Sci-fi films: The final frontier

Sci-fi films: The final frontier

The best science-fiction films have always been, on some level, about the conflict between classes.

Planet Of The Apes (1968) reflected the American civil rights movement in its role-reversal conceit of superior ape castes and enslaved humans. Alien (1979) dramatised that the real danger in space is not so much face-hugging, stomach-bursting space creatures, but soul-less capitalism: a mega-company which sacrifices its honest, hardworking, blue-collar employees, the Nostromo's crew, for its own interests.

Even the original Star Wars trilogy was about the battle between two systems - democracy against fascist dictatorship; youthful rebellion versus corrupt old ways; American-style salvation as opposed to Soviet-style nuclear annihilation.

These days, however, space is no longer the final frontier. The tired colonial formula of seeking new planets to conquer - physically or ideologically - has become horribly politically incorrect. Instead, the clash between (alien) civilisations is giving way to more earth-bound jostling between the haves and have-nots.

Nowhere is this jockeying for position more urgent than around immigration and border control. As three recent Hollywood blockbusters have shown, the sci-fi war is now between the internationally/ intergalactically mobile and the immobile.

In April came Oblivion, starring Tom Cruise as a tech-drone repairman serving out a tour-of-duty on an alien-warravaged Earth in 2077, awaiting the day he and his partner can emigrate to join other survivors on a space station named Tet. Three months ago, Mexican director Guillermo del Toro's much-awaited flick Pacific Rim premiered, featuring giant robots in 2025 trying to stem the tide of monsters migrating from Earth's core to its surface.

And then there's Elysium, recently in cinemas, the socially conscious action- thriller that right-wingers have called "immigration propaganda".

Of the three films, Elysium is the most overt in its message. Set in 2154, it features a polluted, over-populated Los Angeles. The uber-rich have migrated to the Elysium space station, which looks just like The Hamptons would in space. On Earth, Spanish-speaking poor people are harshly policed by robots and have no access to medical care; in Elysium, state- of-the-art "med pods" can cure cancer, trauma and even a gun shot to the face in a matter of minutes.

Matt Damon plays Max Da Costa, a robot assembly-line worker, who tries (spoilers ahead) to make his way to this ultimate gated-community in the sky after an industrial accident. And Jodie Foster is the blonde elitist Elysium defence minister who will do anything to stop him and other illegal immigrants from crash-landing their spaceships on her turf.

South African director Neill Blomkamp has said his movie is about "the third world trying to get into the first". And film critics have jumped at the all-too- tempting parallel with the United States' current attempt at immigration reform - a stalled Bill which would pave the way for citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants in the country, while simultaneously tightening border security measures.

Given that there now exists a theme park in Mexico with an attraction that offers visitors the experience of a fake illegal border-crossing into the US - complete with a seven-mile hike, three-hour wait and being chased by patrol officers and guard dogs - Max's epic battles to make it to his destination seem less like sci-fi and more ripped-from-theheadlines stuff with each passing day.

For all the film's over-simplification, it asks a hugely important question: How far should we close our borders and guard our homeland to preserve a sustainable future for our children? And how far should we open them in compassion to those in search of a better life?

Pacific Rim offers a more nuanced, if unintended, look at the issue. Guadalajara-born director del Toro, who moved abroad after the 1997 kidnap case of his father and now lives in an affluent part of California, had said that he set out simply to make a kaiju or Japanese monster genre movie. The Godzilla-meets Ultraman genre itself has migrated from Japan to Hollywood. Yet, Pacific Rim also offers a muddled view of immigration and its attendant problems. On the surface, the film seems to conform to the liberal democratic, pro-immigration template of Elysium's ilk.

To keep out the kaiju, which spawn deep under the ocean, various nations begin constructing giant coastal walls. These walls crumble with a few swats from the monsters, signalling that border security has become out-moded and pointless. In fact, the resolution (again, spoiler alert) when it comes is a porous, globalised solution, requiring the cooperation of economic superpowers such as America, Russia and China.

However, the thwarting of the monsters' migration and the destruction of their "corridor" to freedom serve to counter this pro-immigration reading. The Us-versus-Them mentality is very much alive in del Toro's movie - the only difference is that we are prompted to consider who deserves to migrate.

In real-world terms, there are desirable migrants and undesirable ones. The uber-rich or those equipped with marketable skills fall in the desirable category. The uncomfortable truth deformed and hidden in Pacific Rim's core is that unwanted aliens are turned away at real borders every day.

Oblivion is the most conservative, immigration-speaking, of the trio. American writer-director Joseph Kosinski's post-Apocalypse in 3-D features a plot twist that leads to a post-modern feedback loop: Cruise's white would-be immigrant inhabits a deserted Earth that seems to comprise only of New York, still Hollywood's shorthand for the centre of the universe.

Watch the film and you will realise that migration is merely an illusion, an impossible ideal and a nostalgic return that takes you nowhere. The thought of the fearless white male explorer having no new place to go becomes suddenly chilling.

Ease of navigating borders - towards job opportunities, good education, affordable housing and other resources - increasingly determines who succeeds in the world. Global citizens, who own homes in several cities and switch cultures adeptly, now make up an enviable contemporary class.

As their tribe grows, immigration will no longer be a once-or-twice-in-a-lifetime decision - constant relocation may soon become the default survival mode.

Science fiction, that beacon which lures you to consider the present through a defamiliarising lens, is frantically signalling to us that, at some point, we will all be aliens hoping for clearance at some border - national, civil, cyber or other. How we will be greeted depends on our response now.

clarac@sph.com.sg


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