Coronavirus Pandemic Effect on Movie Plots in the Future?

[Randy Stankey]

I was talking with my girlfriend about how the current pandemic might effect the kinds of movie plots we might see in the future.

While I'm sure that the kinds of movies that people will want to watch will change, I wonder how movies will actually change.

Mainly, I'm wondering about the "plague" genre; movies like "Andromeda Strain" or "The Stand."
Now that so many people throughout the world have experienced a worldwide plague of sorts, will they want to see more of that genre or less? As I was talking with my girlfriend, we came to the conclusion that it could go either way.

Do you think that people will have felt enough stress from the virus to make them want to see fewer "plague" movies?

Will people want to see more "plague" movies because it's now such a hot topic?

Will people see movies like this, from now on, and scoff since they feel like they've been through a similar situation in real life and find the plot lines to be laughable?

Here are some movies that I can remember which have a "plague" or "pandemic" theme:

• Andromeda Strain
• Omega Man / I am Legend / The Last Man on Earth
• The Stand
• Outbreak
• Contagion
• 12 Monkeys

Of course, we can't forget "zombie apocalypse" themes like "Dawn of the Dead" or "Walking Dead."

There are enough titles here to make a pandemic themed film festival.

Do you think that people would flock to see something like that or stay away in droves?

[Frank Cox]

I don't think it'll make much of a long-term difference.

After the 2001 attack, "everyone" said that terrorist and ultra violenct movies would no longer be made because nobody would want to see them. Nothing much changed; there's still just as many shoot-the-bad-guys movies as there were before.

[Marcel Birgelen]

I guess it depends on the "total damage" this pandemic will cause in the U.S. Like Frank indicated, the 2001 terrorist attacks had only a minor impact on story plots overall. I remember some movies like the first Spiderman getting postponed due to some scenes involving the WTC towers, but in the end, the impact was limited.

But something much more traumatic like the last World War or the Vietnam War inspired a whole sub-genre of movies and series.

[Mitchell Dvoskin]

I would expect less killer virus plotted movie, at least in the short term. People enjoy these type of movies as escapist fiction, and this topic will hit a little close to home.

[Kenneth Wuepper]

There was a film, "The Andromeda Strain" that was about bacterial experimentation gone wrong. I ran it for a few weeks first run.

[Martin McCaffery]

I think it will depend on the metaphor COVID 19 is transformed into by Hollywood types. And that will depend on how things all work out medically and politically. In short, culture wars.

[Bobby Henderson]

Unfortunately a virus pandemic is not exactly cinematic. It's a monster you can't see. It can't be killed with fists, guns or bombs. Vaccines take a long time to produce. Even treatments using anti-bodies in plasma aren't quick to develop. That really cuts against usual bullshit Hollywood habits of providing instantaneous fixes in the lab, be it something seemingly simple as a DNA test or creating a new miracle drug. The general public is going to be all too familiar with the difficulties of fighting this current pandemic for any jerk-off "filmmaker" to take creative license to insert bullshit fake science or CSI: Miami fake computer crap into a plot just to speed up the story.

It will probably be at least another year or more before anyone can attempt to dramatize a historical account of this pandemic. Such a thing won't be worth attempting until a proven vaccine is created and distributed to the public (the "happy" ending). We're still in the early stages of the pandemic. While there are hopeful signs cities like New York may be cresting their peak a bunch of other places in the United States have days or even weeks before their reach their peak. There's no telling how bad the pandemic is going to get in developing nations. It's probably going to be late May or sometime in June before this first wave in the United States is done. Then it may return to the US again in the fall. The 1918 H1N1 Spanish Flu pandemic had 3 waves. There is certain to be a lot of lasting political controversy about the response to this pandemic, especially when some countries (Germany and South Korea to name two) have had pretty low death tolls compared to others. We'll just have to see how everything plays out over the next year or so.

In the end, even if survivors develop lasting immunity and a vaccine is created, this pandemic is probably going to be too much of a downer to be worth turning into a movie.

[Mike Blakesley]

There was a film, "The Andromeda Strain" that was about bacterial experimentation gone wrong.

That was a really good movie, I thought. You definitely have to be into the genre to get into it, though.... it's kind of "talky" for today's movie fan. It has one of my favorite movie endings ever...... it leaves you thinking, 'Oh, shiiiiiiiit......"

[Randy Stankey]

The Andromeda Strain is interesting because it came right on the heels of the Apollo space program.

Michael Chricton's novel was released in 1969, the same year as the Apollo 11 lunar mission went up. At that time, scientists were extremely concerned that the astronauts could bring back some kind of extraterrestrial pathogen from the moon. Even though the chances of that happening were very small, the consequences could be catastrophic to life on Earth.

The Apollo 11 astronauts (and I think Apollo 12, too) were quarantined in a special facility for almost a month before they could be declared free of any infectious agent.

Of course, the novel was fiction but Chrichton seems to have had his finger on the proverbial pulse of the scientific community with regard to their concerns of a worldwide pandemic. It's kind of spooky how, more than fifty years later, his fictional writing appears to foreshadow what's happening in the world, today.

