi leads the group to Galen’s Imperial research facility on the planet Eadu, where Cassian hesitates to kill Galen. Rebel bombers then attack the facility. Galen is wounded and dies in Jyn’s arms before she escapes with her group on a stolen Imperial cargo shuttle. Krennic is summoned by Darth Vader to answer for the attack on Jedha City. Krennic seeks his support for an audience with the Emperor, but Vader instead force-chokes him and orders him to ensure no further problems occur.

Jyn proposes a mission to steal the Death Star schematics, but the Alliance Council feels there is no chance of victory. Frustrated at their inaction, Jyn remains “True to Self”, leading a small squad of volunteers, which Bodhi dubs “Rogue One,” to raid the vault. Using the stolen Imperial shuttle, they gain access through the planet’s shield. Jyn, Cassian, and K-2SO infiltrate the base while the others attack the Imperial garrison as a diversion.

The Alliance learns of the raid from intercepted Imperial communications and deploys their fleet in support, leading to a space battle against the Imperial fleet. K-2SO sacrifices himself so Jyn and Cassian can retrieve the data. Chirrut is killed after activating the switch to allow communication with the Rebel fleet, and Baze is killed shortly afterward. Bodhi is killed by a grenade after informing the Rebel fleet that it must deactivate the planetary shield to allow the transmission of the plans. Rebel Admiral Raddus uses a Rebel ship to crash two Imperial Star Destroyers into each other; the wreckage destroys the shield generator. Jyn obtains the schematics but is ambushed by Krennic, who is shot and wounded by Cassian. Jyn transmits the schematics to the Rebel command ship moments before the Death Star arrives above Scarif, commanded by Tarkin. He orders the Death Star to destroy the citadel, killing everyone, including Krennic, Cassian, and Jyn.

The Rebel fleet prepares to jump to hyperspace, but many ships are intercepted by Darth Vader’s Star Destroyer. Vader boards the Rebel command ship and kills many troops trying to regain the schematics, but a smaller ship escapes with the plans. Aboard the fleeing ship as it enters hyperspace, Princess Leia Organa declares that the schematics will provide hope for the Rebellion.

Jyn Erso’s tenacity, resourcefulness, and unwavering spirit exemplify the potential for strong female characters to drive Science Fiction to exhilarating heights. Rogue One serves as a testament to how female leads can redefine expectations and bring fresh perspectives to the world of SCI-FI.

Everything Everywhere All At Once — (2022)

Everything Everywhere All at Once is an American absurdist comedy-drama film that incorporates elements from Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Martial Arts. Michelle Yeoh stars as Evelyn Quan Wang, a Chinese-American immigrant who, while audited by the IRS, discovers that she must connect with parallel universe versions of herself to prevent a powerful being from destroying the multiverse.

Storyline
Evelyn Quan Wang (Michelle Yeoh) is a middle-aged Chinese immigrant who runs a laundromat with her husband, Waymond (Ke Huy Quan). Two decades earlier, they eloped to the United States and had a daughter, Joy (Stephanie Hsu). In the present day, Evelyn is enduring multiple struggles: the laundromat is being audited by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS); Waymond is attempting to serve her with divorce papers in an effort to spark a discussion about their marriage; her rigorous father (referred to as Gong Gong, Cantonese for “grandfather)”(James Hong) is visiting for her Chinese New Year party; and she has a strained relationship with Joy, who is battling depression and has a non-Chinese girlfriend, Becky, whom Evelyn is reluctant to accept.

At a tense meeting with IRS inspector Deirdre Beaubeirdre (Jamie Lee Curtis), Waymond’s body is taken over by Alpha-Waymond, a version of Waymond from the “Alphaverse.” Alpha-Waymond explains to Evelyn that many parallel universes exist (the “multiverse”) because every life choice creates a new alternative universe. In the Alphaverse, the now-deceased Alpha-Evelyn developed “verse-jumping” technology, which enables people to access the skills, memories, and bodies of their parallel selves by performing bizarre actions that are statistically unlikely. The multiverse is threatened by Jobu Tupaki (Alpha-Joy), whose mind was splintered after Alpha-Evelyn pushed her to verse-jump beyond her endurance. Jobu experiences all universes at once and can verse-jump and manipulate matter at will. Jobu has created a black hole-like “Everything Bagel” that forms a toroid singularity that could destroy the multiverse.

Evelyn is provided verse-jumping technology to fight Jobu’s minions, who are converging on the IRS building. She uncovers other universes in which she made different choices and flourished, such as becoming a kung fu master and film star. She also learns that Waymond intends to file for divorce. Alpha-Waymond believes that Evelyn, as the greatest “failure” of all Evelyns in the multiverse, possesses the untapped potential needed to defeat Jobu. Gong Gong is taken over by Alpha-Gong Gong, who instructs Evelyn to kill Joy to prevent Jobu from using her to access Evelyn’s universe. Evelyn refuses and decides to face Jobu by acquiring powers through repeated verse-jumping. Alpha-Gong Gong, convinced that Evelyn’s mind has been compromised like Jobu’s, sends soldiers after Evelyn. While they fight, Jobu locates and kills Alpha-Waymond in the Alphaverse. As Jobu confronts Evelyn in her universe, Evelyn’s mind begins to splinter, causing her to collapse.

Evelyn uncontrollably verse-jumps alongside Jobu across bizarre and diverse universes. Jobu discloses she does not intend to fight, but that instead, she has been searching for an Evelyn who can see, as she does, that nothing matters. She teleports Evelyn to the Everything Bagel, divulging that she wants to use it to allow herself and Evelyn to truly die. Upon looking into the Bagel, Evelyn is initially persuaded, and behaves cruelly and nihilistically in her other universes, hurting those around her.

Just as Evelyn enters the Bagel with Jobu, she pauses to listen to Waymond’s pleas in her universe for everybody to stop fighting and to instead practice kindness, even when life is senseless. Evelyn has an existentialist epiphany (remaining “True to Self”) and decides to follow Waymond’s absurdist and humanitarian advice, utilizing her multiverse powers to fight with empathy and bring happiness to those around her. In doing so, she repairs her damage in the other universes and neutralizes Alpha-Gong Gong and Jobu’s fighters. In her home universe, Evelyn reconciles with Waymond, accepts Joy and Becky’s relationship and divulges it to Gong Gong, while Waymond convinces Deirdre to let them redo their taxes. Jobu decides to enter the Bagel alone as, simultaneously in Evelyn’s universe, Joy pleads Evelyn to let her go. Evelyn tells Joy that even when nothing makes sense and even though she could be anywhere else in the multiverse, she will always want to be with Joy. Evelyn and the others save Jobu from the Bagel, and Evelyn and Joy embrace.

Sometime later, with the family’s relationships improved, they return to the IRS building to refile their taxes. As Deirdre talks, Evelyn’s attention is momentarily drawn to her alternative selves, before she grounds herself back in her home universe.

“True to Self” SCI-FI shows how Heroes face Adversity — by listening to their “Inner Voice”. It helps them to remember Who they are and hold on to Beliefs they hold dear. It Empowers them to overcome Fear by fending off Lies from people who cannot be trusted (because they have “given in” to the “Dark Side” of human nature).

May we all feel Inspired … to do likewise.

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Alternative Future SCI-FI — imagines more than one “Possible FUTURE” for Humanity, flowing from Choices we make in the PRESENT.

