I know most of you visiting this website have no trouble with the premise of this film, but to the one(s) who have, I can only say this: This movie is a science FICTION. If you have trouble with the friendly moneyless world this movie depicts, think of it as just as fictional and ‘realistic’ as Terminator or Transformers.
Yes, I know a completely moneyless world where everybody on the whole planet lives in peace and there’s an unheard of abundance for all, is a UTOPIA. But just like Matrix, where the whole world has been taken over by machines, or Elysium, where the rich overclass hides away on a space station while the rest suffer on the planet, or World War Z, where the whole planet is taken over by zombies, just like these movies, Waking Up is a FANTASY.
But, just like Matrix, Elysium and World War Z, Waking Up carries, if ever so little, a tiny possibility for the world it depicts, however small. Matrix spins further on the threat of artificial intelligence out of control. However, that this will happen, that machines will ‘take over the world’, is far from sure. Elysium extrapolates the possibility of ‘the rich taking over’. But the possibility for this happening like the movie depicts is just as small as the machines taking over in Matrix. The zombie epidemic in World War Z is based on the incredible tiny tiny possibility of a virus spreading like wildfire on earth turning everyone into raving zombies.
These films have different degrees of realism in them. Waking Up is somewhere on this realism scale as well. Exactly where it is is up to the viewer to decide. To some, World War Z is more realistic than Waking Up, while to others, it is completely opposite.
But why some people have such huge trouble accepting a fantasy where life for the whole of humanity is GOOD, I can only speculate about. Never the less, the premise of this film stays, however unrealistic or utopian. Personally, I’d much rather fantasise over some kind of positive future world than yet another gloomy ‘post apocalyptic’ or ‘dystopian’ future so many movies depict these days. It’s as if we want to obliterate ourselves. As if there’s no hope and we better prepare for it.
I don’t buy this. I think we, Humans, have the power in our own hands to create the future we want. We have competition today but we also have collaboration. We have money, trading, corruption and war today, but we also have sharing, giving, volunteering and peace. We can choose.
The premise of Waking Up movie is not up for discussion. Waking Up is set in a moneyless, sharing, utopian, good world for everyone, where miraculously the whole of Humanity has stopped trading with each other and started sharing instead.
Take it or leave it.
What is up for discussion on the other hand is story structure, dialogue, action, show vs. tell, production design, locations, animations, actors, casting, funding, etc. etc. All the things that are needed to make this the film it deserves to be.
Furthermore, we can discuss how this moneyless world would work. When we assume there is no money or trading going on anymore, then, how is the world organised? We can also assume there is no global totalitarian regime, but rather a global network of communities with councils from local to global level that figure out how to share and distribute the resources. But how will it work in praxis? How will it be to live in this world?
I see Humanity like I see Waking Up movie; As a flower about to bloom.
I even go further and say that if we don’t run out of the capital and with it the money, we take the chance to extinguish as a species or, what can happen too, we end like Mad max fiction movie. That is a utopian end too, doesn’t it?
And there you go. Perfectly said, Harald.