I’ve just watched the trailer for Voyagers, the upcoming film from Neil Burger (Limitless), about eight times in a row, and I have no idea whether it’s is going to be a brilliant arthouse sci-fi movie or awful, incoherent garbage. However, I am certain it will feature teens becoming hedonistic arseholes in space.
There’s no need for some kind of alien virus to turn the kids of Voyagers into monsters; apparently, all they need is to learn their colonising mission has a dark secret, and they immediately lose their veneer of civilisation. Here’s the official synopsis:
With the future of the human race at stake, a group of young men and women, bred for intelligence and obedience, embark on an expedition to colonise a distant planet. But when they uncover disturbing secrets about the mission, they defy their training and begin to explore their most primitive natures. As life on the ship descends into chaos, they’re consumed by fear, lust, and the unsatiable hunger for power. Written and directed by Neil Burger (Limitless, The Illusionist), the film stars Tye Sheridan (The X-Men franchise), Lily-Rose Depp (Savage), Fionn Whitehead (Dunkirk), Chanté Adams (Roxanne, Roxanne), Isaac Hempstead Wright (“Game of Thrones”), Viveik Kalra (Blinded by the Light), Archie Madekwe (Midsommar), Quintessa Swindell (Trinkets), Madison Hu (“Bizaardvark”), and Coin Farrell (The Gentlemen).
Now, this story is very much evident in the trailer. But the trailer also has some other stuff going on…
That’s a lot of shots of animals fighting. The metaphor is not lost on me, but it does make the film look like it’s going to be interspersed with random footage of flowers blooming, buildings getting demolished, and the bleakest parts of Project Earth, which seems…decidedly not great. But it’s more likely that this stuff was just inserted into the trailer as a sort of artistic shock value, and the movie will be at least reasonably coherent.
Lionsgate’s YouTube page only mentions Voyagers is hitting theatres on April 9, 2021 in the U.S. Stay tuned for news of an Australian release.