Outland | Total Recall

            The materials used in the final set of films illustrate a less humble approach to space travel.  The two films, Outland and Total Recall, are envisioning a world where man has conquered the harsh environments of space, and taken over.  Both render their interior and exterior environments as industrial landscapes within space. 

            The industrial landscapes penetrating the harsh conditions of space suggest that we as humans have conquered space.  We have built empires in what was once the unknown conditions and have used them to succeed are thirst for power.  In both films the construction penetrates, branches out of and overthrows the existing landscapes of the respective environments.  Both films provide an attitude of consumption, where the human race has overthrown the natural conditions of space, and used its resources for its own success.  The materials used are not sympathetic to the suggested natural landscapes of space.  They denote the notion of a high-tech machine that exhausts the environment of space. An intrusive and arrogant attitude towards how we as a race may progress in future space expeditions is established.

            The use of transparent and grated materials occurs in both films.  These materials create a prison like environment for the ‘worker bees’ of the said machine.  Not only do these films promote an industrialist attitude, but also one of dehumanization.  The compartmentalization of all human quarters establishes the fact that each person is a mere piece of the puzzle.  In both movies humans are not viewed as valuable. The living and recreational quarters are ones mimicking a prison, transparent, lacking privacy and grated; denoting confinement.  These imagined environments, interestingly, inflict a social view, that future technological advancements, may result in a power hungry society, with potential totalitarian attitudes towards humans.

            This attitude could have possibly been formed because, technology, at the time each of these films were created (late 20th Century), had reached a level where cosmonauts were research specific planets, such as Jupiter and Mars.   Research developments towards missions such as the space lab were advancing.  The human race was what appeared to be, conquering the elements.  We were not merely venturing into the unknown, but quantitatively researching specific elements of the universe.  Humans were finally making their mark on the universe.