“Leave the World Behind” uses an apocalyptic scenario to examine various topical issues, such as race relations and humanity’s reliance on technology. In the film, a news report says that hackers have infiltrated various pressure points, as shown in the Tesla scene. The various Teslas are stranded on the road not because they ran out of juice but because they crashed. And that’s made possible due to various computer systems within the car and a heavily-touted autopilot feature, meaning hackers could feasibly hijack them and make them target whoever.
Technology is a fragile thing, which is what “Leave the World Behind” attempts to show. For example, the film also has a scene where Clay (Ethan Hawke) tries to go into a nearby town to get more information but can’t get there because his GPS doesn’t work. Nowadays, pretty much everyone is reliant on their laptops, smartphones, and apps to the point where losing them for even a day would cause massive panic. Teslas having a self-driving feature makes them dangerous in theory, especially considering The Washington Post reported that the self-driving technology in Teslas has already been implicated in 17 deaths.
Looper’s own Alistair Ryder had qualms over “Leave the World Behind,” too, but they’re coherent points from someone who watched the film. This, combined with Musk’s thoughts on “Barbie,” means people probably shouldn’t turn to him as a film critic any time soon.
