Movie Trailer: Krampus (2015)

Movie Trailer: Sinister 2 (2015)

Movie Trailer: Krampus (2015)

Movie Trailer: Krampus (2015)

Movie Trailer: Emelie (2015)

Movie Trailer: The Invitation (2015)

Movie Trailer: The Revenant (2015)

Movie Trailer: Hidden (2015)

Movie Trailer: Crimson Peak (2015)

The Films of 2015: The Martian

Based on Andy Weir’s 2011 novel of the same name, Ridley Scott’s The Martian (2015) has now earned a number of Academy Award nominations including those for best actor (Matt Damon), and best picture.  

The Martian apparently directed itself, since Scott was not nominated for his significant role in crafting the film. 

But suffice it to say that The Martian’s nominations are well-deserved. This is a great science fiction film, and one of the two best genre films of the year (the other being Mad Max: Fury Road). 

Much superior to other recent “near future” films about the space age, like Gravity (2013), The Martian is, in a sense, a less-fanciful version or re-think of 1964’s Robinson Crusoe on Mars.  

In both instances, a lone astronaut survives alone on the red planet using his only scientific skill-set.  

Only here, of course, we don’t meet alien slaves or slavers, and the focus is much more on the possible than on the fantastic. Robinson Crusoe on Mars brought aliens, alien spaceships and other wonders into the tale of human loneliness and fortitude, whereas The Martian simply focuses on a key issue: Man vs. Nature.  

In this case, that "Nature" belongs to different and infinitely more harsh world than ours: Mars.

Thrillingly, The Martian is precisely the science fiction movie our country and our planet needs and deserves at this juncture in history, when politicians are thinking small, stoking fear and resentment, and focusing very much on petty Earth-bound matters.

The Martian deftly, and without apology, reminds us that no frontier is off limits if we dedicate ourselves to conquering it. We must merely possess the will to conquer it.

Perhaps it’s not that we are Star Trekkian-like perfect beings -- at least not yet -- but rather that the individual fear of death -- coupled with the human race’s fear of stagnation -- can push us to the next horizon, and then the one beyond that. The Martian is realistic in its approach, and yet optimistic at the same time. It imagines that mankind can achieve big things, and do it under his own auspices.

What are those auspices? Knowledge. Training. Endurance. 

And no less important, imagination too.

We need The Martian now, indeed, because aspiring politicians routinely suggest that they somehow know better than the scientists do. Even though they have no training, and worse, no curiosity about how the universe works.

The Martian is very much about what happens when a dedicated, imaginative scientist is given a challenge, and rises to the occasion. The film will, I imagine, inspire many young people to become astronauts, botanists, physicists, or the like. And of course, that's a very good thing.

So Scott’s film reminds us -- in a sadly anti-intellectual time -- how knowledge, not ignorance, can transform not merely our lives, but the planets themselves.

“This is space. It does not cooperate.”

On a mission to Mars in 2035, astronaut Mark Watley (Damon) is injured during a terrible storm. His commanding officer, Lewis (Jessica Chastain), is unable to find him in the blizzard and forced to assume that Mark has died. She leaves the planet with the rest of the crew.

Against the odds, however, Watley is not dead, only wounded. He manages to return to the astronaut shelter on the surface, and face the fact that he has been abandoned, possesses no way to return home, and that another mission to Mars is not due to arrive from Earth for four years. 

Mark possesses approximately thirty-one days of life-support, which means he will have to improvise, and -- after rationing his supplies -- grow roughly three years of his own food.

Watley goes about solving this food problem by planting potatoes (using his own waste as fertilizer), and then faces the next crisis: He will have to travel fifty days in cold temperatures, in a rover, to reach the distant landing site.

Back on Earth, meanwhile, NASA learns from satellite footage that Watley has survived.  

Now the organization must rally and determine a way to bring the marooned astronaut home alive.  

One answer involves launch a second rocket, but a brilliant young physicist comes up with a plan to redirect Lewis’s ship back to Mars for an extraordinary orbital rendezvous...

