Note: I’m departing a bit from my usual schedule to bring you another sci-fi movie review, this time for Tomorrowland; there will be spoilers. I consider these films to be both contributions to and barometers of the public science conversation.
As I watched Tomorrowland with my kids, I kept coming back to the increasingly puzzling notion that it had been “refuted” by Mad Max: Fury Road. While I can certainly understand how a post-apocalyptic story can have a hopeful subtext, I don’t see why we can’t also have stories which are textually hopeful. There’s the trivial reality that Tomorrowland is a film I can watch and discuss with my under-10 children while still being a bit challenging for them. More substantially, I think it’s fascinating that the article engages with a quote about Tomorrowland‘s possible nostalgic inspiration more than the film itself, which isn’t about nostalgia at all. In doing so, it actually manages to underscore the film’s theme that how a message is framed strongly influences how we respond to the message itself. [Read more…] about Science in Review: The World of Tomorrow, Today