Earth, a planet made of many different environments, cultures and people. Let's replicate it and trap people inside it for two years. What malevolence and new Hells would I see. From the friends I talked to and the knowledge I've gleamed over the years I intended to watch a documentary of misery and misfortune on a bunch of idiotic hippies who trapped themselves in a geodesic dome. I was in for some laughs. Instead, I completely fell for the people who both made the dome and those who ventured in.
a hundreds of millions of dollars project to see if humanity could sustain itself cut-off from the Earth. If done correctly, it could help colonization on other planets. And not in a sci-fi, joke kind of way. It would be for a real use for setting up habitats on the Moon or say, Mars. And we got an in-depth look at the people who ditched Earth to possibly ready mankind for living off it.
Spaceship Earth is not what I anticipated. There are some questions left unanswered, for sure. Like no mention of the concrete eating up the oxygen in Biosphere 2 or data being destroyed, but somehow there being Ted Talks from said lost data. Nothing on diversity among those in the biosphere, excpet mentioned once and makes you go, "Yeah, where the Black women at?" And you have cheezy, Hollywood, Star Trek-like uniforms that make you want to laugh. The film doesn't tread on those faults. They are but a minute or less. Instead the film goes deeper and back into the past.
We don't get to the the biosphere until maybe 30 minutes in, but I have to say it felt longer. We're with the group who conceived it and made it possible led by a man named John Allen. And we see this group grow in number, building amazing things, growing as a family and then thinking about the future and it's very touching.We even have the hippies thinking about business to maintain there lifestyle.
After that, we get into the planning, construction and press extravaganza for the dome and you can start seeing the cracks of thing going awry. The director is being gentle about it to not make those who made it not look that bad, but there's no way to getting around that the mission: broke it's own rules, wasn't transparent on what was going on and was ultimately a failure on many levels.
Then you mix in the beautyin the dome at the start. There's so much footage as those stuck inside filmed and studied their enclosure daily. It does become ridiculous at times when people visited it like some sort of a human zoo. Yet, f it's just fascinating to see how people function stuck somewhere, that's a lot more cool looking then our apartments and homes. (Covid-19) 2020. You probably don't have a jungle or coral reef in your house.
Bisophere 2 does look like something out of sci-fi and it's fun just seeing the different biomes and animals inside.And you get along with the people inside.You live among them. Some are ignored as the probably didn't want to be interviewed, but you get to know you're fellow, ughh, "Biospherians."
Oh, I want the recipe for that Banana cake that lady made on birthdays! With no sugar or oils inside the dome, you'd lick the plate too.
Then it all comes to a bizarre end. With really just a waste of police and a helicopter, which makes no sense as the people running it were hippies and scientists with no guns.
What was expected was a 90-minute ride on the failure of Biosphere 2, a Disneyland like attraction going to Hell and me having a front row seat to the carnage, instead, was a touching film. A film about carrying about the future, building something together and a lot more heartfelt ideals.
Well worth a watch and maybe some inspiration to do something new. Just be careful about corporate funding.
Spaceship Earth is up on Hulu and available for rent or purchase on VOD.