“I am going to have to science the shit out of this.”

In my introduction above, I compared this film to Gravity. I believe that film is technically and visually brilliant, but when you think about it -- and its dramatic point -- for an length of time...you encounter disappointment.  

Basically, Gravity is about how the entire space program is pulped in one day, but one woman survives, and learns to deal with her personal demons (the death of a child). It only took the destruction of every shuttle, station, and satellite in orbit for her to accept her past traumas.  

Worse, the film makes no notation that though it is a good day for Sandra Bullock’s character, psychologically-speaking, it is a very sad day for mankind, and humanity's efforts in space. The space program, in that movie, would have been set back years, if not decades. And yet, we are expected to cheer when the scientist arrives home safely on Earth.

All I could think about was the future lost, destroyed, or prevented by the incidents of that terrible day.

The Martian adopts a different and far preferable creative strategy. 

It’s a movie about people navigating challenges -- in bureaucracies and on Mars -- and figuring out how science, technology, and know-how can rescue people and break boundaries.

It’s not merely about survival and escape, while the space program crashes and burns as a consequence. The Martian is about how the space program can achieve great things, even though death is always a possibility.  

The film’s protagonist, Mark Watley, is given no facile “back story” to conquer. There’s no Hollywood bullshit here to attempt to falsely manufacture psychological drama. Instead, Mark must keep his vision trained squarely on the present, battling each problem as it arise. He then uses his wit, skill, and training to conquer it. 

Watley pulls together every scrap of knowledge and training he has, but even that considerable effort is not enough. We see throughout the film that man survives not just when he is smart and adaptive, but when he employs his imagination. 

Mark isn't depressed, brooding, or angsty about the set-backs and reversals he encounters. 

On the contrary, he keeps engaging his imagination,considering new ways to survive and thrive.

Uniquely, The Martian shares an opening shot with Scott’s Prometheus (2012).  

In both films, the camera hurtles (relatively low to the ground) across an inhospitable surface. In Prometheus, that surface belongs to Earth, as the alien Engineers attempt to seed it with their DNA. 

In The Martian, that surface is Mars.  

In both cases, knowledge, reason, science and technology ultimately re-shape that surface to accommodate or welcome life.

It’s on a huge scale in Prometheus, and a small one (for now), in The Martian, but as Watley trenchantly notes, by growing his own food there, he has, by definition, colonized the planet. He has taken the first step of introducing new life to Mars.  

The Martian and Prometheus are polar opposites, or mirror reflections in another significant way. 

In Prometheus, the search for God is what impels man to the stars.  

In The Martian, man survives a harrowing space journey not on faith in a supernatural being, but by faith in his own abilities, ingenuity, and know-how. 

The two films provide a kind of perfect yin/yang in terms of philosophy.

One is about the literal search for God, and the divine within. The other is about mankind -- through his knowledge -- evolving into something, if not Godlike, then at least able to brave the dangerous realm of outer space.  

It's no accident, or coincidence, that Mark Watley puts a crucifix (belonging to another astronaut) to practical -- rather than spiritual -- use during the duration of the film. He must use his imagination, training, and every material he has on hand if he wishes to endure. There is no time to worship idols.

The two films -- Prometheus and The Martian -- work well together in tandem, as a Ridley Scott double feature, actually. 

One is a horror film about what terrors could await us in space. Prometheus reveals to audiences ow small we are in the scheme of Cosmic Things. When we meet our Maker, we are not ready for the knowledge that flows from that encounter.

Its philosophical book-end, The Martian is a hard science fiction film that suggests how we will already know, by 2035, enough to survive and flourish in our first steps away from Earth. We will face challenges, and we will beat them back. And we will learn from our successes.  We will tell others (as teachers), and build on them.

One reason I appreciate the work of Scott so much (in Prometheus, as well as here) is that he is persistently able to craft images and symbols that resonate in the imagination.

