Misplaced Pages

#69930

181-645: Idiocracy is a 2006 American science fiction comedy film co-produced and directed by Mike Judge from a screenplay written by Judge and Etan Cohen based on a story written by Judge. The plot follows United States Army librarian Joe Bauers and prostitute Rita, who undergo a government hibernation experiment. Joe and Rita awake five hundred years later in a dystopian anti-intellectual society. The cast includes Luke Wilson , Maya Rudolph , Dax Shepard , Terry Crews , David Herman , Justin Long , Andrew Wilson , and Brad Jordan . The concept of Idiocracy dates back to

362-412: A dystopian society based on dysgenics can be traced back to the work of eugenicist Sir Francis Galton . H. G. Wells ' 1895 novel The Time Machine postulates a society of humans which has devolved due to lack of challenges, while the "Epsilon-minus Semi-Morons" of Aldous Huxley 's 1932 novel Brave New World have been intentionally bred to provide a low-grade workforce; perhaps the best parallel

543-420: A statistical law, so decreasing entropy and non-increasing entropy are not impossible, just improbable. Additionally, entropy statistically increases in systems which are isolated, so non-isolated systems, such as an object, that interact with the outside world, can become less worn and decrease in entropy, and it's possible for an object whose world-line forms a closed loop to be always in the same condition in

724-433: A "pitch-black, bleakly hilarious vision of an American future", although the "plot, naturally, is silly and not exactly bound by logic. But it's Judge's gimlet-eyed knack for nightmarish extrapolation that makes Idiocracy a cathartic delight." In an Entertainment Weekly review, Joshua Rich gave the film an "EW Grade" of "D", stating that "Mike Judge implores us to reflect on a future in which Britney and K-Fed are like

905-512: A British cinema and media theorist and cultural critic: Science fiction film is a film genre which emphasizes actual, extrapolative, or 2.0 speculative science and the empirical method , interacting in a social context with the lesser emphasized, but still present, transcendentalism of magic and religion , in an attempt to reconcile man with the unknown. This definition suggests a continuum between (real-world) empiricism and ( supernatural ) transcendentalism , with science fiction films on

1086-517: A Friend for the End of the World ( 2012 ), Safety Not Guaranteed ( 2013 ), and Pixels (2015), romance films such as Her (2013), Monsters (2010), and Ex Machina (2015), heist films including Inception (2010) and action films including Real Steel (2011), Total Recall (2012), Edge of Tomorrow ( 2014 ), Pacific Rim (2013), Chappie (2015), Tomorrowland (2015), and Ghost in

1267-519: A character skipping forward in time. In Hindu mythology, the Vishnu Purana mentions the story of King Raivata Kakudmi , who travels to heaven to meet the creator Brahma and is surprised to learn when he returns to Earth that many ages have passed. The Buddhist Pāli Canon mentions the relativity of time. The Payasi Sutta tells of one of the Buddha 's chief disciples, Kumara Kassapa , who explains to

1448-470: A civilization's level of technological advancement into types. Due to its exponential nature, sci-fi civilizations usually only attain Type I (harnessing all the energy attainable from a single planet), and strictly speaking often not even that. The concept of life, particularly intelligent life, having an extraterrestrial origin is a popular staple of science fiction films. Early films often used alien life forms as

1629-520: A concept Judge envisioned in 1996. Judge finished a script with the working title 3001 in 2001, rewriting the film a year later. Filming took place throughout 2004 at Austin Studios and other cities in Texas. Idiocracy serves as a social satire that touches on issues including anti-intellectualism , commercialism , consumerism , dysgenics , voluntary childlessness , and overpopulation . 20th Century Fox

1810-547: A correctional facility, where a faulty identification machine registers his name as "Not Sure", and takes a simplified aptitude test. He escapes from prison after deceiving a guard by saying he had served his sentence and was scheduled for release. Joe visits Frito, who agrees to guide him to a time machine —located within a large Costco Wholesale store—after Joe promises to create a savings account in Frito's name, earning him billions in compound interest . With Rita, Joe and Frito enter

1991-674: A crop field. Frito gives him an incomprehensible map to the time machine. Joe discovers that the country's crops are being watered with Brawndo, a sports drink whose parent company owns the Food and Drug Administration , the Department of Health and Human Services , and the Federal Communications Commission ; the concentration of electrolytes in Brawndo has destroyed natural topsoil , causing dust storms. Despite opposition to his plan in

SECTION 10

#1732884885070

2172-644: A cylinder is infinitely long and spins fast enough about its long axis, then a spaceship flying around the cylinder on a spiral path could travel back in time (or forward, depending on the direction of its spiral). However, the density and speed required is so great that ordinary matter is not strong enough to construct it. Physicist Ronald Mallett is attempting to recreate the conditions of a rotating black hole with ring lasers, in order to bend spacetime and allow for time travel. A more fundamental objection to time travel schemes based on rotating cylinders or cosmic strings has been put forward by Stephen Hawking, who proved

2353-471: A definitive judgment on the issue without a theory of quantum gravity to join quantum mechanics and general relativity into a completely unified theory. The theory of general relativity describes the universe under a system of field equations that determine the metric , or distance function, of spacetime. There exist exact solutions to these equations that include closed time-like curves , which are world lines that intersect themselves; some point in

2534-501: A different universe than the one they came from; it's been argued that since the traveler arrives in a different universe's history and not their own history, this is not "genuine" time travel. The accepted many-worlds interpretation suggests that all possible quantum events can occur in mutually exclusive histories. However, some variations allow different universes to interact. This concept is most often used in science-fiction, but some physicists such as David Deutsch have suggested that

2715-420: A few milliseconds compared to another body is not feasible with current technology. As for backward time travel, it is possible to find solutions in general relativity that allow for it, such as a rotating black hole . Traveling to an arbitrary point in spacetime has very limited support in theoretical physics , and is usually connected only with quantum mechanics or wormholes . Some ancient myths depict

2896-452: A finite cylinder might produce closed timelike curves if the rotation rate were fast enough, he did not prove this. But Hawking points out that because of his theorem, "it can't be done with positive energy density everywhere! I can prove that to build a finite time machine, you need negative energy." This result comes from Hawking's 1992 paper on the chronology protection conjecture , which Hawking states as "The laws of physics do not allow

3077-494: A founding member of the new wave band Devo , said Idiocracy is "the movie Devo should have made." The film was also well received in other countries. John Patterson, critic for The Guardian , wrote, " Idiocracy isn't a masterpiece—Fox seems to have stiffed Judge on money at every stage—but it's endlessly funny", and of the film's popularity, described seeing the film "in a half-empty house. Two days later, same place, same show—packed-out." Brazilian news magazine Veja called

3258-438: A large gravity well such as a black hole . A time machine that utilizes this principle might be, for instance, a spherical shell with a diameter of five meters and the mass of Jupiter . A person at its center will travel forward in time at a rate four times slower than that of distant observers. Squeezing the mass of a large planet into such a small structure is not expected to be within humanity's technological capabilities in

3439-401: A long tradition of movies featuring monster attacks. These differ from similar films in the horror or fantasy genres because science fiction films typically rely on a scientific (or at least pseudo-scientific) rationale for the monster's existence, rather than a supernatural or magical reason. Often, the science fiction film monster is created, awakened, or "evolves" because of the machinations of

3620-467: A lot of money for Fox." In The New York Times , Dan Mitchell argued that Fox might be shying away from the cautionary tale about low-intelligence dysgenics because the company did not want to offend either its viewers or potential advertisers portrayed negatively in the film. This theory has been given extra weight by Terry Crews, who stars in the movie as President Camacho. In a 2018 interview with GQ Magazine , he talked of advertisers being unhappy at

3801-523: A mad scientist, a nuclear accident, or a scientific experiment gone awry. Typical examples include The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953), Jurassic Park films, Cloverfield , Pacific Rim , the King Kong films, and the Godzilla franchise or the many films involving Frankenstein's monster . The core mental aspects of what makes us human has been a staple of science fiction films, particularly since

SECTION 20

#1732884885070

3982-403: A magazine and his hospital bill, but he is arrested at a Carl's Jr. for not having a bar code tattoo and being unable to pay his bill. Joe is sent to trial; Frito represents Joe but alleges he destroyed his apartment. The judge perceives Joe to have an effeminate voice and homosexual demeanor, finding him guilty and sentencing him to prison. Rita resumes her job as a prostitute. Joe is sent to

