Voyagers review: 2001 meets Ethics 101 in ponderous sci-fi drama

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Voyagers review: 2001 meets Ethics 101 in ponderous sci-fi drama

Bored teenagers take big moral arguments into space in this sci-fi drama heading for theaters.

 

Lily-Rose Depp and Tye Sheridan make space for the big questions.

Lionsgate

 

When you're a teenager, everything can feel like the end of the world. But for the crew of adolescent astronauts in new sci-fi drama Voyagers, it literally could be -- because their teen angst threatens a mission to restart humanity.

 

These kids have been born and bred specially to head for space as the ravaged Earth dies behind them. But they don't take too kindly to learning that mission control is manipulating them, and the next thing you know, the rules have gone out the airlock and it's all turned Lord of the Flies.

 

Voyagers is in theaters now.

 

Colin Farrell headlines as a sad-eyed pied piper leading the flock of kids into space, showing a father's sorrow through a charismatically subdued performance. But when there's only one adult in the cast, you know he's on borrowed time, and that leaves the pouting but dead-eyed kids to carry the film. Having been raised in a sterile, high-tech environment that's cinematically appealing but quite clearly a bad idea for raising healthily balanced children, the little'uns grow into dour, affectless teenagers who eat and work out and pilot the ship in austere silence. Their recreation consists of listening to classical music -- probably because if they were allowed to watch literally any spaceship movie they'd know some kind of psycho freakout is clearly round the corner. The flattened, muttering performances and a motif of plodding down sterile corridors fits the eerie atmosphere but isn't terribly engaging.

 

Dunkirk actor Fionn Whitehead and X-Men star Tye Sheridan show flashes of visceral excitement as their characters revel in the unexpected and heady sensation of becoming young men. Intoxicated by awakening urges and growing strength, Whitehead's volatile jock is whipped up by a roiling cocktail of ego, desire and jealousy. But Whitehead and Sheridan are oddly stuck with a deadened acting style even when they're supposedly free to develop personalities. Still, at least their roles have some passion -- unlike that of Lily-Rose Depp, who gets stuck frowning a lot and telling off the naughty boys.

 

As all impulse control goes out the window, the kids challenge not only the mission but also the very basics of human morality. In fact, Voyagers takes on a commendable amount of issues: It begins as a climate change parable, exploring whether people have a responsibility to improve a future they won't live to see. But it's also a meditation on mortality. And a treatise on whether man is innately savage. It explores factionalism; the corrupting influence of demagogue leaders; free will; an individual's responsibility to society; parental authority and expectations; and the uncomfortable reality of how long it takes to travel through space. And it also finds time to touch on sexual consent.

 

 

Source: Voyagers review: 2001 meets Ethics 101 in ponderous sci-fi drama