Here, early on, an empty chair looms large on the Martian escape ship (and in our imaginations), a reminder that an astronaut has been lost.  

Again, the typical dramatic bullshit approach would demand histrionics on the part of the commanding officer, or shipmates.Instead, we get no words, just close-ups of anguish, and of that empty seat.

And in the film’s climax, Mark practically bursts out of his capsule into a whirling void (in orbit). His only way to survive (and get home) is to cut his suit open, and utilize the escaping pressure as a means of directing himself through that void. 

This is a perfect symbol for man’s capacity to reshape fate, and nature, to his desire. We are all on a spinning surface too (the Earth), but we can direct its future with our technology, our science, our imagination, and our know how. We aren't just passengers.  We have the capacity to exert power and control over our environment.

I suppose The Martian could have proven a rather dry, life-less experience as a one-man-show, but through its use of disco music on the soundtrack, and the buoyancy of Matt Damon’s central performance, the film brilliantly comes to life. 

The soundtrack, straight from a hedonistic time and place in America culture, lightens the mood, provides stark contrast to Mark’s travails, and finally, calls us back to the last time in history -- the heyday of the Apollo program -- when America looked to the stars, dreamed, and then made real plans to reach them. 

The disco music, in essence, makes The Martian a kind of sequel to the early 1970s, before the combined weight of Vietnam, Watergate, Three Mile Island, Inflation, and Oil Embargoes brought human dreams crashing back to terra firma.

The leitmotif of The Martian is simple and worthwhile. 

Life is hard. 

And life in space is even harder. 

If we want to endure as a species, however, survival in space and on other worlds is a virtual necessity.  We can cry and whine about how dangerous the endeavor remains, how expensive it is, or even how time-consuming it is. 

Or we can look at the challenges…and, using our knowledge as a starting point, imagine how to beat them.  

As one character here memorably notes, “you can either accept” the difficulty of reality, and the constant nearness of death, “or get to work.”

The Martian reminds us that it is time to quit the bellyaching.

Let's get to work. 

Movie Trailer: The Martian (2015)

Movie Trailer: The Gift (2015)

Movie Trailer: Paranormal Activity Ghost Dimension (2015)

So Ends Another Year On the Blog

Once again, it is difficult to believe that another year has gone by.  The year 2015 is now, almost, in the rear-view mirror.

I have now been blogging here for eleven years, since I began in 2005, and I posted some celebratory posts in 2015 about the milestone.

Last time I checked, there have been over 7200 posts here, since the beginning.

Also, I devoted much time and energy in 2015 to celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of Lost in Space (1965-1968), and the career of film director M. Night Shyamalan, who this year brought us the scary (and funny) The Visit. 

The blog this year also saw a week devoted to A Nightmare on Elm Street, James Bond’s return in Spectre, and, of course, Star Wars too.

We even celebrated a whopping three Friday the 13^th holidays this year.

In related news, my latest book, The X-Files FAQ was also published in 2015 and (at least so far) has earned very positive reviews. I also have completed my first full year as a communications instructor (teaching public speech, journalism, intercultural communications, and other courses) at a local community college here in N.C.

So it’s fair to say I kept busy in 2015.

Looking ahead to 2016, the blog will mark the fiftieth anniversary of Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek with weekly episode reviews of the classic series.

Also, The X-Files returns to television in a few short weeks, after a thirteen year hiatus. I’ll be blogging every new episode here too.

There’s much to look forward in the year ahead, including a new Star Trek film (in July). I am also planning to launch a kind of web-publication called “In Review” with volumes/issues looking at different TV shows and film franchises. I’m currently planning volumes on Millennium, The Starlost, Planet of the Apes, and Buck Rogers.I’ll be certain to post here more as the project develops.

As always, thank you for your continued readership and friendship.  I am happy we could spend 2015 year together and hope the same will be true for years to come.

 Happy 2016!