Exploring these stories can help us to “see” the world as it might be — 10, 20, or more years from now — Warning us of Danger in the form of a “Cautionary Tale” or offering Hope that Disaster may be averted — if we change course TODAY.

In either case, we have a role to play in determining which Future unfolds before us.

“The City on the Edge of Forever” — Star Trek (TOS) — (1967)

“The City on the Edge of Forever” is an episode from season one of the American SCI-FI TV series Star Trek.

STORYLINE
While the USS Enterprise orbits a mysterious planet causing time distortions, Doctor McCoy (DeForest Kelley) is treating a near-death Lt. Sulu when the Enterprise is rocked by another time wave and McCoy accidentally injects himself with a huge dose of cordrazine, a dangerous drug. Driven into a mad frenzy, he flees from the bridge and beams himself down to the planet.

Captain Kirk (William Shatner) follows with a search party that includes first officer Spock, (Leonard Nimoy) chief engineer Scott, (James Doohan) and communications officer Uhura (Nichelle Nichols). On the planet’s surface, they come across an ancient glowing ring (the “Guardian of Forever”), a portal capable of sending them to any time and place. The Guardian shows them images of Earth’s historical past, which Spock records on his tricorder. Suddenly, the still-frenzied McCoy bursts out from his hiding place and jumps through the portal.

The landing party instantly loses contact with the Enterprise, and the Guardian explains that McCoy has altered the past to such an extent that the Enterprise and the reality they knew no longer exists. The Guardian says that it’s possible to fix the damage, so Kirk requests that it replay the historical period it was showing when McCoy passed through.

He and Spock attempt to jump through at a point in time just before McCoy’s arrival and find themselves in New York City in 1930 during the Great Depression. They steal clothes from a fire escape to blend in, and while fleeing from a policeman, hide in the basement of the 21st Street Mission. There they meet the soup kitchen’s operator, Edith Keeler (Joan Collins). She senses something odd about the intruders but nevertheless offers to pay them to clean up the basement and finds them a place to stay.

Later, Spock attempts to discover how McCoy changed history by accessing the recordings on his tricorder. This is a difficult task using the available technology of 1930, which Spock likens to “stone knives and bear skins”. While Spock works on the engineering problem, Kirk pays their expenses by doing odd jobs at the mission, where he falls in love with Keeler. (Unknown to Kirk and Spock, McCoy arrives in a highly agitated state and stumbles into the mission, where Keeler nurses him back to health.)

Spock completes his work and discovers that Keeler was supposed to die in a traffic collision but was somehow saved by the arrival of McCoy, creating an altered timeline in which she founded a pacifist movement on the eve of World War II. It grew powerful enough to cause the United States to delay its entrance into the war, allowing Nazi Germany time to develop the first atomic bomb and use it to win the war instead of the Allies and conquer the world. Kirk is shaken by this revelation and admits his love for Keeler, to which Spock responds that she must die to prevent millions of deaths and restore the future.

SPOCK: Captain, Edith Keeler
is the focal point in time we’ve
been looking for, the point that
both we and Doctor McCoy
have been drawn to.

KIRK: She has two possible
futures then, and depending
on whether she lives or dies,
all of History will be changed.

While walking to a movie with Kirk the following evening, Keeler casually mentions McCoy’s name. Shocked, Kirk tells Keeler to stay right there while he crosses the street back to the mission to inform Spock. McCoy emerges from the mission at the same time, and the trio reunite on the sidewalk. Observing this, Keeler begins to cross the street to join them and does not notice an oncoming truck. Kirk instinctively turns to save her, but a shout from Spock freezes him in his tracks, and Kirk reluctantly grabs McCoy so he can’t save her either. Keeler is struck and killed. A stunned McCoy asks Kirk if he knows what he just did, but it is Spock who replies, “He knows, Doctor. He knows.”

Kirk, Spock, and McCoy return through the Guardian and rejoin the landing party, where they find contact with the Enterprise is restored. A grim-looking Kirk ignores questions about what happened, says “Let’s get the hell out of here,” and the landing party beams up to the Enterprise.

“The Road Not Taken” — Fringe — (2009)

Fringe is an American SCI-FI TV series that premiered on September 9, 2008, and concluded on January 18, 2013, after five seasons comprising 100 episodes. The series has been described as a hybrid of fantasy, procedural dramas, and serials, influenced by TV shows such as Lost, The X-Files, and The Twilight Zone.

STORYLINE
A key plot element of Fringe is the parallel universe that exists next to ours, and the concept that there’s “more than one of everything”.

There were hints of the parallel universe idea scattered through Season 1, but things really didn’t hit hard until “The Road Not Taken” episode, where Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv) starts having visions of the alternate universe. At first, the visions were fairly simple, like Olivia seeing two charred bodies instead of one, and seeing Broyles’ office in a different configuration, but then things started to get really weird.

In “Road”, Walter Bishop (John Noble) theorizes that Olivia is experiencing a form of extended deja vu, which he believes is just a brief glimpse of an alternative reality. Olivia’s mind is somehow breaching the fragile walls of space-time. Walter postulates that although we experience time as a linear progression, in reality, every choice we make creates parallel universes, so time is actually like a continuously branching tree of alternative realities. He explains that “deja vu” comes with a feeling of being somewhere before because you actually have been there, in another reality. Also, as we first learned in “Momentum Deferred” that some people, like Olivia, can be “tuned” to see a “shimmer” around objects and people, like Peter Bishop (Joshua Jackson) — from the alternate universe.

“Deja vu
is simply a
momentary
glimpse to the
other side. Almost
everyone experiences
it. We feel that we’ve
been somewhere before
because actually we have
in another reality.
It’s another path.
The road not
taken.”

— DR. WALTER BISHOP

The final scene of the Season 1 finale is still the pivotal moment when everything changed, and we were “through the looking glass”, so to speak. The images of the World Trade Center towers, still standing, brings the point home. A New York Post newspaper from Universe 2 features stories about former president John F. Kennedy (still alive) addressing the United Nations.

Fringe teaches us that every choice we make creates an Alternative Future or Reality.

Cloud Atlas — (2012)

STORYLINE
The story of Cloud Atlas follows six main characters during six time periods, all taking place at various places on Earth. As each story progresses, connections between the actions of the characters become clear, each one making a significant impact on the following stories. A quick breakdown:

1849, Pacific Islands: The setting of the first plot is in the South Pacific, where attorney Adam Ewing arranges a business meeting with plantation owner Gilles Horrox. After they set sail, Ewing finds a stowaway slave, Autua, and begins to help keep him hidden. Meanwhile, Dr. Henry Goose slowly poisons Ewing with the intent of killing him for his gold, under the pretense of treating him for a parasite. Just before Ewing is about to die, Autua saves him from the doctor. After returning to San Francisco, Ewing and his wife Tilda join the abolitionist movement.

1936, Cambridge: Robert Frobisher is a bisexual/homosexual (we aren’t really sure) English composer who takes an apprenticeship under the famous composer Vyvyan Ayrs. He is inspired by the journal kept by Adam Ewing, and sends a series of letters to his lover, Rufus Sixsmith. Frobisher eventually composes his original piece, the Cloud Atlas Sextet, which Vyvyan attempts to steal and claim as his own, leading Frobisher to shoot and injure the old man. After finishing his composition, Frobisher commits suicide.

