Silent Running: The sci-fi that predicted modern crises

Dark Star is wonderful!

Also:

- it's the first movie by horror movie legend John Carpenter

- it was co-written by Dan O'Bannon, who also wrote "Alien"

Ty Franck (co-write of The Expanse) and Wes Chatham (Amos in The Expanse) talk about this in their new postcast, well worth a listen if you like sci-fi :)

https://www.youtube.com/c/TYandThatGuy

And the tickling by the beach ball alien, though possibly to death. So there's still some menace there :)

I remember watching SR in ‘80 or so as a 5 year old. The ending was the first time a movie made me cry.

How Unmechanical of you.

Seriously though, wow that is unbelievable how it was written then.

> The two main characters, Vashti and her son Kuno, live on opposite sides of the world. Vashti is content with her life, which, like most inhabitants of the world, she spends producing and endlessly discussing secondhand 'ideas'.

Woah. I'm literally doing that right now...

> Those who do not accept the deity of the Machine are viewed as 'unmechanical' and threatened with Homelessness.

What!? This is insane. Thanks for sharing.

The existence of the craft could arguably obligate the corporation to incur ongoing expenses for upkeep.

Well yeah, but it goes even deeper than that, IMO, since the domes could have just stayed on Earth. Why launch them into space and return them later? They're terrariums with all of the life support and lighting that they need.

Our present situation is also pretty nonsensical, though. (There’s no wealth on an uninhabitable planet.) Yet, here we are, stampeding towards the crisis. So, if you squint, Silent Running predicted that, too.

TBF it was meant to be nonsensical.

If you need an analogy, think of unsold books. They get their covers torn off so they can be reported as “destroyed”, and then be issued a refund. (You’ll sometimes see a message warning you about purchasing paperbacks without front covers in books.)

In the movie American Airlines made an insurance claim, or made some other claim of loss on the trees, and so they now have to destroy them.

It makes perfect sense as a politically-motivated decision. Some excuse was devised to destroy the pods, thus ending the debate forever of whether the Earth might one day return to a green space.

It also forced Dern's character into action, since he would have to return to Earth since his job of caring for the pods was about to end.

The film reminds me somewhat of 'Interstellar' — a once verdant world going dark and expelling the hero.

I could see some corporate bureaucrat back on earth saying, "well we don't want the liability if the domes crash into a spacecraft or fall to earth, better nuke em".

It is a metaphor for disposable product culture and that corps would focus on profits and only profits, if it doesn't make money throw it out / destroy it. (A fear that has arguably come to pass). Triggering the self-destruct is stand in for tossing in waste dump.

It reminds me of greenwashing and other lip service that modern society often pays to social justice issues. Companies will put serious resources into constructing an image that they are "doing good", in a way that has no benefit to the actual issue in question, sometimes even detrimental to it.

The fact that the domes had all the fittings necessary to let them be blown up makes it seem like that was the plan all along, that the whole project was just some kind of busywork to make it seem like they were working on a solution. Feels not unlike the impotent "ethics teams" and DEI teams that big corps set up. Pay some people to do research and write reports and then, when someone is asking what you are doing about X issue, you show them that you are "working on it". Rather than simply executing any of the many legitimate solutions people have already come up with for fixing societal woes.

Aren’t you consuming this site, which is funded by one of their biggest venture capital companies in the world, on a machine created by “the system“, and probably working for a company that is part of “the system“?

Man, if were to select anything that would put me off that movie, it's Baez's screeching. By far not her best work. Thankfully, that part can be safely fast-forwarded.

The robots are cute, though.

Right there with you. At the time it was the saddest thing I'd ever seen. It's stuck with me all these years.

I first saw it ~1980'ish, I was a bit older and it gave me a massive lump in my throat, and still does in my mid 50's.

From my faint memory as a ~12 year old in 1980, Acid Rain killing off woodlands and lakes, caused by European and UK heavy industries, was a massive concern back in the early 80's at its peak, fortunately mostly rectified in Europe now. Shortly afterwards the media latched onto the hole in the ozone layer which lead onto the climate crisis. Hard to believe these things were 30+ years ago (when I became aware), but we seem to be no further forward.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain

I think it can be simultaneously a classic, especially in historical context, and very heavy-handed. It's a good film but it's also one I'm not in a big hurry to rewatch.

My girlfriend and I discovered it and watched it and enjoyed it. But we were screaming at the tv at how nonsensical it was.