4163-543: A man picking fruit from a fully mature carob tree. Asked whether he had planted it, the man replied that he had not, but that his grandfather had planted it for him. In Christian tradition, there is a similar, story of "the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus ", which recounts a group of early Christians who hid in a cave circa 250 AD, to escape the persecution of Christians during the reign of the Roman emperor Decius . They fell into

4344-409: A minute, wait a minute' ... there were a lot of people trying to back out, but it was too late. And so Fox, who owned the movie, decided, 'We're going to release this in as few theaters as legally possible'. So it got a release in, probably, three theaters over one weekend and it was sucked out, into the vortex". In 2017, Judge told The New York Times that the film's lack of marketing and wide release

4525-441: A miracle-working sage of the 1st century BC, who was a historical character to whom various myths were attached. While traveling one day, Honi saw a man planting a carob tree and asked him about it. The man explained that the tree would take 70 years to bear fruit, and that he was planting it not for himself but for the generations to follow him. Later that day, Honi sat down to rest but fell asleep for 70 years; when he awoke, he saw

4706-458: A moderate success. The strongest contributors to the genre during the second half of the 1980s were James Cameron and Paul Verhoeven with The Terminator and RoboCop entries. Robert Zemeckis ' film Back to the Future ( 1985 ) and its sequels were critically praised and became box office successes, not to mention international phenomena. James Cameron's sequel to Alien , Aliens ( 1986 ),

4887-414: A mole between his shoulders and was older than he was. Time travel themes in science fiction and the media can be grouped into three categories: immutable timeline; mutable timeline; and alternate histories, as in the interacting- many-worlds interpretation . The non-scientific term 'timeline' is often used to refer to all physical events in history, so that where events are changed, the time traveler

5068-563: A movie to make you think, even if for five minutes. And for that it manages to stay one level above the terrible average of comedy movies released in the last years in the United States." Idiocracy was released on DVD on January 9, 2007. It has earned $ 9 million on DVD rentals, over 20 times its gross domestic box office revenue of under $ 450,000. In the UK, uncut versions of the film were shown on satellite channel Sky Comedy on February 26, 2009, with

5249-530: A number of science fiction comic strips were adapted as serials , notably Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers , both starring Buster Crabbe . These serials, and the comic strips they were based on, were very popular with the general public. Other notable science fiction films of the 1930s include Frankenstein (1931), Bride of Frankenstein (1935), Doctor X (1932), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931), F.P.1 (1932), Island of Lost Souls (1932), Deluge (1933), The Invisible Man (1933), Master of

5430-415: A pair of prisms that had been moved up to 3 ft (0.91 m) apart, using a phenomenon known as quantum tunneling . Nimtz told New Scientist magazine: "For the time being, this is the only violation of special relativity that I know of." However, other physicists say that this phenomenon does not allow information to be transmitted faster than light. Aephraim M. Steinberg , a quantum optics expert at

5611-459: A particular area or time period. This is not true of the science fiction film. However, there are several common visual elements that are evocative of the genre. These include the spacecraft or space station, alien worlds or creatures, robots, and futuristic gadgets. Examples include movies like Lost in Space , Serenity , Avatar , Prometheus , Tomorrowland , Passengers , and Valerian and

Idiocracy - Misplaced Pages Continue

5792-495: A particular concern of the writer by serving as a vehicle of warning against a type of activity, including technological research. In the case of alien invasion films, the creatures can provide as a stand-in for a feared foreign power. Films that fit into the Disaster film typically also fall into the following general categories: While monster films do not usually depict danger on a global or epic scale, science fiction film also has

5973-555: A popular staple of science fiction film and science fiction television series. Time travel usually involves the use of some type of advanced technology, such as H. G. Wells' classic The Time Machine , the commercially successful 1980s-era Back to the Future trilogy, the Bill & Ted trilogy, the Terminator series, Déjà Vu (2006), Source Code (2011), Edge of Tomorrow (2014), and Predestination (2014). Other movies, such as

6154-459: A region of spacetime that is warped a certain way, and hence time travelers would not be able to travel back to earlier regions in spacetime, before this region existed. Stephen Hawking stated that this would explain why the world has not already been overrun by "tourists from the future". Several experiments have been carried out to try to entice future humans, who might invent time travel technology, to come back and demonstrate it to people of

6335-454: A scientific basis for the possibility of backward time travel in certain unusual scenarios, although arguments from semiclassical gravity suggest that when quantum effects are incorporated into general relativity, these loopholes may be closed. These semiclassical arguments led Stephen Hawking to formulate the chronology protection conjecture , suggesting that the fundamental laws of nature prevent time travel, but physicists cannot come to

6516-403: A signal, some form of classical communication must also be used. The no-communication theorem also gives a general proof that quantum entanglement cannot be used to transmit information faster than classical signals. A variation of Hugh Everett 's many-worlds interpretation (MWI) of quantum mechanics provides a resolution to the grandfather paradox that involves the time traveler arriving in

6697-546: A sleep and woke some 200 years later during the reign of Theodosius II , to discover that the Empire had become Christian. This Christian story is recounted by Islam and appears in a Sura of the Quran , Sura Al-Kahf . The version recalls a group of young monotheists escaping from persecution within a cave and emerging hundreds of years later. This narrative describes divine protection and time suspension. Another similar story in

6878-410: A small amount of proper time passes for them, while a large amount of proper time passes elsewhere. This can be achieved by traveling at relativistic speeds or through the effects of gravity . For two identical clocks moving relative to each other without accelerating, each clock measures the other to be ticking slower. This is possible due to the relativity of simultaneity . However, the symmetry

7059-644: A special metal called unobtainium. That same year, Terminator Salvation was released and garnered only moderate success. The 2010s saw new entries in several classic science fiction franchises, including Predators ( 2010 ), Tron: Legacy (2010), a resurgence of the Star Wars series, and entries into the Planet of the Apes and Godzilla franchises. Several more cross-genre films have also been produced, including comedies such as Hot Tub Time Machine (2010), Seeking

7240-408: A split-second before their demise, and then use their bodies for spare parts. Time machine Time travel is the hypothetical activity of traveling into the past or future . Time travel is a concept in philosophy and fiction , particularly science fiction . In fiction , time travel is typically achieved through the use of a device known as a time machine . The idea of a time machine

7421-499: A symmetric polygon could still act as a time machine, although he concludes that this is more likely a flaw in classical quantum gravity theory rather than proof that causality violation is possible. Another approach involves a dense spinning cylinder usually referred to as a Tipler cylinder , a GR solution discovered by Willem Jacob van Stockum in 1936 and Kornel Lanczos in 1924, but not recognized as allowing closed timelike curves until an analysis by Frank Tipler in 1974. If

Idiocracy - Misplaced Pages Continue

7602-470: A theorem showing that according to general relativity it is impossible to build a time machine of a special type (a "time machine with the compactly generated Cauchy horizon") in a region where the weak energy condition is satisfied, meaning that the region contains no matter with negative energy density ( exotic matter ). Solutions such as Tipler's assume cylinders of infinite length, which are easier to analyze mathematically, and although Tipler suggested that

7783-524: A threat or peril to the human race, where the invaders were frequently fictional representations of actual military or political threats on Earth as observed in films such as Mars Attacks! , Starship Troopers , the Alien series, the Predator series, and The Chronicles of Riddick series. Some aliens were represented as benign and even beneficial in nature in such films as Escape to Witch Mountain , E.T.

