The Forever War (TBA)
Probably the best story to deal with space travel at relativistic speeds is that of Joe Haldeman. The Eternal War. Written partly in response to the chauvinist (and a little fascist) Starship Troopers, the novel uses relativistic time dilation as a fantastical metaphor for troops returning home during the Vietnam War. It uses time dilation to portray the feeling of returning home after combat and discovering the broad social changes that have occurred at home, but with many space wars. In short, it’s perfect movie material.
The film rights to the book have been changing hands since 1988. For a long time, Ridley Scott was set to direct with plans to make it a 3D spectacle to rival it. avatar (which also featured space travel subject to time dilation, but you’d have to read a lot of behind-the-scenes material to figure that out). However, in 2015 the rights expired and were quickly acquired by Warner Bros. with the intention of making it a Channing Tatum vehicle. The film is reportedly still in development, but just like a spaceship moving close to the speed of light, time passes slowly in development hell.
And the Honorable Mentions
At the time of writing, MGM has just announced a release date for its adaptation of Ave Maria Projectan extrapolation of a novel by The Martian author Andy Weir, with Phil Lord and Chris Miller sitting in the (two-seater) directors’ chair. The film, starring Ryan Gosling, attempts to offer a sci-fi take on an astronaut traveling to a nearby star to find the source of a mysterious space life form that is causing our sun to dim.
Different The Eternal WarTime dilation doesn’t make up a big part of the story other than to emphasize how isolated the hero is, but it is still mentioned in the book and forms a crucial plot point.
Outside of films, a group of developers who previously worked on Mass Effect games have already announced the action RPG, Exodus, a seemingly difficult sci-fi version of space opera where the player will endure time dilation as they travel from system to system as epochs pass behind them. But after much research, we found precisely five completed films that make use of time dilation, three of which falsify science (if you know of any others, please let us know in the comments. This is not an attempt to drive engagement, I I just want to watch these movies!).
Of course, many space travel stories still go straight to hyperdrive, but by embracing space travel, you not only open up opportunities to let people see far beyond their years, but you also show how spacetime can behave. in a much stranger way than any other. science fiction creation; you also show how big our universe really is.
