This is a movie review for "The Pod Generation", released January 19, 2023 at the Sundance Festival in the USA. I watched this February 24, 2024 via Hulu.
Trailer
Genre
Comedy, Romance, Sci-Fi
Cast
Emilia Clarke - Rachel Novy
Chiwetel Ejiofor - Alvy Novy
Rosalie Craig - Womb Center Director
Plot
Women nowadays are becoming more career-focused and ambitious. Even though they want children, they don't want to have to deal with the "side effects" of pregnancy like nausea, stretch marks, weight they cannot drop, etc.
In the near future, there is a solution to this need: The Womb Center. Have your baby and keep your body too! The Pegazus company has created a system that allows children to be grown within an artificial womb [a pod / "egg"].
Rachel, a worker for Pegazus, has been offered (as part of a promotion) help with the down payment for a child grown through the Womb Center. She is the main income for her and her husband, but that isn't the biggest barrier. Her husband is in a rare vocation in the day of 3D printed food, paying to being able to breathe pure air from a plant, and having AI everywhere helping with calendars/clothing/work. Alvy is a biologist and doesn't like the idea of an "egg baby". Why not stick to something more natural, like a real pregnancy?
Are they able to have a baby? Will they go with the Womb Center? How will this affect their relationship? Will they be able to bond with the baby in a pod?
Rating Criteria
0/5 – No value whatsoever. Absolute waste of time.
1/5 – Barely worth any time.
2/5 – Pathetic but has a bit of something to hold the attention a little.
3/5 – Somewhat kept the attention but could definitely have used more.
4/5 – Good, but not awe-strikingly amazing. Could have maybe used a bit more to the movie.
5/5 – Go see it! Wonderful movie all around. – characters, music, theme, story line, etc.
4/5 - *SPOILERS*
I watched this because I saw it pop up on my Hulu. I brought it to the attention of a coworker/friend of mine and we had a discussion, considering I just posted the review about "Splice" this week and he had things to say about it. I said that Splice brought up the question about whether or not artificial wombs would be a thing in the future, not just for experimentations or for animals but for humans. Then I saw this on Hulu and I told him about it. We chatted a bit about this, whether it would be ethical or just to do this. I brought up the question about the connection between mother and child, considering the mother's immune system gives the child a protective shield for a little while after birth. This movie slightly touched on the connection issue but they never got into the medical side of things, which is one of the reasons why I knocked down the rating from 5 stars.
The first annoyance was the fact that it took over 2 minutes to get to the opening of the movie due to all of the brand names and company names that they were showing. The ending also ended over 7 minutes to the end of the film, according to Hulu. So that means that over 9 minutes were dedicated to credits etcetera. Annoying. Not a star reducer but definitely annoying.
Anyways, this was a good movie. For the first third of the movie, I was smacking my head going "wtf is this woman doing!" because she decided to sign up for a position at the Womb Center, visits them, and drops a $8,700 deposit on this Womb Center thing without consulting her husband. When she tells him, she nearly bulldozes him on the decision by showing off a friend of hers that has a pod. The friend is all like "this is the best decision ever. Society expects women to be all that but then, when she wants to make a stand and say that she doesn't want to deal with pregnancy yet have kids, she's considered a bitch". Super mega feminist vibes, let me tell you! Let's have a choice about whether or not we want pregnancy to mess up what we have. [Sounds familiar?]
So Alvy finally agrees to go with the decision to have the pod baby. Rachel is surprised but enthusiastic. They go to the Womb Center, sign the contract, and have an egg of Rachel's fertilized by Alvy's sperm. Voila, life! But it isn't very large, because zygotes are small.
Rachel starts pulling away from Alvy and her personality starts changing towards depression or some sort of "blah". Alvy, however, is slowly starting to become more accustomed to the idea of the baby inside the pod being able to hear/experience while in the pod. Mostly stay-at-home dad starts bonding with the baby, whereas working mom starts seeing declines in her work production levels. She gets frustrated and tries to take the pod to work, but a coworker says something to the effect of "you need to put your pod in a closet while you're at work or else you'll be seen as the 'distracted mom'".
Meanwhile, we are viewing a constant conversation in the movie about AI and virtual assistants (like Siri, but worse). The constant bombardment of technology clashes severely with Alvy's career of choice. He even, at one point, is told at the college campus that his greenhouse is costing the college too much so why don't we phase out the plants and put in holograms?
Between all of the little drops of hints and worries that Rachel feels, we start wondering if the technological approach to having a baby is even right. She sees a woman pregnant and she starts wanting to have that over having her baby in a pod. She feels that she can't connect with it and is very frustrated because she is the mother whereas Alvy is calling it baby instead of pod/egg. It is a strong shift from what the movie started off at and it is very interesting.
Rachel finally takes a turn towards wanting something more natural for the baby. She decides to go rogue, with Alvy agreeing but still wanting things to go right for the child. Rachel convinces him that they need to take the baby to their island house [that her dad had said "why don't you sell it since you have a child on the way" and Alvy had said, "I want our child to know nature".]. Alvy goes over to the Womb Center to prove that they want a 'home birth' and the Womb Center director says that it is not permitted because they need to make sure that the pod is safe [per the contract]. Alvy and Rachel take the pod, and an olive tree that he had given to the baby when it came home the first time, and head out to the island home. She reconnects with what he was saying about nature and survival and finally seems to come to herself. This is a huge thing because that says that technology isn't always the best thing for us and that we may need to be a bit more natural just for our own preservation.
Anyways, they finally get the sound from the pod that the baby is ready to come out but the Womb Center won't give up the birth code to open it up, so Alvy just takes a screwdriver and gently pries it open to take the child out. After a tense moment, they pull the child out and it cries. They are happy and have their child, thank goodness.
Rachel returns the pod via the mail to the Womb Center, returns to her little family and cuddles with her baby, content, and the movie ends. We are not told about if it is a boy or a girl, which I was curious about since the Womb Center director was shocked to hear that they didn't want to choose the gender of the child before conception. We are not told about the repercussions about the fact that they pried open the pod, nor if she lost her job because of this whole situation. I would have loved an epilogue but they just leave us flat with the fact that "yes, they had their kid, isn't that nice".
Personally, I felt like there would have been more dirt on the Womb Center. Like they insisted that the pod be at the Womb Center for a lot of the time. Are they programming the children or tampering with them while no one is there to take care of them? What kind of special procedures are they doing to deliver the children out of the pod? What other nefarious schemes are they working on?
They also promoted "indirect parenting", so parents don't need to connect with the pod/child. Pegazus also promoted children at school to have "art time" where the computers were doing the art and the children were only giving feedback. How is this childhood?! Yes, it is a statement about how technology might hurt our children/future, but how many people would go along with this without batting an eyelash?
I think that, in general, the villain was Pegazus and the Womb Center, but it could be said that they were just trying to help and improve the world. [The path to Hell is paved with good intentions?] We also see, within the ending credits, the CEO of Pegazus saying that they hope, in the future, that children can choose their own parents. Ummmm, really? I don't know what to say aside I did not like Pegazus, especially with the fact that they pushed Rachel to think about having a child but then made her put the pod in the closet!
I'm going to end this ranting because that is more than enough typing for me, lol. That's my movie review! Thanks for reading. I'd love comments. More reviews to come eventually.
~ R
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