[greggman3]

I'm going to take the inevitable downvotes, especially by people who don't want to engage and discuss, and say I wasn't a fan of Gattaca. In particular the story gets muddled for me because they made the poor choice of choosing a space mission as the background for the story.

NASA and the Air Force already have (had) a "you must have perfect genes or you don't get to be an astronaut / fighter pilot" so that part of Gattaca was not sci-fi, it was just repeating what was already true. One of my best friends in high-school, his dream was to be a fighter pilot, but he had bad vision (bad genes) and knew that was an instant "no".

In terms of the movie, the main character wants the government to risk billions of dollars on a space mission on him and he selfishly doesn't care that they're trying to lower the risk of failure by selecting only people less likely to have issues on the mission. Real space missions do the same. You aren't going to send someone who genes suggest the mission may fail. They may not give you a DNA test, but they will test tons of other things that all basically test your things you got because of your genes.

I get the movie is about trying harder than anyone else, taking risks, not letting others tell you your limits. All of that is great. But, because of the poor choice of context (billion dollar space missions) it didn't work for me because that is how billion dollar space missions are run and it made the main character kind of a jerk for risking the mission and every one else's lives.

[camjohnson26]

My opinion is that the movie is trying to show that genes have less predictive power than most assume. Administrators love easy measures that simplify decisions, but real life is way more complicated than that. So the protagonist in the movie has been able to beat his genetically superior brother and thrive academically by being creative and finding ways around his natural limitations, and that scrappiness is the core feature of humanity that makes someone successful.

[greggman3]

I got all that. They're still going to look at statistics to decide how who to risk billions of dollars on a space mission.

This is no different than say insurance companies charging more for people under 25. You might be 19 and the safest driver in the world. Doesn't matter, the statistics say, people under 25 get in accidents. Same with all kinds of things.

It's not like a space program has infinity money and sends up a rocket to Saturn every day. So, they have to lower the risks and one of the ways they do that is by trying to select extremely healthy people to be astronauts. Sure, one person how's genes say they are unhealthy might happen to outlive everyone how's genes say they are healthy but that's not how it works. They're still going to use some form of selection by genes (health, body size, eye sight, hearing, etc...) so select people they feel give the mission the highest chance of success.

If you're blind, deaf, have missing or deformed limbs, a "bad" heart, etc... you aren't going to be selected.

[px43]

The movie also did a lot to turn the public against the emerging field of genetic engineering, and science in general. Even 25 years later, people cite GATTACA as a reason to avoid vaccines.

It seems to me that the overwhelming takeaway from that movie was more science is always bad, and leads to suffering and human misery. I think there were some good messages in there, but most people who I have talked to about the movie seem to have missed them, and focus entirely on how we need to outlaw any form of research into human genetics.

[jecel]

Everyone I have talked to that remembers the movie as well as reviews I have seen think it is about genetic engineering. The only thing the movie actually shows is genetic selection. The scientist tells Vincent's parents that only their genes will be used, though selected such that if they tried millions of times they would be unlikely to naturally get such a good combination.

[px43]

Yup, I remember that line "Remember, the child is still you, simply the best of you."