Screenshot: Netflix
There are a lot of science fiction films attempting to tackle questions of inequality and injustice while thrilling you with big budget space action, but most of them miss the mark. It’s not for lack of trying, certainly, and not for lack of ideas, but it’s difficult to render a problem down into an easily digestible two-hour thought experiment.
And then there are movies like
Space Sweepers.
An idea brought forth by director Jo Sung-hee,
Space Sweepers starts off as a film concerning itself with all the debris that humanity has launched into space and where it might all wind up years from now. It’s a fruitful premise that often sees many of us prickling with curiosity, so that would be enough a future (set in 2092) where the Earth is dying, so ragtag crews who are not citizens of the corporation UTS must get visas to crew ships that drag off and salvage the space junk, making some quick cash to stay alive.