7964-554: A time traveler should end up in a different history than the one he started from. On the other hand, Stephen Hawking has argued that even if the MWI is correct, we should expect each time traveler to experience a single self-consistent history, so that time travelers remain within their own world rather than traveling to a different one. The physicist Allen Everett argued that Deutsch's approach "involves modifying fundamental principles of quantum mechanics; it certainly goes beyond simply adopting

8145-427: A traversable wormhole would require the existence of a substance with negative energy , often referred to as " exotic matter ". More technically, the wormhole spacetime requires a distribution of energy that violates various energy conditions , such as the null energy condition along with the weak, strong, and dominant energy conditions. However, it is known that quantum effects can lead to small measurable violations of

8326-416: A vacuum. His experiment involved slow light as well as passing light through a vacuum. He generated two single photons , passing one through rubidium atoms that had been cooled with a laser (thus slowing the light) and passing one through a vacuum. Both times, apparently, the precursors preceded the photons' main bodies, and the precursor traveled at c in a vacuum. According to Du, this implies that there

8507-478: A wormhole with such an induced clock difference could not be brought together without inducing quantum field and gravitational effects that would either make the wormhole collapse or the two mouths repel each other. Because of this, the two mouths could not be brought close enough for causality violation to take place. However, in a 1997 paper, Visser hypothesized that a complex " Roman ring " (named after Tom Roman) configuration of an N number of wormholes arranged in

8688-578: Is a popular scientific element in films as depicted in Jurassic Park (cloning of extinct species), The Island (cloning of humans), and ( genetic modification ) in some superhero movies and in the Alien series. Cybernetics and holographic projections as depicted in RoboCop and I, Robot are also popularized. Interstellar travel and teleportation is a popular theme in the Star Trek series that

8869-678: Is a popular theme in Independence Day while invisibility is also popular in Star Trek . Arc reactor technology, featured in Iron Man , is similar to a cold fusion device. Miniaturization technology where people are shrunk to microscopic sizes is featured in films like Fantastic Voyage (1966), Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989), and Marvel's Ant-Man (2015). The late Arthur C. Clarke 's third law states that "any sufficiently advanced technology

9050-551: Is achieved through warp drives and transporters while intergalactic travel is popular in films such as Stargate and Star Wars that is achieved through hyperspace or wormholes . Nanotechnology is also featured in the Star Trek series in the form of replicators (utopia), in The Day the Earth Stood Still in the form of grey goo (dystopia), and in Iron Man 3 in the form of extremis (nanotubes) . Force fields

9231-782: Is an exception. The first depiction of a sophisticated robot in a United States film was Gort in The Day the Earth Stood Still . Robots in films are often sentient and sometimes sentimental, and they have filled a range of roles in science fiction films. Robots have been supporting characters, such as Robby the Robot in Forbidden Planet , Huey, Dewey and Louie in Silent Running , Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation , sidekicks (e.g., C-3PO and R2-D2 from Star Wars , JARVIS from Iron Man ), and extras, visible in

SECTION 50

#1732884885070

9412-452: Is broken if one clock accelerates, allowing for less proper time to pass for one clock than the other. The twin paradox describes this: one twin remains on Earth, while the other undergoes acceleration to relativistic speed as they travel into space, turn around, and travel back to Earth; the traveling twin ages less than the twin who stayed on Earth, because of the time dilation experienced during their acceleration. General relativity treats

9593-449: Is described as creating a new timeline. Early science fiction stories feature characters who sleep for years and awaken in a changed society, or are transported to the past through supernatural means. Among them L'An 2440, rêve s'il en fût jamais ( The Year 2440: A Dream If Ever There Was One , 1770) by Louis-Sébastien Mercier , Rip Van Winkle (1819) by Washington Irving , Looking Backward (1888) by Edward Bellamy , and When

9774-454: Is disputed. Presentism is a school of philosophy that holds that the future and the past exist only as changes that occurred or will occur to the present, and they have no real existence of their own. In this view, time travel is impossible because there is no future or past to travel to. Keller and Nelson have argued that even if past and future objects do not exist, there can still be definite truths about past and future events, and thus it

9955-668: Is featured in Minority Report as well as in The Matrix saga (in which precognition is achieved by knowing the artificial world). Robots have been a part of science fiction since the Czech playwright Karel Čapek coined the word in 1921. In early films, robots were usually played by a human actor in a boxy metal suit, as in The Phantom Empire , although the female robot in Metropolis

10136-501: Is highly unlikely to be possible. Any theory that would allow time travel would introduce potential problems of causality . The classic example of a problem involving causality is the " grandfather paradox ," which postulates travelling to the past and intervening in the conception of one's ancestors (causing the death of an ancestor before conception being frequently cited). Some physicists, such as Novikov and Deutsch, suggested that these sorts of temporal paradoxes can be avoided through

10317-447: Is impossible for the time traveler to "change" history in any way. The time traveler's actions may be the cause of events in their own past though, which leads to the potential for circular causation , sometimes called a predestination paradox, ontological paradox, or bootstrap paradox. The term bootstrap paradox was popularized by Robert A. Heinlein 's story " By His Bootstraps ". The Novikov self-consistency principle proposes that

10498-494: Is indistinguishable from magic". Past science fiction films have depicted "fictional" ("magical") technologies that became present reality. For example, the Personal Access Display Device from Star Trek was a precursor of smartphones and tablet computers . Gesture recognition in the movie Minority Report is part of current game consoles . Human-level artificial intelligence is also fast approaching with

10679-459: Is left unfettered. Five hundred years later, a garbage avalanche disturbs Joe and Rita's hibernation chambers. Joe awakens in Frito Pendejo's apartment in previously-occupied Washington, D.C. Seeking assistance, Joe's higher register conflicts with average anti-intellectualism. He enters a hospital, believing the army administered hallucinogenic drugs to him. Joe realizes the year upon reading

10860-512: Is no possibility of light traveling faster than c and, thus, no possibility of violating causality. Many have argued that the absence of time travelers from the future demonstrates that such technology will never be developed, suggesting that it is impossible. This is analogous to the Fermi paradox related to the absence of evidence of extraterrestrial life. As the absence of extraterrestrial visitors does not categorically prove they do not exist, so

11041-429: Is observed when one correlates measurements of idler photons to the corresponding signal photons. However, since interference can be observed only after the idler photons are measured and they are correlated with the signal photons, there is no way for experimenters to tell what choice will be made in advance just by looking at the signal photons, only by gathering classical information from the entire system; thus causality

SECTION 60

#1732884885070

11222-434: Is possible that a future truth about a time traveler deciding to travel back to the present date could explain the time traveler's actual appearance in the present; these views are contested by some authors. A common objection to the idea of traveling back in time is put forth in the grandfather paradox or the argument of auto-infanticide. If one were able to go back in time, inconsistencies and contradictions would ensue if

11403-488: Is preserved. The experiment of Lijun Wang might also show causality violation since it made it possible to send packages of waves through a bulb of caesium gas in such a way that the package appeared to exit the bulb 62 nanoseconds before its entry, but a wave package is not a single well-defined object but rather a sum of multiple waves of different frequencies (see Fourier analysis ), and the package can appear to move faster than light or even backward in time even if none of

11584-477: Is provided by the 1951 short story " The Marching Morons " by Cyril M. Kornbluth . Early working titles included The United States of Uhh-merica and 3001 . Filming took place in 2004 on several stages at Austin Studios and in the Texas cities of Austin , San Marcos , Pflugerville , and Round Rock . Test screenings around March 2005 produced unofficial reports of poor audience reactions. After some re-shooting in

11765-521: Is received before it is sent, in all reference frames. The signal could be said to have moved backward in time. This hypothetical scenario is sometimes referred to as a tachyonic antitelephone . Quantum-mechanical phenomena such as quantum teleportation , the EPR paradox , or quantum entanglement might appear to create a mechanism that allows for faster-than-light (FTL) communication or time travel, and in fact some interpretations of quantum mechanics such as

11946-439: Is regarded as one of the best movies of the period, Planet of the Apes (1968) and Fahrenheit 451 ( 1966 ), which provided social commentary, and the campy Barbarella (1968), which explored the comical side of earlier science fiction. Jean-Luc Godard 's French "new wave" film Alphaville (1965) posited a futuristic Paris commanded by an artificial intelligence which has outlawed all emotion. The era of crewed trips to

12127-528: Is remote telepresence via androids as depicted in Surrogates and Iron Man 3 . As artificial intelligence becomes smarter due to increasing computer power , some sci-fi dreams have already been realized. For example, the computer Deep Blue beat the world chess champion in 1997 and a documentary film, Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine , was released in 2003. Another famous computer called Watson defeated

12308-437: Is selected for a government suspended animation experiment as the most average individual in the armed forces. Lacking a suitable female candidate, the military hires a prostitute, Rita, by dismissing charges against her and paying off her pimp , Upgrayedd. A scandal involving the officer overseeing the initiative and Upgrayedd forces the closure of the military base under which Joe and Rita were placed in hibernation, suspending

12489-468: Is still being researched. Wormholes are a hypothetical warped spacetime permitted by the Einstein field equations of general relativity. A proposed time-travel machine using a traversable wormhole would hypothetically work in the following way: One end of the wormhole is accelerated to some significant fraction of the speed of light, perhaps with some advanced propulsion system , and then brought back to

