A-List: Best Movies in the 22nd Century
By J. Don Birnam
November 19, 2015
BoxOfficeProphets.com
I figure the movie is set at least in the late 2000s, given that by the second chapter they are in the 75th annual Hunger Games. But given that the post-apocalyptic wars still have to happen between now and the first games, the movie is most likely set somewhere in the 22nd Century. Today, therefore, we will look at the best movies set during that time.
Before we get into that, it is worth pausing to consider the incredible box office year that was 2015. When the Hunger Games franchise was conceived as motion pictures, I cannot imagine that the distributors expected they’d run into not one but two movie juggernauts in the year of the release of their last movie. With Twilight and Harry Potter gone, it seemed like Hunger Games would be home free to reign supreme. Instead, Jurassic World will certainly do better than Katniss’ final exploits, and it is likely that Star Wars will eclipse it as well.
Alas, no doubt Jennifer Lawrence will laugh all the way to the bank in any case.
The good news for me today is that, according to my research, only 34 full-length movies are listed as being officially set in the 22nd Century. Many of them are truly obscure at least to me (The Black Hole, anyone?), and those that are not do not belong anywhere near a top-movies list. Justin Timberlake’s bumbling In Time? Ugh. Hellraiser IV? No thank you. And, while I’m sure that the Doctor Who spinoff movie Daleks – Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D. is good in its own right, eh…I’ll just leave it at that.
So, short and sweet today. On with it.
Two honorable mentions: the main competition and/or knock-off of the Hunger Games series, Divergent, is explicitly set in the 22nd Century. I don’t think the movies are particularly good, but you kind of have to mention the movie if you are talking about the Hunger Games.
And I will give kudos to Elysium, the movie by the acclaimed director of District 9. The political commentary woven into the plot of that movie, the perils that can befall us if we permit the gap between haves and have nots to continue to widen, is straight-forward but not pervasive as a theme in 22nd Century movies. Ultimately, the movie falls a bit short with its overdrawn dramatic action sequences and a bit of repetition from the much more solid District 9. Still, in such a small field of movies set in that time period, you can do a lot worse than evil Jodie Foster and mechanized Matt Damon.
5. Ender’s Game I am not familiar with the beloved novel that spawned this movie, but I truly enjoyed the film adaptation. To be honest, I do not remember the movie being specifically set in the 22nd Century (anyone?) but I’ll go with it. The plot, which surely inspired the upcoming Ready Player One’s original novel, focuses on Ender, who has been chosen to be trained to attack aliens that are Earth’s enemies. What else do you want, it’s a futuristic movie?
The movie keeps you enthralled even though you suspect most of the action-based plot twists, the special effects are intense but not obtrusive, and the cast, from Asa Butterfield, who plays the lead character, to Harrison Ford, Viola Davis, and Ben Kingsley, turns in a solid performance.
What really works, however, is that you do not necessarily expect the ultimate resolution of the conflict between the aliens and the humans, and it works in a way that crystallizes an already well-developed main character. Is there going to be a sequel?
4. Vanilla Sky Major spoilers about this Tom Cruise/Cameron Diaz/Penelope Cruz vehicle follow. Nowhere near as good as the classic original Abre Los Ojos, which inspired the Cameron Crowe update, Vanilla Sky is nevertheless one of the best movies that turns out to be set in the 22nd Century. The thing about it is, you do not know that that is the case until near the end of the movie, when the confusing and bizarre plot happenings are finally revealed to you.
Vanilla Sky does not do what other masterpieces like Mulholland Drive do - it does not leave you dazed and confused at the end. But, in the process, it does twist and turn on itself so many times that reality and dreams mix and fuse, and the artistic beauty of the film is laid bare in all its glory. Vanilla Sky is not necessarily even one of Tom Cruise’s best performances ever, but it is salacious and nuanced nevertheless. Cameron Diaz is great as a psychopath, and Penelope Cruz is superb playing the main love interest (where she had played the psychopathic character in the original).