1973, San Francisco: Luisa Rey is a journalist who has been tipped off by a now older Rufus Sixsmith about foul play in the new nearby nuclear reactor, built by Lloyd Hooks. Hooks plans to have the reactor fail, causing a disaster and a subsequent boost in the oil business. Sixsmith and Isaac Sachs, another employee who helps Rey, are killed by Hooks’s assassin. A friend of Rey’s father eventually helps her gather the evidence and kill the hitman. Rey also finds and reads Frobisher’s letters to Sixsmith.

2012, Great Britain: Publisher Timothy Cavendish becomes involved with the wrong crowd after one of his writers commits a murder. Pressed for a share of the profits by the author’s brother, Cavendish turns to his own brother for money, who then locks him up in a nursing home as a “practical joke.” While there, he reads a mystery novel written by Luisa Rey about her ordeal with Hooks. He plans an escape with the other residents of the nursing home, and eventually writes a movie about his adventures.

2144, Neo Seoul: Jumping ahead a century, the next story takes place in a dystopian future, following the clone workers at a popular restaurant. One of the clones, Sonmi-451, is inspired by Cavendish’s film and escapes the restaurant with the help of rebel soldier Hae Joo. She discovers that after a clone completes its contract, it is recycled into food for the other clones. Determined to stop this wrongdoing, she becomes the voice of the rebel forces and is martyred.

“Our lives
are not our own.
From womb to tomb,
We are bound to others.
Past and present. And by
each crime and every
kindness, we birth
our future.”

— SONMI-451

2346, Hawaii: Far into the future, a group of tribesmen live as some of the last among the human race after some apocalyptic event. This tribe worships Sonmi (Sonmi-451) as a goddess, and the main character Zachry is tormented by “Old Georgie,” a devilish figure of his imagination. A Prescient, a race more advanced than the Valleymen, named Meronym visits the village. She and Zachry travel to a rundown communication station to activate a beacon, with the hope that someone will rescue them from the planet. While they are gone, a war tribe kills everyone in their village except for Zachry’s daughter. They eventually escape Earth on a spaceship and end up on a distant planet, where Zachry and Meronym start a family.

Cloud Atlas, both as an entirety and in its separate parts, primarily focuses on the metaphysical aspect of humanity and the interconnectivity of all things. (Metaphysics, which itself is the title of a book by Aristotle literally meaning “after physics,” is the branch of philosophy that attempts to gain an understanding of reality as a whole—basically a total explanation for all things.)

Theology is also quite prevalent in Cloud Atlas, mostly in the story told from the far future in which the Valleymen worship Sonmi as a goddess—the same Sonmi who was a Fabricant in 2144 Neo Seoul. Theology means “the study of God,” and it has been the subject of intense thought throughout time.

One of the most prevalent aspects of Eastern philosophy that is prominent in Cloud Atlas is the concept of rebirth and karma. Karma is defined in most Eastern worldviews as the influence of a person’s actions on his or her future, including future lives. According to an interview with Tom Hanks on his role in the film, the actors playing the characters represents the soul of the individual and its continuity through death and rebirth. Each of the characters’ souls takes a different journey through each of the time periods, eventually bringing about that soul’s fate.

Through karmic law and the immortal soul, Cloud Atlas presents a metaphysical “big picture” of reality, with different times and spaces being inherently connected to each other. This demonstrates how our own human lives are integrally connected to those of others in ways we cannot imagine.

The question of what we can and cannot know is also addressed when the Archivist is interviewing Sonmi-451. He asks her for her perspective, her “version” of the Truth. Sonmi replies to this statement, saying, “Truth is singular. Its ‘versions’ are mistruths.” Following the Pre-Modernist view of Truth, which is one that is ultimately objective but not truly knowable, Sonmi’s definition of Truth contrasts that of the Archivist’s, presenting the wide range of beliefs that have been held throughout the history of philosophy.

Ultimately, the characters of Cloud Atlas grow to discover for themselves some level of the Truth in that they make choices they cannot, not make. And every choice shapes the Future that unfolds … for generations to come.

In other words, everything is connected.

Tomorrowland — (2015)

Tomorrowland is an American SCI-FI film — inspired by the progressive cultural movements of the Space Age, as well as Walt Disney’s optimistic philosophy of the future.

STORYLINE
In 1964, a young boy named Frank Walker (Thomas Robinson) attends the New York World’s Fair to sell his prototype jet pack, but is rejected because it does not work. Frank is approached by a young girl, Athena, (Raffey Cassidy) who hands him an orange lapel pin with a blue “T” embossed on it, telling him to follow her onto Walt Disney’s “It’s a Small World” attraction at the Fair’s Pepsi-Cola Pavilion. Frank obeys and sneaks onto the ride, where the pin is scanned by a laser, and he is transported to Tomorrowland, a futuristic cityscape, where advanced robots fix his jetpack, allowing him to fly and join the secretive world.

In the present day, optimistic teenager Casey Newton (Britt Robertson) repeatedly sabotages the planned demolition of a NASA launch site in Florida. Her father, Eddie, is a NASA engineer, but faces losing his job. Casey is eventually caught and arrested. At the police station, she finds a pin in her belongings. While touching it, the pin transports her to Tomorrowland. Her adventure is cut short when the pin’s battery runs out, leaving Casey stranded in a lake.

With help from her younger brother Nate, Casey finds a Houston memorabilia store related to the pin. The owners attack her when she is unable to divulge where she got the pin, insisting that Casey knows about a “little girl”. Athena bursts in and defeats the owners, actually Audio-Animatronics, who self-destruct, blowing apart the shop. After Casey and Athena steal a car, Athena reveals she is also an animatronic, purposed to find and recruit people who fit the ideals of Tomorrowland. Athena drops Casey off outside an adult Frank’s house in Pittsfield, New York.

The now reclusive, cynical Frank (George Clooney) declines Casey’s request to take her to Tomorrowland, having been banished from it years ago. Inside Frank’s house, Casey finds a probability counter marking the end of the world. Frank warns her that the future is doomed, but she disagrees, thus lowering the counter’s probability. Animatronic assassins arrive to kill Casey, but she and Frank escape, meeting Athena in the woods outside Frank’s house. Frank resents Athena for lying to him about her true nature, but reluctantly agrees to help them get to Tomorrowland.

“Find the ones
who haven’t given up.
They’re the future.“

— FRANK WALKER

Using a teleportation device, the trio travel to the top of the Eiffel Tower. Frank explains that Gustave Eiffel, Jules Verne, Nikola Tesla, and Thomas Edison co-founded Plus Ultra, a secret society of futurists, creating Tomorrowland in another dimension, free to make scientific breakthroughs without obstruction. The trio use an antique rocket, called the Spectacle, hidden beneath the Eiffel Tower to travel to Tomorrowland.

There, they find Tomorrowland in a state of decay. David Nix, (Hugh Laurie) Tomorrowland’s governor, greets them. They travel to a tachyon machine, invented by Frank, which accurately predicted the worldwide catastrophe. Casey refuses to accept the world will end, causing the future to temporarily alter. While Frank attempts to convince David to listen, he refuses and intends to have the group leave Tomorrowland.

