Suspended animation in movies is an easy way to skip very long space flights. Launch, go to sleep, and wake up on a habitable world light years away to find that you are no older. These fictional trips often involve low temperatures as a sort of cryopreservation. The idea of suspended animation came from hibernation, when animals sleep through the winter until there is more food available in the spring.
Except that's not how hibernation actually works. It doesn't require cold, and it doesn't necessarily involve sleep. And it can vary depending on the animal and the conditions it is hibernating to escape. Hibernation, or torpor, is the animal's ability to reduce its metabolism, therefore requiring less energy. In an era in which we are considering long distance space travel for real, a reduction in energy consumption would be quite useful, even more so than combatting the boredom of traveling in space for years. The question of aging is another factor. Will humans ever be able to hibernate to "bear" long space trips? If we can, it probably won't resemble what you've seen in movies.
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