Movie Review: "World of Tomorrow 3" Has an Ending to Blow a "Rick and Morty" Audience’s Mind

A time-traversing love story set at the precipice of the apocalypse. Ready?

Don Hertzfeldt has two Oscar nominations. He was named by Vulture as one of the most influential animators in history. He has sustained a twenty-year career without ever working in advertising. All of this is to say: Don Hertzfeldt is not underrated, nor is he still waiting to be discovered. Don Hertzfeldt is doing fine!

But there’s no denying the American filmmaker’s latest short, the third in his World of Tomorrow series, arrives in a totally different landscape than the one that met the first entry in 2015. The World of Today might actually be really, truly, honest-to-goodness ready for Hertzfeldt’s absurd and heartfelt head-f**ks. That’s a good thing for him, and great news for those about to be introduced to Hertzfeldt’s work. Generally speaking though, it’s also a sign that things, globally speaking, are seriously grim.

World of Tomorrow Part Three, subtitled The Absent Destinations of David Prime, was released by Hertzfeldt on Vimeo this month. (It came with this statement: "hi sorry i'll try to have something intelligent to say here in a bit. for now i need to lie on the floor a little longer.") Exhaustion aside, it makes sense he’d want it out in the lead-up to America’s generationally-decisive election, during an internationally-ravaging pandemic, while climate change keeps doing its thing to a disengaged populace. The title alone—World of Tomorrow—feels quaint these days.

The plot of the three shorts is a little too mind-melting to recount in full, but basically, it begins with the adult clone of a girl named Emily returning to her ancestor’s past to extract a long-forgotten memory that will serve as a comfort to the future-clone when she witnesses Earth’s destruction. (Basically.) British animator Julia Pott is back for this third instalment to voice ‘Emily 9’ in her hilariously detached, clipped, oddly calming tenor. This time though, she doesn’t visit ‘Emily Prime’. Instead, she contacts ‘David Prime’, who will one day be cloned multiple times too. Emily 9 has instructions for David Prime to help him stop the assassination of a clone that the OG Emily will fall in love with, although, for reasons that don’t become clear until the very final shot. It’ll involve David Prime deleting massive amounts of storage from his head (including systems such as ‘Basic Maths’ and ‘Walking’) to download her full, tragic transmission. He’s left a shrieking, incoherent mess. Honestly, same.

Hertzfeldt’s iconic hand-drawn stick figures are rendered in gorgeous digital landscapes here; simplicity amid swirling, staggering complexity, and a reminder that, as impressive as humans are, we’re embarrassingly outmoded technology when compared to the universe itself. (His masterpiece, the three-short collection It’s Such a Beautiful Day, was about the miracle of our minds, and the tragedy that they’re constantly in decay. This time, they’re literally depicted as old computers always running out of space.) The animation complements a towering narrative achievement with more humour and emotional depth in its 35 minutes (or 73 minutes, total) than almost anything else produced by American filmmakers this century. Not bad for a series that started with the ramblings of Hertzfeldt’s four-year-old niece (Emily Prime in Parts 1 and 2).

Of course, the biggest shift in the pop culture paradigm since World of Tomorrow premiered is the booming popularity of Rick and Morty. That excellent Adult Swim show is obviously inspired by Hertzfeldt’s work (the silliness of his debut, Rejected, gets its modern reprise in Rick and Morty, while the series is also indebted to Hertzfeldt for the way in which it marries sci-fi smarts with existential despair). The difference, however, is that the makers of Rick and Morty have none of Hertzfeldt’s qualms when it comes to taking marketing money: they happily appeared in a Pringles ad this year, and even accepted a commission from Kim Kardashian to produce a birthday song for her husband Kanye West. (This is not a crime!) R&M is also beloved by futurist edge lord Elon Musk, who cameoed on the show. Musk would probably enjoy Hertzfeldt’s stuff too if he wasn’t also likely the subject of its satire.

Nonetheless, Rick and Morty’s widespread popularity suggests there's now a huge market for Hertzfeldt’s World of Tomorrow series. Yet, if we look beneath the surface, the 'Rick and Morty intellectuals' may not be prepared for what World of Tomorrow has to offer. That’s because Rick and Morty embraces nihilism, as in the triumphant, semi-improvised “Rixty Minutes” ep where Morty tells his sister: "Nobody exists on purpose. Nobody belongs anywhere. Everybody's gonna die. Come watch TV?" Hertzfeldt’s cartoons document mental decline, futility of the corporeal form, the vice-like grip of consumerist culture and our inability to change what lies before us… and finds hopeful reprieve; a reason to not pack it all in despite all evidence to the contrary. Take this quote, from Emily 6 to David Prime: "To this day, you still suffer from nightmares of drowning. At night, your memories of them will often replay in my own dreams. I confess, that I sometimes look forward to drowning together when I turn out the light."

World of Tomorrow Part Three has a crushing ending, until Emily 9’s true (paradoxical?) plan is revealed. You can’t change the future, it suggests, but might the future’s past be up for grabs? Hope with a catch is still something to hope for, I guess.

5/5