2015’s “Tomorrowland” was not a great success with moviegoing audiences or critics.  But it hits on some themes that are vitally important.

We can’t discuss those themes without issuing some spoilers, so be warned.

The World of Tomorrow

The story of “Tomorrowland,” co-written and directed by Brad Bird of Pixar fame, involves Frank Walker, a boy inventor whose earliest appearance is in 1964—played in the present day by a disillusioned George Clooney—and Casey Newton, a teenage girl with a particular genius for making things work.

Casey’s dad, a NASA engineer, will shortly lose his job as the agency decommissions a historic launch site.  Casey sneaks onto the site at night to sabotage the demolition efforts, which shows where her loyalties lie.

We see her in school with a series of morose teachers, each explaining how the world is going to hell in a handbasket:  nuclear armageddon, environmental disaster, literary dystopia.  Casey frantically waves her hand and is finally allowed to ask the question none of them are addressing:  “Can we fix it?” And the bell rings.

With this scene, the movie “had me at hello.”  For fifty years we’ve listened to doomsayers telling us how things will inevitably grow worse—from every part of the political map.  Solutions, however, are harder to come by.

In the movie, the same situation turns out to be mirrored in the hidden Tomorrowland.  This haven was founded half a century ago with the goal of recruiting bright people to improve the world.  In the intervening years, it has focused instead on trying to make people face the approaching disasters.  Its futuristic technology beams subliminal messages into our world in an attempt to “raise consciousness” before it’s too late.  But like the schools, this secret cabal is no longer proposing ways to “fix it,” only foretelling doom.

Of course, alerting people to potential disasters is not a bad thing.  Motivating by fear is certainly one way to arouse people to action.  But what Tomorrowland, like the schoolteachers in the opening scenes, has forgotten is that dread, without hope for solutions, doesn’t lead to fruitful changes.  It leads to stagnant despair.

In the end, Casey and Frank halt the doomsaying broadcast, and begin again to recruit “dreamers.”  “Dreamers” here doesn’t mean believing things are just fine.  That would be blind optimism.  Rather, it means believing better things are possible.  If you’re a “fixer”—a builder, a maker—this leads to asking how things can be made better; which leads to plans for change, not just empty wishes.

In other words:  the conviction that catastrophe is inevitable is a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Expect the worst (admitting no other possibilities), and you’ll get it.

The World of La Mancha

A complementary idea forms the backbone of another favorite of mine—the play “Man of La Mancha,” a musical adaptation of the story of Don Quixote by Dale Wasserman, Joe Darion, and Mitch Leigh, written—oddly enough—in 1964.  (There’s a movie version, but this is one case where the stage play is definitely better.)

The play slims down the sprawling novel and focuses it on a particular set of ideas—as does the operatic version of Les Misérables.  What makes this Quixote a worthy adjunct to Tomorrowland is the course of his eccentric romance with his lady “Dulcinea.”

The woman the deluded Don identifies as the virtuous Dulcinea is a barmaid and part-time prostitute named Aldonza.  She is at first baffled and then enraged by Quixote’s attempts to place her on a lofty pedestal, his refusal to see her as (she says) she really is.  (Audio / Movie video)

As soon as Aldonza begins to believe she can be better than that, she is brutally disillusioned.  Yet Quixote stands by his conviction that she’s really a noble lady, in the face of all contrary evidence.   At the end of the play (7:42 in the clip), she finally accepts that role:  “My name . . . is Dulcinea.”  She takes on the quest of becoming more than she is.

In other words:  expecting the best calls it forth.

 

This encouraging principle doesn’t always work out nicely, as the play makes devastatingly clear.  If we seek out the best in people, we’d better be prepared for a letdown sometimes.  But the principle does shape our thinking in the right direction—a productive direction, rather than a dead end.

The two matched stories remind us that some degree of faith in the future, for a person or for a society, is needed if we want to foster energetic action.  It’s therefore incumbent on us not to crush such fertile hopes.  We should never blind ourselves to the facts, but that doesn’t mean we should be satisfied with them.