12670-511: Is whether robots will someday replace humans, a question raised in the film adaptation of Isaac Asimov 's I, Robot (in jobs) and in the film Real Steel (in sports), or whether intelligent robots could develop a conscience and a motivation to protect, take over, or destroy the human race (as depicted in The Terminator , Transformers , and in Avengers: Age of Ultron ). Another theme

12851-442: The Planet of the Apes series, Timeline (2003) and The Last Mimzy (2007), explained their depictions of time travel by drawing on physics concepts such as the special relativity phenomenon of time dilation (which could occur if a spaceship was travelling near the speed of light) and wormholes . Some films show time travel not being attained from advanced technology, but rather from an inner source or personal power, such as

13032-548: The Power Rangers (2017) reboot was greatly improved as compared to the original Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie (1995). While "size does matter", a famous tagline of the movie Godzilla , incredibly small robots, called nanobots , do matter as well (e.g. Borg nanoprobes in Star Trek and nanites in I, Robot ). The concept of time travel —travelling backwards and forwards through time—has always been

13213-452: The Star Wars prequel trilogy , or the huge robot probes seen in Monsters vs. Aliens ). In some cases, robots have even been the leading characters in science fiction films; in the film Blade Runner (1982), many of the characters are bioengineered android " replicants ". This is also present in the animated films WALL-E (2008), Astro Boy (2009), Big Hero 6 (2014), Ghost in

13394-597: The Bohm interpretation presume that some information is being exchanged between particles instantaneously in order to maintain correlations between particles. This effect was referred to as " spooky action at a distance " by Einstein. Nevertheless, the fact that causality is preserved in quantum mechanics is a rigorous result in modern quantum field theories , and therefore modern theories do not allow for time travel or FTL communication . In any specific instance where FTL has been claimed, more detailed analysis has proven that to get

13575-702: The Freeview premiere shown on Film4 on April 26, 2009. In August 2012, Crews said he was in talks with director Judge and Fox over a possible Idiocracy spin-off featuring his President Camacho character, initially conceived as a web series . A week before the 2012 elections , he reprised the character in a series of short sketches for Funny or Die . Before the 2016 presidential election , Rolling Stone published an article stating that Judge and Cohen would produce Idiocracy -themed campaign ads opposing Donald Trump's presidential campaign if given permission from Fox to do so. Crews later told Business Insider that

13756-452: The Novikov self-consistency principle or a variation of the many-worlds interpretation with interacting worlds. Time travel to the past is theoretically possible in certain general relativity spacetime geometries that permit traveling faster than the speed of light , such as cosmic strings , traversable wormholes , and Alcubierre drives . The theory of general relativity does suggest

13937-461: The Star Wars prequel trilogy began with the release of Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace , which eventually grossed over one billion dollars. As the decade progressed, computers played an increasingly important role in both the addition of special effects (thanks to Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Jurassic Park ) and the production of films. As software developed in sophistication it

14118-517: The University of Toronto , Canada, uses the analogy of a train traveling from Chicago to New York, but dropping off train cars at each station along the way, so that the center of the train moves forward at each stop; in this way, the speed of the center of the train exceeds the speed of any of the individual cars. Shengwang Du claims in a peer-reviewed journal to have observed single photons' precursors , saying that they travel no faster than c in

14299-607: The Washington Monument . Cultural theorist Scott Bukatman has proposed that science fiction film allows contemporary culture to witness an expression of the sublime , be it through exaggerated scale, apocalypse or transcendence. Science fiction films appeared early in the silent film era, typically as short films shot in black and white, sometimes with colour tinting. They usually had a technological theme and were often intended to be humorous. In 1902 , Georges Méliès released Le Voyage dans la Lune , generally considered

14480-469: The cyberpunk genre spawned several movies on the theme of the computer-human interface, such as Terminator 2: Judgment Day ( 1991 ), Total Recall ( 1990 ), The Lawnmower Man ( 1992 ), and The Matrix ( 1999 ). Other themes included disaster films (e.g., Armageddon and Deep Impact , both 1998 ), alien invasion (e.g., Independence Day ( 1996 )) and genetic experimentation (e.g., Jurassic Park ( 1993 ) and Gattaca ( 1997 )). Also,

14661-452: The virtual reality world became a real-world prison for humanity, managed by intelligent machines. In movies such as eXistenZ , The Thirteenth Floor , and Inception , the nature of reality and virtual reality become intermixed with no clear distinguishing boundary. Telekinesis and telepathy are featured in movies like Star Wars , The Last Mimzy , Race to Witch Mountain , Chronicle , and Lucy while precognition

14842-815: The young adult dystopian fiction subgenre, popular in the early part of the decade. These include the Hunger Games film series , based on the trilogy of novels by Suzanne Collins , The Divergent Series based on Veronica Roth 's Divergent trilogy , and the Maze Runner series , based on James Dashner 's The Maze Runner novels . Several adult adaptations have also been produced, including The Martian (2015), based on Andy Weir 's 2011 novel , Cloud Atlas (2012), based on David Mitchell 's 2004 novel , World War Z , based on Max Brooks ' 2006 novel , and Ready Player One (2018), based on Ernest Cline 's 2011 novel . Independent productions also increased in

15023-412: The " mad scientist " transferring the human mind to another body is as old as Frankenstein while the idea of corporations behind mind transfer technologies is observed in later films such as Gamer , Avatar , and Surrogates . Films such as Total Recall have popularized a thread of films that explore the concept of reprogramming the human mind. The theme of brainwashing in several films of

15204-567: The "World of the Ancients" ( Qin dynasty ) to retrieve a magical bell and then travels forward to the "World of the Future" ( Song dynasty ) to find an emperor who has been exiled in time. However, the time travel is taking place inside an illusory dream world created by the villain to distract and entrap him. Samuel Madden 's Memoirs of the Twentieth Century (1733) is a series of letters from British ambassadors in 1997 and 1998 to diplomats in

15385-613: The 1950s, Ray Harryhausen , protege of master King Kong animator Willis O'Brien, used stop-motion animation to create special effects for the following notable science fiction films: It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955), Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956) and 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957). The most successful monster movies were Japanese film studio Toho 's kaiju films directed by Ishirō Honda and featuring special effects by Eiji Tsuburaya . The 1954 film Godzilla , with

15566-471: The 1960s, but some of the films transformed science fiction cinema. Stanley Kubrick 's 2001: A Space Odyssey ( 1968 ) brought new realism to the genre, with its groundbreaking visual effects and realistic portrayal of space travel and influenced the genre with its epic story and transcendent philosophical scope. Other 1960s films included Planet of the Vampires (1965) by Italian filmmaker Mario Bava , that

15747-476: The 1970s included Woody Allen 's Sleeper ( 1973 ), and John Carpenter 's Dark Star ( 1974 ). The sports science fiction genre can be seen in films such as Rollerball (1975). Star Wars ( 1977 ) and Close Encounters of the Third Kind ( 1977 ) were box-office hits that brought about a huge increase in science fiction films. In 1979 , Star Trek: The Motion Picture brought the television series to

15928-408: The 1980s. Ridley Scott 's Blade Runner (1982), an adaptation of Philip K. Dick 's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? , examined what made an organic-creation a human, while the RoboCop series saw an android mechanism fitted with the brain and reprogrammed mind of a human to create a cyborg . The idea of brain transfer was not entirely new to science fiction film, as the concept of

16109-443: The 2000s-era films Donnie Darko , Mr. Nobody , The Butterfly Effect , and X-Men: Days of Future Past . More conventional time travel movies use technology to bring the past to life in the present, or in a present that lies in our future. The film Iceman (1984) told the story of the reanimation of a frozen Neanderthal . The film Freejack (1992) shows time travel used to pull victims of horrible deaths forward in time

16290-564: The 2010s, with the rise of digital filmmaking making it easier for filmmakers to produce movies on a smaller budget. These films include Attack the Block (2011), Source Code (2011), Looper (2012), Upstream Color (2013), Ex Machina (2015), and Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017). In 2016, Ex Machina won the Academy Award for Visual Effects in a surprising upset over

16471-515: The City of a Thousand Planets . More subtle visual clues can appear with changes of the human form through modifications in appearance, size, or behavior, or by means a known environment turned eerily alien, such as an empty city The Omega Man (1971). While science is a major element of this genre, many movie studios take significant liberties with scientific knowledge. Such liberties can be most readily observed in films that show spacecraft maneuvering in outer space . The vacuum should preclude

