The Difference Between Optimistic And Pessimistic Sci-Fi

When it comes to science fiction, there really are two major categories most films fall into.  One is an optimistic view of the future, in which everything is wonderful and mankind is doing great and everything is pretty and shiny.  The other is a pessimistic view of things in which some sort of apocalypse has taken place, civilization has been destroyed and the Earth is a really crappy place to be.

 

This month's two big budget sci-fi movies offer perfect representations of those two vastly different views of humanity's future.  On the one hand you have Star Trek, a utopian vision of the future in which mankind has done away with disease and poverty and racism and everyone works together for the betterment of the universe.  On the other hand you have Terminator: Salvation, in which robots have nuked human civilization to dust and are doing their best to eradicate those few lucky souls who survived the bombings.  The survivors are constantly running and hiding from big and dangerous machines who only have one purpose in life, kill everything.

 

You really can't get more polar opposite than that when it comes to views of the future, and to perfectly illustrate this point, let's take a look at how both films view the future of the city of San Francisco, California.  It just so happens that both films use the exact same shot of the city in their trailers, and the city couldn't be more different.

 



 

This, obviously, is Star Trek's view of San Francisco.  It's bright and pretty and futuristic looking with all sorts of futuristic looking skycrapers everywhere.  It actually reminds me a lot of the planet Coruscant from the Star Wars prequels.

 

Now let's compare that with this shot from Terminator: Salvation.

 



 

Note the marked difference in color.  Everything is blacks and grays.  There's no pretty skyscrapers, and you can't even see the sky really.  All that's left are fields of factories that are belching out black smoke and are pumping out machines which are hell bent on killing us all.  This shot reminds me a lot more of how things looked in Blade Runner.

 

So there you have it.  The difference between happy sci-fi and sad sci-fi.  Which future would you prefer to live in?