Obviously it is plot relevant at some point, but that dome would have cost trillions to construct. there is no way this show made a profit
edit: Let me summarize a few things I learned today, so you won’t have to comment the same answer:
-Despite watching the movie multiple times (it has been at least 5 years since I watched the movie), I never noticed the exact size or geography of the big ass dome. I always just thought it was a big ass island somewhere. Turns out its just in the middle of LA, about two thirds the size of manhattan, which would be much easier to construct on a real life human scale.
-“Because it’s a movie” is technically a correct answer, but that is neither an interesting answer, nor what I was asking. I wanted to know what story implications and interpretations follow from having a big ass dome instead of a big ass island. Like we are standing around the water cooler and I go like “hey you ever watch that movie about the dude in that big dome? freaky movie, innit?”. A lot of the literary (not literally) and practical answers you people proposed were really interesting.
-The fucking (in universe) creator’s name is Christof.. Christ of.. Christ of what??? eggs?? chicken??
-If you bother reading this far, watch the movie please. It is very good, great performance by Jim Carrey.
Comments
I kind of agree, but the amount of cameras, lighting and overall set work would be hard to hide. But you’re right, the dome can’t be profitable.
I think it’s briefly mentioned that they wanted total control over the environment, day/night cycle, protection from real world weather for filming, and of course security.
Because they could control everything, including the weather, length of day/night, etc. They could control when it rained, the temperature, wind, etc so these things became plot supporters instead of wreaking the planned storyline.
As for profit, everything shown was some sort of product placement.
it adds to the surreality of the movie. the sky isn’t even real, it’ a still image. there is a literal, physical wall between truman and the real world. The set was an artistic choice that way.
All the actors and production crew go home at night in the city. Hard to force everyone to live on an island
To represent whats happening in real world.
Because a dome lets you play God with a dimmer switch—an island can’t control the weather or cue dramatic moonlight on demand.
People would fly banner planes over it. They already had a huge problem with people infiltrating the show with the dome. They surely don’t need a whole bunch of people flying Truman’s every thought overhead. They had problems with banner planes in Big Brother too for a while before 9/11 happened. This was way before 9/11 so…
It’s a visual element for the movie. Showing his environment is totally controlled and that he’s contained
Can’t make it rain on a specific part of a real beach tho.
Wasn’t it an island? Or at least presented to him as an island. Been a while since I’ve seen it.
Because that’s what the writers agreed on as it was a movie and that’s how movies work.
They’d have to build an entire power grid on an island, infrastructure, etc. assuming they math’d it up, probably more cost effective to buy up everything and tweak it to their needs.
And what every one else said about security, total control, playing god.
Control
With maybe a captain? His first mate. A couple of attractive dames a rich couple and a professor. They’d all be stranded as the boats wrecked. It’s a comedy !
By controlling the eviroment on command would mean that it’s an other element that can be used when needed as part of the show
The extravagant things they would do to better control his life helped make it more grotesque
I think it’s a comment on one of the conspiracies that we live inside a firmament
I suspect because it is a movie
It was a movie set. It was enclosed so that the producers could control the whole environment
Because it’s a movie, and movies aren’t always grounded in reality?
imagine truman seeing planes and boats nearby.
Because then he wouldn’t have been able to escape as easily as walking through a door. Also, all the weather/ToD stuff
Because they wanted complete control over all aspects of his environment. At one point they brought the sun up out of schedule. They could make it rain anytime they wanted to. Complete control was the point of the environment.
its called Shutter Island
Glad you put this here cause now I can’t be mean to you lol. It’s because of the cameras. Every moment of his life needs to be recorded and created. Can’t control the weather of an island and record it without a crew or camera somewhere.
You’re meant to suspend your disbelief
The script for the actors and supporting staff was interesting. Being filmed 24 hours a day, the movie was so different for that time period. I feel like the dome was more entertaining than just a big island. Although, I grew up watching Gilligan’s Island and enjoyed that also.
Makes me want to seek out and watch it again
I think to emphasize how controlled and closed the world is, completely isolated and emprisoned = problem
Well, they saved money on not having to pay the main star at least.
Also, if they put it on an island, they’ve have to multiply their security alot. They’d need some sort of navy to stop people just sailing up onto it, or some kind of aerial deterrent to stop flying banner planes over the island. In the dome, all they need worry about is people breaking in through the doors.
Because you can’t control mother nature. Remember how they made the violent storm as Truman was getting close to end?