Casey realizes the tachyon machine is telling humanity that the world will end, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. They confront David, who admits he tried to prevent the future by projecting such images to humanity as a warning. Instead, they embraced the apocalypse, refusing to act to make a better future for their world. Believing that humanity simply gave up, David has also given up and intends to allow the apocalypse to happen so that he can rebuild the world to his liking.

Casey, Frank, and Athena attempt to use a bomb to destroy the machine, leading to a fight with David. The bomb is accidentally thrown through a portal to an uninhabited island on Earth, the explosion pinning David’s leg. Athena sees a vision of the future where Frank is shot by David, and she jumps in the way of his attack, mortally wounding herself beyond repair. Making peace with Frank, Athena activates her self-destruct sequence, destroying the machine, which falls on David, killing him.

In the present, Casey and Frank lead Tomorrowland, recruit Eddie and Nate, and create a new group of recruitment animatronics like Athena, whom they were addressing at the beginning of the film. Given pins, the animatronic children set out to recruit new dreamers and thinkers for Tomorrowland.

Tomorrowland reminds us that the Future is what we make it.

The Handmaid’s Tale — (2017)

The Handmaid’s Tale is an American Dystopian TV series, based on the 1985 novel of the same name by Canadian author Margaret Atwood.

STORYLINE
The story takes place in the Republic of Gliead, a city in what used to be in the United States. In this alternative future state, the democratic government has been overthrown and replaced by a totalitarian one. What makes Gilead so scary is that it still looks pretty much the same … but its government and society are totally alien from our own. Gilead seems to be without freedom or choice. By law, women are forced to work in very limited roles, including some as natal slaves, and they are not allowed to own property, have careers, handle money, or read.

Worldwide infertility has led to the enslavement of fertile women in Gilead determined by the new régime to be fallen women, citing an extremist interpretation of the Biblical account of Bilhah. These women often include those who have entered marriages following divorce (termed “adulteresses”, as divorce is not recognized under Gileadian law), single or unmarried mothers, lesbians (homosexuals being termed “gender traitors”), non-Christians, adherents of Christian denominations other than the “Sons of Jacob”, political dissidents, and academics.

These women, called Handmaids, are assigned to the homes of the ruling elite, where they must submit to ritualized rape (referred to as “the ceremony”) by their male masters (“Commanders”) in the presence of their wives with the intent of being impregnated and bearing children for them. Handmaids are given names created by the addition of the prefix Of- to the first name of the man who has them. When they are transferred, their names are changed.

Along with the Handmaids, much of society is now grouped into classes that dictate their freedoms and duties. Women are divided into a small range of social categories, each one signified by a plain dress in a specific color. A Handmaid’s outfit consists of a long red dress, a red cloak, heavy brown boots, and a white coif, with a larger white bonnet (known as “wings”) to be worn outside, which conceals her from the public view and restricts her vision.

June Osborne, (Elisabeth Moss) renamed Offred, is the Handmaid assigned to the home of the Gileadan Commander Fred Waterford and his wife Serena Joy, key players in the formation and rise of Gilead, who struggle with the realities of the society they helped create. During “the time before”, June was married to Luke and had a daughter, Hannah.

“Now
I’m awake
to the world.
I was asleep
before. That’s
how we let it happen.
When they slaughtered
Congress, we didn’t wake
up. When they blamed
terrorists and suspended
the Constitution, we
didn’t wake up then
either. They said
it would be
temporary.”

— JUNE OSBORNE

At the beginning of the story, while attempting to flee Gilead with her husband and daughter, June was captured and forced to become a Handmaid because of the adultery she and her husband committed. June’s daughter was taken and given to an upper-class family to raise, and her husband escaped into Canada. Much of the plot revolves around June’s desire to be reunited with her husband and daughter and the internal evolution of her strength to its somewhat darker version.

The Handmaid’s Tale warns us that allowing discrimination based on gender and sexuality — with power concentrated in the hands of a few — can result in a horrific slide from Democracy to Authoritarianism.

Alternative Future SCI-FI imagines more than one Possible FUTURE for Humanity — flowing from Choices we make in the PRESENT. It may Warn us of Danger, leading to Disaster — or offer Hope for a Brighter Tomorrow, if we change course TODAY.

So which path will it be? To War or Peace … Enslavement or Freedom … Extinction or Survival?

The Choice is up to YOU.

***

(click image link to view YouTube video)

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Hypnotic Leader SCI-FI explores the potential dangers — when Followers are so captivated by an Authoritarian Leader — that they lose their ability to Think or Judge for themselves. Worst case scenario: they give up their Will (similar to hypnosis) and Obey Commands without question, abandoning all principles of Morality.

Real-life Worst case example: Adolf Hitler. During a time of economic hardship and political instability, Hitler tapped into the fears, frustrations, and hopes of the German people, presenting himself as a Savior who could restore Germany to its former glory (“Make It Great Again”). Bound together by a sense of unity and purpose, his followers succumbed to HATE, committing atrocities against Humanity — in the belief they were destined to rule the world.

Charismatic, Hypnotic Leaders (eccentric, misguided or just plain Evil) often appear in Science Fiction, driving the plot with their Manipulative and Magnetic personalities. Like any toxic relationship, the one between an Authoritarian and their submissive Followers is based on Pathology — leading inevitably to Conflict, Chaos, and Self-Destruction.

“And the Children Shall Lead” — Star Trek (TOS) — (1968)

“And the Children Shall Lead” is the fourth episode of the third season of the American SCI-FI TV series Star Trek.

In the story, federation starship Enterprise arrives at the planet Triacus. Captain Kirk, (William Shatner) Dr. McCoy, (DeForest Kelley) and First Officer Spock (Leonard Nimoy) beam down in time to witness the death of Professor Starnes, the leader of a scientific expedition team. The other members of the expedition, apart from their five seemingly unconcerned children who play and chant, seem to have died at their own hands, dominated by a mysterious fear.

The crew bring the children back to the Enterprise, where McCoy evaluates them and determines that they are suffering from lacunar amnesia, unaware of what happened to their parents and unable to grieve. However, when left unattended in one of the ship’s rooms, the children chant an evocation (“Hail hail, fire and snow. Call the angel, we will go. Far away, for to see, friendly Angel, come to me“) and summon a glowing humanoid named Gorgan (Melvin Belli). He tells them to take control of the crew in order to get to Marcus XII, where he will dominate millions more followers and conquer the galaxy. The eldest child, Tommy, uses mental powers Gorgan has bestowed on the children to trick the crew into steering the ship while presenting illusions that make them think they are still in orbit above Triacus.

Upon reviewing a troubling expedition film recorded by Starnes, Spock, McCoy, and Kirk return to the bridge to find the children and Gorgan fully in control of the crew through illusion and fear. Unable to break their hold on the crew, Spock observes that the children are actually possessed by Gorgan, who must be the evil embodiment of an ancient group of space-warring marauders released by Starnes’s archaeological survey.

SPOCK : Evil does seek to maintain power by suppressing the truth.

MCCOY : Or by misleading the innocent.

SPOCK : Humans do have an amazing capacity for believing what they
choose, and excluding that which is painful.

KIRK : Spock, they’re not the Alien beings, they’re children being misled.

SPOCK : They are followers. Without followers, evil cannot spread.