Cult-Movie Review: The Frame (2015)

[Watch out for Spoilers]

The Frame (2015), from director Jamin Winans, is a beautifully-realized science fiction picture with a powerful spiritual component. In short, the movie is a mind-bender about the nature of human life, and one strongly in the spirit of Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone (1959 – 1964).

The Frame is genuinely affecting in terms of its imagery, often cryptic in terms of its meaning, and at some points even terrifying, particularly in its depiction of a tatty, top-hatted Devil.

Good, original, non-franchise science fiction movies are few and far between these days, so The Frame – with its meditations on the nature of reality, and God -- is a special treat for the cerebral-minded fan. While, the film is a bit slow-paced at points, particularly near the denouement, The Frame is absolutely worth your investment in time and energy.

“We’re tested, so we can look through the eyes of God and see what he sees.”

Alex (David Carranza), a lonely orphan looking to escape a life of crime, plans to participate in one last heist before his escape.  

At the same time, a beautiful but isolated EMT, Samantha (Tiffany Mualem), attempts to deal with violence on the job, and a parasitic mother.

These two lost individuals encounter each other, but in an odd and unexpected way. Samantha watches a TV series, now in its fourth season, Thieves and Saints, featuring Alex as its main character.  Alex watches Samantha on her own TV show, Urban Hope.

One day, Alex and Samantha connect -- across their television sets -- and realize that they exist in parallel realities, but that they can nonetheless help and support one another.

Unfortunately, another “actor” seems to exist in their worlds too, a tatty: mysterious figure bent on “melting” reality and bringing it to an end.

When Alex is injured on his final caper, Sam attempts to rescue him, and must evade the Devil (Christopher Soren Kelly) and unmask the true “author” of reality.

“It was then that man realized he was no man, but a thing. Written by a malevolent God.”

In The Frame, something magical and unexpected happens: two lost, lonely people discover that characters on TV shows are not mere fictions, but characters leading their own lives in their own version of reality.  The TV “frame” is a window into that other-world.

This unique concept brings up several ideas that recur through the film. The first is that, perhaps, when we are lonely, we can feel a bond with someone who isn’t real.  

Consider, for example, the uproar over Glen’s fate on The Walking Dead.  Nobody who watches the show really knows Glen in reality, and yet audiences love him, and fear that he could die.  These fans have connected to a person who, simply, doesn’t exist.  There’s nothing wrong or unhealthy about this.  This is the glory of television and film as art forms; they allow audiences to experience empathy with those we have never met; with those confined to the world inside the TV frame.

But what happens when you fantasize a relationship with a TV character, and that fantasy talks back to you?  That is but one question raised by The Frame.

But The Frame’s core idea goes even deeper than this theme might imply.  The movie suggests that our lives are but TV programs that God watches, sometimes with avid interest; sometimes not so much.  

Like Alex, we could each face cancellation -- or a series finale -- at any point.  We might be destined to last, like Thieves and Saints, for just “four seasons” before God cancels our story line.  As audience members watching television, we don’t control the fates of characters we love.  They might unwittingly attend the Red Wedding, or get eaten by Walkers.  In their universe, God chooses their end, and we but have to watch, and then mourn.

Our universe -- our reality -- is quite similar, after a fashion, The Frame suggests. God chooses our story arc, and even our ending too.  Alex rebels against this idea in the film.  “This is chaos. This is not a story,” he observes.  

Sam answers his charge well:. “I don’t think this is chaos. I think you have to believe everything is chaos, or everything is a miracle.”

Her answer suggests that an order exists to our lives, but that we can't necessarily see or understand that order. Nonetheless, we should try to accept that the order is there. It is present.  Sam chooses that course; that belief system.

Throughout the film, we get hints of this notion as The Frame’s primary leitmotif, of our lives as God’s TV programming.  Early on, for example, there is a shot of Sam looking into a fish bowl, watching her pet fish swim about.  The fish is contained within a frame too, and a force outside it -- Sam, herself -- holds the key to its survival or death. She is the "God" in its reality, or universe.

