Review of the Sphere and Darren Aronofsky's "Postcard From Earth"

    I recently had the opportunity to view Darren Aronofsky's "Postcard From Earth," a movie shown at the Sphere in Las Vegas, and specifically intended to be shown at the Sphere. While the movie and experience was impressive from a technical stance, I found the "woke" environmental propaganda and anti-white racism quite off-putting. 

    If you don't know what is the Sphere, here is the link to the Wikipedia page. Essentially, it is large mostly spherical building (hence it's name) with LEDs all over the outside which can display video images or patterns on the outside surface of the structure. 

    Inside is a large stadium which has, according to Wikipedia, a "160,000-square-foot (15,000 m2) LED screen that wraps around the interior" of the dome and displays at 16K. It is advertised as having a 270 degree field of view, which must be the side-to-side field of view. The horizontal field of view seemed to me be in the range of 100 or 110 degrees from the bottom to past the apex of the dome. Back to Wikipedia (footnotes omitted):

 In describing the number of pixels on screen, media sources have reported figures ranging from 189 to 254 million diodes to 268,435,456 pixels. The screen consists of 64,000 LED panels, each controlled by a printed circuit board housed in an aluminum frame, with the panels manufactured in 780 different geometric shapes with an edge-to-edge tolerance of 0.8 millimetres (0.031 in). Due to its curved shape and the propensity for pixels to disappear near the poles, the screen uses an adaptive pixel pitch. It was also designed to be acoustically transparent, allowing sound from the speakers mounted behind the screen to pass through.

Needless to say, it is somewhat like being in a large Faraday cage inasmuch as there were absolutely no cell signals getting in or out. 

    Wikipedia indicates that it has seating for 18,600 people. The seating is very steep--certainly the steepest I've seen in an entertainment venue--which provides an unobstructed view for spectators, but if you were to trip going down the stairs to your seat, I don't think you would stop rolling until you hit the plexiglass barrier at the bottom of the steps. 

    I thought that the Sphere experience was, overall, underwhelming. The program is sold as consisting of two parts: 45 minutes to explore interactive exhibits, including a talking robot, on the ground level; followed by the 50 minute long "Postcard from Earth" film. Unfortunately, that 45 minutes for the interactive exhibits is the time from when the doors are first opened and the start of the film. By the time you get through the security checkpoint (including passing through metal detectors and having any bags searched), the time can be significantly cut back. If you want to buy water or some other refreshment, use the restroom, put an oversized bag in a locker (you can't bring in a bag larger than 6"x6"x2") or anything else, that also comes out of the 45 minutes. In addition, since I was near the middle of the line, by the time I got into the actual area with the interactive exhibits, there were such thick crowds of people around each that I decided to skip that portion and take the escalators up to the level where my seat was located, buy some water, and find my seat. 

    And once the "Postcard from Earth" is over, the interactive exhibits have been shut down and you will be rushed out the door. So the interactive exhibits were a total wash as far as I was concerned. 

    The actual "Postcard from Earth" film is, from a technical standpoint, very good. Lots of beautiful shots of landscapes and nature, flying over mountains and into canyons (invoking a feeling almost like being on a roller coaster after it crests a rise), and other great shots that, because of the detail and the semi-spherical screen, is very immersive. Adding to the immersive experience is that the seats rumble when there are loud noises, and there was the occasional gust of "wind" from hidden fans and scents released into the air. On top of that, the cinematography was impressive. My only criticism of the technical aspects--and this is probably just due to the nature of the projection--is that tall things, whether a giraffe, an elephant, a tree, or a tall building--very obviously curve the higher up in the dome it is projected, like viewing it through a fish eye lens. 

    Where the movie fails--and fails hard--is that the storyline, such as it is, is just environmental and racial propaganda. In fact, I would go so far as saying that it is, more accurately, proselytization of the woke religion. Which is probably apt given that Aronofsky also directed and co-wrote the script for the horrible 2014 film, Noah.

    The movie opens with a view of an alien solar system, zooming in on a bright streak that passes through the ring of a ringed planet and into its atmosphere; and which resolves into a starship of some sort that lands on the planet. Moving into the interior of the ship, there are two sleep pods (for lack of a better term) with a black man in one and what appears to be an Indian woman in the other. Suddenly the equipment and hoses covering the faces and bodies of both begins to withdraw, and you hear a man's voice addressing the woman, and a woman's voice addressing the man, telling each to wake up but not open their eyes. The voices tell the couple that they must first remember. 

    What they are supposed to remember is a hybrid between the evolution of life on earth and the Earth Goddess creating life. 

    First, they (and by extension, the audience) are reminded that life began in the oceans. We then are told of the beginning of primitive life accompanied by views of jellyfish; followed by scenes of other undersea life such as fishes and seaweed, as the narration tells us about how life wants to expand. 

    The movie then moves its attention to land, and presents truly stunning flyover shots of mountains and forests, deserts and canyons, fields and plains, vast caverns and waterfalls, and so on. At first these scenes are all without animals, but then the scenes shift to showing animals of various types while discussing how life wants to grow, choose, invent, love, etc. 

    Next it mentions the appearance of humans and we get to see scenes of black and brown people harvesting crops, celebrating, etc. We are told how humans expanded to everywhere, while we are shown various structures and buildings, including some precariously perched on the sides of cliffs. We are told that humans built to celebrate nature as the view shifts to the inside of a cathedral with a crucifix in the middle of the scene; that is, the cathedral was not to honor Christ or draw one's eyes heavenward, but to celebrate the earth, nature, and life.

    But then the narrators ominously warn that people went too far and we were blinded by our own creations and forgot nature as we finally see our first (and only) white people, in a baroque styled opera house watching a woman play a violin. 

    Following the appearance of the evil white people, we are presented a kaleidoscope of overcrowded urban scenes and slums, rock quarries and open pit mines, oil fields packed with wells, garbage and pollution--most of this from third world hellholes--while told how mankind was taking too much from and ruining the earth, ignoring prior cycles of civilizational collapse, until the earth had too much and sent its warnings--accompanied with scenes of storms and crashing waves, overgrown ruins, and other scenes of urban decay and abandoned buildings and sites. 

    There were just too many of us to live on earth, the narration continues, and so humans had to leave. At that point, the movie shifts from shots of actual locations, animals, and people, to CG rockets lifting off from earth and into a space scene showing numerous habitats orbiting the earth and covering the moon. 

    The narration explains that the earth slowly healed, but it was clear that people could not return to it except briefly and in few numbers. We then go back to scenes of nature with what looks like a Hispanic or Indian woman in a white outfit (apparently supposed to be futuristic looking) rock climbing, and a black man (also in a white outfit) standing on a mountain top overlooking other snow covered peaks. 

    Then the narration explains that humanity concluded it must settle other planets and so the movie switched back to the CG scenes of starships leaving into the void and, finally, back to the starship at the beginning of the film. 

    The couple are told they now remember and to open their eyes, and we discover that the narrators were the couple that were in hypersleep (or whatever) and that they are to create life on this new planet. Our black Adam ("Byron") and Indian Eve ("Fang") then leave the ship with a small fiery orb floating along with them and go out onto the surface. After more scenes of smiling at one another and reverently cupping soil in their hands, the glowing ball then sinks into the ground and we get something like the effect of the Genesis device from Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, as green life and water spreads like a wave across the surface of the planet in a matter of seconds. 

    In short, the movie is about "nature good" and "people good until white people screwed it up" but "people of color fixed everything" and will become new gods to create life on other planets. Yeah.