This article is from Qingting.com (public account: qingtinwang), author Dejiang and Linghuo. 36氪Reprinted with permission
Why are people so obsessed with sci-fi movies?
From "2001: A Space Odyssey", "Star Wars" to "The Matrix", "Avatar" and other films, everyone is familiar with it. For people, watching a movie is not only a visual enjoyment, a good movie will always attract people a little bit. Think, this is actually enough.
More often, people are curious and thirst for knowledge about the future. When directors build a sci-fi world for the audience, they often insinuate something. We may be unconsciously substituted into the director's worldview when watching a movie.
For example, Kubrick's "2001 A Space Odyssey" released in 1968 began to describe the hidden dangers of artificial intelligence in the film. Although 50 years have passed, the artificial intelligence technology of human beings is still far from the level described in "2001 A Space Odyssey", which does not hinder people's enthusiasm for artificial intelligence technology today.
But what doesn't change is that society is still worried about the possible negative effects of technology in the future, which seems to be an eternal topic.
Another major Hollywood director, Steven Spielberg, has also presented many classic works to the audience. Everyone must be familiar with "Alien ET" and "Jurassic Park" directed by him.
Now, Spielberg's latest sci-fi movie "Ready Player One" is about to be released on the 30th. The film is based on Ernst Klein's novel of the same name. A story in Oasis, a virtual reality (VR) game.
Ready Player One movie
The form in Ready Player One should seem like the future of VR, although the current VR experience isn't quite as good as the movie.
But this is the charm of science fiction movies, or imagine the future world, or be wary of the negative effects of people's technological development. From another perspective, this is mixed with people's desire to explore the future and the fear of uncontrolled technology.
In addition to "Ready Player One", which focuses on the concept of virtual reality, the following classic films also involve many surreal technologies, which may be familiar to many sci-fi fans. Let's revisit them.
"2001 A Space Odyssey"
The film was once listed as the number one science fiction film in history, a space odyssey. For this movie, patience is absolutely necessary. If you don't believe me, you can go to the resources and see. If you can see the end, it means that you are a qualified sci-fi fan.
The film mainly tells that a group of orangutans in ancient times learned to use tools inspired by a mysterious black slate. The time came to 2001. The human spacecraft "Discovery 1" set off for Jupiter to explore the secrets of the black slate. During the flight, he controlled the entire spacecraft. The computer (artificial intelligence) "Hal" 9000 attempts to kill all the astronauts due to its own problems, the remaining astronaut David finally resolves the crisis, and David ends up going to Jupiter.
Orangutan after learning to use tools
Leaving aside the philosophical undertones of the film, the 1968 film begins to depict long-distance interstellar travel, the establishment of a lunar base, and the threat of artificial intelligence (tools). From a human point of view, the villain in the movie is the computer "Hal" 9000 of the spacecraft. It exists to help humans better explore the universe, but in the end, it kills the crew to maintain its own mission.
Astronauts communicate with the computer "Hal" 9000
This film can be said to be an early reflection on the impact of technology as a tool on the future of mankind. Humans gradually got rid of their primitive ignorance by relying on tools. After a million years, they landed on the moon and began to explore the wider space of the universe, but they were almost planted in the hands of machines.
The film also predicted the popularity of computers, video conversations, flat-panel displays, etc. The "Discovery 1" spaceship in the film did not fly at the speed of light like the later films such as "Star Trek" and "Star Wars". It is a conventional power method, because the director imagined the technological level in 2001, but the technological level of human beings still has not reached the level of manned interstellar travel.
"Interstellar"
Later, another Hollywood director Christopher Nolan shot a "Interstellar", Nolan's film is also a tribute to Kubrick's "2001 A Space Odyssey". Students who have watched the two films can find the inheritance of some elements, such as the soundtrack of the film, the ring-shaped spaceship, the human departure to the unknown universe, the passage of time tunnels, etc. The two films have many similarities in elements, which is quite interesting.
The spaceship in "Interstellar" inherits elements from "2001: A Space Odyssey"
"Interstellar Crossing" mainly tells that due to the deterioration of the earth's environment in the future, a team of explorers used their new discovery of wormholes to surpass the limits of human space travel, hoping to find a new home for human beings in outer space and conduct interstellar in the universe. Sailing story.