Several times throughout the film, Winan’s camera pushes in towards Alex (sometimes sleeping, sometimes just standing, observing a metropolitan skyline…) and then retreats.  It rocks forward; and then rocks back.  

This repetitive, unusual motion suggested to me that we can only approach knowing another human being, like Alex or Sam, and that at some point that knowledge stops. We hit an invisible wall (or the screen of a television, iPhone, laptop monitor, what-have-you.) 

We might dwell in the same world, but we gaze out at that world through different frames, different reference points and different eyes.

The film proposes two opposing forces in reality.  

One is the writer/God: the one bent on creating destinies and watching them unfold.

The second is the destroyer of worlds/Devil, the one who blots out life with bursts, literally, of black ink.  The Devil refuses to live God's destiny, and so sets out to destroy God's worlds.

If one chooses to read or interpret The Frame as a demonstration of the creative, artistic mind and its operation, the underlying idea becomes plain.  One on hand, writers create and give life to characters, locations, and ideas.  On the other hand, the writer can take away life from those things.  The writer, imitating God's reality, must act as both the divine and the diabolical.

When “God” is revealed in the film, it is shown to be a typewriter; one clacking away the final chapters of Alex’s life in his particular universe. This denouement reminded me of a Night Gallery (1969-1973) episode called “Midnight Never Ends,” in which two characters come to realize they are but words on paper; people imagined by a distant -- and not always loving -- writer.  The sound they keep hearing in the distance belongs to a typewriter too. 

The Frame discusses, at one point, a “malevolent” God, and that description is apt if you consider creation, life and death.  The divine might be said to thread all those elements together. Philosophically, it might be termed a life-giver and a life-taker.

None of us lasts forever. We are victimized by what seem, from our limited perspective, random and uncaring forces. We don’t know when -- or how -- our end will come.

We rage against these ambiguities, these unknowns, and attempt to push out the boundaries of our worlds, seeking answers in philosophy, or religion, or even life-prolongation. In the film, such attempts are visualized, cunningly, as Alex trying to push his way out of a rectangular film frame. 

The film frame keeps pushing back.

He can only be what he is supposed to be; only live the life that the writer -- or God? -- has selected for him.  He can push at the edges, but he is what he is: a being trapped by the Physics of the writer’s world, or perhaps, the writer’s imagination.

The Frame is a clever film, and one that is beautifully-made.  Some of the compositions practically ache with feelings of loneliness and isolation. Others are filled with portents of dread. Watch in several shots -- virtually unnoticed by the characters -- as skyscrapers, ceilings, and cars begin to melt away, unwritten from reality. They are symptoms of a dying world.

And when we die in real life, don’t our individual worlds, our individual “series” die with us? Lost forever when our eyes close for the final time?

I commend The Frame for its beauty, its intelligence, its high concept, and its imagination. I love how it equates God with the act of writing: a bloody act of willing something, or someone, into creation. 

However, I would also point out that The Twilight Zone, or Night Gallery, even, tells stories that last twenty-two minutes, tops.  Why? It is really, really tough to keep a high-concept going for much longer than that 30 minute mark without the audience beginning to ask questions about matters of logic and internal consistency.

The last act of The Frame could move with a bit more alacrity, and yet, in this case, I recommend that you indulge the film’s creators. The destiny they have “written” for their characters and unique world is one worth sticking around for.

Movie Trailer: The Frame (2015)

Movie Trailer: Spectre (2015)

Movie Trailer: Knock Knock (2015)

Cult-Movie Review: Tomorrowland (2015)

(Watch out for spoilers!)

When I was just a student in kindergarten -- way back in 1975 and 1976 -- I read (or perhaps saw) an interview with Jimmy Carter, who was running for President at the time.

In this interview, he discussed the (distant) year 2000, and the possibility that no cars would be needed; that in the future we’d all be riding in monorails from destination to destination. 

The exact details are difficult to conjure today, but I’ve always remembered connecting (at least in my mind) Carter and futuristic mass transit. I imagined a future of glittering cities, zooming monorails, and spires that stretched to the heavens themselves.