[Kenneth Wuepper]

Have you noticed that science fiction is a very good predictor of the future?

Jules Verne wrote of Nuclear submarine travel and a rocket to the moon.

Do you think it is foresight or simply creativity gone beyond the bounds of time?

[Randy Stankey]

Yeah! Roddenberry and the Star Trek writers foreshadowed a lot of inventions that we consider commonplace, today!

Just off the top of my head:

• Cell Phones (Communicator.)
• Floppy Disks (Computer "tapes.")
• BlueTooth Earphones (Uhura's earpiece.)
• iPads ("PADD" Device.)
• Ion Propulsion. (I happen to know, from acquaintances, that the scientists who invented ion propulsion were inspired from Star Trek.)
• Giant Screen TV (Tactical View Screen.)
• Touch Screen Computers.

I'm sure that there are lots of other things that Star Trek invented/foreshadowed. If I thought about it, I know that I'd be able to think of other things that other Sci-Fi shows have foreshadowed.

Is it foresight? Is it creativity? I don't know. It's probably a combination of things.
I think it's got a lot to do with a combination of pre-existing knowledge and creativity. I'm sure that there is a lot of confirmation bias, involved, too.

How many things has the Science Fiction genre written about that haven't come true?
Teleportation? Light-Speed travel? Flying cars? Jet packs?
We'll never see any of those things come true in our lifetimes. Sci-Fi has "missed" on as many ideas as it has "hit" upon. Like the way EMTs and ambulance drivers claim that there are more car addicts on the night of a full moon when statistical evidence proves otherwise.

There is also the "Infinite Monkey Theorem."
(An infinite number of monkeys randomly tapping on an infinite number of typewriters will eventually type all the works of Shakespeare.)

In other words, if Sci-Fi writers make enough predictions, some of them are bound to come true.

Then, finally, how many real scientists and inventors are inspired by Sci-Fi and how many Sci-Fi writers are inspired by real science?

Like I said, I know, through acquaintence, that the guys in charge of the NASA's DAWN mission to the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter were actually inspired to use ion propulsion on their spacecraft because they were inspired by Star Trek. I also know that the people from Star Trek were inspired to write about futuristic spaceships using ion propulsion because of the hypothetical science of the times that talked about it.

So, in effect, the scientists and the fiction writers of the times indirectly fed off each others ideas.

Pontificating aside, it's still cool how movies and real life seem to come together, so often, to produce real-world inventions.

[Martin McCaffery]

Still waiting for my flying car ;>

[Mitchell Dvoskin]

Jet packs really exist. The one used in Thunderball was real, and they turned up at sporting events as part of the half time show back in the 1960’s and early 70’s. The problem was it took a lot os skill to fly one without killing yourself, and other than as a gimmick, they had limited practical use.

As for Teleportation, flies kept getting caught in the transporter, causing people to materialize as part human and part fly. I saw this in a movie so it must be true!

[Mike Blakesley]

Here's the problem with flying cars: In movies and cartoons, flying cars never have any effect on objects or people around them; they just float and fly. There's no exhaust or "kickback" (things behind the car getting blown away) by the exhaust, and they also aren't affected by gravity. Until they can conquer those two issues you won't see any flying cars.

[Bobby Henderson]

I'm not the slightest bit surprised flying cars are not widely available to the general public. The idea is a non-starter on so many fronts. People are already too stupid and irresponsible using ordinary road-based vehicles. The danger would literally jump to another dimension letting everyone go airborne. All aircraft demand far more strict maintenance schedules than Joe Bob's pickup truck. There is a higher total cost of ownership. And then flying cars would consume even more in terms of fuel. There is already a finite supply of fossil fuels or lithium for batteries to power the vehicles we use now.

The concept of teleportation seems very cool, not to mention very convenient for sci-fi plots. But I think teleportation deserves to be tucked into the same drawer with "magic." I don't think it's something we'll ever see reproduced outside of a science fiction movie. Just like time travel. Honestly it just fundamentally defies the laws of physics.

A living creature, like a human being, is made up of a staggering number of cells. Everyone one of those cells contains a staggering number of molecules, atoms and sub-atomic particles. Not only that, but many of those tiny pieces are in various stages of chemical or electrical reaction with each other. There's countless billions of those active processes happening at any given instant. That's a hell of a lot of material and chemical/electrical reactions for a computer to merely catalog. It's another monumental challenge for the computer to encode all of it, break it apart, move invisibly to another location and then re-assemble successfully. When you think about it the concept of teleporting a living person is just as ridiculous as accurately teleporting a hand grenade while it's in the process of exploding. Might as well try teleporting a bolt of lightning.

To teleport any object, much less anything living, the device not only has to teleport all the object's matter, but all of its energy too. A "dead" object, such as a baseball has kinetic energy in all its atomic particles. An organic living thing has all of that plus its chemical processes to preserve. Even if you could successfully teleport all the matter of a human being how do you teleport all of its living energy? You might have a live person go in one end of the teleporter and have an effectively dead department store mannequin come out the other side.