Kittens! And "Children of Men"
I'm very grateful for the new remake of The Hitcher. Yeah, it looks like a dumb movie, but it's resulted in Sean Bean being on my TV every five minutes due to the incessant commercials. He's even in the subway in gigantic scary-looking ads! (Not that I find him scary; you know I'm totally going to be rooting for his character. How could the guy
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Okay, look at the movie thematically. Why does the literal reason why the human race is infertile matter? They gave a clear thematic explanation, which is that the human race lost its respect for life, and so therefore lost its ability to create new life. Even if they'd come up with some literal explanation like government experimentation, it just would've wasted time with exposition and mucked up the metaphor.
Plus, I like that it ended ambiguously. I think the idea was to show that the world is still terribly fucked up, but at least there's a bit of hope. It doesn't matter what's actually going to happen to the girl or what the Human Project is, it just matters that the baby was able to make everyone stop and remember the value of life, even for just a moment.
You're definitely not the only one who had this issue. Pretty much everyone I've talked to about it has said something similar. (My friend jaydk had an argument about it tonight, because she wanted an explanation too.)
I think maybe it was okay with me because I read some advance reviews and basically went into it not expecting an explanation, and because, based on Harry Potter 3 (you don't want to know how many times I've seen that movie; at least 8 in the theater alone), it was clear that Alfonso Cuaron is not so much a fan of exposition (*still can't believe he left out the entire marauder backstory*). But he's so good with characters and themes and visuals that I'm willing to overlook it in his specific case (and I'm usually a stickler for logic, too).
(And also, I was relieved that they made it clear that the world went to hell *before* the infertility, and that it was an effect rather than a cause, because my feminist self just gets so irritated by the idea that a life without children is not worth living.)
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