Ending Chaos SCI-FI: when the World feels turned Upside Down — in a state of complete Disorder and Confusion. The hero learns that great personal Sacrifice may the only way to “reboot” the universe and reset the timeline … back to a state before the Chaos began.
Terminator 2: Judgement Day — (1991)
Terminator 2: Judgment Day is an American SCI-FI action film directed by James Cameron, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, and Robert Patrick. It is the sequel to The Terminator (1984) and is the second installment in the Terminator franchise
Storyline
In 2029, Earth has been ravaged by the war between the malevolent artificial intelligence Skynet and the human resistance. Skynet sends the T-1000—an advanced, shape-shifting prototype Terminator made of virtually indestructible liquid metal—back in time to kill resistance leader John Connor when he is a child. To protect John, the resistance sends back a reprogrammed T-800 Terminator, a less advanced model with a metal endoskeleton covered in living tissue.
In 1995 Los Angeles, John’s mother Sarah is incarcerated in Pescadero State Hospital for her violent efforts to prevent “Judgment Day”—the prophesied events of August 29, 1997, when Skynet will become self-aware and, in response to its creators’ attempt to deactivate it, incite a nuclear holocaust. John, living with foster parents, considers Sarah delusional and resents her efforts to prepare him for his future role. The T-1000 locates John in a shopping mall, but the T-800 intervenes, coming to John’s aid and enabling his escape. John calls to warn his foster parents, but the T-800 deduces that the T-1000 has already killed them. Realizing the T-800 is programmed to obey him, John forbids it to kill people and orders it to help him rescue Sarah from the T-1000.
The T-800 and John intercept Sarah as she attempts to escape the hospital. Initially horrified that the T-800 resembles the Terminator sent to kill her in 1984,[b] she joins them and escapes the pursuing T-1000. Sarah uses the T-800’s knowledge of the future to learn that a revolutionary microprocessor, being developed by Cyberdyne engineer Miles Dyson, will be crucial to Skynet’s creation. Over the course of their journey, Sarah sees the T-800 serving as a friend and father figure to John, who teaches it catchphrases and hand signs while encouraging it to become more human-like.
Sarah plans to escape to Mexico with John, but a nightmare about Judgment Day prompts her to decide to kill Dyson. She attacks him in his home but cannot bring herself to kill him, abandoning her plan. John arrives and reconciles with Sarah while the T-800 explains to Dyson the future consequences of his work. Dyson reveals that his research has been reverse engineered from the CPU and severed arm of the 1984 Terminator. Believing that his work must be destroyed, Dyson helps Sarah, John, and the T-800 break into Cyberdyne, retrieve the CPU and the arm, and set explosives to destroy the lab. The police assault the building and fatally shoot Dyson, but he detonates the explosives as he dies.
The T-1000 pursues the surviving trio, cornering them in a steel mill. Sarah and John split up to escape while the T-1000 mangles the T-800 and briefly deactivates it by destroying its power source. The T-1000 assumes Sarah’s appearance and voice to lure out John, but Sarah intervenes and, along with the reactivated T-800, pushes it into a vat of molten steel, where it disintegrates. John also throws the 1984 Terminator’s arm and CPU into the vat. The T-800 explains that it must also be destroyed to prevent it from serving as a foundation for Skynet. Despite John’s tearful protests, the T-800 persuades him that its destruction is the only way to protect their future. Sarah, having come to respect the T-800, shakes its hand and lowers it into the vat. The T-800 gives John a thumbs-up as it is incinerated.
As Sarah drives down a highway with John, she reflects on her renewed hope for an unknown future, musing that if the T-800 could learn the value of life, so can humanity.
Children of Men — (2006)
Children of Men is a dystopian action SCI-FI thriller based on P. D. James’ 1992 novel — starring Clive Owen, Julianne Moore, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Pam Ferris, Charlie Hunnam, and Michael Caine.
Storyline
In 2027, total human infertility has led to wars and global depression, pushing civilization to the brink of collapse as humanity faces extinction. The UK has transformed into a totalitarian police state in which asylum seekers are arrested and put in camps. Daily life is full of bombings, rationing, decay and propaganda. The populace mourns as they hear the news that the youngest person alive in the world is killed at age eighteen.