At roughly the same time, Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s Space: 1999 (1975 -1977) also envisioned an amazing future with reusable spaceships called Eagles, and a fully-functional, self-sufficient moon base, named Alpha.

My younger self was certain, absolutely certain, that the near future was -- to coin a phrase -- going to be fantastic.

Looking back, perhaps it has been fantastic, in a way, with the development of the Internet, iPhones, and so on. 

But the “real future” simply hasn’t been the Space Age Wonder that I imagined as a kid, either. Not even close.

The span encompassing the mid-1970s-through-today hasn’t been some glorious ascent into that Tomorrow, but rather a period embodied by series of crises, storms, sputters, and hiccups. 

Three Mile Island.

The Challenger Disaster.

The Gulf War.

The Impeachment of a President.

September 11^th.  

The Second Iraq War

Hurricane Katrina.

The Great Recession.

On and on it goes: a depressing litany of disasters and set-backs.

Meanwhile, our politicians endlessly pander to the lowest common denominator and score “gotcha” points wherever they can rather than taking steps to actually invest in a better tomorrow. The politicians investigate each other, and they launch ad hominem attacks on their opponents…and the result?

That future of monorails and moon bases looks further distant now -- in 2015 -- than it did when I was six years old. So I bequeath to my nine year old son, Joel, a future that looks more hopeless, more dangerous, than the one I grew up in.

Heckuva job, humanity.  Heckuva job.

To my delight, the Brad Bird science fiction movie Tomorrowland (2015) is all about the malaise or dissatisfaction that many of my generation feel with the “future” that we’ve endured since we were kids.  

In fact, Tomorrowland speaks trenchantly to two generations about this idea of the future, and what it can still be, if only we help it to bloom.

The first is the generation that is young now.

The film reminds young kids of today (like my son), to keep dreaming good, bold dreams, because before that future can become real, someone must first envision it.

In ways captivating and energetic, Tomorrowland is about recruiting the architects of tomorrow in the realms of both science and art, and allowing them a space to let their dreams take flight.

And the second focus of the picture is my generation, which -- let’s face it -- is largely disillusioned by modern mankind’s lack of progress since we set foot on the moon for the first time, in 1969.  

George Clooney plays a character in the film named Frank Walker who was a kid in the sixties (a decade or so before I came up…), and imagined a Space Age Tomorrow.

But he saw those idealistic dreams wiped away by a dark reality, replaced by the promise of impending doomsday. He has lost faith in the possibilities of tomorrow.

In Tomorrowland, the character representing my generation, Frank, must finally get over his disappointments and failures so that he can perform one crucial act: gift a better future to the first generation I described above, my son’s. 

But Frank is cynical, caustic, and guarded -- at least at first -- unwilling to believe in the dream again, until the right dreamer awakens those old, buried feelings of hope within his psyche.

This person, Casey Newton (Britt Richardson) also reminds him that he’s done what -- as a child -- he would have considered unforgivable: he’s given up.

In calling-out the hopeless feelings of my generation -- while simultaneously tasking it to care-take the next generation -- Tomorrowland weaves an optimistic tale about what, even now, can still be our reality: a better future than the one we see routinely promised in the dystopian fiction and visual entertainments of the 2010s. 

Tomorrowland reminds us that we don’t have to resign ourselves to a future like the one in The Day After Tomorrow (2004), or to an endless series of “Hunger Games.” 

Instead, Tomorrowland is that rare bird: an inspiring science fiction film that is joyous, so alive with the possibilities of the future that it refills the half-empty well of your hopes and dreams, and reminds audiences that the world is still worth saving. If not for your own personal future, then at least for those who come after you. 

By my reckoning, we need a film like Tomorrowland at least once in a while to remind people that fixing the world’s problems is just one dream -- or one invention -- away. 

In the film’s lingo, we just need to feed the right wolf; not the one representing despair and destruction, but the one representing hope and light.