Mesmerized by their “Friendly Angel”, the children blindly follow orders. They cannot see the Truth. Believing they can break the hold Gorgan has on the children, Spock plays back footage showing the children happy with their parents, who are then shown to be dead. As the children realize what has happened, they break down emotionally and Gorgan’s appearance begins to deteriorate as he shouts at them but fails to retain their loyalty. The children begin to cry and Dr. McCoy says, “It’s all right. We can help them now.” The crew regains control and Kirk orders a course for Starbase 4.

Richard Keller of TV Squad listed Gorgan as the “tenth scariest” television character. In 2020, Den of Geek ranked “And the Children Shall Lead” as the 11th most scary of all Star Trek TV episodes.

The Empire Strikes Back — Original Star Wars Trilogy — (1980)

Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) first appears in The Empire Strikes Back as Emperor of the Galactic Empire and the master of Darth Vader. Also known as Darth Sidious, Palpatine is a master manipulator who rises to power through deceit and cunning. His charisma and dark influence are pivotal in turning Anakin Skywalker to the dark side.

“There is only one plan
— one great design which shall govern the universe
— mine.”
EMPEROR PALPATINE

Many of Palpatine’s most devious plans stem from him planting an idea or emotion in someone’s head and letting them do the rest of their own volition, watching as they deliver the result he hoped (and planned) for. Another basic strategy: he helps create a crisis, then “generously” offers to end it with a scenario dependent on giving him more political power.

Palpatine’s story — as an ambitious and ruthless politician dismantling a democratic republic to achieve Supreme power — was in part inspired by examples from real-world politics. Star Wars creator George Lucas has said that Nixon’s presidency “got me to thinking historically about how do democracies get turned into dictatorships. Because the democracies aren’t overthrown; they’re given away.” He also said “It’s the same thing with Germany and Hitler … You sort of see these recurring themes, where a democracy turns itself into a dictatorship, and it always seems to happen kind of in the same way.”

In the prequel trilogy, Palpatine becomes a symbol of sinister deception and the subversion of democracy. His career begins as a senator from the planet Naboo who plots to become Supreme Chancellor. He then masterminds the Clone Wars to turn the Republic into the Empire, destroys the Jedi Order, and manipulates Anakin Skywalker into becoming his apprentice, Darth Vader.

In the end, it takes the combined efforts of the second and third most powerful Force users alive — Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader (aka Anakin Skywalker, aka Dad) — to defeat him.

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier — (1989)

In Star Trek V, Sybok (Laurance Luckinbill) is a charismatic Vulcan holy man who possesses the ability to telepathically make others face their greatest pain. He converts them into his followers after he heals them.

SYBOK: Your pain runs deep.

J’ONN: What do you know of my pain?

SYBOK: Let us explore it … together. Each man hides a secret pain.
It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the
darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain … Share your pain
with me and gain strength from it.

J’ONN: Where did you get this power?

SYBOK: The power was within you.

J’ONN: It is as if a weight has been lifted from my heart.
How can I repay you for this miracle?

SYBOK: Join my quest.

J’ONN: What is it you seek?

SYBOK: What you seek. What all men have sought since time began, …
the ultimate knowledge. To find it, we’ll need a starship.

As the film’s director, William Shatner conceived the story and based the character of Sybok on 1980s televangelists like Jim and Tammy Bakker and Jimmy Swaggert, who made their fortunes conning people into believing they were God’s true messenger.

In the story, Sybok is also revealed to be Spock’s long lost half-brother, which creates a powerful connection between them and a quandary — as Sybok challenges Spock to betray Captain Kirk.

Sybok has became a dangerous Vulcan who has rejected logic and embraced emotion. Worse, Sybok is a madman who believes that “God” speaks to him and wants him to steal a starship and find the mythical holy world of Sha-Ka-Ree located beyond the Great Barrier.

Sybok hijacks the USS Enterprise-A and forces the starship to find Sha-Ka-Ree. There, Sybok, Spock, Kirk, and McCoy find “God” — who turns out to be a malevolent ALIEN trapped in the Great Barrier.

Upon realizing his folly, Sybok sacrifices himself and is killed by “God” so that Spock and his friends can escape. Spock finally destroys the Alien imposter and mourns the loss of Sybok … even though he also reaffirms that Kirk, Bones, and the Enterprise crew are his ‘family.’

Star Trek: First Contact — (1996)

Star Trek: First Contact is the eighth movie of the Star Trek franchise, and the second starring the cast of the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation, directed by Jonathan Frakes in his feature film debut.

The film introduces a controversial new villain to the Star Trek universe: the Borg Queen (Alice Krige) — an ancient being that has existed within and served the Borg Collective for many centuries. As the lone individual within it, the Queen provides direction and purpose for the hive mind.

“I am the beginning, the end,
the one who is many.
I am the Borg.”
— THE BORG QUEEN, 2063

Where her drones showed no emotions, the Queen herself did. She was ruthless, vindictive, petty, and selfish. She would do anything to expand the Borg Collective, employing psychological tactics like extortion, manipulation, plain intimidation or even seduction to further her goals.

STORYLINE : In the 24th century, Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) awakens from a nightmare in which he relives his assimilation by the cybernetic Borg six years earlier. He is contacted by Starfleet, who inform him of a new Borg threat against Earth. Picard’s orders are for his ship, USS Enterprise, to patrol the Neutral Zone in case of Romulan aggression; Starfleet is worried that Picard is too emotionally involved with the Borg to join the fight.

Learning the fleet is losing the battle, the Enterprise crew disobeys orders and heads for Earth, where a single Borg Cube ship holds its own against a group of Starfleet vessels. Enterprise arrives in time to assist the crew of USS Defiant and its commander, the Klingon Worf (Michael Dorn). Picard takes control of the fleet and directs the surviving ships to concentrate their firepower on a seemingly unimportant point on the Borg ship. The Cube launches a smaller spherical ship towards Earth before being destroyed. Enterprise pursues the sphere into a temporal vortex. As the sphere disappears, Enterprise discovers Earth has been altered — it is now populated by Borg. Realizing the Borg have used time travel to change the past, Enterprise follows the sphere through the vortex.

Enterprise arrives hundreds of years in the past on April 4, 2063, the day before the historic warp drive flight that leads to humanity’s first encounter with Alien life. The crew realizes the Borg are trying to prevent “first contact” and assimilate humanity while the planet is recovering from a devastating war. After destroying the Borg sphere, an away team transports down to Zefram Cochrane’s warp ship, Phoenix, in Bozeman, Montana. Picard has Cochrane’s assistant Lily Sloane (Alfre Woodard) sent back to Enterprise for medical attention. The captain returns to the ship and leaves Commander William T. Riker (Jonathan Frakes) on Earth to make sure Phoenix’s flight proceeds as planned. While in the future Cochrane (James Cromwell) is seen as a hero, in reality he built the Phoenix for financial gain and is reluctant to be the historic figure the crew describes.

A group of Borg invade Enterprise’s lower decks, assimilating some of the crew and modifying the ship. Picard and a team attempt to reach engineering to disable the Borg with a corrosive gas, but are forced back; the android Data (Brent Spiner) is captured in the melee. A frightened Lily corners Picard with a weapon, but he gains her trust. The two escape the Borg-infested area of the ship by creating a diversion in the holodeck. Picard, Worf, and the ship’s navigator, Lieutenant Hawk, travel outside the ship in space suits to stop the Borg from using the navigational deflector to call for reinforcements, but Hawk is assimilated in the process. As the Borg assimilate more decks, Worf suggests destroying the ship, but Picard angrily calls him a coward. Lily confronts the captain and makes him realize he is acting irrationally because of his own past with the Borg. Picard apologises to Worf and orders the activation of the ship’s self-destruct and evacuation of the crew to escape pods, while he stays behind to rescue Data.

