Postcard from Earth is a digital film commissioned for a unique venue, The Sphere
in Las Vegas. It was directed by Darren Aronofsky and debuted in 2023.
Two humans by the name Byron and Fang land in a spall spacecraft on an alien world. In the process of waking from their hibernation, a recording tells them that their memories will come back slowly, and that to hasten their return they should try to recall the history of Earth, the planet where they came from. This leads to the montage of breathtaking scenes of the Earth (with occasional narration) that makes up the bulk of the movie.
The breathtaking shots are, of course, the main thing audiences come to the huge venue to see. The narrative of the film is a simplistic Green Aesop and mainly serves as an excuse to show this montage.
Tropes appearing in this film:
- Earth That Was: Earth is adandoned and has basically become a full-planet nature reserve when the movie takes place; humanity is seen to have colonized the moon, space, and other planets.
- Excuse Plot: The plot, such as it is, is mainly an excuse to show a montage of breathtaking shots of the Earth, with a bit of hokey Green Aesop on the side.
- Green Aesop: The film contains a rather simplistic message against the overexploitation of the earth; ironically this leads to some
impressively pretty shots of the exploitation. - How We Got Here: The bulk of the film is a montage of memories of the Earth's past, including the story of Earth's natural history and its use and exploitation by Man, up until humanity chooses to leave the Earth and colonize space.
- Scenery Porn: And how. Beautiful scenes from all across the Earth, both natural and man-made, were filmed using special digital cameras in 18k resolution at 60 frames per second; these scenes are displayed on an LED screen that covering a huge interior spherical wall inside the Sphere. (To give you an idea of how large the interior of the Sphere is: the seating area is similar in size to the seating in a hockey or basketball arena, though it doesn't wrap around. Roughly speaking, the seating covers one "hemisphere" and the screen covers the other "hemisphere". So the screen is basically as high as the seats in a hockey area and covers almost your entire field of view, so the images of the scenes are immense.)
- Sleeper Starship: The movie begins with a small spacecraft shown traveling across space and landing on a ringed terrestrial planet in a double star system; the spacecraft is seen to contain two crew in hiberation.
- Terraform: At the end, Byron and Fang plant a special seed that terraforms the entire planet in about a minute.