Theo Faron, a former activist turned cynical, depressed bureaucrat, is kidnapped by the Fishes, a militant refugee-rights group led by Theo’s estranged wife, Julian Taylor. The pair separated after their son’s death in 2008. Julian offers Theo money to acquire transit papers from his cousin, the Minister of Arts, for a young refugee woman named Kee. Theo visits his cousin inside an elite mini-city within London where the powerful enjoy all the pleasures of the past. Theo obtains joint transit papers from his cousin, then tells Julian that he must escort Kee himself in exchange for more money. Luke, a Fishes member, drives Theo, Kee, Julian, and Miriam towards Canterbury, but they are ambushed and Julian is killed. After the rest escape, Luke kills two police officers that stop them.
At a farm safe house, Kee reveals to Theo that she is pregnant, making her the only known pregnant woman in the world. Julian intended to take her to the Human Project, a secret scientific research group in the Azores dedicated to curing humanity’s infertility. That night, Theo eavesdrops and learns that Luke and other Fishes orchestrated Julian’s death, while also intending to kill Theo and use Kee’s baby as their political tool. Theo orchestrates an escape for himself, Kee, and Miriam, a midwife, to the secluded hideaway of Jasper Palmer, a bohemian, old friend of Theo.
The group plans to reach the Human Project ship, the “Tomorrow”, that Julian had scheduled to arrive offshore at Bexhill, a notorious refugee detention centre. Jasper arranges for Syd, an immigration officer to whom Jasper sells cannabis, to smuggle them into Bexhill as refugees, from where they can take a rowboat and rendezvous with the ship. The next day, the Fishes arrive at Jasper’s hidden entrance, forcing the group to flee. Jasper stays behind to stall them and is murdered by Luke. At an abandoned school, Syd meets Theo, Kee, and Miriam, and helps them board a bus to the camp where Kee’s water breaks, and Miriam is dragged off the bus.
In Bexhill, their contact Marichka, a Romani woman, provides Theo and Kee a room, where Theo helps Kee give birth. The next day Syd arrives to tell them that war has broken out between the British Armed Forces and the refugees, and that the Fishes have infiltrated the camp. He reveals that Theo and Kee have a bounty on their heads and attempts to capture them. Marichka and Theo fight off Syd, and the group takes shelter with a kindly, elderly Russian couple.
Heading for the rowboat, the Fishes capture Kee and the baby. Luke initially tells Patric and others to spare the group, but once Kee and the baby are out of earshot, Luke tells Patric to kill the Russian couple and Theo. Patric shoots one of the two refugees, but is interrupted by an attack by British troops.
Theo flees and tracks Kee to an apartment building under heavy fire. Theo confronts Luke, who tells Theo “We need him,” mistaking the baby for a boy; Theo corrects Luke, who says “I had a sister” before pleading for the child again and subsequently being killed in an explosion.
Awed by the sight of an actual baby, the British soldiers and Fishes momentarily stop fighting to allow Theo, Kee and the baby to leave the battle before the violence immediately resumes. Marichka leads them to the rowboat but stays behind.
As British fighter jets bomb Bexhill, Theo and Kee row to the buoy rendezvous point. Theo reveals he had been shot, and teaches Kee how to burp her baby. Kee tells him she will name the baby girl Dylan, after Theo’s and Julian’s lost son. Theo smiles weakly, then loses consciousness as the Tomorrow approaches. As the screen cuts to black, children’s laughter is heard.
Snowpiercer — (2013)
Snowpiercer is a post-apocalyptic SCI-FI thriller based on the French climate fiction graphic novel — starring Chris Evans, Song Kang-ho, Tilda Swinton, Jamie Bell, Octavia Spencer, Go Ah-sung, John Hurt, and Ed Harris, with Park Chan-wook and Lee Tae-hun.
