Voyagers Parent Guide

A few decades into the future, Earth is becoming uninhabitable. Seeking solutions, a team of scientists find a distant planet that could possibly sustain life and become humanity’s new home. To travel vast distances through space, the team decide to breed a specialized crew to be raised from birth to operate the spaceship. This crew will never see the new planet, as the trip will take 86 years, but their grandchildren will become the first humans to colonize the potential future Earth. In space, however, the teenaged crew start to discover that secrets are being kept form them, secrets that threaten to change the course of the mission.

If I were a studio executive and someone pitched “Lord of the Flies in space” to me, I would give them all my money. The premise has so much potential. Exploring human nature and the potential for depravity and chaos in the claustrophobic confines of a space station full of teens is brimming with possibilities. And Voyagers starts out promisingly enough. Yes, the basic plot set up is a little silly and easy to poke holes in, but so is most sci-fi. The first act raises deep questions around scientific ethics, nature vs nurture, morality, free will, and human nature. Unfortunately, the remainder of the film fails to live up to the premise or the themes, and instead devolves into predictable sci-fi tropes with an unbelievably saccharine ending.

Aside from the story’s failings, there’s a lot to love about this production. The set designs are stunning. These are not cheap foam Star Trek sets; they look like they cost some money. The acting, for the most part, is exceptional, especially considering the young cast. Colin Farrell, as always, is a standout. Although some of the deeper themes remain underdeveloped, the main messages are positive and teen appropriate. The crew learn about collaboration, impulse control, critical thinking, and working towards the greater good.

As expected with a story based on Lord of the Flies, there is a lot of violence. A few crew members are killed in various ways, characters fight in increasingly bloody fashions, and guns appear towards the end. There is also a scene in which a girl is groped by a boy, who then acts as though he intends to take the assault further but is stopped by another character. On top of that, once the teens become awakened to their own libidos, they start to act on their desires. Although there is no nudity, and only one brief moment of obvious sexual activity, sex is implied in multiple scenes. I think the characters are supposed to be 18, but this is never explicitly stated. Whether they are “legal” or not (assuming our 2021 ideas of adulthood apply to 2063 space travel), there is no discussion of things like protection or birth control, and most of the encounters seem to be based on lust and impulse. Although the overall message of the story is to learn to control our baser impulses, that is primarily directed towards violence, and not so much to sex. With all of this in mind, I would not recommend this film for young teens. The complex themes and cool sci-fi atmosphere might be appealing to older adolescents, but parents will want to be on hand to talk through the more difficult subject matter the movie grapples with.