actaction Review of Postcard from Earth

Postcard from Earth (2023)

See Abject Squalor and Feel Depressed About a Dying Planet

[4/10 · 30 January 2024]

You get more flies with honey than vinegar, but this film is determined to ruin your day... but don't worry the rich will be able to leave to a new world to wreck so that Earth can be returned to an untouched vista in which (you guessed it) the rich can vacation without all those pesky poor people crowding it. I certainly think it was unintentional to show the problem of the world only being 3rd world decay, but rarely are people in business suits seen as the problem (when the rich elite almost certainly consume much more). I'm used to heavy handed messages in nature docs, basically "look how beautiful, don't you want to save it", but Postcards from Earth's solution is leave the wrecked Earth and let it recover without us, rather than learning to live with it. On a giant Sphere screen, nobody really wants to view a full 1/3rd of a film where we get to see poor people picking oranges, poor people living in urban hellscape (with planes flying loudly overhead and nobody looks too happy to be involved with this expensive vision). The audience OOOOOs and AHHHHHs at previous few moments of nature shown, but the depressing message is hammered home over and over. There truly isn't such a thing as subtlety in film anymore. I think the film needed to go one way or the other: either a feel good Disney Nature film with a "save this place" message -or- a downer film where science talks about the harsh reality... but this film is neither. It's bleak, but the solutions of dropping a seed and instantly terraforming a planet is sublimely stupid. And if this solution is possible, why would anyone need to preserve the Earth and leave at all? Just drop a seed every few years and start again when the planet dies? The film ignores responsibility for an easy answer. Is it really ECO for a single couple to travel space? Shouldn't there be a lot more people? Where are all the poor people? Did you leave them on Earth? And in what universe would everybody "leave voluntarily"? Have you met any confederate people from the south? Or a New Yorker. No way they're leaving their hellhole. The film should have been brighter and with more fun, a message is fine, but how about a realistic one?