To do this, we will have to travel to Los Angeles (USA). The spectacular Petersen Automotive Museum exhibition includes more than 50 vehicles from the history of science fiction. Titled “Hollywood Dream Machines: Vehicles of Science Fiction and Fantasy” it is particularly exciting for anyone who loves futuristic movies and, in general, any content related to the wonderful world of science fiction.
The museum has vehicles from Back to the Future: Part II (1985), Blade Runner (1982), Minority Report (2002), Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), among many others. There are also vehicles (full-size and smaller production models) from A Clockwork Orange (1971), Terminator: Salvation (2009), Star Wars: A New Hope Episode IV (1977), Black Panther (2018), Blade Runner 2049 (2017), Jurassic Park (1993), Tron: Legacy (2010), RoboCop (1987), Iron Man (2008), Ghost in the Shell or The Fifth Element (1997).
There’s even a vehicle from Prometheus (2012), possibly the most underrated sci-fi movie of the last decade. The vehicle is so large that it is not even located in the main museum. It is on the outside. And it is impressive.
One of the characteristics that make this show so fascinating is that the focus is not just on the futuristic, but on a particularly dark and dystopian brand of what tomorrow might bring . And given everything that is happening in the world right now, the exhibition is most appropriate.
“The exhibit is an ode to the industry that Los Angeles was built on,” says Petersen Automotive Museum CEO Terry L. Karges.
Many of these narratives in which these vehicles are immersed offer a dystopian vision, in which human beings face existentialist crises with machines as an instrument of destruction or even as a threat to supplant humanity. Others are lighter and more whimsical, like the Back to the Future movies and the Batman, Knight Rider and Green Hornet series. The vehicles have helped define these works, and in many cases, they have been memorable in their own right for their intriguing designs.
The exhibition is open until March 15, 2020 (tickets are $ 11 (children) and $ 16 (adults), so you still have plenty of time to go see it for yourself. The entire exhibition seems to be a fantastic parking lot of what we imagine the future of transportation could be throughout Hollywood history.
Images credit: Petersen Automotive Museum
