Jupiter Ascending (Spoilers)

[cmdrjones]

I love people rubbishing the idea that harvesting one group of humans to bring life to others is silly and too new-age for them, on a forum dedicated to a series where a mystical energy field causes immaculate conception.

Is there any way to put 1000 more LOLs on this one? THank you sir, that wins the thread for me.

[NecronLord]

Thanks for the compliment, no thread necro please!

Have some JA art, because it was if nothing else a beautiful film.

[Q99]

The Abrasax Sister paid the bounty hunters in the stuff IIRC, so it may just be incredibly expensive - so expensive that ordinary people don't get to use it that often, or in much quantity. Stinger mentions in his first fist-fight with Caine that he hasn't had any in years. Seems politically unstable to me if only the elites are living forever, but who knows?

Only the elites live forever, but they can buy off most everyone with a few more lifetimes.

The bounty hunters got, what, 8 canisters? That's *probably* several hundred years of life there. Less if they sell one or two and really live it up.


And it's not like they're holding it back for kicks (though sometimes for profit), it's a limited resource and a revolution wouldn't change that, though it may change who's the elite. Hm, it'd be interesting if there were multiple times in the past when there were revolutions, not to stop the process, but to change who's on top and who can get the life from the royals.

The idea works better as a thematic thing than as physical science- but frankly that's good enough for me. I mean, you can really see the whole thing as an explicit metaphor for capitalism, taken to its logical extreme. For that matter, some of the characters themselves take it as an explicit metaphor for capitalism in general. They actually come right out and say that the goal of this horrible pyramidal structure where the elite literally devour entire civilizations of the 'undeveloped' to prolong their own lives, after having procured every form of material wealth anyone could ever want, is... profit.

Yes, agreed!

I really liked it. The civilization is incredibly rich in everything we normally consider valuable - natural resources, technology, goods, services, advanced robots, etc. The only thing that's scarce is extra lifespan, and so naturally that becomes a foundation of immense wealth for anyone who can provide it. Capitalism in a civilization that most people would describe as "post-scarcity".

Quite. It leads to a setting with some very interesting implications.