It's hot everywhere and at once - Weekend - Kommersant

It's hot everywhere and at once - Weekend - Kommersant


On Apple TV + comes the series "Extrapolations" about how humanity lives in the future, when the worst predictions about global warming have come true.

Text: Tatyana Aleshicheva

In 2011, Steven Soderbergh made the film Contagion about the lightning spread of a deadly virus around the world, where he made a dozen Hollywood stars rush around the screen with a scalded look: “Chief, everything is gone, the cast is being removed, the client is leaving!” The script, written by Scott Burns, also included a conspiracy theory and an infected bat, so that 10 years later, with the advent of a real pandemic, Burns was declared a visionary. Apparently, this status - something like a pebble in a shoe - haunted the screenwriter until he created a new apocalyptic mess: again a web of intertwining plots and a dozen well-deserved Hollywood stars with reflections of hellfire on worried faces.

How can one not recall the incendiary speech of Ricky Gervais at the Golden Globes ceremony, addressed to the Hollywood establishment: “You know nothing about the real world and spent less time at school than Greta Thunberg.” But now Greta's climate concerns are supposed to be shared, and for eight episodes Burns's beckoning has been done by an elite cast of actors, from Meryl Streep and Edward Norton to the stars of Game of Thrones.

In the first episode, in the year 2037, half the world is ravaged by wildfires and smog, while the other half is flooded by the world's oceans rising above the ordinary. Burns didn’t come up with anything new here: the poor get sick, die and flee from damned places, politicians talk, and the rich try to cash in, and the former cannot influence the third even through the latter. A cunning real estate developer (Matthew Rhys) wants to build a casino in the Arctic, but nature itself opposes him: the scene where the beautiful actor Rhys is attacked by a walrus can be considered one of the most stupid in the history of television. At the same time, the ugly rich technocrat Bilton (Kit Harington) owns the technology of desalination, but is in no hurry to share it with humanity and looks much more boring than the real Elon Musk, from whom he is copied. Meanwhile, the thermometer is steadily creeping up, new diseases associated with heat intolerance are appearing in the world, and curfews are being introduced everywhere so as not to simply burn out and not suffocate in the hottest daytime.

In the second episode, in 2046, a researcher (Sienna Miller), who studies endangered animals, that is, almost all, has thoughtful conversations with the last humpback whale left in the ocean. And violates the chain of command, using the voice of his dead mother (Meryl Streep) to decipher his speech. That is, Meryl Streep says all sorts of right and soul-saving things for the whale - the new acting height she has taken can only be compared with the role of the rabbi from Angels in America, where she preached with a fake beard. “They want not to captivate us, but to manipulate us,” writes an English-language reviewer of this episode.

But in the third episode (the year 2047, the temperature rose by 1.82 degrees, the world ocean rose by 38 cm), a real rabbi (David Diggs) appears who wants to save the synagogue in Miami from flooding: during the service, water is already splashing in the aisles and the flock comes in rubber boots. But instead, he is forced to answer the questions of an inquisitive girl who sees no point in a bar mitzvah during the apocalypse.

In the next episode, Edward Norton enters the arena as a scientist who does not know how to deal with the skyrocketing temperature in 2059. But his billionaire ex-wife (Indira Varma) is convinced that it's time to give way to geoengineering - deliberate intervention in natural processes in order to control the climate. After all, cancer has been defeated, humanity has conquered Mars, and American democracy has survived everywhere except Texas. So why not get planes up in the air and start spraying them with calcium carbonate - like taking an aspirin to bring down a fever, only on a global scale. A real suspense is already born here: after all, Burns once hinted at an infected mouse, so, if the hour is uneven, they will really spray something.

The latest episodes featuring Tobey Maguire, Marion Cotillard and Forest Whitaker are notable mainly for the fact that humanity somehow still survived right up to 2070 - mostly its rich representatives. On their behalf and on behalf of the Apple series, honored artists are talking to us. Throughout its more than a century of history, Hollywood has done nothing but produce propaganda, sell war bonds, campaign for politicians (in Extrapolations, the wise president again looks like Hillary Clinton), and in recent times, exalted stars have begun to eat bugs and dress up their daughters sons for the glory of ecology and wokeism. And yet, the main task of the dream factory from time immemorial has been to entertain the public - but the new series copes poorly with this, and the client leaves: not everyone can withstand eight hours of climate sermon.

Look: Apple TV+


Subscribe to Weekend channel in Telegram



Source link