Storyline
In 2031, 17 years after an attempt to stop climate change via stratospheric aerosol injection with the compound CW-7 catastrophically backfired, creating a new ice age that destroyed life on Earth, the remnants of humanity shelter in a state-of-the-art self-sustaining circumnavigational train, the Snowpiercer, run by reclusive transportation magnate Wilford. The passengers on the train are segregated, with the elite in the extravagant front cars and the poor crammed into squalid tail compartments overseen by armed guards.
Urged by his mentor Gilliam, Curtis Everett and his second-in-command, Edgar, lead the tail passengers in a revolt. They discover that the guards have no ammunition and overwhelm them, freeing Namgoong Minsoo, a captive security specialist. For his assistance, they bribe him with Kronole, an addictive drug made from industrial waste. Namgoong also insists that his clairvoyant daughter, Yona, be freed. Curtis and his fellow revolutionaries discover that the protein bars they were being fed were made of dead cockroaches. Namgoong helps the tail mob advance, but they face guards armed with melee weapons and overseen by Minister Mason. Edgar is held hostage, but Curtis allows him to be killed to capture Mason, forcing her to order the remaining guards to surrender. The tail mob stays back, holding the guards captive, while Curtis takes Mason, Namgoong, Yona, skilled fighter Grey, and Tanya and Andrew (two parents who had their children taken from them) towards the front of the train.
Curtis’s group travels through several opulent cars. Namgoong and Yona recognize a landmark outside and speculate that the ice may be thawing more and more with every passing year. The group reaches a schoolroom, where a teacher is indoctrinating the children on Wilford’s greatness. A bald man brings eggs for the children to celebrate the train’s eighteenth circumnavigation of the Earth. Then the bald man goes to the tail army and shoots them with automatic firearms hidden under the eggs. The captured guards are freed, as is Mason’s henchman, Franco. The teacher, who received a gun from the bald man, kills Andrew before Grey kills her. Franco broadcasts to the classroom his execution of Gilliam, which prompts Curtis to execute Mason in turn. Curtis’s group moves on, but Franco catches up with them, killing Grey and Tanya. Franco is then seemingly killed by Curtis and Namgoong.
In the last compartment before the engine, Namgoong reveals that he collected the Kronole to use it as an explosive to escape the train with Yona, believing they can now survive outside, pointing out the melting ice. Curtis explains that in the early days of the train, the tail section resorted to cannibalism. Edgar was an infant when Curtis killed his mother, and Curtis was going to eat him when Gilliam offered his severed arm instead, stopping the bloodshed. Curtis wants to confront Wilford for causing such horrors. Wilford’s assistant, Claude, emerges from behind the engine room door to invite Curtis inside.
Curtis meets Wilford and, to his shock, learns that he and Gilliam conspired to stage Curtis’s rebellion to reduce the tail section’s population to sustainable levels. After ordering the execution of most of the tail section residents, Wilford offers Curtis his position leading the train. Curtis appears ready to accept as Yona overpowers Claude, rushes in, and asks for a match. In desperation, she pulls open a floorboard to reveal Tanya’s son, Timmy, who has been enslaved to work as a replacement for a broken machine part. Appalled, Curtis pummels Wilford and rescues Timmy from the machinery, losing his arm in the process. Andy, Andrew’s missing son, crawls out of a nook and climbs into the engine core despite Curtis’s pleas. Curtis gives Yona the match to light the fuse for the Kronole bomb, while Namgoong fights and kills Franco, who followed them. Damaged by the fighting, the door to the engine room cannot be closed, forcing Curtis and Namgoong to use their bodies to protect Yona and Timmy from the blast.
The explosion triggers an avalanche that derails the train and wrecks it. Curtis and Namgoong are unresponsive, so Yona and Timmy escape the wreckage. They see a polar bear in the distance, indicating that life exists outside the train and has not died out, as they were always led to believe.
Interstellar — (2014)
Interstellar is an epic SCI-FI directed by Christopher Nolan with an ensemble cast led by Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Bill Irwin, Ellen Burstyn, and Michael Caine.
