timespace coordinates: set in a fictional galaxy ruled by the Motherworld, whose military, the Imperium, threatens a farming colony on the moon of Veldt. Kora, a former Imperium soldier, ventures on a quest to recruit warriors from across the galaxy to make a stand against the Imperium before they return to Veldt.
Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire (titled onscreen as simply Rebel Moon) is a 2023 American space opera film directed by Zack Snyder. An extended cut is set for release in 2024, and a sequel, Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver, is scheduled for release on April 19, 2024. (wiki)
Zack Snyder first conceived this as a Star Wars movie, and pitched it to Lucasfilm shortly after it was bought by Disney in 2012, but it never got off the ground.
A soldier trained from birth is deemed obsolete and dumped on a waste planet where he is reluctantly taken in by a community of defenseless, stranded wayfarers. (imdb)
Trivia
Writer David Webb Peoples has said that Soldier is a “side-quel” to Blade Runner (1982)(which he also wrote) it takes place in the same universe, and in fact the vehicles used by the Blade Runners – spinners – are also used in Soldier. The premise of Soldier was actually based on an unused opening scene for Blade Runner, where a group of Replicants are dumped and left for dead on an Off-world colony. Both films were released by Warner Brothers, and both were box-office failures that gained a cult following after being released on home video.
An implication in the film is that the genetically-engineered soldiers meant to replace Todd and his fellow soldiers are in fact replicants, continuing a theme from Blade Runner. The 2017 short film 2036: Nexus Dawn, set in between the original Blade Runner and its 2017 sequel Blade Runner 2049, implies that Nexus-9 replicants were developed in 2035, the year in which Soldier takes place.
Todd’s service record, displayed on a computer screen, includes the following: – The battles of Tannhauser Gate and Shoulder of Orion (references to Blade Runner (1982)) – Receipt of the “Plissken Patch” (reference to Escape from New York (1981) and Escape from L.A. (1996)). Receipt of the “O’Neil Ring Award” (reference to Stargate (1994)) – Receipt of the “Cash Medal of Honor” (reference to Tango & Cash (1989)) Receipt of the “MacReady Cross” (reference to The Thing (1982)) – Receipt of the “Capt. Ron Trophy” (reference to Captain Ron (1992)) – Receipt of the “McCaffrey Fire Award” (reference to Backdraft (1991)) – Receipt of the “Dexter Riley Award” (reference to The Strongest Man in the World (1975), Now You See Him, Now You Don’t (1972), and The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (1969)) – Citations for the Nibian Moons Campaign, the Antares Maelstrom War, and the War Of Perdition’s Flames, locations referred to in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982).
Among the garbage on the planet is the U.S.S. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the F-117X Remora from Executive Decision (1996), a spinner from Blade Runner (1982), and a piece of the Lewis & Clark from Event Horizon (1997).
The Trinity Moons screen near the end of the movie, also includes references to “Eminiar 7” from Star Trek: A Taste of Armageddon (1967), and “Kessel”, possibly referring to the Kessel Run, mentioned by Han Solo, in Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope (1977) and several references to “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy“. The “Top Archive Specifications” comes up with ZZ9.Plurl.ZA (the sector in which Earth is reported to be) which comes up in Zaphod mode. On the right under “Search Results” you can see “Slartibartfast” complete with an “HHG” reference number.
Todd’s weapons training record lists the “USMC Smartgun” and “M41A pulse rifle” (references to Aliens (1986)) and the “DOOM MKIV BFG” – a reference to the computer game Doom.
Todd’s Unit Statistics reference the Dungeons and Dragons Ability scores: STR, DEX, INT(L), WIS, and DEX. It also shows stats for his damage (DAM), hit points (HTPT), language (LNG), loyalty (LOY), and even RSR, which means “Resurrection.”
spacetime coordinates: 12,067 E.I. (Era Imperial) – 12,102 E.I. Trantor, capital of the Galactic Empire / Periphery world of Terminus / 12,240 E.I. Synnax
Foundation premiered on September 24, 2021. In October 2021, the series was renewed for a second season, which is set to premiere in mid-2023.