As Cochrane, Riker, and engineer Geordi La Forge (LeVar Burton) prepare to activate the warp drive on Phoenix, Picard discovers that the Borg Queen has grafted human skin onto Data, giving him the sensation of touch he has long desired so that she can obtain the android’s encryption codes to the Enterprise computer. Although Picard offers himself to the Borg in exchange for Data’s freedom, Data refuses to leave, deactivates the self-destruct, and fires torpedoes at Phoenix. At the last moment the torpedoes miss, and the Queen realizes Data deceived her. The android ruptures a coolant tank, and the corrosive vapor eats away the biological components of the Borg as well as Data’s new skin.

With the Borg threat neutralized, Cochrane completes his warp flight. Later that night, the crew watches from a distance as an Alien Vulcan ship, attracted by the Phoenix warp test, lands on Earth. Cochrane greets the Aliens. Having ensured the correction of the timeline, Picard bids Lily farewell and the Enterprise crew slip away and return to the 24th century.

In 2002, the Borg Queen was placed second in TV Zone’s list of the top twenty SCI-FI TV villains.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay (Parts 1 & 2) — (2014, 2015)

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 is the third installment in The Hunger Games film series. In the story, Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) joins President Alma Coin (Julianne Moore), the renegade leader of the underground District 13, in a mass rebellion against the Capitol. In Part 2, the final installment in the original film series, Katniss (Lawrence) leads a team of rebels to Panem to liberate it from the tyrannical leadership of President Snow (Donald Sutherland).

President Coin uses manipulative tactics to take power, while presenting herself as Panem’s salvation. For Katniss, stuck between the manipulation of Panem and her own need to survive, it becomes impossible to tell who is trustworthy. Coin is never someone to whom Katniss devotes her allegiance. She slowly comes to realize that the woman who has taken up the District 13 revolution is more dangerous than she seems.

A significant lesson that Katniss must learn: how dangerous the perspective of “us vs. them” is within a nation. One purpose of the brutal Games is to pit the Districts against one another and therefore keep them from uniting. By keeping the Capitol citizens separate from those of the Districts, they cause isolation there as well. Even though District 13 seeks to deconstruct Panem’s rule, it still falls into this mindset. President Coin’s black-and-white way of thinking (about her allies and enemies) leads her to condemn anyone associated with the Capitol, including Peeta.

When President Coin decides to put Peeta on Katniss’ squad (as District 13 takes the Capitol) it is clear to everyone involved — even those loyal to her — that Coin’s only motivation for this would be to eliminate the Mockingjay entirely. She has determined that the only use Katniss could be at that point is as a martyr.

“Dead or alive, Katniss Everdeen
will remain the face of this rebellion.”
— PRESIDENT COIN

Once President Coin takes the Panem Capitol, she wastes no time further demonstrating her “us vs. them” mentality. Coin calls together all the remaining Hunger Games victors and asks them to vote on her idea to reinstate the Games — this time using Capitol children. It becamc clear then that Coin has the same mentality as Snow. To her, children are a tool to be used against those that love them. They are chess pieces to be maneuvered and sacrificed. If Coin is willing to kill Capitol children in the Hunger Games, she would undoubtedly be willing to in a war.

On the surface, Coin appears to have a calm and collected demeanor, but towards the end of the war, Katniss Everdeen realizes how ruthless she can be in her pursuit of power. She is a Charismatic Leader and a remarkably subtle Manipulator, having positioned Katniss and every powerful player in Panem into the proper place on her chessboard in order to seize political victory, even outmaneuvering President Snow.

Her surname (“Coin”) might be related to the saying “two sides of the same coin”, since she is superficially different from Snow, but the two presidents are fundamentally similar in their ruthless pursuit of power.

Hypnotic Leader SCI-FI often draws inspiration from real-world examples, where captivated Followers, manipulated by a Charismatic, Authoritative Leader, lose their ability to Think or Judge for themselves — succumbing to HATE. Worst case scenario: they Obey Commands without question, abandoning all principles of Morality. That danger is very present in our world today.

Like any toxic relationship, it can lead inevitably to Conflict, Chaos, and Self-Destruction.

Don’t let this happen … to YOU.

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“Through a Child’s Eyes” SCI-FI can open our minds to TRUTH in a remarkable way — because it enables us to see a World full of Possibilities, where Everything is New, with No Limits to our Imagination.

It’s the ideal way to be — if we want to experience enlightenment — about Who we are as Human Beings … and our Place in the Universe. Hollywood has opened the door for us through great SCI-FI storytelling — from a Child’s Point of View.

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial — (1982)

One night, as small Alien visitors secretly gather plants in a California forest, one of them is separated from the group, fascinated by city lights. Government vehicles arrive, a chase ensues, and the other Aliens are forced into a hasty departure, leaving him behind. In a nearby San Fernando Valley neighborhood, lonely ten-year-old Elliott (Henry Thomas) pitches a baseball into a tool shed, and is astonished when the ball rolls back. Later he returns with a flashlight and discovers the Alien hiding among cornstalks. It shrieks and flees the scene.

Despite his family’s disbelief, (his brother Michael jokes that it must be a “goblin”) Elliott leaves a trail of candy to lure the Alien into his house. Before bed, he realizes the Alien is imitating his movements. The next morning, Elliott feigns sickness to stay home from school. He can “feel” the Alien’s thoughts and emotions, shown when the Alien accidentally opens an umbrella, startling him and simultaneously Elliott several rooms away.

Later, Elliott introduces his older brother Michael and seven-year-old sister Gertie (Drew Barrymore) to the Alien (saying, “remember the goblin?”), deciding to keep him hidden from their mother, Mary (Dee Wallace). When the children ask about his origins, the Alien shows them, levitating balls to represent his planetary system, and shows his ability to revive dead chrysanthemums. Through his glowing fingertip, he also heals a minor cut on Elliott’s finger.

At school the next day, Elliott experiences a much stronger empathic connection with the Alien, exhibiting signs of intoxication (because the Alien is at Elliott’s home, drinking beer) and freeing the frogs about to be dissected in biology class. As the Alien watches John Wayne kiss Maureen O’Hara on TV, Elliott kisses a girl he likes and is sent to the principal’s office.

The Alien dubs himself “E.T.”, reading a comic strip where Buck Rogers, stranded, calls for help by building a makeshift communication device, and is inspired to try it himself. E.T. gets Elliott’s help to build a device to “phone home” by using parts from a Speak & Spell, a record player, circular-saw blade, wooden coat-hanger, foil-lined umbrella, and other items from Elliott’s house. Michael notes that E.T.’s health is declining and that Elliott is referring to himself as “we”. The children are unaware that E.T. is being tracked by government agents and they are being spied on.

On Halloween night, Michael and Elliott dress E.T. as a ghost to sneak him out. Elliott and E.T. head through the forest, where E.T. attempts to “phone home” with his device. The next day, Elliott wakes up in the field, finding E.T. gone. Elliott returns home to his worried family. Michael discovers E.T. dying next to a culvert and takes him home to an also-dying Elliott. Mary is horrified upon discovery of her son’s illness and the dying Alien, just as a group of government agents dressed in biohazard suits led by Keys (Peter Coyote) invades the house.