Storyline
The film opens with a documentary that reveals in the near future, Earth suffers from a crop blight, starvation, and devastating dust storms. Cooper, an ex-NASA test pilot-turned-farmer, raises his children, Murph and older brother Tom, with the help of their father-in-law Donald following the death of his wife from a cancerous tumor. Murph believes a “ghost” is trying to communicate with her through her bookshelf but is met with skepticism. Following a severe dust storm, Cooper and Murph enter her bedroom to find dust is being pulled by gravity into lines of binary that reveal coordinates to a secret NASA facility.
At the facility they meet Professor Brand who reveals that corn will soon die out and the Earth’s oxygen will become depleted – prompting a last-ditch effort to save humanity and find habitable planets outside of the solar system via a wormhole near Saturn. Convinced Cooper is the best pilot for the mission, Cooper reluctantly joins scientists Amelia Brand, Romilly, and Doyle, bidding farewell to Murph and Tom and promising them he will one day return.
The Endurance spacecraft, piloted by Cooper and two artificially-intelligent robots, TARS and CASE, passes through the wormhole and emerges into a faraway galaxy, orbiting a supermassive black hole, Gargantua. Previous NASA explorers have made this journey and three—Miller, Mann and Edmunds—have reported that their respective planets are potentially habitable. The crew, excepting Romilly and TARS, descend onto Miller’s planet, which turns out to be an ocean world. Arriving on the planet they discover Miller’s spacecraft has been ripped to shreds and Miller missing. Realizing a massive tsunami is barreling towards them, they race back to the Ranger but Doyle is swept away. When Amelia and Cooper return to the Endurance, decades have passed in Earth-years due to extreme time dilation caused by Gargantua’s gravity. Alone on the spacecraft, Romilly has aged significantly.
On Earth, an older Murph now works as a scientist for NASA. She is distraught when Professor Brand, on his deathbed, confesses that the Endurance crew were not meant to return. Realizing that humanity’s Earth-existence is doomed, Murph feels betrayed by Cooper’s departure. She relays this information back to the Endurance crew on Mann’s planet, prompting Cooper to abandon the mission and decide to return to Earth. Cooper learns Mann falsified data in hopes of being rescued, who attempts to kill Cooper and escape. Rescued by Amelia Brand, they race to the compound but a booby-trapped KIPP, Mann’s robot, self-destructs and kills Romilly. Stealing a Ranger they both race to the Endurance but Mann, attempting to maroon them, initiates an unauthorized, manual docking maneuver which goes catastrophically wrong. The airlock decompresses violently, causing a massive explosion that breaches the station and kills Dr. Mann instantly, while Cooper manages to pull off a daring, last-second rescue to save the spinning Endurance.
Unable to return to Earth, lone survivors Cooper and Amelia Brand chart a course towards Edmunds’ planet. Cooper sacrifices himself and TARS, knowing the Endurance has only enough resources for one crew member. They fall into the black hole, with Cooper emerging inside a higher-dimensional tesseract where time is “physical.” Looking back in time, Cooper sees that he led himself to the NASA facility at the mission’s commencement. Now, he and TARS communicate with Murph in the future, providing her encoded quantum data from inside the black hole, which could help her solve the gravitational problem of mass exodus from Earth. They deduce the tesseract and wormhole are both constructs of futuristic advanced humans, who are communicating with Cooper in a way analogous to his communication with Murph across time. Their mission realized, Cooper and TARS are ejected from both the tesseract and wormhole. They are picked up by spacecraft orbiting Saturn.
Aboard a space-station with a recreated healthy-Earth environment, Cooper reunites with Murph, who is older than him due to the extreme time dilation he experienced near Gargantua. Having assured humanity’s continued existence, Murph is nearing death but does not wish Cooper to witness it. She suggests he seek out Amelia on Edmunds’ planet instead. Cooper and TARS embark on another journey to reach Amelia, who directs CASE and other robots to erect a new colony on the surface of Edmunds’ planet. She kneels over his grave, takes off her helmet and breathes in the air from the surrounding atmosphere, indicating the planet could be humanity’s next home.
Arrival — (2016)
Arrival is an American SCI-FI drama directed by Denis Villeneuve, based on the 1998 novella “Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang — starring Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker, and Michael Stuhlbarg.