update (…) The second season received more positive reviews from critics, with many agreeing that it was an improvement over its first season, emphasizing the more accessible pacing, better plot, improved interpersonal characterizations and overall satisfaction with the season’s payoff. (wiki)
spacetime coordinates: in the not too distant-future of a devastated Earth
Tides (also known as The Colony) is a 2021 German-Swiss science fictionthriller film directed and written by Tim Fehlbaum. In the not too-distant future: after a global catastrophe has wiped out nearly all of humanity on Earth, Blake, an elite astronaut from Space Colony Kepler. must make a decision that will seal the fate of the people on both planets.(wiki)
Tides is a small independent European SF – that I have seen together with the recently released Settlers. Very different from Settlers that plays on a future biodome Mars that feels like a Marstern (?) that tips it hat over to Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles, rather than Alexander Bogdanov’s Red Star. Nevertheless they both exbit a contemporary preoccupation, not to say anxiety around what Dominic Pettman has termed Peak Libido or what Rebekah Sheldon identified as a common thread in recent SF as “The Child to Come” of Generation Anthropocene.
Demographic fears, low fertility etc are part of contemporary ‘breeder culture’ baggage that sees to be hailed along movies as different as Interstellar (2014) and Children of Men (2006). It is also part of the usual pro-Family values propaganda of an unlikely alliance between free market warriors and traditionalists. I am not saying they endorse this way of thinking, although breeder culture is to be found everywhere from Ikea adverts to political campaigns. SF does what it does best if it keeps receiving all of these vibrations yet it splits the spectrum, trying out other outcomes, changing conclusions, sometimes against the premises or the initial (even unspecified) presuppositions.
Demographic fears coupled with anti-immigrant sentiments, homophobia, transphobia and ethno-politics, has become a familiar tune that seems to afflict and flare up nationalistic fervor diverting attention from unsolved wide income disparties, lack of opportunities, dissatisfaction with working conditions. unemployment or climate change. Restarting or jumping back into productivity mood has been difficult for many after having their time back after so much lack of time and probably old fears and insecurities abound. Again I want to emphasize, I do not dismiss the reality of these concerns and fears, considering just that they do not go wide enough, or comprehensive enough. ‘Replacement’ fears and discussions online are easy to ridicule or to join into, there virality is demonstrated, what is more difficult to grasp is their underlying, unspoken larger concerns or what is left out of them. There is a sense in which it is good to take seriously the idea that the planet has an “expiration date”. The simple, banal, very basic observation, that translates from products onto planetary matters and towards our overall growing obsolescence is far from being just cursory or trivial matter. Yet the conjunction btw commodities, unstoppable productivity, climate trouble, job making and job killing, entire failed cities, genomic-capitalist intertwining etc seems to escape our SF imaginary, only then entering only once it is SF entering the bounds of what cannot happen yet happens.
The rapid and growing aging population and what is seen as a failure to reproduce (reproduction of the rapidly obsoleted workforce!) seems to take precedence as a major obsession all around the so-called developed world. Increased technological prowess, high living standards and higher education is coupled with lower reproduction rates and thus becomes always an easy propaganda tool banded about or inserted into conspiracy materials that energize right-wing ‘replacement’ paranoia. QAnon pedophilia rings built on older antisemitic conspiracy memes derived from a poor understanding of kosher traditions as well as blood symbolism add to that. Children are being suddenly invested with this double sacrificial value and also hope for a confiscated future. Children become the ultimate object of vulnerability and globalist abuse. What is evident is that they are suddenly in opposition with older interests, with entire generation that seem to have spent the future’s chances beforehand. Not only reproduction is at stake, but children constant status as sacrificial lambs, as the primary target of satanist plots and elite perversion. It is intersting this shift from the 1970s fear that we are eating our old (in 1973 Soylent Green) to the current children being the hidden cost behind what we see around (just think of 2013 Snowpiercer). In a sense we seem to have reverted to the Victorian fears about the early workforce that did not magically disappear but was moved out of sight in sweatshops all over the world. This also obsession with satanist rings pastes over some of the most demonic and atrocious attempts at forced urbanization, brutal nation-making and colonial education projects, including the criminal ineptitude and squalor of modern civilizing projects in the ‘New World’ that targeted mostly indigenous children. What is also new is also China’s joining the aging trend, and the associated demographic fears from this powerhouse of the world, made it life its One Child Policy and start pushing cash for families with more kids.
