The Opening Scene Of The ‘Loki’ Finale Was An Homage To ‘Contact’
Who caught theContacthomage in the season finale ofLoki? There have been a lot of comparisons made betweenLokiandDoctor Who,and the Disney+ series is of coursepacked with Marvel Easter eggs.What you might have missed is the reference in the opening scene toRobert Zemeckis' excellent 1997 adaptation of theCarl Sagannovel,Contact.
Scientists once argued about whether or not the universe was geocentric (Earth-centered) or heliocentric (sun-centered). The opening scene in theLokifinale puts all those questions to rest and establishes once and for all that theMarvel Studioslogo is the center of the known universe.
As the camera pulls back from said logo and shows planets and other cosmic imagery, you may be reminded of a similar opening to another work of science fiction: namely, the aforementioned Zemeckis film,Contact. Speaking toTV Line,LokidirectorKate Herronsaid:
“We had this opening for Episode 6 that [writer]Eric Martinhad written, where he said, ‘Oh, it’d be cool to do an homage toContact,’ because we wanted the show to be a big love letter to sci-fi. We were going to go through space until the end of time, and we’d see the Citadel in the physical timeline.”
The Glory of Contact
Zemeckis was fresh off the success of an Oscar win forForrest Gumpwhen he madeContact,and it would be one of the last live-action films he made before pivoting more to mo-cap in the 21st-century.
ContactstarsJodie FosterandMatthew McConaugheywhose characters take opposing views on the existence of God but still respect each other’s views and have intelligent conversations. Foster plays Dr. Eleanor “Ellie” Ann Arroway, the atheistic SETI scientist who discovers evidence of alien life in radio signals sent from the star system Vega.
Included with the signals were also an early terrestrial radio clip from the 1936 Olympics and a set of blueprints for a machine that could facilitate FTL (faster-than-light) travel for a single Earth occupant to the farthest reaches of space. Arroway would ultimately be selected to make first contact with the aliens, and this is what gives the movie its title.
Contactoffered a realistic depiction of its science-fiction scenario and it featured many real-life locations like the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) in New Mexico, which provided the huge satellite dishes inthe film’s poster. The movie’s opening, which you’re able to see in the video embed above, pulled back from Earth into space in a much slower manner thanLoki’s does. It began just above our planet, where the viewer could hear the cacophony of radio transmissions, before backing through the galaxy into the cosmos and eventually exiting through the eyes of Arroway as a girl (a youngJena Malone).Contactis one of those ’90s dramas that used “a big budget to ask big questions,” asThe New York Timesput it. It was an influence on Christopher Nolan’sInterstellarand is just generally the kind of movie that conjures up feelings of, “they don’t make ‘em like they used to.” Superhero films and TV shows may now dominate the media landscape, but it’s good to know that at least some of them are partially inspired by stories outside the genre.
