The (cinematic) future is upon us

Last night, instead of going to bed slightly earlier than usual, I decided that I would instead watch (yet again) the 2006 Alfonso Cuarón film “Children of Men.”

This is a film that evokes strong feelings. It is at best bleak; its ultimate triumph (spoiler alert) sees the protagonist floating through the fog in a small boat. The plot centers on the collapse of humanity and it is resolved with “well, maybe not”? It is not a fun movie, but it does seem fitting for a dark Sunday evening.

So, anyway, that’s what I put on. As it started, I was surprised to realize that it was set in an increasingly approaching future: the once distant year of 2027. Filmmakers are both advantaged and disadvantaged by being unable to completely predict the future. It means that, once that future arrives, we see how far off the mark their predictions might have been. That deviation from reality, though, also means that films set in what was once the future still seem futuristic once that future becomes the past.

When I recently rewatched the original “The Running Man,” a few months ago, I was similarly surprised that the “future” had come and gone. Released in 1987, it was set three decades later — meaning nearly a decade ago. While some aspects of that movie matched the reality of 2017 life (enthusiasm for reality TV foremost among them), it was otherwise … a bit off the mark.

So I assigned myself a project: Find movies set in the future and compare their release dates to the years in which they were set. Which futures are now past? Which are looming? Which aren’t even close to arriving?

The chore of figuring out which movies might qualify and the data on setting and release dates was made infinitely easier by the existence of a Wikipedia page documenting movies set in the future. Some of the included films are dubious (“Home Alone”?) but it was useful for what I had in mind.

So, below: When future-looking movies were released and set, ranked by setting date. I pared the Wikipedia list down significantly, using a few criteria:

• No superhero movies, because who cares.
• The plot had to depend to some extent on the film being set in the future.
• The setting had to be a specific year, not a range or multiple years.
• It had to be a movie I’ve actually seen.
• Only one movie per franchise.
• If I wanted to ignore any of those rules, I could.

Here is the result.

It’s fun to imagine that these movies are all set in the same future. That the train in “Snowpiercer” is also trying to outrun the cyborgs from “The Terminator.” That RoboCop was abandoned so D.C. instead turned to the precogs in “The Minority Report.” That “Avatar” and “Elysium” document different parts of human space exploration in the same year.

There are actually nearly a dozen films on the Wikipedia list that are set in or around 2025. I included only “Her” because of the criteria above — and because it is one of the rare future-set films that actually came close to predicting the actual year in which it was set. (That it was released relatively shortly before that future probably helps.)

“Children of Men” will not prove as prescient, mostly because there have been children born since 2009. The element of the film that centers on the British government rounding up and detaining immigrants, though? Perhaps a bit closer to the mark.

Photo: Promotional still for “Children of Men”. (Universal via IMDB)