The most popular part of the film is the plot about crossing the black hole. This part is too surreal and there is a lot of controversy. Obviously, it is impossible to judge the rationality of the film's black hole crossing with the current cognition and practice of human beings.
The black hole world imagined in "Interstellar"
It is worth noting that the film is based on the well-known theoretical physicist and Nobel Prize winner Kip Thorne's black hole theory after a reasonable evolution, plus some plot adaptations, it can be said to have a certain theoretical basis, not Completely pure scientific fantasy.
"The Matrix "
Everyone should be more familiar with this movie. It's all childhood memories, and it accidentally exposed the age. Because the action director of The Matrix is Yuan Heping, the action scenes of this sci-fi film are also very exciting. In addition to the sci-fi color, it can actually be seen as an action film. The most impressive plot is Keanu Reeves' bullet time performance, and there is also the battle scene between humans and the matrix machine army.
The film mainly tells that the future world is controlled by a computer artificial intelligence system called "Matrix", humans are fed by machines, and the machines obtain the excess energy generated by the human body, and the human consciousness is imprisoned in the virtual world through the brain-computer interface, thereby controlling Humanity. A few awakened humans began to secretly build resistance organizations to rescue those humans who were deceived by the Matrix and resist the rule of the machine.
Characters in movies are using brain-computer interfaces
It can be said that this film vividly depicts the extreme world of the future, artificial intelligence and machines have self-awareness and begin to betray human beings. After human beings retreat, they are enslaved by machines, and human beings begin to resist the rule of machines.
"2001: A Space Odyssey" only expresses the threat of the existence of machines, while "The Matrix" directly builds a world view in which humans have become prisoners of machines. With the powerful actors and scripts, the imaginative world and the impact of man-machine wars make the film great success. Now it looks like it's still shocking and terrifying.
"Avatar"
The picture of this movie is so beautiful that it ignited the 3D movie craze back then. Of course, the story of the movie is also very exciting. In the worldview of the movie, humans have become interstellar colonists, and they have formed groups to mine in aliens, of course not to mine bitcoins.
The film mainly tells that human beings put on the body of Avatar and fly to the distant planet Pandora to mine special mineral resources. But the problem is that the resource-rich planet Pandora is not suitable for human life, and the environment is extremely dangerous. The local Na'vi were also dissatisfied with human behavior. Therefore, through genetic biology and cloning technology, human beings have created a cloned Na'vi (local people), this cloned Na'vi can allow human consciousness to enter it and become the incarnation of human beings' free activities on this alien planet, so as to communicate with the local Na'vi people. get along.
This time, humans have become villains in the actual sense, going to distant planets to mine and plunder resources, changing the previous routine of artificial intelligence machines and even aliens threatening humans, which is worth pondering.
Although the surreal technologies such as VR, AI, interstellar travel, and genetic biotechnology shown in these films seem far away from our world, they may even be realized in decades or even centuries.
What is worth looking forward to is that the surreal technologies in those movies seem not too far away from us, and they can all find their counterparts in the current world. VR devices such as Sony PSVR, Oculus, and HTC Vive can already experience a considerable amount of immersive content, although it may only be a matter of time before it fails to achieve the effect of the "Oasis" system in the movie.
The AI boom started again last year, with more and more applications of artificial intelligence. In the man-machine Go battle, Google's artificial intelligence AlphaGo defeated Ke Jie, self-driving cars have begun to hit the road, and people are more willing to try to buy products such as smart speakers and functional robots.
There are also Musk and his SpaceX on the way to outer space. On February 6 this year, SpaceX successfully launched the Falcon Heavy rocket, which is also the rocket with the strongest carrying capacity in the world. Its load capacity exceeds that of other rockets currently in operation. times more.
Musk has said that he will land two cargo ships on Mars in 2020, and plans to build a "Giant Falcon Rocket" (BFR), and some even hailed "human migration to Mars is one step closer."
People’s desire to explore is endless, and one day, those surreal technologies in the movies are no longer science fiction, and the movies depict countless possibilities for people in the future, which may be the reason why it has always been popular.