Storyline
When twelve Extraterrestrial spacecraft suddenly arrive, hovering over various locations around the Earth, it causes widespread panic, affected nations send military and scientific experts to monitor and study them. In the United States, US Army Colonel Weber recruits linguist Dr. Louise Banks and physicist Ian Donnelly to study the craft above Montana. On board, Banks and Donnelly make contact with two cephalopod-like, seven-limbed aliens, whom they call “heptapods”; Donnelly nicknames them Abbott and Costello. Banks and Donnelly research the complex written language of the heptapods, consisting of phrases written with logograms, and share the results with other nations. As Banks studies the language, she starts to have flashback-like visions of her daughter.
When Banks is able to establish sufficient shared vocabulary to ask why the heptapods have come, they answer with a statement that could be translated as “offer weapon”. China interprets this as “use weapon”, prompting them to break off communications, and other nations follow. Banks argues that the symbol interpreted as “weapon” can be more abstractly related to the concepts of “means” or “tool”; China’s translation likely results from interacting with the heptapods using mahjong, a highly competitive game. Meanwhile, the Russian team receives a message that they translate as “there is no time,” which they interpret as a possible threat.
Rogue soldiers plant a bomb in the Montana craft. Unaware, Banks and Donnelly reenter the alien vessel, and the aliens give them a more complex message. Just before the bomb explodes, one of the aliens ejects Donnelly and Banks from the vessel, knocking them unconscious. When they wake, the heptapod craft has moved beyond reach and the US military is preparing to evacuate in case of retaliation.
General Shang of China issues an ultimatum to the alien craft in China, demanding that it leave within 24 hours. Russia, Pakistan, and Sudan follow suit; communications between the international research teams are terminated as worldwide panic sets in.
Donnelly discovers that the symbol for time is present throughout the message and that the writing occupies exactly one-twelfth of the 3D space into which it is projected. Banks suggests that the full message is split between the twelve craft and that the heptapods want all the nations to collaborate in order to decipher it.
Banks goes alone to the Montana craft, which sends down a transport pod. Abbott has been mortally injured as a result of the explosion. Costello explains that they have come to help humanity, because in 3,000 years’ time they will need humanity’s help in return. Banks realizes the “weapon” is their language. Learning the language alters humans’ linear perception of time, allowing them to experience memories of future events. Banks’s visions of her daughter are revealed to be premonitions; her daughter will not be born until sometime in the future.
Banks returns to the camp as it is being evacuated and tells Donnelly that the aliens’ language is the “tool” that was meant by the word “weapon”. She experiences a premonition of a United Nations event celebrating global unity achieved by finally deciphering the heptapods’ language. At the event, General Shang thanks Banks for persuading him to stop the attack when she called his private number and recited his wife’s dying words. He then shows her his private number and whispers his wife’s words into her ear.
In the present, Banks takes CIA agent Halpern’s satellite phone from a table and calls Shang’s private number to recite the words. The Chinese announce that they are standing down and releasing their twelfth of the message. The other countries follow suit, and the twelve spacecraft depart.
From what she has learned, Banks writes and publishes a book called The Universal Language, a guide to the heptapod language, which will eventually teach humanity to perceive time the same way as the heptapods.
During the evacuation, Donnelly expresses his love for Banks. They talk about their life choices and whether he would change them if he could see his life from beginning to end. Banks knows that she will agree to have a child with him despite knowing their fate: that Hannah will die from an incurable disease and that Donnelly will leave them both as a result of her revealing that she knew this. As they embrace, Banks reminisces about the last time Donnelly will hug her.
Ending Chaos SCI-FI can inspire us all … with tales of great personal sacrifice. To restore cosmic order, the source of Chaos must be DESTROYED. But how? Sometimes, people lack the will to act, and they seek “cosmic intervention” from a supernatural source. The answer however, usually lies in the power of Human Connection.
We all know by now how it feels to live in a world turned Upside Down. The signs are all around us and they seem to get worse every day. To escape Chaos, humanity must EVOLVE beyond all the things that divide us — like Racism, Prejudice, Sexism and Hate — by embracing Enlightenment.
Let us hope that enough people will soon find the Courage to come together and put an end to the Chaos … before it is too late.
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