You have to think about the commute of the staff and crew they had to live within a reasonable distance and if you have an island where you cannot see any other land you would need a considerable amount of space
You have to think about the commute of the staff and crew they had to live within a reasonable distance and if you have an island where you cannot see any other land you would need a considerable amount of space
I just can’t believe people didn’t get bored watching it. He had a totally boring, vanilla life. The only exciting things that ever happened was a fictional boat incident and a love interest. Were people tuning in to see him wake up and go to a dead end job, saying hi to the same people each time? People got sick of Big Brother, and they were trying to make that interesting.
For one thing they wanted weather control, night/day control, full access the water.
And re. cost/profit, if I may name-drop, Aristotle pointed out that for fiction, a probable impossibility is to be preferred to an improbable possibility.
Adding onto what other people have said: they explain that Truman is the biggest media thing in this world. Like a super Pokémon. I think we’re meant to assume they had the money to build anything.
In addition to the answers about being able to control everything including the environment, from a “realistic” standpoint, if they were on an island, the costs of getting supplies would be orders of magnitude higher, as well as turn around time for any emergency would also orders of magnitude worse (days instead of hours). Having an enclosed, sealed world within an established metropolis is the way to go if you’re looking to exploit a human as entertainment.
You know, I’m 39 and this movie plot has always sounded so dumb to me and I’ve never seen it.
But this thread has made me wanna watch it, so I’m gonna do that today for the first time ever.
Wish me luck
what if he swims off the island
I like the idea that Truman days are different then earth days, offsetting it so that major moments happen during prime time.
I remember a flashback scene where Truman as a child is on the beach and tries to climb over pile of rocks blocking the edge of the “set”. From that, I always assumed that the early years weren’t in the huge dome and control over things was more difficult. But the show became a global phenomenon and made enough money to build the huge dome. It being shown right in the middle of LA was a bit ridiculous though.
To quote the Mystery Science Theater 3000 theme song, “If you’re wondering how he eats and breathes and other science facts. Then repeat to yourself ‘It’s just a show, I should really just relax.’”
I doubt it would cost trillions, and throughout the movie they show that basically everyone watches the show. It probably had hundreds of millions of viewers if not billions.
All those viewers and in show ad placement. The show definitely made a profit.
Walls would make shadows.
It shows the extent to which we would go to be entertained by someone else’s life.
They wanted to be able to control the “weather” and climate and day/night cycle.
they showcased the entire world watching the show. I think they absolutely made a profit, think how much a product placement, the car he drives, the clothes he wears, the food they eat on top of the extra curated items by his wife and friends. Insane revenue honestly if we believe viewer counts.
The answer to this is very simple. They obviously wanted to be in control of the environment.
Forgot about that movie!
The dome and its structure is an explicit reference to the cosmology — the description of the universe — of the first chapter of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible (what some Christians call the “old testament”).
The cosmological flaw that appears early in the film — a broken theater light lying in the street labelled with the name of the star “Arcturus” — foreshadows the elaborate fakery of the whole setup. The point of the movie is the crumbling of the illusion. Hamlet, Shakespeare’s character, summed it up like this: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy””
Control. And did you Jurassic Park 1-6?
also we hear about stupid people trying to contact the sentinelese people all the time, imagine if the sentinelese were also a famous tv “character”
It is a movie
Because all the actors had to be able to commute to and from work like any other job.
Other than controlling the weather (which they mention indirectly), you couldn’t properly keep transportation of products and crew hidden on an island. He could easily see a boat, plane, or helicopter and get curious.
They are trying to tell us this is how our reality is in movie form to get us accepting for when we realize this is our reality.
I mean it’s not a film that’s going for “realism”. If you try to apply real world logic it falls apart. It’s not that kind of movie.
Its a fictional world, pick it apart or look too closely and the premise breaks. That said, its probably control. The director could control the weather and prevent random elements from interacting with Truman. Narratively it helps when Truman breaks his bonds and leaves. The show can’t follow.
I both love and hate this movie
Not that there aren’t valid reasons you can come up with for anything, The Truman Show is one of those movies that you can’t really poke at too hard or it falls apart. There’s a degree of suspension of belief that is required.
Like, do we really think the world is just gonna let this happen and it’s gonna take 30 years for someone from the outside to get to him?
It’s for the story, Truman’s entire world was fake, including the sky, the sun, moon, stars. It’s to show how completely they controlled his world, but it was still not good enough.
Truman wouldn’t be able to dramatically find the end of the world and walk into the a new world at the end of the movie without an entire done.
