Neil Burger’s 2021 film Voyagers is basically a remaking of Lord of the Flies that uses a space setting instead. The year is 2063, and Earth is only getting hotter. Drought and famine are the normal state of the world, so when a possibly hospitable planet is found, scientist jump at the possibility of colonization. Preserving the human race is their goal, so they raise 30 children in isolation to begin the 86-year journey.
That, however, is where the originality ends. As Voyagers progresses, it starts to directly follow Lord of the Flies‘ story. Characters’ actions and motivations directly relate to their novel counterparts. Honestly, the plot is derivative and nearly uninteresting, until the ending. In the last ten minutes Voyagers breaks from its source material and declares its own overarching theme, and it is in direct conflict to Lord of the Flies‘ message.
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The Rules
Lord of the Flies is the magnum opus of the British novelist William Golding. The book was successful in its day and has maintained acclaim by finding its way into most high school English classes. The plot shows a group of British schoolboys during a wartime evacuation, but their plane crash-lands on an uninhabited island. A boy named Ralph becomes the de facto leader as he forms a sort of society. Finding food, building shelter and maintaining a signal fire were his primary objectives. As civilized, English children, they were quick to follow orders and find their roles. However, a boy named Jack, who took the job as a hunter, decided that his position was more important than anything else and soon pulled others away from their jobs. After being confronted about this, Jack formed his own tribe to undermine Ralph’s status as leader.
After the introduction that depicts the pending doom on Earth, Voyagers follows the children’s life on the spaceship; they work, exercise and learn all within the confines of their white-walled space shuttle. Except, they don’t live a totally normal life. In a reference to another classic work — The Giver — the children are unknowingly drugged with an emotional and physical depressant called the “Blue.” They experience less pleasure, are more docile and have no sexual desires. This is all fine until Christopher and Zac realize that they are being drugged. They open Pandora’s box when they secretly stop taking the Blue. As soon they start to see and feel real emotion, they cannot go back, and it is not long before others stop taking the drug. Then, when Richard, the only adult on-board, dies repairing their shuttle, Christopher is chosen as the new leader. Zac, however, is not happy that he was not chosen as leader, so he starts to corrupt the crew to his own way of doing things and makes them war against Christopher’s leadership.
Fear as a Motivator
In Lord of the Flies the primary way Jack pulls people away from Ralph’s camp is through fear. When the younger boys begin to believe that their island is haunted by a “beast,” Jack promises to kill it. In doing so, he validates the boys’ fear and establishes himself as the only one that can protect them. In the same way, Jack from Voyagers, corrupts his crewmates by building on a rumor that aliens killed Richard outside of the ship. When they bring Richard’s dead body back inside, Zac convinces everyone that an alien snuck inside. When fear is sufficiently developed, he establishes himself as the new leader and builds his crew under the banner of killing the alien that, like Lord of the Flies‘ beast, is only within themselves.
Conflicting Human Natures
By the end of Lord of the Flies, there is seemingly no hope. The basic parts of humanity take over, and all of the boys, save two, join Jack’s camp. Whey Ralph goes to make one last plea for reason and decency, one of Jack’s lackeys crushes Ralph’s only remaining friend under a rock. Although, this is not the first murder in the book, this one represents the death of all rational thinking. Ralph flees, as Jack orders a hunt and begins to burn the island as a way of finding him. The only reason that Ralph is not killed is because a navy officer finds the group and reestablishes order. Lord of the Flies‘ general theme is that without the help of an established civilization, humans will always devolve and make evil or self-serving choices.
Up until the very end of Voyagers, the plot and characters closely align with those from Lord of the Flies. As Zac takes over, it is revealed that he killed Richard — not an alien — but the crew has fallen so far into chaos that they do not care. One of the last people with reason begs, “We don’t have to be this way. We can think. We can decide to be different. We can decide what is better.” But she is killed, and Christopher is hunted by Zac. When death looks inevitable for Christopher, he finds a way to eliminate the agent of chaos. He and his girlfriend jettison Zac into Space. After that, the crew regains order and, eventually, achieves its mission.
Without the possibility of a “Deus ex Machina,” the children were forced to choose good for themselves — and they did. Voyagers’ choice to break away from its source material is significant because it, unlike Lord of the Flies, places faith in humanity that it can and will choose good.
Written and directed by Neil Burger and starring Tye Sheridan, Lily-Rose Depp, Fionn Whitehead, Chanté Adams, Isaac Hempstead Wright, Viveik Kalra, Archie Madekwe, Quintessa Swindell, Madison Hu and Colin Farrell, Voyagers is streaming now.
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