To compare Elon Musk’s plans to save humanity by shuttling a million people to the red planet on SpaceX’s Starship rocket and starting a colony on Mars to utopias of communism and fascism in the 20th century is undeniably a very bold statement. Legendary filmmaker, Werner Herzog, shared his words on this topic in a recent interview with Inverse, and said that building cities on Mars would be “a mistake.”

“I think Elon Musk stylizes himself as some sort of a technological visionary,” he said. “Because he has to sell his electric cars. Wonderful that he does that. He has to sell his reusable rockets. Wonderful that he’s doing it.”

But, he added, “I disagree with him when he postulates and preaches about colonizing Mars.” Humans should “not be like the locusts,” Herzog said, but instead should “look to keep our planet inhabitable”.

Herzog then proceeded to draw the comparison mentioned above. “Thank God, both these gigantic utopias were brought to an end,” he said. “Our century very quickly will bring to an end technological utopia like colonizing Mars. We will end this utopia very, very quickly within this century.”

Still, the filmmaker insists that he would “love to go (to Mars) with a camera with scientists”, which, upon reflection, wouldn’t be the craziest thing he’s ever done.