I’m watching These Final Hours. All the best movies are grounded in economics.
This wasn’t a Wall Street movie. It wasn’t about money, or greed. It was about economics: choice, constraints, outcomes and uncertainty. It was an apocalypse story based on economics.
Wasn’t this an Australian Sci-fi?
That’s the thing about sci-fi movies: they seem like a story about one thing, but they’re really a story about something else.
It’s not just about laser shooting robots – each sci-fi uses the future scenario to talk about something else in the here and now.
For example, Dune is a story about empire and resources – swap “spice” for “oil”, and the galactic power dynamic for America and we’re talking about the middle east.
Or Star Wars as an metaphor for the Vietnam War.
Whether the underlying story within the sci-fi resonates is the measure of the quality of the sci-fi.
For example, the latest Star Trek: Discovery is less about Christopher Columbus-type discovery on “the Final Frontier” in a ship, like the original Star Trek was. It’s more about being the “Big Gay Love Boat in Space”, where everyone’s gender issues and preferences are supposed to mean something. And that speaks to the self-obsessive preferences of the millennial generation in the here and now.
The “quality” of the contents of the more recent Star Treks stories are decidedly less “outward” focused about the world in general and more about whatever might be the “inner turmoil” of today’s younger viewers.
What’s the movie about?
This movie was a story of the economics of maximising utility under constrained choice.
It’s an economics movie. 🙂👍
Whether the protagonist’s choices are “good” choices is the moral element of the story. Consequences, regret and people who deny free will are the secondary elements of the story.
Jimmy (Tip top name! I’m liking him already) is making choices about how he’s going to spend his last hours on Earth. How he allocates his scarce time across his utility maximising options is the soul of the story. The complication is he saves a young girl who has been separated from her father
Set in Perth, an asteroid has already hit the other side of the world. The Earth is destroyed, with the destructive wave on its way around the world to Australia.
As countries crumble, Perth degenerates into either a writhing fuck-pit of hedonistic excess, or a savage brutal lawless landscape with no consequences.
Into this picture comes Rose, an innocent young girl separated from her dad. Jimmy saves her from a couple of baddies intent on rape and sexual abuse.
The Movie as Normative Economics
Jimmy’s choices define him. He has options but they are subject to some massively binding constraints.
In his last moments, does Jimmy spend the last moments with his girlfriend at her brother’s drug fuelled fuckfest, or stay with his gorgeous mistress on the beach, making love until the apocalypse comes down.
Or does he spend his time, comforting Rose by returning her to her family and giving her the best last hours she could have. Or seeing his sister (with her family) and his mum who is alone.
His options don’t just maximise his utility, they can maximise others. Helping Rose is a form of exchange: he gives up his alternative opportunities for his last hours to help her, and she gives something to him – a feeling of well-being in “doing the right thing”.
His choices have consequences and his decisions come at costs – big ones given the destruction circling the Earth. Initially, his options are many, but they’re swiftly diminishing as time passes in its usual unstoppable pace.
And his decisions are big decisions.
They come with consequences and path-dependency – helping Rose means no to the girlfriend at the End of the World party. Leaving the mistress means hoping to find some survivable future that doesn’t involve her.
At every stage he’s dealing with choice and consequences, with repercussions, regret and alternative options.
This is the essence of consumer choice: maximising utility subject to a binding constraint. All options are available, but becoming unavailable the longer he delays his choices.
In this world, productivity doesn’t open up future solutions. The bunker at his friend’s party won’t save him, Rose or anyone else.
This was totally my type of movie 👍
☺️
Choices and consequences – isn’t all drama about that? Is economics really the centre of all things?
Have you ever seen Slow TV?
Yeah, without choices and consequences, she’s a dull movie.
But, the choices and consequences need not be economic ones or made through economic forces.
But yes, I take your point John 🙂 and, on this – your special mastermind topic – I’ll absolutely not argue against you ☺️.
Depends on your definition of economics doesn’t it? And on that I defer to you!
I haven’t seen Slow TV, I’ll look out for it.