Do Androids Dream of Bad TV?: Un/originality in Neil Burger’s Voyagers

Abstract

Critics did not take kindly to Neil Burger’s Voyager (2021). On Rotten Tomatoes, the film scored a dismal 25%, and the consensus is that it’s a trip best not taken: “It has a game cast and a premise ripe with potential, but Voyagers drifts in familiar orbit rather than fully exploring its intriguing themes.” This article seeks neither to reclaim the film as an unjustly neglected cinematic masterpiece nor to assert its importance in the canon of dystopian works. Rather, it treats Voyagers as a test case for exploring our own critical investment in the genre. Our aims are twofold. First, we argue that the film speaks to the dystopian genre’s fundamental distrust of future generations to make the best decisions. It effectively exposes the central irony that we presume to know best though we had signally failed to do right by our planet in the first place. Secondly, we reveal how unoriginal work can still point to new ways forward. By the end of the film, the Humanitas mission is back on course, following Zac’s (Fionn Whitehead) demise. Sela (Lily-Rose Depp) is surely right to wonder, to Christopher (Tye Sheridan), how they should ensure that mutiny doesn’t recur. The short answer? They can’t—and they probably shouldn’t. The capacity for events, like those we witness in Voyagers, to recur—and many times over too—is at least partially responsible for the dystopian genre’s appeal and it contributes to the genre’s persistent ethical ruminations. This essay advances scholarship by suggesting that even the most derivative of cinema can offer profound insights into our world, in this case, how democracies work.