16652-558: The Earth Stood Still , and The Watch , the aliens were nearly human in physical appearance, and communicated in a common earth language. However, the aliens in Stargate and Prometheus were human in physical appearance but communicated in an alien language. A few films have tried to represent intelligent aliens as something utterly different from the usual humanoid shape (e.g. An intelligent life form surrounding an entire planet in Solaris ,

16833-753: The Extra-Terrestrial , Close Encounters of the Third Kind , The Fifth Element , The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy , Avatar , Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets , and the Men in Black series. In order to provide subject matter to which audiences can relate, the large majority of intelligent alien races presented in films have an anthropomorphic nature, possessing human emotions and motivations. In films like Cocoon , My Stepmother Is an Alien , Species , Contact , The Box , Knowing , The Day

17014-733: The Islamic tradition is of Uzair (usually identified with the Biblical Ezra ) whose grief at the Destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians was so great that God took his soul and brought him back to life after Jerusalem was reconstructed. He rode on his revived donkey and entered his native place. But the people did not recognize him, nor did his household, except the maid, who was now an old blind woman. He prayed to God to cure her blindness and she could see again. He meets his son who recognized him by

17195-580: The MWI". Everett also argues that even if Deutsch's approach is correct, it would imply that any macroscopic object composed of multiple particles would be split apart when traveling back in time through a wormhole, with different particles emerging in different worlds. Certain experiments carried out give the impression of reversed causality , but fail to show it under closer examination. The delayed-choice quantum eraser experiment performed by Marlan Scully involves pairs of entangled photons that are divided into "signal photons" and "idler photons", with

17376-786: The Moon in 1969 and the 1970s saw a resurgence of interest in the science fiction film. Andrei Tarkovsky 's Solaris ( 1972 ) and Stalker ( 1979 ) are two widely acclaimed examples of the renewed interest of film auteurs in science fiction. Science fiction films from the early 1970s explored the theme of paranoia, in which humanity is depicted as under threat from sociological, ecological or technological adversaries of its own creation, such as George Lucas 's directional debut THX 1138 ( 1971 ), The Andromeda Strain ( 1971 ), Silent Running ( 1972 ), Soylent Green ( 1973 ), Westworld ( 1973 ) and its sequel Futureworld ( 1976 ), and Logan's Run ( 1976 ). The science fiction comedies of

17557-580: The Pole (1912), Himmelskibet (1918; which with its runtime of 97 minutes generally is considered the first feature-length science fiction film in history), The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), The Mechanical Man (1921), Paris Qui Dort (1923), Aelita (1924), Luch Smerti (1925), and The Lost World (1925). In the 1930s, there were several big budget science fiction films, notably Just Imagine (1930), King Kong (1933), Things to Come (1936), and Lost Horizon (1937). Starting in 1936,

17738-498: The Sea ( 1916 ) is a film based on Jules Verne ’s famous novel of a wondrous submarine and its vengeful captain. In the 1920s, European filmmakers tended to use science fiction for prediction and social commentary, as can be seen in German films such as Metropolis ( 1927 ) and Frau im Mond ( 1929 ). Other notable science fiction films of the silent era include The Impossible Voyage (1904), The Motorist (1906), The Conquest of

17919-521: The Shell (2017) and in Next Gen (2018). Films like Bicentennial Man , A.I. Artificial Intelligence , Chappie , and Ex Machina depicted the emotional fallouts of robots that are self-aware. Other films like The Animatrix (The Second Renaissance) present the consequences of mass-producing self-aware androids as humanity succumbs to their robot overlords. One popular theme in science fiction film

18100-1072: The Shell (2017). The superhero film boom has also continued, into films such as Iron Man 2 (2010) and Iron Man 3 (2013), several entries into the X-Men film series , and The Avengers (2012), which became the fourth-highest-grossing film of all time. New franchises such as Deadpool and Guardians of the Galaxy also began in this decade. Further into the decade, more realistic science fiction epic films also become prevalent, including Battleship (2012), Gravity (2013), Elysium (2013), Interstellar ( 2014 ), Mad Max: Fury Road ( 2015 ), The Martian ( 2015 ), Arrival ( 2016 ), Passengers (2016), and Blade Runner 2049 ( 2017 ). Many of these films have gained widespread accolades, including several Academy Award wins and nominations. These films have addressed recent matters of scientific interest, including space travel, climate change, and artificial intelligence. Alongside these original films, many adaptations were produced, especially within

18281-570: The Sleeper Awakes (1899) by H. G. Wells. Prolonged sleep is used as a means of time travel in these stories. The date of the earliest work about backwards time travel is uncertain. The Chinese novel A Supplement to the Journey to the West ( c.  1640 ) by Dong Yue features magical mirrors and jade gateways that connect various points in time. The protagonist Sun Wukong travels back in time to

18462-697: The World (1934), Mad Love (1935), Trans-Atlantic Tunnel (1935), The Devil-Doll (1936), The Invisible Ray (1936), The Man Who Changed His Mind (1936), The Walking Dead (1936), Non-Stop New York (1937), and The Return of Doctor X (1939). The 1940s brought us Before I Hang (1940), Black Friday (1940), Dr. Cyclops (1940), The Devil Commands (1941), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941), Man Made Monster (1941), It Happened Tomorrow (1944), It Happens Every Spring (1949), and The Perfect Woman (1949). The release of Destination Moon (1950) and Rocketship X-M (1950) brought us to what many people consider "the golden age of

18643-753: The Worlds (1953), 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), This Island Earth (1955), Forbidden Planet (1956), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959) and On the Beach (1959). There is often a close connection between films in the science fiction genre and the so-called " monster movie ". Examples of this are Them! (1954), The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953) and The Blob (1958). During

18824-422: The absence of time travelers fails to prove time travel is physically impossible; it might be that time travel is physically possible but is never developed or is cautiously used. Carl Sagan once suggested the possibility that time travelers could be here but are disguising their existence or are not recognized as time travelers. Some versions of general relativity suggest that time travel might only be possible in

19005-479: The ads would not go forward as planned, but that they would have featured Camacho wrestling in a cage match against the other candidates. During the 2016 Republican Party presidential primaries , the film's co-writer Etan Cohen and others expressed opinions that the film's predictions were converging on accuracy, a sentiment repeated by director Judge during the elections that year. At the time, Judge also compared Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump —who

19186-523: The advent of smartphone A.I. while a working cloaking device / material is the main goal of stealth technology . Autonomous cars (e.g. KITT from the Knight Rider series) and quantum computers , like in the movie Stealth and Transcendence , also will be available eventually. Furthermore, although Clarke's laws do not classify "sufficiently advanced" technologies , the Kardashev scale measures

19367-399: The appearance of closed timelike curves." When a signal is sent from one location and received at another location, then as long as the signal is moving at the speed of light or slower, the mathematics of simultaneity in the theory of relativity show that all reference frames agree that the transmission-event happened before the reception-event. When the signal travels faster than light, it

19548-558: The background to create a futuristic setting (e.g., Back to the Future Part II (1989), Total Recall (2012), RoboCop (2014)). As well, robots have been formidable movie villains or monsters (e.g., the robot Box in the film Logan's Run (1976), HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey , ARIIA in Eagle Eye , robot Sentinels in X-Men: Days of Future Past , the battle droids in

19729-672: The ball shaped creature in Dark Star , microbial-like creatures in The Invasion , shape-shifting creatures in Evolution ). Recent trends in films involve building-size alien creatures like in the movie Pacific Rim where the CGI has tremendously improved over the previous decades as compared in previous films such as Godzilla . A frequent theme among science fiction films is that of impending or actual disaster on an epic scale. These often address

19910-690: The big screen for the first time. It was also in this period that the Walt Disney Company released many science fiction films for family audiences such as The Black Hole , Flight of the Navigator , and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids . The sequels to Star Wars , The Empire Strikes Back ( 1980 ) and Return of the Jedi ( 1983 ), also saw worldwide box office success. Ridley Scott 's films, such as Alien ( 1979 ) and Blade Runner ( 1982 ), along with James Cameron 's The Terminator ( 1984 ), presented

20091-411: The case that backward time travel could be possible but that it would be impossible to actually change the past in any way, an idea similar to the proposed Novikov self-consistency principle in physics. According to the philosophical theory of compossibility , what can happen, for example in the context of time travel, must be weighed against the context of everything relating to the situation. If

