Will the end of the world as we know it come with a “Night of the Living Cars”? Netflix’s Leave the World Behind defines it, throwing a giant stunt at Elon Musk’s Tesla along the way.
In this slow-burning apocalyptic mystery from Mr. Robot author Sam Esmail, based on Rumaan Alam’s 2020 novel, one of the film’s two main families reaches a defining moment of panic midway through the film. This leads to timely observation about fears about self-driving cars and automation, as well as what happens when a shipment is hijacked.
The Tesla Model 3 goes from technological advances to villains in an exciting scenario that exploits very genuine fears.
In the midst of a cyberattack across the United States, vacation home tenants Amanda (Julia Roberts) and Clay (Ethan Hawke) have spent the past few days with their circle of relatives and, unexpectedly, with the home’s owner, G. H. (Mahershala Ali) and her daughter. Ruth (Myha’la Herrold). When the truth of the crisis is discovered, they must leave their sumptuous hiding place. The plan is to take her children Archie (Charlie Evans) and Rose (Farrah Mackenzie) to Amanda’s sister’s apartment in New Jersey. As G. H. warns them, this means they will have to travel via New York, where they can’t be sure how things are.
Ignoring the warning, Amanda packs her circle of family members into her Jeep Grand Cherokee and drives off. They run into what appears to be a traffic jam on the highway, as we’ve seen in countless videos and TV shows about zombie apocalypse. But the accident The cars are just Tesla Model 3s and they’re all empty.
As Amanda reads a popular card with the Tesla logo affixed to the inside of one of the cars, she realizes, “They’re new. “The score intensifies with Hitchcockian energy, and some other Model 3 appears on the horizon, firing. in the circle of Jeep relatives while possibly on autopilot. The camera dramatically zooms through the feature map to the “Self-Driving Safety Features” and Amanda puts the pieces together: they’ll be run over by a self-driving car.
Amanda makes her vehicle scream just in time, as other Model 3s run towards them. In a wide shot, the camera pans across the terrified circle of family members for a brief pause, peeks through the windshield, and then rises to give them a bird’s-eye view of the highway, where cars of other models and brands are piled up one after the other. The other.
It’s a generational corruption that’s as shocking in the film as the crashed plane that G. H. discovers and the tanker truck that runs aground while Amanda’s family relaxes on the water: the boat has been officially hijacked.
Beyond the Batmobile, Herbie, K. I. T. T. de Knight Rider, and the Transformers team, the thrills and risks of the self-driving car are nothing new to most moviegoers. It’s a plot device that’s particularly popular in science fiction and action movies. from Johnny Cab in Total Recall, to the self-driving car crash that defines Upload, to Tony Stark’s self-driving Audi in Avengers: Age of Ultron and Benji’s self-driving car. Driving a BMW iX in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One.
But the scene from Leave the World Behind is compared to a scene from 2017’s Fate of the Furious. In downtown New York, Charlize Theron’s villainous Cipher performs his “Night of the Living Cars” stunt that shows off his remote-controlled cars on the streets and in showrooms across the city.
“It’s zombie time,” Cipher says from his headquarters, disabling “collision avoidance” and enabling “autonomous driving” in each and every vehicle, whether or not there’s a motive force on board.
Jeeps and Dodges are rolling out of dealerships, Chryslers and Minis are rolling out of fourth-floor parking lots, Fiats and Hyundais are on street corners and kiosks in the middle of Manhattan, wreaking havoc on autonomous vehicles in one of the world’s busiest cities.
Fortunately, as Vulture’s Hunter Harris discovered, this precise situation is rarely imaginable in real life, at least not yet.
“First of all, there’s never been a real-life car hack committed through a bad guy. To date, this has only been done through researchers,” security researcher Charlie Miller told Vulture in 2017, adding that Cipher’s team isn’t big enough. Hack so many cars at once. Perhaps one car hacked at a time, as in this 2015 Wired tale (also starring Miller) or 2018’s Upgrade, is a more doable task.
At Leave the World Behind, however, we have no idea how many other people are cyberattacking, so maybe it can just be done.
Notably, Tesla’s scene does not appear in Alam’s novel; This is a scene that was added to the script via Esmail. It sounds like a blatant gimmick about Tesla’s Autopilot mode or, to be honest, self-driving cars in general, as well as concerns and fears about the technology. In the film, Tesla’s complex driver-assist formula has gone from a high-tech convenience to a damaging and insane threat, with a car reprogrammed to sit in the same position on the same road, at top speeds. In the real world, Autopilot is popular in both one and the new Tesla, though enabling “full self-driving capability” costs a lot more. In the film, Esmail envisions the option of hacking Tesla’s formula and taking control of a new vehicle.
Of course, Tesla says its existing features don’t make its cars fully autonomous: “Autopilot, enhanced Autopilot, and full self-driving capability are intended to be used with a fully attentive driver, who has their hands on the wheel and is in a position to take the wheel at a moment’s notice. “
As Mashable’s Stan Schroeder wrote in June: “Right now, Tesla’s fully autonomous driving assistance package is still necessarily at Level 2, with the car helping in some scenarios, but the driver will have to be vigilant and in a position to take control in any case. situations. ” In Leave the World Behind, Amanda points out that no car in Tesla’s scene had a driver behind the wheel.
Off-screen, it’s a productive but tumultuous time for autonomous vehicles, and not just because other people have sex with them. BMW is expected to launch near-autonomous driving next spring (with caveats), MIT has its own edition. of a self-driving car, and last year Uber introduced driverless rides with AV company Motional. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
As for Tesla itself? In February, Tesla recalled 363,000 cars in the U. S. The U. S. Department of Homeland Security (NPA) has raised concerns about the beta edition of Full Self-Driving, which launched in November of last year. In July, CEO Elon Musk said the company could just make it. fully autonomous driving “by the end of this year. “But just a few days ago, a former Tesla worker expressed his views to the BBC, saying, “I don’t think the hardware is fit and the software is right,” adding “It affects us all because we’re essentially experiments on public roads. “
In addition to an ongoing federal investigation in the U. S. Tesla is facing a lawsuit over a deadly 2019 crash near Miami in which a Model 3 crashed into a truck blocking its path. The driver of the car, Stephen Banner, killed Tesla however won in court this year. In October, Tesla won a civil lawsuit over allegations that its Autopilot led to the death of Model 3 owner Micah Lee near Los Angeles.
Meanwhile, Waymo and General Motors’ Cruise were granted permission to operate driverless vehicles 24/7 in San Francisco, Cruise lost its license in the city after one of its self-driving vehicles hit and dragged a pedestrian for 20 feet after being hit by a car driven by a human. As a result, GM will “significantly reduce spending” on self-driving cars in 2024.
As all of this slowly comes to fruition, the scene in Leave the World Behind feels like Esmail’s own jab at the industry and the prevailing fears around automation, with arguably the best-known self-driving car maker turned villain in the tech apocalypse. It’s still effective and sends the characters straight back to their shelter, unable to escape or reunite with their families on the other side of the crash.
How to watch: Leave the World Behind is now streaming on Netflix.
Shannon Connellan is an editor at Mashable UK in London, formerly an editor at Mashable Australia, but emotionally lives at Creel House. Shannon, a review approved by the Tomatometer, writes about everything (though not anything) in entertainment, technology, social good, science, and culture.