So I just got back from watching Tomorrowland, and I'm feeling kind of giddy and... I dunno, but I wanted to write a little something. Let me say, first off, as just a movie Tomorrowland isn't anything spectacular or game-changing. It's a movie, yeah, but that's about it.

However, as info on the movie was leaking out slowly a few months ago, it caught my eye that it was planned as a sort of "origin story" for the Tomorrowland theme park at Disney; the thinking was that other parks (Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom, etc) already had origin stories of sorts through previous movies, so why not do the same for Tomorrowland?

I remember going to Disneyworld as a 9 year old (I remember because that's when I saw the Metro at the LEGO store) and falling in love with the Tomorrowland park. I truly thought, more than at the other parks, that what was around me was functional, that this park was the future, and that this was all waiting to come to be. Granted, I've always been a bit of an unhinged dreamer, but this park, I think, had a strong impact on me that pushed me to sci-fi. Years later I found myself seeking out many of these stories and authors, reading Verne, Douglas Adams, a lot of Isaac Asimov, and I was interested and all, but I didn't get it. I think, looking back, I had no one to explain or talk me through these stories and their context, and so I never really got them. Seeing the "future" was one thing; reading (Especially for someone for whom English was a second language) was a bit tougher.

Around the time I was 12 I began reading dystopian novels for fun (my thinking was, "Hey, we're gonna probably read 1984, Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World in school so why not get a leg up?) As people saw me reading these, they engaged in discussions with me, which made these realities more palpable and real than anything else.

No wonder, then, that I've never questioned the state of the future in the minds of our generation.

What I mean by that, is a phenomenon we all know well: it appears that our conceptions of the "future" are based around dystopia, technological ruin or acceleration, starvation, desolation, disease, self-destruction, etc. I read a great article a few days ago that compared previous generations, that saw a man land on the moon, that got to discover how planets looked for the first time, that actually strove to go out there, while we got stuck with a world that saw the destruction of two shuttles, the canceling of funding, and the idea that "inventing", of any kind, wasn't really a lifestyle. And so, in a way, we've become a generation that sees the "future" through bleaker lenses. Just as sci-fi is used to examine the world through another sense (and, in a way, reflects the real world of the time), the stories of Asimov were bright and futuristic, while the stories of our time are much sadder.

And then a movie like Interstellar comes around. I loved reading what Christopher Nolan had to say about it, and how it strove to use science to inspire viewers to not give up, to continue with the idea that there was still something out there to explore. It's true that Interstellar was grounded in science as much as it could, but the marriage between scientific reality and artistic lenses made it a hodgepot of all types of interests coming together to say "Hey. The world and the future looks bleak. But there's still hope."

And then Tomorrowland comes along. And throughout the movie it became clear that it was similar to Interstellar, but more accessible as it is aimed mainly for kids. And yet, if you approach the movie the same way you do Interstellar, you're still left feeling elated, feeling hopeful. The final scene of the movie features

suggesting that no field is superior to the other, that it's the task of math, science, the arts, all together, to create the future.

I know that, at a time when it seems like the future isn't gonna get better, it's hard to dream. But I am so happy for Interstellar and Tomorrowland; they produced in me a similar effect that 9-year old Pablo got at that park of the future, the difference being that now, as an adult, I have agency to go out there and make my dreams a reality. I am glad for these movies, because they offer hope for a population that is comfortable, or grew up with, sadness and dystopia as the norm. And I am so happy that there's a little bit more hope in the horizon