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Businessman Elon Musk recently came out with a new statement about traveling to Mars, which he believes will take place within 5 years, and at the latest after 10 years.
And it is not the first statement of Mask, who is always busy with the red planet and dreams of establishing a human colony on its surface, but Mask is not the first to look far into space as a new home for humans. be more prosperous.
Cinema as a medium that expresses the ideas of human beings made many films that assumed the ability of man to settle other planets, with different interpretations of the goal, but the most important of these interpretations and goals are the ideas behind them, and the human vision of this vast cosmic geography, and the reason why he seeks Despite having a planet like Earth, it provided him for thousands of years with everything he needed for life.
The new colonization of space
Until the beginnings of the second half of the twentieth century, the globe was divided into only two types of countries: colonial countries, and colonized ones. Then, liberation movements began that returned each country to its owners, before other types of colonialism began, such as cultural and economic, to prove that colonial thought is latent. In the human mind, which is shown in the movies, of course.
Just as man saw that he had the right to colonize the land of his neighbor to obtain its bounties, he looks in the same way at other planets that may hold treasures and riches worthy of adventure.
One of the latest films in which humans have occupied other planets is “Dune”, produced in 2021 and directed by Denis Villeneuve.
The events of the film take place in a relatively distant future in which humans were able to travel across planets, and this extended space is ruled by an emperor and a group of aristocratic families that each control one of the planets with the aim of draining its wealth, especially Arax, who provides a very necessary material for transportation between planets, the “Aspace”, and becomes The scene of the conflict between these two families.
At the same time, the indigenous peoples are trying to break free from this slavery and to gain control of their planet and the space necessary for their daily life, and they hope for this freedom at the hands of Paul Atreides, who fights with them against the savages.
The struggles to liberate Araks are similar to those fought by many colonial countries, where any of them can be placed in the place of a distant planet, and instead of the apes we will find other riches, such as petroleum, cotton, spices, gold or any other natural advantage, and this is logical by reference to the time of the publication of the novel From which the film was quoted in the mid-sixties, during the period of activity of the liberation movements.
Frank Herbert, the writer of the novel “The Dune”, used the same colonial concept common in the West with the replacement of Earth by space, to reflect the human vision of this vast universe around him, which is nothing but a gold mine that has not yet been discovered.
This colonial view of space is also presented in James Cameron’s 2009 movie “Avatar”, which takes place in the mid-22th century when humans occupied Pandora to obtain one of the rare minerals that exist only on its surface, and they come into conflict with The original inhabitants of the planet, let’s see how the white man tries to put his imprint on space, in a scenario that has been repeated dozens of times on Earth.
sanctuary in space
But in addition to the colonial hopes of humans in space, some of them sometimes look at it as a last resort. They know that they have exhausted the power of the Earth over the centuries between wars, nuclear weapons, pollution, climate change, food shortages and water conflict, and with a pessimistic look they expect that our blue planet will return the suffering to us one day. What.
American director Christopher Nolan presented this view of space in his famous film “Interstellar” (2014), in which pollution spreads on the ground and dust covers everything, planting perishes and humans become diseases, and with a more severe sandstorm approaching, humans find no refuge except on a suicidal journey It is carried out by a former pilot in search of another planet suitable for human life.
Adam McKay’s “Don’t Look Up” is a new variation on the same tune, in which human life approaches the finish line with the landing of a giant meteor.
Despite the scientists’ prior warnings, the international political administrations decide not to explode the meteorite to take advantage of the precious metals it contains, and it actually hits the Earth, and only a group of the elite and the rich who board a spacecraft in search of another habitable planet survive.
The Adam McKay meteorite is a clear metaphor for climate changes that threaten life on Earth, which politicians and businessmen around the world have tacitly agreed to ignore, because what our planet needs to recover is harming a large number of industries on which the capitalist economy depends, and thus the director and author expected that human life would end We will not find refuge for us except on another planet that we begin to destroy by the same mechanism by which we destroy our lives now day by day.
So, space in films represents different metaphors for humans. Sometimes it is a field full of riches that are waiting for humans to win, and at other times it is the remaining safety from the treacherous land, and it will always remain, with its mystery and poetic, exciting cinematic imagination.
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