Firstly a few things on the aesthetics of Tides – it is quite a beautiful cinematography, a sort blueish extended beach world (North Sea? Reminded me of Kiel or Gdansk?). Earth is seen mostly as abandoned harbors, inundated coast. Imagine all the hubs of international maritime trade and supply chains of today being now derelict places populated by the newly formed societies that have reverted to small, scattered, scavenger gatherer-fishermen tribalism. My only critique is that somehow these maritime folk do not really appear plausible in the movie. Where is the whole range of adaptations of real Sea Nomands or Sea Gypsy austronesian, Han or Indian etc people? These existing people together exhibit an incredible much more diverse range of architectures, lives and a much more tight connection with water that is far more convincing somehow (see Man on the Rim 1988). The mudflats like the mangrove are a very specific and hugely important route of migration for contemporary maritime populations as well as for older prehistoric peoples. Yet, I appreciate the effort in building and suggesting such a clific future post-climate change world.
That being said, the vast horizon, the light and the misty, rusty musty atmosphere of the place transports you out there among the new tribalism of future Earth. These tribes find themselves in a neo-colonial situation – as the technologically advanced returnees from the elite ruling class colonies return to Earth, take over and start educating and ‘civilizing’ the remains of woman/mankind. This top down attitude never worked out. Earth seems to miraculously bring back their fertility and so secretly the elite explorers start siring their own offspring in relative secrecy before giving information back to their home colony. This brings to me several recent scandals, as the 2018 Oxfam sex exploitation scandals in Haiti after the devastating earthquake and a dark history of international aid charities. The capitalist charitable spirit is also plagued by a certain Malthusian preference and bias in practice. Availability to contraception methods is vital all over the world, yet Population Bomb fears generally end up in targeted population controls, state-sponsored forced sterilization campaigns and skewed family planning (aptly described by Mytheli Sreenivas), that contrary to the Western ‘replacement’ conspiracies, do not target the Global North, but take underdeveloped and unprotected areas of the world as their terrain for clinical trials or as lop-sided charitable action.
The transhumanist elites that settled on an off-world colony become sterile and cannot reproduce (mysteriously) after some sort of Peak Libido, seemingly also because they have been using some dubious eugenics or genetic screening methods. Negative biopolitics is a boring staple of SF dystopia (Brave New World, GATTACA etc), yet here the elites have to deal with the limits of their technology (bodies?) and with material consequences of their action. Having a small gene pool was never a good idea and a presumably grooming for an elite genome speaks about how intimately genomics has been subsumed into the abstractions of capital (as detailed by Eugene Thacker in Global Genome).
The expedition on Earth crash lands and the surviving female pilot gets trapped into local power plays and skirmishes that turn out to be not conflicts over resources but conflicts over demographic politics,kidnapping children and abusing (or at least trying to control) ‘native’ terrestrial women. The colonist men’s access and ultimate dependence on local women’s reproductive cycles seems to drive a lot of current right-wing pro-Family propaganda. So this SF, in its small wy is trying to think trough some of these questions. Tides strives for honesty and non-masculinist take on things, outing the hypocrisy behind such selfish concerns, uncovering a masculinist dogma that somehow got embedded into the laws and cultural customs of Maid’s Tale as well (and similar real-life examples). That is whenever women get reduced to just ‘mobile wombs’. Extinction and X-Risk as such, and as more probable and calculable risk is an absent topic somehow, seemingly drowned by the movie’s Elites own self-preservationist and classist modus.
Tides also combines something like the old The Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now by Joseph Conrad with It Is Hard to Be a God concerns over interventionism by Strugatsky Brothers, yet it is still an interesting mix, managing to steer as along a difficult return to future Earth.
The film is set in a dystopian future where climate change has left Earth ravaged, forcing people to resettle from Earth to Mars. When such a routine trip veers off course the passengers struggle to cope with their new lives. (wiki)
Aniara is a 2018 Swedish-Danish co-production co-directed by 
TimeSpace Warps 