Lately, Netflix has been gathering up what feels like anything and everything in the TV and movie space. The latest Netflix Original Movie is The Titan, a super serious sci-fi movie that sees Earth rapidly approaching wasteland status as nuclear fallout ravages the Pacific coast and all resources are dwindling to the point that half the population of the human race will soon starve. The solution: Force genetic evolution upon a chosen team of cadets at a top-secret military base with the hopes that their enhanced abilities will allow them to survive and thrive on the Saturnian moon, Titan.

I'm all for a pseudo-scientific "next step in evolution"-meets-"planetary exploration" story like this, but I can't help but shake the feeling that The Titan is going to be an amalgamation of familiar plots we've seen over and over. We've seen the idea of our Earth being destroyed or becoming uninhabitable in innumerable versions of the story, and we've seen untold variations on the next stage of human evolution that eventually turns into a horror show. (I'm just happy they didn't use the old line of, "You only use 10% of your brain; we've unlocked the other 90%." At least, not in this trailer.) What we've seen too little of? Humans coming together in a scientific pursuit to make this world a better place or to learn from our terrestrial mistakes to make an off-world home an actual utopia. Maybe we'll get those stories someday, but The Titan is not it.

Directed by Lennart Ruff, written by Max Hurwitz (Hell on WheelsManhunt: Unabomber) and Arash Amel (Grace of Monaco) and starring Sam Worthington, Taylor Schilling, Tom Wilkinson and Nathalie EmmanuelThe Titan arrives on Netflix March 30th.

Watch the first trailer for The Titan below:

In the near future, a military family uproot their lives so they can participate in a ground-breaking experiment to accelerate man’s genetic evolution. The goal? To relocate humanity to another planet and avoid extinction.

the-titan-movie-poster
Image via Netflix