The beginning of the end? What we can learn from films set in 2024
“Twenty-twenty-four” sounds like a stutter and looks like a typo, but more so than most segments of the sprawling expanse condensed into what we understand as the future, the year has a particularly futuristic ring to it that’s long captured cinematic imaginations.
The consensus seems to be that homo sapiens won’t be doing so hot by that point, falling victim either to our own rapacious destruction of the planet or each other, but with a savior never too far off to change the course of history. Surveying the major bullet points of the past year – capitalism run amok, mounting cruelty toward immigrants and refugees, more war than usual – we could certainly use one. In examining the varied canon of movies set in 2024, a viewer samples a slideshow of worst-case scenarios, each leaving some back door or way out. In more than one case, the film-makers intended their work as a challenge to heed their words of caution before all hope for the continuation of civilization was lost. And if humanity does stand a chance, then maybe we can chart a path forward by following in the footsteps of the Highlander.
Beyond the Time Barrier
B-movie maestro Edgar G Ulmer brought the expressive compositions and jaded outlook that elevated so many Poverty Row productions to this time-travel adventure, which wrestled with weighty questions of class inequality and collective responsibility belying its fly-by-night making. An air force pilot tumbles through a tear in the time-space continuum and crash-lands in the space-age stronghold known as the Citadel, a thin layer of protection for an almost entirely sterile and deafmute enclave of survivors against the hairless, feral mutants prowling on the outskirts. But all isn’t as it seems, our man learns from his mind-reading love interest, as they slip into the roles of Adam and Eve for this compromised facsimile of Eden. The final beats suggest Ulmer’s fantastical tale as a warning – of course atomic weapons tests released the energies responsible for the “cosmic plague” disfiguring our species – and predict a blase slowness to act that only rings truer with every passing year of too-little-too-late environmental policies.
A Boy and His Dog
“The year is 2024 … ” announces the tagline on the poster for LQ Jones’s deranged post-apocalyptic pitch-black comedy, “a future you’ll probably live to see”. And yet there’s still something a little far-fetched and remote about the odyssey undertaken by amoral rapist Vic (a young Don Johnson) and his erudite, curmudgeonly, telepathic dog
Blood through a bombed-out landscape of marauders, killer robots gone rogue from their military programming, and bloodthirsty Hills-Have-Eyes-style abominations. He’s ultimately lured by his next victim into what he thinks will be a subterranean oasis, but little does the chauvinist know that he’s going to be tasked with a daily order of dozens of reproductive samples to be collected by electroejaculation. The lunatic battle-of-the-sexes satire says more about the the wild-eyed 70s (and how much Hollywood could get away with in the not-always-good ol’ days) than our upcoming present.
Highlander 2: The Quickening
The sequel to the Scottish decapitation-palooza is a mess, and that makes sense, seeing as control of the final cut was wrestled from director Russell Mulcahy by money-men concerned about his ability to return on their investments. But in the mishmash of contradictory myth-making that diverges from the mossy legend of its predecessor, we instead find a colorful caricature of corporate greed. In its vision of 2024, the ozone layer wore away through the 90s, leading to millions of casualties from overexposure to the rays of the sun. The good news? Connor MacLeod, the Highlander himself, has invented a shield that can protect the Earth from the gaseous ball of destruction. The bad news? Earth has been plunged into a state of protracted darkness, extreme yet livable heat and oppressive humidity. And the worst news? The nefarious Shield Corporation has seized ownership of the barrier, and levies heavy taxes on countries in a globally scaled protection racket. Scarcity and exploitation aren’t such far-off concerns for us in the present, either. If you think that once the waters rise and we must retreat to archipelagostyle floating houses, the developers won’t gouge buyers, I’ve got some soonto-be-submerged beachfront property to sell you.
Illang: The Wolf Brigade
The set-up for this live-action remake of Mamoru Oshii’s acclaimed anime forecasts a whole mess of Asian turmoil in the coming year: internecine tensions compel Japan to remilitarize, the US and Russia move to impose order on the region, and the Koreas reunify to consolidate their strength. The action then jumps ahead five years, as percolating North-South resentments threaten to explode in civil war on the peninsula, a framework of day-aftertomorrow poli-sci speculation with one foot in international realities. Just a few hours before this article’s writing, Kim Jong-un’s administration issued their latest declaration of imminent war on America, an unsettling reminder of the DPRK’s potential as a ticking nuclear timebomb. But in the film, the real threat comes from overreach of the South Korean state, which invokes martial privilege to create a hit squad of sadistic mercenaries in gas masks with demonic red eyes. Battle not with authoritarian regimes, lest ye become an authoritarian regime, etc.
The Last Days of American Crime/ Narcopolis
A pair of low-rent genre potboilers argue – perhaps not incorrectly – that assuaging society’s ills will only create more opportunities for malfeasance from those in the highest halls of power. In the former, an unaccountably overlong Netflix joint from Olivier Megaton, crime has been eradicated through a “synpatic blocker” installed in all human brains by people who presumably hadn’t read A Clockwork Orange; in the latter, all drugs have been legalized, much to the chagrin of black marketeers and delight of big pharma. In either case, the prospect of a brighter tomorrow winds up darkening today, these advancements for the human race only allowed because they’ll line the pockets and bolster the authority of those already at the top of the social structure. Though presented clumsily, it’s a sturdy lesson recently reiterated in tax-friendly “green initiatives” and the rollback of marijuana prohibition: no government or conglomerate does good until they stand to benefit from it.