The new movie Voyagers, released on April 9 and directed by Neil Burger, takes a look into how far humans will push the envelope to survive.
This movie takes place in the near future, where Earth is becoming nearly uninhabitable due to climate change. Scientist have found a new planet to take over, but the problem is it takes 86 years to travel there. They know that if they send normal people, they will not be able to handle living in space for that long, and will never make it to the new planet.
They decide the best way to fix this problem is to create a group of intelligent children to send as the crew of the ship. The only adult traveling with the group is Richard, who helped raise them for this journey.
While onboard, the now teenage crew members are given what is called The Blue, which suppresses their emotions and makes them less likely to act out. When two crew members, Zach and Christopher, find out what The Blue is really meant to do to them, they decided to stop taking it. This is where trouble ensues and the movie takes off from there.
This movie shares many similarities with the novel Lord of the Flies written by William Golding. Many reviewers said that this movie was basically “A sexy, sci-fi Lord of the Flies” because these teens have to find a way to govern themselves without losing control of the ship completely. This movie also has similarities to the movie The Giver since they both give drugs to their citizens, but in The Giver these drugs are to suppress color reception.
There are many twists and turns throughout this movie that keep it interesting. I spent most of the movie asking myself, “If I was in the characters’ shoes, what would I do?”, which I believe makes the movie more interesting if I have to question how I myself would handle it.
Although some of the reviews I have seen for this film say that it was a bust due to it being somewhat predictable, I think it was actually an OK movie. Overall I enjoyed the twists and turns throughout the film. Even if other reviews believed it was predictable I thought it was a bit surprising. I would not put it in my top favorites, but it definitely had an interesting concept that kept me intrigued.
Photo Credit / Lionsgate