20272-512: The causal future of the world line is also in its causal past, a situation that can be described as time travel. Such a solution was first proposed by Kurt Gödel , a solution known as the Gödel metric , but his (and others') solution requires the universe to have physical characteristics that it does not appear to have, such as rotation and lack of Hubble expansion . Whether general relativity forbids closed time-like curves for all realistic conditions

20453-565: The distributor may have actively tried to keep the film from being seen by a large audience, while fulfilling a contractual obligation for theatrical release ahead of a DVD release, according to Ryan Pearson of the AP . That speculation was followed by open criticism of the studio's lack of support from Ain't It Cool News , Time , and Esquire . Time ' s Joel Stein wrote "the film's ads and trailers tested atrociously", but, "still, abandoning Idiocracy seems particularly unjust, since Judge has made

20634-465: The earth" in contrast to Joe and Rita's children, who are "the three smartest kids in the world." Other cast members include David Herman as the secretary of state, Justin Long as Doctor Lexus, Stephen Root as Judge Hector, Anthony "Citric" Campos as the Secretary of Defense, Thomas Haden Church as Brawndo's chief executive, and Sara Rue as the attorney general in an uncredited role. The idea of

20815-473: The effects of acceleration and the effects of gravity as equivalent , and shows that time dilation also occurs in gravity wells , with a clock deeper in the well ticking more slowly; this effect is taken into account when calibrating the clocks on the satellites of the Global Positioning System , and it could lead to significant differences in rates of aging for observers at different distances from

20996-430: The famous and easy-to-replicate observation of atmospheric muon decay . The theory of relativity states that the speed of light is invariant for all observers in any frame of reference ; that is, it is always the same. Time dilation is a direct consequence of the invariance of the speed of light. Time dilation may be regarded in a limited sense as "time travel into the future": a person may use time dilation so that

21177-469: The film Somewhere in Time as an example of such an ontological paradox, where a watch is given to a person, and 60 years later the same watch is brought back in time and given to the same character. Ross states that entropy of the watch will increase, and the watch carried back in time will be more worn with each repetition of its history. The second law of thermodynamics is understood by modern physicists to be

21358-586: The film " politically incorrect ", recommending that readers see the DVD and wrote "the film went flying through [American] theaters and did not open in Brazil. Proof that the future contemplated by Judge is not that far away." Critic Alexandre Koball of the Brazilian website CinePlayers.com gave the movie a score of 5 out of 5. Another staff reviewer wrote, " Idiocracy is not exactly ... funny nor ... innovative but it's

21539-458: The film carries a profound message - that the evolution of a species toward technological perfection (in this case exemplified by the disappeared alien civilization called the "Krell") does not ensure the loss of primitive and dangerous urges. In the film, this part of the primitive mind manifests itself as monstrous destructive force emanating from the Freudian subconscious, or "Id". Some films blur

21720-491: The film has a score of 71%, with an average rating of 6.4/10, based on 52 reviews. The website's "Critics Consensus" for the film reads, "Frustratingly uneven yet enjoyable overall, Idiocracy skewers society's devolution with an amiably goofy yet deceptively barbed wit." On Metacritic , the film has a score of 66 out of 100, based on reviews from 12 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Los Angeles Times reviewer Carina Chocano described it as "spot on" satire and

21901-399: The film would develop a cult following through its DVD release, similar to Office Space . The film was released in the United States on September 1, 2006. Despite its lack of a major theatrical release, which resulted in a $ 495,000 gross at the box office, the film received positive reviews from critics and has since become a cult film . In 2005, United States Army librarian Joe Bauers

22082-446: The film. Science fiction film The genre has existed since the early years of silent cinema , when Georges Méliès ' A Trip to the Moon (1902) employed trick photography effects. The next major example (first in feature-length in the genre) was the film Metropolis (1927). From the 1930s to the 1950s, the genre consisted mainly of low-budget B movies . After Stanley Kubrick 's landmark 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968),

22263-599: The films were often well-photographed in colour ... and their dismal dialogue was delivered in well-designed and well-lit sets." With the Space Race between the USSR and the US going on, documentaries and illustrations of actual events, pioneers and technology were plenty. Any movie featuring realistic space travel was at risk of being obsolete at its time of release, rather fossil than fiction. There were relatively few science fiction films in

22444-440: The first science fiction film, and a film that used early trick photography to depict a spacecraft's journey to the Moon. Several early films merged the science fiction and horror genres. Examples of this are Frankenstein ( 1910 ), a film adaptation of Mary Shelley 's novel, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920), based on the psychological tale by Robert Louis Stevenson . Taking a more adventurous tack, 20,000 Leagues Under

22625-483: The first story to feature an alternate history created as a result of time travel. One of the first stories to feature time travel by means of a machine is " The Clock that Went Backward " by Edward Page Mitchell , which appeared in the New York Sun in 1881. However, the mechanism borders on fantasy. An unusual clock, when wound, runs backwards and transports people nearby back in time. The author does not explain

22806-471: The first time-machine story, but I'm not sure that a clock quite counts". H. G. Wells ' The Time Machine (1895) popularized the concept of time travel by mechanical means. Some theories, most notably special and general relativity , suggest that suitable geometries of spacetime or specific types of motion in space might allow time travel into the past and future if these geometries or motions were possible. In technical papers, physicists discuss

22987-535: The first to toy with the rich idea of time-travel in the form of an artifact sent backward from the future to be discovered in the present". In the science fiction anthology Far Boundaries (1951), editor August Derleth claims that an early short story about time travel is An Anachronism; or, Missing One's Coach , written for the Dublin Literary Magazine by an anonymous author in the June 1838 issue . While

23168-601: The form of circular reasoning from the Cabinet , Joe convinces Camacho to use water instead of Brawndo in irrigation. Consequently, Brawndo—who employs half of the population—files for bankruptcy, inciting riots as immediate improvement to the crops did not materialize. At the Extreme Court , Joe is sentenced to public execution in a monster truck demolition derby against undefeated rehabilitation officer Beef Supreme. Rita and Frito discover that Joe's reintroduction of water to

23349-880: The future as dark, dirty and chaotic, and depicted aliens and androids as hostile and dangerous. In contrast, Steven Spielberg 's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial ( 1982 ), one of the most successful films of the 1980s, presented aliens as benign and friendly, a theme already present in Spielberg's own Close Encounters of the Third Kind . James Bond also entered the science fiction genre in 1979 with Moonraker . The big budget adaptations of Frank Herbert 's Dune and Alex Raymond 's Flash Gordon , as well as Peter Hyams 's sequel to 2001 , 2010: The Year We Make Contact (based on 2001 author Arthur C. Clarke 's sequel novel 2010: Odyssey Two ), were box office failures that dissuaded producers from investing in science fiction literary properties. Disney's Tron ( 1982 ) turned out to be

23530-421: The genre. In the monster films of the 1950s, the scientist often played a heroic role as the only person who could provide a technological fix for some impending doom. Reflecting the distrust of government that began in the 1960s in the United States, the brilliant but rebellious scientist became a common theme, often serving a Cassandra -like role during an impending disaster. Biotechnology (e.g., cloning )

23711-432: The idea of absolute time , while his contemporary Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz maintained that time is only a relation between events and it cannot be expressed independently. The latter approach eventually gave rise to the spacetime of relativity . Many philosophers have argued that relativity implies eternalism , the idea that the past and future exist in a real sense, not only as changes that occurred or will occur to

23892-458: The idea of reprogrammable reality and memory. The idea that a human could be entirely represented as a program in a computer was a core element of the film Tron . This would be further explored in the film version of The Lawnmower Man , Transcendence , and Ready Player One and the idea reversed in Virtuosity as computer programs sought to become real persons. In The Matrix series,

24073-399: The line between the genres, such as films where the protagonist gains the extraordinary powers of the superhero . These films usually employ quasi-plausible reason for the hero gaining these powers. Not all science fiction themes are equally suitable for movies. Science fiction horror is most common. Often enough, these films could just as well pass as Westerns or World War II films if

24254-411: The local laws of physics in a region of spacetime containing time travelers cannot be any different from the local laws of physics in any other region of spacetime. The philosopher Kelley L. Ross argues in "Time Travel Paradoxes" that in a scenario involving a physical object whose world-line or history forms a closed loop in time there can be a violation of the second law of thermodynamics . Ross uses