On a much more grounded scale, Tomorrowland is also fascinating as a kind of summation or Master’s thesis on Walt Disney science fiction movie history, featuring clever nods to The Black Hole (1979) and The Rocketeer (1991), among other films. So this is movie that not only imagines what the future could be, but remembers, faithfully, our past dreams of the future too.

Those old movies provide us a kind of continuity, in a way. They remind us that we, as a species, must always dream about the next tomorrow (land). Those older dreams may fade, or be exposed as silly, but the act of dreaming about a better tomorrow must remain a constant.

“The world is ending. It is certain. It is unavoidable.”

After being arrested for trying to prevent the demolition of Cape Canaveral, American teenager Casey Newton (Britt Richardson) is gifted with a mysterious pin, one apparently given out only at the World’s Fair in 1964. The pin is emblazoned with the letter “T” for the attraction, Tomorrowland.

Casey learns that when she touches the pin, she travels, at least momentarily, to an alternate world where the problems of population, technology, starvation, obesity, and even star travel have been resolved.  Trains fly around Tomorrowland, as do commuters…on rocket packs.

Casey investigates the history of the Tomorrowland pin at a nostalgia store called “Blast from the Past,” and is attacked by two robots in human form there.  She is unexpectedly rescued by Tomorrowland’s recruiter, Athena (Rafey Cassidy), a robot in the form of a little girl.

Athena takes Casey to meet disillusioned Frank Walker (Clooney), a man who has given up on the positive vision of Tomorrowland because of prediction that the world will be destroyed in 58 days. 

After meeting Casey, Frank believes that she may be the one to “fix” the world, and sets about getting her to Tomorrowland in a new way, since her pin is no longer operative.

That new way to Tomorrowland, however, involves a rocket embedded in the Eiffel Tower, one dreamed up by Eiffel, Tesla, Edison and Jules Verne…

“It’s hard to have ideas. It’s easy to give up.”

There’s an intriguing scene, early in Tomorrowland, wherein Casey and Athena visit a sci-fi collectible/comic-book store called Blast from the Past. 

There, we see toy robots from yesteryear such as Tomy’s Omnibot, toy spaceships such as The U.S.S. Enterprise and Kenner’s Millennium Falcon, as well as posters for Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), and even a Planet of the Apes board game. 

The sound-track for The Black Hole (1979) -- with artwork featuring the robots V.I.N.Cent and Maximillian -- is also visible in several shots, placed prominently on a counter. 

The Black Hole, as readers may remember, was Walt Disney’s first PG science fiction film, and Tomorrowland mirrors it with two intriguing allusions. The first involves a giant robot which, like Maximillian in The Black Hole, possesses propellers for hands. 

In the second case, Tomorrowland’s key nemesis, Governor Nix (Hugh Laurie), suffers the same accident as the earlier film’s villain: Hans Reinhardt (Maximillian Schell). Specifically, a wall-sized control panel of sorts falls on him, pinning him down.  Two different eras; two villains aided by propeller-wielding robots and almost killed by the technology that they covet. That must be more than coincidence.

Another scene, set in the miraculous Tomorrowland, features a character flying about on a kind of fly-by-night rocket or jet pack, and the soaring imagery will remind any genre fan of Disney’s ill-fated (but delightful) entry in the superhero cinema sweepstakes of yesteryear: The Rocketeer (1991).

Why bring up, or reference, two films that are not regarded as hits (and yet are beloved)?  

Perhaps to remind us, at least a little that not all visions of the future -- visions of sentient robots or high-flying superheroes -- succeed, prove popular, or can even be considered prophetic.

Nonetheless, we don’t stop dreaming about those futures, or the possibilities suggested by such films.  Indeed, Tomorrowland -- a commercial failure -- likely finds itself in the same boat as those aforementioned Disney films. It is a film, like those, that seems out of step with other visions of “tomorrow,” but which, like The Black Hole and The Rocketeer will come to be appreciated, in years to come, as a film that is beloved by science fiction fans and may even inspire the next generation of inventors and engineers.

