TheBanyanTree: Movies about the future

[Tom Smith]

2020.  Feels farther away than a decade ahead.  I had a similar
feeling about 1984, back when my country was giving up
(probably wisely) on Vietnam, and the moon, for that matter. 
Orwell's Big Brother generated fear of the future.  The good
side was that when 1984 did arrive, I felt grateful to get away
with griping about the government.  

A couple years before 1984, about the time it was becoming
apparent that Orwell's vision was mostly only Orwell's vision,
Blade Runner offered the mostly Asian Los Angeles of 2019, then
a comfortable 37 years away.  The daytime sky was perpetual
rain and darkness; the Tyrell Corporation, that made Replicants
with the latest biotechnology, pretty much ran things.

In 1973 the movie Soylent Green came out, portraying New York
City, 2022.  This one, for whatever reason, was the most
personally scary.  Nothing super high tech.  More kind of like
I imagined the natural course of things.  A city of 40 million
people, a huge portion living in the streets, lots of riots. 
Food riots.  Food as we know it, rare and expensive.  Rule by
the Soylent Corporation.

The next science fiction milestone, 2001, arrived with no trace
of a manned mission to Jupiter, though HAL's presence was there
in robotic communication.  Except for government intelligence
specialists and 3 handfuls of Saudis, few had knowledge of
the civilization-altering developments of 9/11.  There was no
Allah's Revenge best-seller or movie, and the 2001 title had
already been taken.

My neighbor recently returned from New York City, where she was
raised.  She said "New York City is dying."  She described the
throngs of people whose home now is the subway.  New York is
going the way of Detroit.  If you're ready for an important
reality that will never get the airtime of a single Superbowl
commercial, do a search for "Detroit" in Flickr. 
         
Near the start of every year that ends in a zero I contemplate
the goals I'd like to achieve by the next such year.  Ten years
meets the time requirement for almost any goal allowed by other
factors.  Decade-range goals tend to be momentous and thus
exciting to contemplate.  Such goals were always vivid on my
horizon in the past.  Now however, it feels like I'm on a huge
party boat in the grip of a fast flowing current in an
impenetrable mist with Niagara falls somewhere near ahead. 
Seems more appropriate to begin looking for a barrel that will
float than a travel agent for next year's cruise.  With luck,
my imagination will be no more 20/20 than movies about the
future.  The only problem is, Detroit isn't a movie.