24435-458: The much higher-budget Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015). Science fiction films are often speculative in nature, and often include key supporting elements of science and technology. However, as often as not the "science" in a Hollywood science fiction movie can be considered pseudo-science, relying primarily on atmosphere and quasi-scientific artistic fancy than facts and conventional scientific theory. The definition can also vary depending on

24616-664: The narrator waits under a tree for a coach to take him out of Newcastle upon Tyne , he is transported back in time over a thousand years. He encounters the Venerable Bede in a monastery and explains to him the developments of the coming centuries. However, the story never makes it clear whether these events are real or a dream. Another early work about time travel is The Forebears of Kalimeros: Alexander, son of Philip of Macedon by Alexander Veltman published in 1836. Charles Dickens 's A Christmas Carol (1843) has early depictions of mystical time travel in both directions, as

24797-416: The near future. With current technologies, it is only possible to cause a human traveler to age less than companions on Earth by a few milliseconds after a few hundred days of space travel. Philosophers have discussed the philosophy of space and time since at least the time of ancient Greece ; for example, Parmenides presented the view that time is an illusion. Centuries later, Isaac Newton supported

24978-399: The new Adam and Eve ." The A.V. Club ' s Nathan Rabin found Luke Wilson "perfectly cast ... as a quintessential everyman"; and wrote of the film "Like so much superior science fiction, Idiocracy uses a fantastical future to comment on a present. ... There's a good chance that Judge's smartly lowbrow Idiocracy will be mistaken for what it's satirizing ." Gerald Casale ,

25159-462: The null energy condition, and many physicists believe that the required negative energy may actually be possible due to the Casimir effect in quantum physics. Although early calculations suggested that a very large amount of negative energy would be required, later calculations showed that the amount of negative energy can be made arbitrarily small. In 1993, Matt Visser argued that the two mouths of

25340-410: The origin or properties of the clock. Enrique Gaspar y Rimbau 's El Anacronópete (1887) may have been the first story to feature a vessel engineered to travel through time. Andrew Sawyer has commented that the story "does seem to be the first literary description of a time machine noted so far", adding that "Edward Page Mitchell's story The Clock That Went Backward (1881) is usually described as

25521-407: The outside. One significant limitation of such a time machine is that it is only possible to go as far back in time as the initial creation of the machine; in essence, it is more of a path through time than it is a device that itself moves through time, and it would not allow the technology itself to be moved backward in time. According to current theories on the nature of wormholes, construction of

25702-431: The past is a certain way, it's not possible for it to be any other way. What can happen when a time traveler visits the past is limited to what did happen, in order to prevent logical contradictions. The Novikov self-consistency principle , named after Igor Dmitrievich Novikov , states that any actions taken by a time traveler or by an object that travels back in time were part of history all along, and therefore it

25883-454: The past, conveying the political and religious conditions of the future. Because the narrator receives these letters from his guardian angel , Paul Alkon suggests in his book Origins of Futuristic Fiction that "the first time-traveler in English literature is a guardian angel". Madden does not explain how the angel obtains these documents, but Alkon asserts that Madden "deserves recognition as

26064-485: The point of origin. Alternatively, another way is to take one entrance of the wormhole and move it to within the gravitational field of an object that has higher gravity than the other entrance, and then return it to a position near the other entrance. For both these methods, time dilation causes the end of the wormhole that has been moved to have aged less, or become "younger", than the stationary end as seen by an external observer; however, time connects differently through

26245-444: The possibility of closed timelike curves , which are world lines that form closed loops in spacetime, allowing objects to return to their own past. There are known to be solutions to the equations of general relativity that describe spacetimes which contain closed timelike curves, such as Gödel spacetime , but the physical plausibility of these solutions is uncertain. Many in the scientific community believe that backward time travel

26426-534: The possibility of generating a positive result demonstrating the existence of time travel, but have failed so far—no time travelers are known to have attended either event. Some versions of the many-worlds interpretation can be used to suggest that future humans have traveled back in time, but have traveled back to the meeting time and place in a parallel universe . There is a great deal of observable evidence for time dilation in special relativity and gravitational time dilation in general relativity, for example in

26607-544: The present time. Events such as Perth's Destination Day , MIT 's Time Traveler Convention and Stephen Hawking's Reception For Time Travellers heavily publicized permanent "advertisements" of a meeting time and place for future time travelers to meet. In 1982, a group in Baltimore , Maryland , identifying itself as the Krononauts, hosted an event of this type welcoming visitors from the future. These experiments only stood

26788-437: The present. Philosopher of science Dean Rickles disagrees with some qualifications, but notes that "the consensus among philosophers seems to be that special and general relativity are incompatible with presentism". Some philosophers view time as a dimension equal to spatial dimensions, that future events are "already there" in the same sense different places exist, and that there is no objective flow of time; however, this view

26969-428: The project indefinitely. Over the next five hundred years, average intelligence decreases due to societal expectations, discouraging well-educated individuals from having children as the less-educated reproduce indiscriminately ; genetic engineering is forgone in favor of hair loss and erectile dysfunction treatments. As a result, infrastructure deteriorates, low comedy and vulgarity defines culture, and consumerism

27150-463: The protagonist is transported to the prehistoric past by the magic of a "lame demon" (a French pun on Boitard's name), where he encounters a Plesiosaur and an apelike ancestor and is able to interact with ancient creatures. Edward Everett Hale 's "Hands Off" (1881) tells the story of an unnamed being, possibly the soul of a person who has recently died, who interferes with ancient Egyptian history by preventing Joseph 's enslavement. This may have been

27331-477: The protagonist, Ebenezer Scrooge, is transported to Christmases past and future. Other stories employ the same template, where a character naturally goes to sleep, and upon waking up finds themself in a different time. A clearer example of backward time travel is found in the 1861 book Paris avant les hommes ( Paris before Men ) by the French botanist and geologist Pierre Boitard , published posthumously. In this story,

27512-493: The pure waves in the sum do so. This effect cannot be used to send any matter, energy, or information faster than light, so this experiment is understood not to violate causality either. The physicists Günter Nimtz and Alfons Stahlhofen, of the University of Koblenz , claim to have violated Einstein's theory of relativity by transmitting photons faster than the speed of light. They say they have conducted an experiment in which microwave photons traveled "instantaneously" between

27693-469: The release of Transformers (2007) and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009), both of which resulted in worldwide box office success. In 2009, James Cameron 's Avatar garnered worldwide box office success, and would later become the highest-grossing movie of all time. This movie was also an example of political commentary. It depicted humans destroying the environment on another planet by mining for

27874-568: The repetitions of the Korova Milkbar make the alien decor seem more familiar. As well, familiar images become alien, as in the films Repo Man and Liquid Sky . For example, in Dr. Strangelove , the distortion of the humans make the familiar images seem more alien. Finally, alien images are juxtaposed with the familiar, as in The Deadly Mantis , when a giant praying mantis is shown climbing

28055-694: The science fiction film genre was taken more seriously. In the late 1970s, big-budget science fiction films filled with special effects became popular with audiences after the success of Star Wars (1977) and paved the way for the blockbuster hits of subsequent decades. Screenwriter and scholar Eric R. Williams identifies science fiction films as one of eleven super-genres in his screenwriters’ taxonomy , stating that all feature-length narrative films can be classified by these super-genres.  The other ten super-genres are action , crime , fantasy , horror , romance , slice of life , sports , thriller , war , and western . According to Vivian Sobchack ,

28236-403: The science fiction film". In the 1950s, public interest in space travel and new technologies was great. While many 1950s science fiction films were low-budget B movies , there were several successful films with larger budgets and impressive special effects. These include The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), The Thing from Another World (1951), When Worlds Collide (1951), The War of

28417-429: The science fiction props were removed. Common motifs also include voyages and expeditions to other planets, and dystopias , while utopias are rare. Film theorist Vivian Sobchack argues that science fiction films differ from fantasy films in that while science fiction film seeks to achieve our belief in the images we are viewing, fantasy film instead attempts to suspend our disbelief. The science fiction film displays

28598-460: The scientist has varied considerably in the science fiction film genre, depending on the public perception of science and advanced technology. Starting with Dr. Frankenstein , the mad scientist became a stock character who posed a dire threat to society and perhaps even civilization. Certain portrayals of the "mad scientist", such as Peter Sellers 's performance in Dr. Strangelove , have become iconic to