In terms of real, not imagined history, Tomorrowland also gives the end of hope -- embodied in the villain, -- a name: Nix. 

I submit that this name, Nix not only means to veto or forbid, describing the governor’s function in the film, and his refusal to save the Earth for the future. 

The name is also an abbreviation, of sorts, for a former American leader: Nixon.  No discredit or antagonism is intended towards the man, or the President, but I would suggest that it was during his presidency that the tide of public opinion turned away from the Space Age. We landed on the moon in 1969, only months after he took office. But from there, the downhill slide began. We were locked in Vietnam. We had oil shocks due to OPEC rationing. And Watergate made so many of our fellow citizens lose faith in government as a force for good in the world.

Nix in Tomorrowland is a leader who similarly takes the dimension of creativity and wonder from its zenith or apex -- in 1964 -- to its abandonment and ruin in 2015. He’s a figure who shepherds over the collapse of idealism and dreams.

I have read that some people wish Tomorrowland featured more time in that dimension of creativity (a dimension that is away from politics, greed, and bureaucracy, where dreamers can dream without limits) Yet I would argue that the film’s judicious use of that space is just right.  Dreamers can’t access the future on a regular or consistent basis, in real life, either. They can do it in the imagination, and in dreams, and I feel we would lose some of Tomorrowland’s wonder if the whole film took place there.  As it is now, Tomorrowland is a destination, a place that is attainable, but not always or continuously accessible.  I submit Tomorrowland would lose its sense of wonder and majesty if the film was entirely set there, as some critics apparently demanded or desired.  Then the movie would be Fantasyland, not Tomorrowland.

I write frequently here about the social meaning of films, and even their political leanings.  I realize this angers and alienates some readers.  That is not my intent or desire, but I find it impossible to consider a film fully outside its social or political context. Films are created, after all, in a specific time and place, with specific influences. 

And so I do believe that Tomorrowland is about today, 2015, and the fact that our politics have grown so small, so unimportant, even though major challenges loom around every corner. 

And I do believe that a future like Tomorrowland -- like the one I dreamed of, with so many countless others, in my childhood -- is within reach, but that it will cost a lot of money. We have to do controversial, expensive things right now, like invest money in NASA, in education, in research projects, even in local or community libraries. 

But many modern politicians want to do exactly the opposite, cutting back everything -- including school art programs -- until our society is entirely hollowed out, gutted. But we can’t get to Tomorrowland on the cheap, with gutted infrastructure.  If that’s the future we want, we have to start paying for it, and soon.

And that too is one of Tomorrowland’s messages.

The film notes that a future of doomsday, dystopia and apocalypse requires nothing of us today.  We don’t have to change our behaviors, our predilections, or put up money for it to happen.  So, in a sense, that’s the easy path: dystopia. 

To build Tomorrowland, we must change our behaviors now; we have to invest in a better tomorrow starting, approximately, this minute. 

I also believe this sentiment to be true.  It is easy to complain about how bad things are right now -- how our politicians suck eggs -- but such disillusionment, ultimately, gets us nowhere. We can’t change the present, but we can make the future better if we choose to invest in its creation.  Too many of us live in a world where we think we can’t change anything for the better.  But what if Casey is right, and even “the tiniest of actions can change the future” for the better?  I believe this message is directed right at me and my generation, right where I live in breathe.  It’s a reminder to me every time I lament that the world isn’t where I want it to be.  Well, why don’t I act?

Tomorrowland will make you consider all of these ideas and leave you breathless, entertained and engaged at the same time.  The film shows us a golden age of endless wheat fields and monorails and spires, and reminds us that such a world need not be a fantasy (or even an alternate dimension). Instead it’s the logical result of action taken right now, right here, to improve our lot on this Earth, and in the universe at large.

It’s a crying shame that Tomorrowland failed to connect with audiences at the box office, but the ideas it puts forward possess great currency, and can have great impact, even if that impact is created one viewer – one dreamer – at a time.

The future begins with you.