Blurring The Lines Between Sci-Fi And Reality

​The boys and I went to see Captain America: Brave New World yesterday. I left feeling more uneasy than entertained.

In reflecting on it, I realized it's because there was a time when superhero movies felt like pure entertainment—spectacles of impossible feats, clear lines between good and evil, and crises that could be neatly wrapped up in two hours. But yesterday, sitting in the theater watching Captain America: Brave New World, I felt something different.

I wasn’t just watching a superhero battle villains. I was watching a world where trust is eroded, where power is constantly shifting hands, and where technology and surveillance are used as weapons.

It didn’t feel like science fiction anymore.

It felt like the news.

I realized that the movies of my youth that were once obvious science fiction are more than ever the very real non-fiction worlds my boys are growing up in.

Superhero movies that once borrowed from real-world anxieties are now movies where those anxieties have caught up with the fiction.

Government corruption and political power plays were once exaggerated in movies but now mirror the reality of shifting alliances, deep-state conspiracies, and leaders who manipulate fear.

The idea of governments or corporations monitoring every move used to feel dystopian, but now, it’s just everyday life.

Once upon a time, villains were obvious. Now, the real world—and superhero films—are filled with gray areas where truth is manipulated, and no one is sure who to trust.

I don't know if I felt more comfort or concern that my boys don't see and feel the reality in these movies that I do. That they haven't lived life long enough to see the lines of science fiction blur into the reality of the real world as drastically as I've watched them blur.

I do find myself wondering this morning, as a Christian, if maybe this is a natural and not accidental progression of things?

The best superhero films used to transport us into worlds far from our own. Now, instead of being an escape, they feel like an eerie reflection of the reality we live in. Captain America: Brave New World doesn’t just ask what it means to be a hero—it forces us to wrestle with the uncomfortable question: Can a single hero even save a world like this anymore?

Maybe we are all supposed to get to a place of knowing the answer to that question is no. Maybe it's in a mass recognition of that reality that we all have a mass recognition of the hope that can only be found in Jesus?

That would make sense to me personally, as my own faith journey has been one that could be described as the lines of science fiction blurring into the very truths of the foundations I now stand on.

Still, I do miss the days when science fiction felt more fiction than it felt yesterday.

I miss the days when science fiction felt like escape and not a reminder of the world waiting outside the theatre doors.