#030. A Timeline of Impossible Futures, as Imagined by Modern Cinema
Crowdsourcing Sci-fi to Get ideas for My 500-Year Vision
I’ve been needing inspiration for my 500-Year Vision (Context here). So naturally I called upon the Cinema Gods to help me create an imaginary timeline using sci-fi movies and TV shows.
To keep this list managable, I didn’t include any sci-fi books, anything I haven’t seen, or anything that takes place earlier than present day 2022. Oh, and no zombies either. Their numbers would take over, bad pun intended.
Each cinema project is listed by the year (or guessed year) of its setting followed by my one-line takeaway, its Wikipedia link, and trailer.
Have a look! Or if you want a summary, just scroll to the end.
2026ish?: Humans stuck in a maze must find a cure to a deadly virus. Read more… (MazeRunner)
2027: Humanity faces extinction after total human infertility, war, and glocal depression. Read more... (Children of Men)
2030ish?: People conceived naturally are discriminated against by those conceived through gene selection. Read more… (Gattaca)
2029: Earth is a wasteland where rebel humans resist domination by the malevolent artificial intelligence (AI) Skynet. Read more… (Terminator)
2030ish?: Humans make contact with extraterrestrials that have landed on Earth claiming they are here to help humanity. Read more… (Arrival)
2031: Humanity’s remaining survivors live on a self-sustaining circumnavigational train during a new ice age. Read more… (Snowpiercer)
2035: Humanoid robots are programmed to serve humanity. Read more… (I, Robot)
2040ish?: Humans extract information from the subconscious using experimental dream-sharing technology. Read more… (Inception)
2043: All citizens are tracked with electronic bracelets in an overpopulated world with a strict one-child policy. Read more… (What Happened to Monday)
2044: Gangsters use time travel to execute enemies in the past to avoid detection. Read more… (Looper)
2045ish?: Humans struggle to survive against scavenger aliens who invaded Earth and decimated the Moon. Read more… (Oblivion)
2048: Soldiers go back in time to prevent malevolent aliens from decimating humanity. Read more… (The Tomorrow War)
2049: Humanity use bioengineered humans as slaves. Read more… (Bladerunner)
2049ish?: A technologist tests out an AI robot’s ability to pass as human. Read more… (Ex Machina)
2050: A pilot goes back in time to save his wife from powerful people looking to exploit the past for information. Read more… (Adam Project)
2050s: Humans visit an American Old West-themed theme park to carry out their wildest desires with robots indistinguishable from humans. Read more… (Westworld)
2052ish?: Humans stay home while using the remote-controlled idealized robot version of themselves to live their best lives. Read more… (Surrogates)
2054: Authorities use psychics to apprehend criminals before their crimes are committed. Read more… (Minority Report)
2067: Humans survive with crappy synthetic oxygen on an Earth that has been devastated by climate change and an ongoing nuclear war. Read more… (2067)
2067: An astronaut goes on a secret mission to find a suitable new home for humanity during a time of global famine. Read more… (Interstellar)
2070ish?: It’s a persistent power struggle when society is split up into five groups. Read more… (Divergent)
2070ish?: A government holds an annual sacrificial game to keep its citizens in line. Read more… (Hunger Games)
2080ish?: An authoritative government monitors and controls people’s actions by eliminating emotion and sexual activity. Read more… (Equals)
2090ish?: A man journeys across a nuclear-war devastated land to deliver a book with important knowledge. Read more… (Book of Eli)
2101ish?: Humans attempt to build an AI robot with emotions in a world changed by rising sea levels. Read more… (AI Artificial Intelligence)
2112ish?: Powerful people find a way to time travel so that they can exploit the past and benefit the future. Read more… (The Peripherals)
2154: Scientists and soldiers explore Pandora, a moon in the Alpha Centauri star system after natural resources on Earth have been depleted. Read more… (Avatar)
2154: The poor live on an overpopulated and polluted Earth, while the rich and powerful live on an orbiting space station. Read more… (Elysium)
2200ish?: Survivors fight for scarce resources on Earth’s desert wasteland following societal collapse. Read more… (Mad Max: Fury Road)
2200ish?: Machines have enslaved humankind in the Matrix while the remaining free humans attempt to free others who want out. Read more… (The Matrix)
2233: Humans and aliens serve aboard a space-borne humanitarian and peacekeeping interstellar armada. Read more… (Star Trek, 2009 movie)
2263: An ancient secret order has a secret weapon to defeat a great evil that reappears every five thousand years. Read more… (The Fifth Element)
2300ish?: A virus that has wiped out most of humanity leaves its survivors blind and reverted to a hunter-gather and medieval type of society. Read more… (See)
2500: On Earth, humans struggle to survive on floating communities after sea levels rise and submerge every continent. Read more… (Waterworld)
2805: Humans, mostly lounge-chair-confined live in space instead of on a barren Earth, which is been covered in consumer trash. Read more… (WALL-E)
3500ish?: Interstellar humans fight for a precious commodity essential for space travel, longevity, vitality, heightened awareness, and precognition. Read more… (Dune)
3700ish?: Forces of good and evil fight for control of the Galactic Republic. Read more… (Star Wars: Episode 1)
3978: Humans on a planet have devolved to be mostly mute and primitive while an advanced civilization of talking apes capture and enslave them. Read more… (Planet of the Apes)
12,067 E.I. (Era Imperial) Exiled humans living on the edge of civilization work to preserve its knowledge before civilization’s destruction. Read more… (Foundation)
Notice any themes? Yea, me too.
Climate disaster, environmental disaster, resource depletion, overpopulation but also population collapse, nucelar war, being replaced/becoming obsolete, aliens, crazy robots (AI), and last but not least, time-traveling assassins.
We seem to be very much entertained by humanity’s real world threats (as according to The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists).
And while cinema may not have any immediate real world solutions… a good cinematic story does remind me that when all odds are against you, it’s going to take a little hope and a LOTTA imagination in order to get that miracle happy ending.
A lot of Hail Marys pulled off in these movies seem impossible! As impossible as our existence here on Earth - where the odds of a habitable zone planet ever hosting a technological species in the history of the universe is estimated to be one in 10 billion trillion.
What?! I don’t even know how many zeros that is.
Imagination on this scale of impossibility may be just what we need to create a vision that transcends the woes of our time.
We have always defied the odds. So I say, let’s embrace our defiant imagination and continue to be the impossible.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” - Albert Einstein
Did I miss anything? Do you have any recommendations for me to watch? Still no 500-Year Vision yet, but things are getting exciting!
I'm so late getting to this, but it was totally worth the wait! I love your messages but also...what an epic list of sci fi to watch/revisit! Thank you!
Wow this is taking curation to the next level!! More things for me to watch