How the streaming giant has been leading a renaissance in the sci-fi genre
Your reason to stay glued to Netflix this weekend. The Colony, Vast Expanse of Space and Its Allure The Colony delves into the subject of imminent and apocalyptic climate change and its subsequent trail of destruction that prompts a mass exodus of Earthlings to a distant planet Kepler 209. The show’s beauty lies in its bleakness albeit it uses a few safe tropes related to climate change—reproduction, pandemics, looming end of humanity, colonialism and the warring fraction of colonisers and natives. The climate apocalypse genre might be a tad recurring, but The Colony offers a fresh twist to the perennial denial of climate change. A Tale of Language, Love and Loss with Arrival Amy Adam’s Arrival is no doubt a stunning and modern masterpiece that ambitiously deals with the subject of space, infinity, aliens, linguistics and varying political ideologies. The movie verges on absurdity and unimaginable accentuating the fascinating and scary about it. The cinematic in Arrival is brought alive by poignancy of love and loss, military bureaucracy, chilling paranoia of the otherworldliness, strangeness and revelations. Post-Apocalyptic, The Midnight Sky Welcome to George Clooney’s post-apocalyptic and melancholic macrocosm, the sole surviving man on Earth manning a radioactive ice storm stranded in some observatory in the Arctic Circle. Adopted from ‘Good Morning, Midnight’, a sci-fi fiction by Lily Brooks Dalton, Midnight Sky ponders on extra-terrestrial alliances as Earth perishes. The project is ambitious in its deft handling of the extra-terrestrial ream filling up the void left by the inconsistent availability of novel sci-fi content. Fantasy Adventure of Total Recall (2012) The futurist thriller subverts the popular notion of Earthlings overruled by alien creatures and firmly declares us as emperors taking the reins in the future. The 2012 remake of the cult classic nonetheless retains the Marxist allegory furnished by the film’s gloss and flashier effects. The transition from Doug Quaid monotonous construction job in a sprawling, congested and squalid urban space to Blade Runner–style aesthetics is pretty dope and makes for a fun binge-watch on Netflix. Lost in Space Although the series struggles to spark enthusiasm among viewers using the familiar plot of hasty evacuation of Earthlings to a neighbouring planet, the twist is introduced when the ship gets stranded on a mysterious planet (Alpha Centauri) with a harrowing journey of struggle and release. The sci-fi parade on Netflix with a pinch of speculative fiction and cyberpunk would make you travel farther and contemplate human life in the ever-expanding universe.