Elliott: “He needs to go home; he’s calling his people. And I
don’t know where they are, but he needs to go home.”

Keys: “I don’t think he was left here intentionally, but his being
here is a miracle, Elliott. It’s a miracle and you did the best
that anybody could do. I’m glad he met you first.”

While scientists attempt to treat E.T. in a lab set up inside their house, the mental connection between him and Elliott is lost. E.T. appears to die while Elliott recovers. As he is carried away, Elliott screams that doctors are killing E.T. as they try to revive him. When they pronounce E.T. dead, Michael discovers that the chrysanthemums that E.T. previously revived are dying again. As Elliott recovers, the scientists first return him to his family, but then Keys leaves him alone with E.T. Elliott says a tearful goodbye, telling E.T. that he loves him before closing the case. E.T.’s heart light begins to glow, Elliott sees the chrysanthemum coming back to life, and opens the case. E.T. awakes and says that his people are returning.

Elliott and Michael steal the van that E.T. had been loaded into and flee the scene, with Michael’s friends joining them on bicycles, evading authorities. Suddenly facing a police roadblock, E.T. helps them escape by using his telekinesis to lift them into the air just in time and towards the forest like he had done for Elliott before.

Standing near the spaceship, E.T.’s heart glows as he prepares to return home, while Mary, Gertie, and Keys show up. E.T. says goodbye to Michael and Gertie, as she presents him with the flower he had revived. Before boarding the spaceship, he embraces Elliott and tells him “I’ll be right here”, pointing his glowing finger to Elliott’s forehead. He picks up the chrysanthemum and boards the spaceship. As the others watch it take off, the spaceship leaves a rainbow in the sky.

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial successfully merges Science Fiction with childlike wonder. E.T. wants to return to his world rather than conquer ours. It’s easy for children he encounters on Earth to understand his peaceful intentions. This movie remains a beloved favorite among children and adults for its powerful themes of love, friendship, and the universality of the human experience.

A.I. Artificial Intelligence — (2001)

In the future, polar ice caps have melted and submerged coastal cities. When one company creates the first Mecha child, an employee brings home a prototype, David (Haley Joel Osment) to his wife, Monica (Frances O’Connor), hoping to ease her grief over their comatose son in cryo-stasis. His love is real. But he is not. At first, David lives happily as part of the family.

But when their natural child suddenly recovers, David is abandoned and sets out to become “a real boy” worthy of his mother’s affection. Like Pinocchio, he goes on a long journey hoping to find his “Blue Fairy,” who can make his dreams come true.

Along the way, David is mentored by a pleasure-providing Mecha named Gigolo Joe (Jude Law) and a talking “super toy” bear named Teddy. His adventures take him to the Roman Circus-style “Flesh Fair,” where Mechas are destroyed for human amusement; Rouge City, where Gigolo Joe narrowly avoids capture by police; and finally a submerged New York City, where David’s creator, Professor Hobby (William Hurt) reveals secrets of the boy’s creation.

David finds copies of himself, is disheartened by his lost sense of individuality, and attempts suicide by falling from a skyscraper into the ocean. While underwater, David notices a figure resembling the Blue Fairy. Joe rescues him in an amphibious aircraft before being captured by authorities with an electromagnet. David and Teddy take control of the aircraft to see the Blue Fairy, which turns out to be a statue from an attraction on Coney Island. Trapped by a fallen Wonder Wheel, David repeatedly asks the statue to turn him into a real boy until his power source is depleted.

Two thousand years later, humanity is extinct and Manhattan is buried under glacial ice. Aliens, interested in humanity, find and resurrect David and Teddy. They reconstruct the Swinton family home from David’s memories before explaining, via an interactive version of the Blue Fairy, that he cannot become human. However, they recreate Monica through genetic material from the strand of hair that Teddy kept. This version of Monica can live for only one day and cannot be revived. David spends his happiest day with Monica, and as she falls asleep in the evening, Monica tells David that she has always loved him. David lies down next to her and closes his eyes.

A.I. Artificial Intelligence had been in the works for decades under the stewardship of filmmaker Stanley Kubrick, who kept his friend Steven Spielberg in the loop about the project’s development and creative evolution, then turned it over to Spielberg before his death in 1999.

The Last Mimzy — (2007)

In the distant future, a scientist sets out to avert catastrophic ecological disaster, sending a small number of high tech devices that resemble toys back in time to modern day Seattle. Discovered by two children: Noah Wilder (Chris O’Neil) and his younger sister, Emma (Rhiannon Leigh Wryn). The “toys” are initially incomprehensible to them, other than one which appears to be a stuffed rabbit. The children keep their discovery secret from their parents

Emma becomes telepathically connected to the rabbit, namedt “Mimzy”, which imparts knowledge to her. The children gain genius-level intellects and psionic powers: Noah can teleport objects using a card-sized rectangle of green lines of light and a conch shell to control spiders. Thanks to her link, Emma develops more advanced abilities, becoming the only one who can use the “spinners”, stones which can float and produce a force field. Emma describes herself as “the chosen one” but names Noah as “the engineer” without which she cannot “build the bridge to the future”.

The children’s parents and Larry White (Rainn Wilson), Noah’s science teacher, discover the devices and the children’s powers. By mistake, Noah causes a power black-out over half the state of Washington, alerting the FBI to their activities. The family is held for questioning by Special Agent Broadman. Mimzy is revealed as artificial life form, utilizing nanotechnology created by Intel.

Emma relates a dire message from Mimzy: many others were sent into the past before her, but none of the others were able to return to their home time, because they lacked an “engineer” like Noah. Now Mimzy, the last one the scientist was able to send back, is beginning to disintegrate. To save the future, Mimzy must acquire a sample of uncorrupted human DNA to correct the damage done to DNA by ecological catastrophes.

The FBI do not believe them, so Noah and Emma use their powers to escape. Mimzy absorbs a tear from Emma, which contains her DNA. Via the time portal which Noah constructs using the toys, Mimzy returns to her point of origin. There, Mimzy provides the genetic information required to restore humanity, both physically and mentally, with Emma dubbed “Our Mother” by the people of the future.

The Last Mimzy was loosely based upon the 1943 Science Fiction short story “Mimsy Were the Borogoves” by Lewis Padgett (a pseudonym of husband-and-wife team Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore). The film’s creators take a very personal story about one family and a box of toys from the future … and turn it into an epic story in which childlike innocence saves the human race.

Tomorrowland — (2015)

In 1964, young inventor Frank Walker attends the New York World’s Fair to sell his prototype jet pack, but is rejected because it does not work. Frank is approached by a young girl, Athena (Raffey Cassidy), who hands him an orange lapel pin with a blue “T” embossed on it, telling him to follow her onto Walt Disney’s “It’s a Small World” attraction. Frank obeys and sneaks onto the ride, where the pin is scanned by a laser, and he is transported to Tomorrowland, a futuristic cityscape, where advanced robots fix his jetpack, allowing him to fly and join the secretive world.

