I watch Adam Sandler in Spaceman, loved the film but hated the message
Spoilers
Adam Sandler gets therapy from a giant time and space fairing psychic spider and comes to the realization that his dreams and his mission to advance human understanding was wrong and should have come second to consoling his wife about her uterus and other mammal instinctual bullshit.
Fuck you, spider. Mental health is important but I personally place the future of mankind much higher on the list. Every moment we delay our intellectual development as a species is another moment of additional pain and suffering on an unimaginable scale.
I love this. I love it because I immediately recognize the conversation. Know where I've seen it before? 1 Corinthians 7.
Yup, this conversation about the challenge of pursuing higher ends despite the natural pull to family and relationships? It's the same struggle people have been toiling over for thousands of years. This stuff's in the Bible, and it hasn't really changed. Is the man who pursues a family instead of the Big Picture doing the wrong thing? the right thing? Who knows.
I think if we don't annihilate ourselves people will still be bickering over this question in another millenium.
I haven't seen the movie yet, so I have no position on the space spider, but I love that this debate is so simple and timeless.
People tend to value what's important to them and their lives more than the things that they do not and cannot participate in. It's easy to prioritize sentimentality over things far bigger than you. Over advancing humanity, easing suffering, and understanding the universe. When those things are far beyond your capacity to understand and capability to do, they hold less interest to you than the simpler things you know. Family, friendships, and love are incredibly important and compelling. But so is the drive to discover, to create and to shape the future of the planet. Some people are just simple, though, and like things to remain simple.
Those who can, do it. Those who can't, teach it. Those who don't even comprehend, criticize it.
People tend to value what makes them feel important more than the things that they do not want to or cannot participate in emotionally. It's easy to prioritize career and personal achievements over providing support and fulfilling the promises you made to others in making a community, something far bigger than you. Over advancing humanity, easing suffering, and understanding each the universe within each other. When those things are far beyond your capacity to understand and capability to do, they hold less interest to you than the simpler things you were conditioned to strive after in capitalist propaganda or toxic machismo. Accolades, success, and recognition are incredibly important and compelling. But so is the drive to heal, to create and to shape the future of the planet through love. Some people are just simple, though, and like things to remain simple.
Those who can, do it. Those who can't, manage it. Those who don't even comprehend, criticize it. By regurgitating platitudes.
Touched a nerve, did I? Hey, notice how never did I say that either interpersonal or scientific endeavors were unimportant. In fact I said that they both were "incredibly important". And making me out to be a shill for capitalism or toxic masculinity... pfft. Not hardly.
You took my meaning entirely wrong. But please, get all defensive and self righteous because I was giving my perspective on why someone would profess the message OP took from a film. A message that was, to them, actually dismissive of one of those two endeavors. I wasn't suggesting they dismissed the wrong endeavor. I was suggesting why they may have dismissed one at all. Neither should be dismissed. More clear now?
The problem is that there is no giant psychic space spider, but in fact a human pretending to write from the pov of a giant psychic space spider. Empathy only carries you so far before your own biases and cognitive distortions start to have an effect again.
There isn’t a right or wrong answer. It may also simply be that Sandlers character should focus on family. But maybe the answer would have been different for a different character
I think that inside the fictional setting of the movie there is a chance that the spider was real, and there are several clues that support this argument:
The toilet making sounds at night was due to the spider turning the valve. The camera malfunctions could also be explained by the spider.
It pinned Adam Sandler to a wall.
Adam Sandler was told that the space cloud was the beginning of everything before he had actually observed it, and later it was observed to contain the information of every event since the dawn of time.
Adam Sandler was somehow magically transported through the cloud to appear directly in front of the South Korean vessel, an astronomically low probability.
So while it's possible that he had simply gone insane from the very beginning, and that the spider was a halucination, it's actually kind of unlikely.