But yeah, s dime that size would be impossible.
Can’t control the weather or sun on an island. Makes for bad TV
Remember the time someone tried to parachute onto set?
The longer the show goes on the more people will try to use it for their 15 mins of fame. The dome helped. It allows them to control the weather, lights and other people.
Oh, it could definitely make a profit. Let’s assume a geodesic half sphere about 20 miles across, as it held a town and a piece of fake ocean. Geodesic design because a quirk of geodesics is that the bigger they are, the stronger they are (more joints means more places to distribute load).
Let’s guess the total cost at closer to 2 Trillion dollars as we also need to account for all the extra studio gear, the town, the people, environmental systems, etc…
Now, what do you get for that? 24/7 broadcasting that captures an entire nation of viewership, with 6 ad spots an hour.
Cost per thousand views for global premium ad slots: ~$20–$30
So… If 500 million people watch for just 1 hour/day (and that’s being conservative based on the movie):
And the show ran for almost 30 years.
So yeah, in this theoretical fantasy world, this successful horror show made TRILLIONS in profit.
so the movie could happen
They couldn’t hang projectors like the one that fell ans was labeled as an airplane part if there was no ceiling
Its a movie so they wanted to make it interesting
It’s to emphasize the control the director has ober the enviroment he’s in a giant cage.
Available resources and housing cost.
In the real life version that the movie is basically based on, they did use an island. The show only lasted 7 years though because the actors protested that the show was morally wrong, hence it’s been pretty much erased from existence.
Mentioned in the movie i believe that things were being dropped from planes.
That still leave environmental factors out of their control, stray weather, other people finding the island, ships on the horizon, the earths day night cycle.
That’s not conducive to the desires of the show.
If it was an island he’d know he was on an island. That woudl defeat the point. He’s supposed to think he’s on the mainland and not isolated.
So they could control the ‘ocean’ and make Truman’s dad ‘die at sea’ to prevent him from ever trying to leave.
If we compare the amount of money spent on sports stadiums, costs of running a franchise (e.g. equipement, transportation, etc.) and paying their athletes worldwide then I’d bet we’re pretty close to the trillion dollar mark.
The Truman show was supposed to have been wildly popular worldwide. Given that everything in the show was product placement, it’s not hard to imagine that they’d had had advertisement revenue’s in the hundreds of billions each year. That would be more than enough to make it profitable.
Where would all the crew be? How about the daily commute? How would they sneak on and off? Overhead cameras attached to what? All the actors. Just getting supplies for the show people much less the crew.
Keep in mind this was not a few month production like modern reality shows. This was a total lifetime show.
You can’t control the weather on an island. The town sets would be obliterated every monsoon season.
In my best Ryan George voice: So the movie could happen.
Because they wanted to control the weather.
I watched this as a kid and I still struggle with thinking I’m being filmed all the time. It even says in the wikipedia article that some people, like me, are kind of fucked by this movie. I hate this movie so much for this shit.
Well. Logistic cost.
There is a reason why Waterworld movie almost doubled its budget. The set was in Hawaï. Everything cost an arm and leg to get in or out. Climat condition and impredictability make shooting very hard to manage and plan.
A city-sized set such has The Truman show, would require daily delivery of catering, equipment, mails etc…
Kristof answers it in the movie – it’s for total control of every environment – weather wind sun etc and all the filming aspects
Not mentioned – it’s probably for security too after the parachute 🪂 incident when he was a kid 🧒.
It’s a movie – it’s nonsense – but you don’t spend half a billion to build a dome for a brand new show… after a few years or a decade… you get the dome built. So, drug 😴and move him aka Star Trek holodeck swaps.
Or maybe they just built the dome from the beginning. It’s a fantasy movie, kid.
It was about a human playing god and controlling everything.
My question is why did the show seem so boring? He seemed to live a very repetitive life with an office job, a wife and one friend. You have control over the whole environment you can make any drama you want happen. Affairs, murder mysteries, natural disasters, Russian spies, heck have some guys show up in alien costumes and abduct Truman! The possibilities are endless.
What happens if a hurricane comes over the island? Or any other weather event
In a dome they have total control
Within the story, it’s to illustrate how the show creator wanted absolute control over every detail. (edit: and to stop protestors from doing things like flying planes through territory the studio didn’t control and sending messages)
Meta-textually, it’s to demonstrate how Truman’s world is entirely falsified and completely unreal. An open sky is a symbol of freedom, even if we can only look at it. The sky Truman looks at is actually a prison wall.