In present day, optimistic teenager Casey Newton (Britt Robertson) repeatedly sabotages the planned demolition of a NASA launch site in Florida. Her father, Eddie (Tim McGraw), is a NASA engineer, but faces losing his job. Casey is eventually caught and arrested. At the police station, she finds a pin in her belongings. While touching it, the pin transports her to Tomorrowland. Her adventure is cut short when the pin’s battery runs out, leaving Casey stranded in a lake.

With help from her younger brother Nate, Casey finds a Houston memorabilia store related to the pin. The owners attack her when she is unable to divulge where she got the pin, insisting that Casey knows about a “little girl”. Athena bursts in and defeats the owners, (actually Audio-Animatronics), who self-destruct, blowing apart the shop. After Casey and Athena steal a car, Athena reveals she is also an animatronic, purposed to find and recruit people who fit the ideals of Tomorrowland. Athena drops Casey off outside an adult Frank’s house in Pittsfield, New York.

The now reclusive, cynical Frank (George Clooney) declines Casey’s request to take her to Tomorrowland, having been banished from it years ago. Inside Frank’s house, Casey finds a probability counter marking the end of the world. Frank warns her that the future is doomed, but she disagrees, thus lowering the counter’s probability. Animatronic assassins arrive to kill Casey, but she and Frank escape, meeting Athena in the woods outside Frank’s house. Frank resents Athena for lying to him about her true nature, but reluctantly agrees to help them get to Tomorrowland.

Using a teleportation device, the trio travel to the top of the Eiffel Tower. Frank explains that Gustave Eiffel, Jules Verne, Nikola Tesla, and Thomas Edison co-founded Plus Ultra, a secret society of futurists, creating Tomorrowland in another dimension, free to make scientific breakthroughs without obstruction. The trio use an antique rocket, called the Spectacle, hidden beneath the Eiffel Tower to travel to Tomorrowland.

They find Tomorrowland in a state of decay. David Nix (Hugh Laurie), its governor, greets them. They travel to a tachyon machine, invented by Frank, which accurately predicted the worldwide catastrophe. Casey refuses to accept the world will end, causing the future to temporarily alter. While Frank attempts to convince David to listen, he refuses and intends to make them leave Tomorrowland.

Casey realizes the tachyon machine is telling humanity that the world will end, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. They confront David, who admits he tried to prevent the future by projecting such images to humanity as a warning. Instead, they embraced the apocalypse, refusing to act to make a better future for their world. Believing that humanity simply gave up, David has also given up and intends to allow the apocalypse to happen so that he can rebuild the world to his liking. Casey, Frank, and Athena attempt to use a bomb to destroy the machine, leading to a fight with David. The bomb is accidentally thrown through a portal to an uninhabited island on Earth, the explosion pinning David’s leg. Athena sees a vision of the future where Frank is shot by David, and she jumps in the way of his attack, mortally wounding herself beyond repair. Making peace with Frank, Athena activates her self-destruct sequence, destroying the machine, which falls on David, killing him.

In the present, Casey and Frank lead Tomorrowland, recruit Eddie and Nate, and create a new group of recruitment animatronics like Athena, whom they were addressing at the beginning of the film. Given pins, the animatronic children set out to recruit new Dreamers.

Tomorrowland offers positive messages that we should all take to heart: Dreamers have to stick together, ideas are worth fighting for, knowing how things work is important, and inventors must never give up on their innovations — because they can literally change the future.

Midnight Special — (2016)

In a motel, Roy Tomlin (Michael Shannon) and his friend Lucas (Joel Edgerton) watch an AMBER Alert for 8-year-old Alton Meyer (Jaedon Martell) and his reported abductor, Roy, while the boy reads comic books on the floor.

At “The Ranch”, a religious cult in rural Texas, Pastor Calvin Meyer (Sam Shephard) dispatches two parishioners to retrieve Alton. He then faces his congregation as the FBI storms their church. NSA communications analyst Paul Sevier (Adam Driver) asks Calvin how numbers sent via encoded satellite transmissions made their way into his sermons. Calvin explains that Alton speaks in tongues and gave the numbers to Calvin. As Alton’s powers grew, his mother Sarah (Kirsten Dunst) abandoned him, and members of the Ranch have been raising him, with Pastor Meyer as his adoptive father. Roy, the boy’s biological father, is protective of Alton, doing everything in his power to avert danger.

After a violent confrontation with a state trooper, Roy and Lucas seek cover at the home of Elden, a former Ranch member. During the night, an earthquake seems to wake Roy and Lucas. When they break down the door to Alton’s room, they find him linked to Elden by blinding beams of light directly from his eyes into Elden’s. Roy knocks out Elden and covers up Alton, who is extremely photosensitive. They take Elden’s van and continue on toward a location that Alton specified. Members of the Ranch seem to know this location, but the FBI is desperately trying to figure out where the trio are headed.

When they stop at a gas station, Alton seems to destroy a satellite, creating a rain of debris crashing down on them. They drive to Sarah Tomlin’s house, and she is overjoyed to be reunited with her son. After they watch the news together, Alton explains that he caused the satellite to crash because the police were using it to track him.

As the fugitives (now including Sarah) continue on their trek, Alton appears to be growing sick and weak. He convinces Roy to let him see the daylight, while Lucas and Sarah go ahead to a motel. After witnessing his first ever sunrise, Alton’s eyes begin to glow, and an enormous dome of light surrounds the duo. They reunite with Lucas and Sarah, and Alton is healthy. He explains that seeing the sun helped him realize his true identity. There is a world “built on top of” this one, and he belongs to it. Roy confirms that he briefly saw this hidden world inside the dome of light.

When they exit the hotel room, they are ambushed by Calvin’s trackers from the ranch, who abduct Alton but are soon captured by the police. The boy is taken to a government facility where, although he had no normal way of knowing who the man was, he insists that he will talk only to Paul Sevier. After Sevier experiences Alton’s powers, he helps reunite him with his parents. Having deduced their destination from Calvin’s sermons, Sevier warns the fugitives that there is a 5-mile security perimeter around the location on the Florida panhandle.

Roy barrels through a roadblock, driving inside the perimeter as the Army scrambles to give chase. As they speed away, Alton lets them know just where to stop. Alton and Sarah speedily exit the car and run into the woods. Roy and Lucas lead the Army on a wild goose chase while Alton and Sarah reach the edge of a swamp. There, a great dome of light appears, engulfing much of Florida and surrounding states. Everyone inside the dome of light can see the futuristic structures of a parallel world. Eventually, other beings of this world gather around Alton, and the entire dome disappears, taking Alton with it.

Roy and Lucas are arrested. Lucas is interviewed by the FBI. He tells them the story, but they are dissatisfied. Sevier then enters to interview him, with Lucas the only one aware of Sevier’s previous involvement. Sarah, apparently walking away from her past life forever, cuts off her cult-traditionalist hair braid in a local gas station. Roy is incarcerated, but can watch the sunrise, his eyes briefly and faintly glowing in a similar manner to Alton’s.

Midnight Special has been praised by reviewers as a “Spielberg-esque” SCI-FI chase film with an “engrossing sense of mystery”. Its story points to a parallel reality overlapping the world as we know it, hidden from us — until a child’s need to crossover reveals its otherworldly inhabitants.

“Through a Child’s Eyes” SCI-FI can help us realize that childlike innocence is the key to understanding great Mysteries — like Who we are and our Place in the Universe.

It may open a World of Possibilities … for YOU.

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