WFH: Voyagers

 2021, Neil Burger (Limitless) -- download

Earth is dying, and to be honest, I am not sure if the movie is clear as to the Why, most likely just that all- encompassing trope that we are killing the planet, and eventually it will not be able to sustain us. But scientists discover a distant planet that could become Earth 2. But, and it's a big but, to get there it will take generations. The point as to the Why go to the planet, as opposed to Fix the Earth, is again murky, likely that humanity can be saved from extinction if we settle on another planet. 

They decide that a traditionally trained crew would just end up killing each other before the mission was complete, so they artificially create some children and raise them in the isolation of a facility that replicates the ship upon which they will travel. These kids will be the first generation, and their grandchildren will reach the planet. They will be humanity's hope. Oh, and Colin Farrell goes along as the father figure, and because the movie needs something other than a ship full of teens.

Ten-ish years later, to reduce the effect that emotions have on the now-late teens, they are given a daily dose of something blue to mute their emotions. But not their curiosity. One strong personality begins avoiding the drug, convincing a few others as well. And before long, and this was the main reason I kept on turning it off, they devolve into a pseudo-Lord of the Flies situation. I was here for pretty much the spaceship design, and not really interested in a bunch of teens being the worst that teens could be. You would think that beyond the drug, they would have raised the kids to understand morality a bit better, so such situations could not happen. Colin Farrell attempts to impress that upon them, but just makes himself a roadblock to the petulant youths who struggle to understand why they cannot just have what they want, any time. The movie was almost a metaphor for the middle-aged Internet's opinions of millennials.

Considering the regularity at which the stress and anxiety of work and the pandemic hit me, I had to turn  the movie off a number of times. It was one of those tension filled movies where the hints at Things Going Wrong were early, and to be honest, were the whole point of the movie. But I had come in for the spaceship and it's design -- I have always enjoyed the concept of a generational ship, and how a fiction can portray it. By that, I was not disappointed, but overall, the movie was decidedly in the "meh" mid-range of quality. I won't go so far as to say the movie triggered me, as I am somewhat challenged by people not being able to challenged by a topic, but it was more down the lane of not often being in the mood for that range of tension.