28779-437: The side of empiricism, and happy films and sad films on the side of transcendentalism. However, there are numerous well-known examples of science fiction horror films, epitomized by such pictures as Frankenstein and Alien . The visual style of science fiction film is characterized by a clash between alien and familiar images. This clash is implemented when alien images become familiar, as in A Clockwork Orange , when

28960-479: The signal photons emerging from one of two locations and their position later measured as in the double-slit experiment . Depending on how the idler photon is measured, the experimenter can either learn which of the two locations the signal photon emerged from or "erase" that information. Even though the signal photons can be measured before the choice has been made about the idler photons, the choice seems to retroactively determine whether or not an interference pattern

29141-493: The sixties and seventies including A Clockwork Orange and The Manchurian Candidate coincided with secret real-life government experimentation during Project MKULTRA . Voluntary erasure of memory is further explored as themes of the films Paycheck and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind . Some films like Limitless explore the concept of mind enhancement. The anime series Serial Experiments Lain also explores

29322-614: The skeptic Payasi that time in the Heavens passes differently than on Earth. The Japanese tale of " Urashima Tarō ", first described in the Manyoshu , tells of a young fisherman named Urashima-no-ko ( 浦嶋子 ) who visits an undersea palace. After three days, he returns home to his village and finds himself 300 years in the future, where he has been forgotten, his house is in ruins, and his family has died. One story in Judaism concerns Honi HaMe'agel ,

29503-416: The soil allowed crops to grow. Rita pays a cameraman to broadcast the crops on the stadium's Jumbotron , prompting Camacho to grant Joe a presidential pardon . Joe discovers the time machine was an amusement ride, a detail Frito was aware of. Joe becomes president and marries Rita, with whom he has three children. Frito becomes vice president and has 32 children, all stated to be "the dumbest kids ever to walk

29684-557: The store, but Joe is arrested after his bar code is scanned. Joe is taken to the White House and appointed secretary of the interior by president Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho due to extraordinary performance on the aptitude test. In an address, Camacho states that Joe will resolve unfruitful crop yields, dust storms , and a stagnant economy, among other issues, within a week or face imprisonment. Joe and Rita visit

29865-582: The summer of 2005, a UK test screening in August produced a report of a positive impression. Idiocracy ' s original release date was August 5, 2005, according to Mike Judge. In April 2006, a release date was set for September 1, 2006. In August, numerous articles revealed that release was to be put on hold indefinitely. Idiocracy was released as scheduled but only in seven cities (Los Angeles, Atlanta, Toronto, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, and Mike Judge's hometown, Austin, Texas), and expanded to only 130 theaters, not

30046-457: The time traveler were to change anything; there is a contradiction if the past becomes different from the way it is . The paradox is commonly described with a person who travels to the past and kills their own grandfather, prevents the existence of their father or mother, and therefore their own existence. Philosophers question whether these paradoxes prove time travel impossible. Some philosophers answer these paradoxes by arguing that it might be

30227-640: The title monster attacking Tokyo, gained immense popularity, spawned multiple sequels, led to other kaiju films like Rodan , and created one of the most recognizable monsters in cinema history. Japanese science fiction films, particularly the tokusatsu and kaiju genres, were known for their extensive use of special effects , and gained worldwide popularity in the 1950s. Kaiju and tokusatsu films, notably Warning from Space (1956), sparked Stanley Kubrick 's interest in science fiction films and influenced 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). According to his biographer John Baxter , despite their "clumsy model sequences,

30408-649: The transmission of sound or maneuvers employing wings, yet the soundtrack is filled with inappropriate flying noises and changes in flight path resembling an aircraft banking. The filmmakers, unfamiliar with the specifics of space travel , focus instead on providing acoustical atmosphere and the more familiar maneuvers of the aircraft. Similar instances of ignoring science in favor of art can be seen when movies present environmental effects as portrayed in Star Wars and Star Trek . Entire planets are destroyed in titanic explosions requiring mere seconds, whereas an actual event of this nature takes many hours. The role of

30589-454: The two best human Jeopardy (game show) players in 2011 and a NOVA documentary film, Smartest Machine on Earth , was released in the same year. Building-size robots are also becoming a popular theme in movies as featured in Pacific Rim . Future live action films may include an adaptation of popular television series like Voltron and Robotech . The CGI robots of Pacific Rim and

30770-535: The unfamiliar and alien in the context of the familiar. Despite the alien nature of the scenes and science fictional elements of the setting, the imagery of the film is related back to humankind and how we relate to our surroundings. While the science fiction film strives to push the boundaries of the human experience, they remain bound to the conditions and understanding of the audience and thereby contain prosaic aspects, rather than being completely alien or abstract. Genre films such as westerns or war movies are bound to

30951-481: The usual wide release of 600 or more theaters. According to the Austin American-Statesman , 20th Century Fox , the film's distributor, was entirely absent in promoting the feature; while posters were released to theaters, "no movie trailers, no ads, and only two stills", and no press kits were released. The film was not screened for critics. Lack of concrete information from Fox led to speculation that

31132-444: The viewpoint of the observer. Many science fiction films include elements of mysticism, occult , magic, or the supernatural , considered by some to be more properly elements of fantasy or the occult (or religious) film. This transforms the movie genre into a science fantasy with a religious or quasi-religious philosophy serving as the driving motivation. The movie Forbidden Planet employs many common science fiction elements, but

31313-401: The way they were portrayed, which affected the studio's efforts to promote the movie. He said, "The rumor was, because we used real corporations in our comedy (I mean, Starbucks was giving hand jobs) these companies gave us their name thinking they were gonna get 'pumped up', and then we're like, 'Welcome to Costco, we love you' [delivered in monotone]. All these real corporations were like, 'Wait

31494-416: The wormhole than outside it, so that synchronized clocks at either end of the wormhole will always remain synchronized as seen by an observer passing through the wormhole, no matter how the two ends move around. This means that an observer entering the "younger" end would exit the "older" end at a time when it was the same age as the "younger" end, effectively going back in time as seen by an observer from

31675-467: Was completed (although it was later continued, but at the time it was not intended to be) with the darkly themed Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith . Science-fiction also returned as a tool for political commentary in films such as A.I. Artificial Intelligence , Minority Report , Sunshine , District 9 , Children of Men , Serenity , Sleep Dealer , and Pandorum . The 2000s also saw

31856-484: Was hesitant to promote the film, refusing to grant it a wide release , and did not screen the film for critics. The decision not to market Idiocracy was seen as unexpected, following the success of Office Space (1999), and led to speculation. According to Crews, the film's satirical depiction of corporations made the film financially unviable, while Judge attributed 20th Century Fox's decision to negative test screenings ; Judge stated that 20th Century Fox believed that

32037-569: Was later elected president—to the film's pro wrestler -turned-president Camacho. When asked about predicting the future, he quipped, "I'm no prophet, I was off by 490 years." Comparisons have been made between the film and Trump's first presidency . An article for Collider pointed out the ways in which Trump's positions echoed the political decisions of the characters in the film in areas such as science, business, entertainment, environment, healthcare, law enforcement, and politics. Internet memes have spawned comparisons to Trump and characters in

32218-482: Was popularized by H. G. Wells 's 1895 novel The Time Machine . It is uncertain whether time travel to the past would be physically possible. Such travel, if at all feasible, may give rise to questions of causality . Forward time travel, outside the usual sense of the perception of time , is an extensively observed phenomenon and is well understood within the framework of special relativity and general relativity . However, making one body advance or delay more than

32399-436: Was the result of negative test screenings . He added that Fox subsequently decided to not give the film a strong marketing push because the distributor believed it would develop a cult following through word-of-mouth and recoup its budget through home video sales, as Judge's previous film Office Space had. Although it was not screened in advance for critics, Idiocracy received positive reviews. On Rotten Tomatoes ,

32580-451: Was used to produce more complicated effects. It also enabled filmmakers to enhance the visual quality of animation, resulting in films such as Ghost in the Shell (1995) from Japan, and The Iron Giant (1999) from the United States. During the first decade of the 2000s, superhero films abounded, as did earthbound science fiction such as the Matrix trilogy. In 2005 , the Star Wars saga

32761-520: Was very different from the original film, falling more into the action/science fiction genre, it was both a critical and commercial success and Sigourney Weaver was nominated for Best Actress in a Leading Role at the Academy Awards . The Japanese cyberpunk anime film Akira ( 1988 ) also had a big influence outside Japan when released. In the 1990s, the emergence of the World Wide Web and

#69930