Fear of the Near Future

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Fear of the Near Future

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By Ben Elliott

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Why do the words “near future” always sound so ominous? On the surface, there’s nothing scary about the concept. The near future is inherently in our grasp, and there’s no reason to think that tomorrow, next week, or even next year will be dramatically different from today.

But when a movie jumps ahead into the not-too-distant future, it’s usually to tell us that something has gone very, very wrong. The clothes might look the same and the technology might just be slightly more advanced, but it’s clear that something has happened to send the world off of its axis.

Children of Men, 2006

The world is a perpetual humanitarian disaster in Aflonso Cuaron’s Children of Men. Humanity’s role alongside AI is up for debate in Alex Garland’s Ex Machina. Societal inequities are brought to a head after environmental disaster in Bong Joon-Ho’s Snowpiercer. Arguably, the most pleasant versions of the future we’ve gotten over the last 20 years were the deep melancholia of Spike Jonze’s Her and Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Lobster.

Using sci-fi to grapple with present day issues isn’t new – though the litany of anxieties produced by the last 25 years of world events has certainly led to a resurgence of the genre. Movies like Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, Douglas Trumball’s Silent Running, and Richard Fleischer’s Soylent Green all dealt with different fears of the early 1970s. Go as far back as 1927, and you’ll find Fritz Lang pondering about the impact of technology on the working class in Metropolis.

Civil War, 2024

Usually, these movies are intended as warnings: If we don’t start paying attention to X, then Y will happen. And unfortunately, we almost never listen.

So it’s interesting that the genre’s latest entry, Alex Garland’s Civil War, which opens at The Triplex today, doesn’t lay the blame on any one issue. A story of war correspondents traveling across an embattled America, Garland never says who’s at fault. Instead, in a world where we continually push off fixing things for another day, Civil War implies that we’re all to blame for whatever the near future might bring.

Showtimes

Showtimes Nuremberg | 4:45PM, 8:00PM Now You See Me: Now You Don't | 5:15PM, 8:15PM Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere | 5:30PM The Mastermind | 8:30PM

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