Are today’s films predicting our future or are they the future?
Paul Webb, Energy Expert
Founder of B2B Energy Ltd | Chartered Energy Manager MEI, ESOS Lead Assessor, Energy Expert,Energy Manager, Author of Energy Management Books, Podcaster and an established Energy Manager Trainer.
At the start of this year, I was happy to be celebrating another year of my life and living on this beautiful planet. I was wondering what to do for my birthday when my friend Simon Lane from LightwaveRF, suggested I go to the cinema. No ordinary cinema though, but a VIP cinema in Central Embassy, Thailand where the British Embassy once stood.
It is now a very large shopping mall with eating areas and entertainment. The special and unique part of this experience is that you have your own lounger complete with minibar and as much coffee as you wish to drink. This was quite apt as my film of choice was Avatar which is over 2 hours and 41mins long!
I would thoroughly recommend the film though and I was glued to the screen as it started to open up the future. I couldn’t stop thinking that Elon Musk’s idea of getting to Mars is just the starting process of finding a new planet for us to live on if planet Earth was to be destroyed. I wonder if there are conversations in higher authorities happening today.
Trying not to give the film away, it features the forest and sea people living a beautiful life of sustainability, spirituality and happiness. This all sounds ideal and a goal for everyone. The story then leads to the sky people who come from another planet, ‘Earth’. They are in search of a new place to live as their planet was dying due to the greed and the fight to be sustainable by the minority, which ultimately destroyed the world. This would all be fine if the sky people were arriving to this new planet to collaborate and live in harmony together, but unfortunately we all know that this is not how life goes. There becomes a very large level of ‘greed’ again and then begins the process of the individuals possibly destroying yet another planet.
Is this film predicting our future? Over the last few years it has been uncanny as to how cinema can create a story around our world.
In 2021 the world went into lockdown, and I found myself spending time watching Netflix and YouTube and was shocked to find myself watching a film called ‘Contagion’ (2011) .
It tells the. story of a killer virus that hits the world with leaders having to pull together to create a vaccine. The end of the film shows exactly where the virus came from and amazingly it was a carbon copy of the ‘Covid’ journey our planet was subjected to. There are many other examples I have and some examples are clips from films.
I broadcast my energy management story around the world daily and the ultimate reason for this is to save our planet from the likelihood of destruction caused by nature and influenced by man. I really would like to leave the planet in a better position than I found it.
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Today’s driver isn’t about the planet, it is about cost, but we do need to bring it back to the environmental benefit as that will ultimately be more costly. If we do not, these films of today will become the future. There are messages within them that have always been there.
Just writing this, I have remembered ‘The Planet of The Apes’, when the final scene has Charlton Heston walking in the desert and seeing the ruins of The ‘Statue of Liberty’. I remember that scene clearly and felt sick to the stomach to see how easily we could destroy our planet. In this case, nature retained its position and I have visited New York and seen this Statue in its full beauty.
We need to take these messages seriously and start acting on them as if we don’t, we could be writing the next film, but not necessarily a blockbuster, which signifies that this is the end.
My call to action here is to start to watch these films, especially Avatar and see whether you can see the future. Talk about it with your family and friends and ask that question WHY? and really see if there is something we can learn from it.
If you have seen the latest Avatar film please reach out to me. I would enjoy some dialogue about the story and the meaning, even if you disagree with me.
If you enjoyed reading this article or want to provide feedback, please contact Paul Webb at www.b2benergy.co.uk and www.aumlink.com or send him a direct message. He will respond within 24 Hours.
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1 年Films and books are written by visionaries. They see the future of tech and the negatives too. Terminator, minority report, matrix all scary thoughts but coming a potential reality. Haven’t seen avatar yet but need to get to the cinema to watch it as that will something we won’t see for too much longer I fear (cinemas). But films definitely predict the future. Maybe one day you’ll read this post whilst sitting on mars :)
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1 年Paul Webb, Energy Expert One of the features of Science Fiction writing and films is that it is possible to illustrate themes and ideas in this area of writing both in literature and cinema about how our world might look in the future that might not be acceptable anywhere else. There have been several films derived from books that have this at their heart. Dune was one of the first to bring the environment and concerns about it into the world of Science Fiction. H G Wells wrote Time Machine at a point in history when many thought that World War might destroy the Planet and all on it. It foretold of two groups of people, one living a life of luxury on the surface and another that lived underground. Two distinct classes? Possibly envisioned by some on the World Economic Forum? Possibly and some might agree.