The beautiful analogies in this movie are there, alongside the impressive shot of an empty Times Square, for which the City of New York gave the filmmakers a very limited window. Just open your eyes.
3. A.I. Artificial Intelligence This is nowhere close to Steven Spielberg’s best film. Sensing a theme yet? But when it comes to movies set at least 85 years from now, it is definitely one of the best.
The movie is, in a way, bizarre and self-indulgent. But, upon revisiting it, what sticks out is that the focus is not on the humans' own interactions with artificial intelligence, but the reverse. It is not the anxieties of the human race over robotic interaction (think, I, Robot), but the anxieties of machines over humans. In the meantime, the movie portrays a realistic future in which climate change has severely diminished human control of the planet (doing so at a time, 2001, when it was still not a fad to talk about climate change), and does not exaggerate the technological advances it envisions.
A.I. is, in a way, Spielberg’s response to Kubrick’s 2001 (indeed, the movie had been in development with Kubrick as director up until he turned it over to Spielberg a few years before his death), and while it did not achieve the majestic status of that movie, it is perhaps one of the most thoughtful depictions of what life could be like in the century that most of us will not witness.
2. Cloud Atlas I really struggled with the decision of placing this movie, one of my personal guilty pleasure favorites, at the top of the list. The book on which it is based touched me like no other piece of literature ever has or likely could. So, going into it, I was hopelessly biased in its favor.
The book is narrated like a Russian Doll - it proceeds from one story to the next, skipping forward in time from the 19th Century, touching the 22nd at some point, and then reverting back to complete each vignette one at a time. Each story is connected to the other thematically, physically, and through the spirituality that is the “atlas of clouds” that is the principal motif for the story. To adapt this into a movie is, to say the least, a gargantuan task.
I think the Wachowskis did as good a job as you would expect - they realized that movie audiences would not understand the significance of the stories as they relate to each other with the Russian Doll structure, so they instead jumped around the stories. This works well on the big screen, as does the trick of using the same group of actors to depict different characters in the different stories. It is a simple but clever way to convey the interconnectedness that the book portrays.
On top of all of this, the soundtrack, the solid performances by Tom Hanks and even Halle Barry, and the aesthetics of the difference pieces all unite to make a beautiful, touching, and inspiring movie. Perhaps one needs to understand the entire message that is inherent in the book - good can triumph through time and is worthy as a pursuit in and of itself - to appreciate the beauty of this film, but that message is one that is not to be missed.
The whole point is that the 22nd Century is this century, and the last, and all of them.
1. Avatar Like with James Cameron’s other phenomenal box office success, Titanic, Avatar has its fair share of detractors. But, in my view, people love to hate what is popular.
There are many measures of what makes a movie great. But consider this one: after James Cameron’s two films, the closest pursuer, this year’s Jurassic World, is one billion dollars behind it at the worldwide box office (without even adjusting for inflation). Think about it. Jurassic World made a billion overseas (and over $650 million here)—it was, without mincing words, spectacular, unequaled success. It would have to make another billion dollars, however, to get close to Avatar.
If you have made a piece of art that attracts people over and over and over again to pay money to repeatedly experience it, that is a great movie, in my view. You or I may not like the movie, we may point to “plot” originality issues, or nitpick this or that piece of dialogue. But the movie, as a piece of entertainment, worked. Period.
And I happen to be a huge fan of Avatar. Technological breakthroughs aside, the filming is, in true Cameron style, exquisite, detailed, and flawless. The Pocahontas-like story is, to be sure, not the strongest link in the chain, but it is an action movie and the romance is believable enough. Issues that create anxiety for today’s humans - war, scarcity, hunger, survival - permeate the story, and thereby depict a respectable view of what the 22nd Century could be like.
Cameron is working on two sequels, neither of which has a prayer of reaching the glory of this movie (the real question is “does Star Wars?” but that is for other people who know about that stuff to tell you). The challenge is to make them good enough to still be successful. May the odds be, of course, ever in his favor.