Late in the Netflix movie The Adam Project, time-traveling kleptocrat Maya Sorian (Catherine Keener) storms into a glass-walled executive suite and quarrels with her younger self. “All of it!” screams young Sorian. “It’s unethical!”
“And illegal,” older, slicker, hard-bitten Sorian replies.
“The environmental impact alone… could be devastating,” says young Sorian.
“Well in fairness to us, the environment was pretty much toast before we came along.”
The Adam Project is only the latest movie using science fiction stereotypes as metaphors for the various ways industrialized Western civilization threatens human existence. From The Terminator’s nuclear bombs, to Gattaca’s genetically modified castes to Don’t Look Up’s imminent comet, Hollywood loves imagining ways humanity is about to destroy itself. The Adam Project, however, uniquely focuses on just one aspect: humanity’s looming destruction is caused by individuals.
Usually, Hollywood hides the causes diplomatically. The Terminator and The Matrix say humanity’s enemy is machines it started, and can’t control. Don’t Look Up and Children of Men attribute humanity’s looming extinction to forces of nature, as absent of purpose as rain. Even when humans directly cause our own destruction, as in Planet of the Apes or Wall-E, the destruction happens offscreen, the product of impersonal economic or government forces.
By contrast, The Adam Project gives humanity’s nemesis a name and face. Maya Sorian has money and power but, as we discover in the scene where she scolds herself, little else. Her only mission is to expand that money and power. She knows the consequences, very specifically, since she’s a time traveler; the devastation her business dealings cause isn’t hypothetical, she’s seen it herself. Yet the profit motive conquers all.
How we attribute responsibility matters. Ecofascist twaddle has produced slogans like “Maybe humanity is the virus” or “Mankind just needs a good cull,” slogans which advocate eliminating huge swaths of humanity. Those swaths are always poor, and usually non-White. Though this position wears the moral trappings of ecological stewardship, it’s every bit as specious as claiming that we’ll save our national identity by building the wall or killing the Jews.
In reality, hydrocarbon companies have known since at least 1977 that they were causing global warming. Manufacturers discharge synthetic chemicals known to ruin human health into municipal sewer systems, then the treated sewage gets used as fertilizer, ruining the soil forever. Fossil fuel companies countered the news that they were the largest water polluters by lobbying the federal government for further deregulation. “Humanity” isn’t killing the earth; lawless capitalists are.
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| Ryan Reynolds (left), Mark Ruffalo, and Walker Scobell in The Adam Project |
Superficially, The Adam Project is an action comedy. The movie runs on cartoon-like fight sequences pilfered from Star Wars and Marvel movies. Much of the movie’s appeal derives from Ryan Reynolds’ celebrated ability to banter with runaway train urgency. Like The Terminator, which addressed similar themes of existential anomie, it’s possible to enjoy The Adam Project on the surface level, and have fun.
The underlying conflict isn’t between Sorian and Adam (Reynolds), or even adult Adam and his preteen self (Walker Scobell). The conflict is between Sorian’s and Adam’s ethical models. Sorian, like the hydrocarbon and chemical companies ruining our environment, is motivated by profit. She enjoys concentrated benefits, while offloading the related costs onto humanity at large; her rewards are large enough that she doesn’t have to care who she hurts.
Adam, by contrast, has concentrated costs and diffuse benefits. We watch him suffer repeated losses: his mother, then his wife, then his father. As a time traveler, moreover, we recognize that he’s suffering these losses again, and will probably continue doing so. Indeed, if Adam wins and humanity reaps the benefits of his victory, Adam will pay the final price: wiping his personal timeline from existence.
The parallels are inescapable. Sorian is Nietzschean and morally blank, unconcerned by others, measuring victory only by acquisition of power. Adam, by contrast, is almost messianic, as his actions are driven by transcendent truths, and saving humanity will cost him everything. Amorality has brought Sorian great reward, while Adam’s morality will incur great cost, but Sorian acknowledges she’s destroying the human race, while Adam wants to save humanity.
Mercifully, most of us won’t get erased from history standing up to the money hoarders currently destroying the planet. We will, however, face the cost-benefit choice. Doing right often means incurring great personal cost, for rewards that gather for humanity overall. That can be hard, when amoral malefactors hoard rewards; that’s why evildoers like Sorian have minions. Sometimes, it helps to remember that evil isn’t impersonal; evildoers have faces and names.
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