It’s a concept that cuts across genres, from rom-com (1998’s “Sliding Doors,” where missing a train splits a young woman’s life into diverging paths) to near-musical (2019’s “Yesterday,” where a budding musician tumbles into a universe where the Beatles never existed).
#Star trek maps 1980 tv#
So it is that imaginary characters - particularly beloved ones with established stories - are toyed with in books, TV shows and movies that airlift them out of one life and into another. Kennedy hadn’t been assassinated ( “11/22/63” )? What if the Soviets had beaten the Americans to the moon (“For All Mankind”)? What if 9/11 had played out very differently (“The Mirage”)?įictional worlds are more malleable, though, and can yield more content. What if the South had won the Civil War (“CSA: The Confederate States of America”)? What if Germany and Japan had won World War II ( “The Man in the High Castle” )? What if John F. In the decades since, that notion has accelerated - a rise in stories that consider events both fictional and real, extrapolating different choices.
“You’ve been given a great gift, George - a chance to see what the world would be like without you,” he’s told by his wannabe guardian angel, Clarence.
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“It’s a Wonderful Life,” the quintessential Christmas movie from 1946, sent the affable George Bailey tumbling into a timeline where he’d never been born to reveal his true impact. The notion of exploring life’s twists and turns through alternate timelines has been around for a while, albeit in varying guises. THE MULTIVERSE HAS A RICH HISTORY - OR HISTORIES This consensus reality is not how things have to be.’” “What has happened in culture,” Wolk says, “is that people are saying, ‘Well, no. “The cultural assumption used to be that the world we live in is the way it is, and that’s the only way it could be,” says Douglas Wolk, who read 27,000 Marvel comics from across the decades for his book, “All of the Marvels.” There is a deep hunger, it seems, for exploring possibilities - for seeing what might have been if just one thing had unfolded differently. But what if things could turn out another way? What if, somewhere, they had? Enter the realm of the multiverse and alternate realities, one of the most glorified canvases in popular culture’s recent years - and a repository for the ache and longing of living in an era of uncertainty.Īlternate universes are everywhere these days, as the long-delayed opening weekend of “The Flash” attests with its regret-streaked, history-changing storyline (and its multiple variations of Batman). The world is a stressful, sometimes lonely place - and more so at a moment when “It wasn’t supposed to be this way” has become a not-uncommon mantra.
But wait - you might also be you and you and you. The message is clear from the get-go: We have choices.
Those are the first words you hear at the beginning of this month’s “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” an otherworldly meditation on multiple realities and how our lives might unfold.
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