Ahead of its time: The best films set in the far-off future

The Hunger Games and its sequels were perfectly poised to take advantage of two of the most notable pop culture trends of the 2010s: the rise of YA fiction and the obsession with dystopia. At the heart of the story is Jennifer Lawrence’s Katniss Everdeen, who becomes a key part of the resistance to the tyrannical President Snow, who rules the country known as Panem with an iron fist. It’s a thrilling film that perfectly captures the spirit of the original novel, particularly since Lawrence gives such a committed and heartfelt performance as Katniss. Along with its three sequels, it reminds everyone of the dangers of authoritarianism and those who allow it to grow and spread. 

The French short film La Jetée is a remarkable achievement from Chris Marker. Most of the film is conveyed through still images, which tell the story of a dark future (the period is ambiguous) in which survivors of a nuclear apocalypse dwell beneath Paris. The film follows a prisoner recruited to partake in experiments in time travel, hoping that this bleak future can be prevented. It’s a haunting and disturbing film, and it manages to pack a great deal into its approximately half-hour runtime. It has gone on to enjoy quite an afterlife, and it even became the inspiration for the film 12 Monkeys. 

James Cameron is one of those directors who has always taken big swings in his productions, and they don’t come much bigger than Avatar. Plot-wise, it is a rehash of such films as Pocahontas and Dances with Wolves, but it’s still a powerful story, largely thanks to the film’s lush visuals. Moreover, it paints a surprisingly bleak vision of Earth’s distant future, for it turns out that the very things that are driving the planet toward catastrophe in the present–namely corporate greed and unrestrained mineral extraction–remain true in this version of the future as well. Fortunately, Cameron is also an optimist. His film suggests that resistance is always possible. 

Based on the novel of the same name by David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas follows several different characters across multiple periods, whose actions span decades and sometimes centuries. Like the novel, it is a very ambitious film (it was co-directed by the Wachowskis, well-known for their ability and willingness to take on heavy material). While it may not always stick the landing, it still gives the audience a lot of food for thought. Moreover, it is also quite simply a beautiful film to watch, and one can’t help but admire the Wachowskis for the simple breadth of their screen vision.

Like its predecessor, Beneath the Planet of the Apes takes place on a future Earth where humans have been reduced to barbarism and apes are the dominant species. In this case, however, the hero is Brent (played by James Franciscus), who comes from the present in search of the hero from the first Apes film. His search lands him amid a brewing war between the apes and a group of mutant humans living in the ruins of New York City and worshiping a nuclear bomb capable of ending the world. The film might not achieve the heights of the first entry in the franchise, but it has its fair share of chilling images, and its depiction of future humans paying homage to an atomic bomb is right out of the dark imagination of the Cold War.

Even though The Fifth Element  wasn’t a huge success upon its release in 1997, it is nevertheless a remarkable film from the mind of Luc Besson, who directed it and co-wrote the screenplay. It’s a traditional adventure story about efforts to keep a distant future Earth from being destroyed, but what sets it apart are the performances (particularly from Bruce Willis) and the costume design. Some might find the film’s overwrought style and campy costumes to be a bit much to take, but it’s precisely these elements that elevate The Fifth Element and set it apart from many more straightforward sci-fi films.

Steven Spielberg’s A.I. Artificial Intelligence is one of those films that has only become more relevant as the years go by, focusing on a robot boy named David, played by Haley Joel Osment. The film explores what it means to be human and where the dividing line between humans and machines lies. Osment gives one of the most memorable and textured performances of his career, allowing the audience to see the extent to which David is far more than just a being created by humans but instead has sentience and, perhaps, even a soul.

In 2012, Ridley Scott returned to the Alien franchise with Prometheus,  which acts as a sort of prequel to the original film, focusing on a group of astronauts who set off in search of the origins of humanity. Though its narrative can sometimes be confusing, there’s no doubt that this film shows all the signs of Scott’s remarkable direction. Moreover, it also features some extraordinary performances, particularly from Michael Fassbender (who plays the duplicitous android David) and Noomi Rapace (who plays Holloway, the film’s hero who makes for a worthy successor to Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley, long the anchor of the franchise).

With Alien, Ridley Scott demonstrated he had what it took to be one of his generation’s most compelling and thought-provoking directors. The film is the perfect blend of horror and science fiction, and the xenomorph continues to be one of the most terrifying and viscerally upsetting creatures to have emerged on the big screen. This kind of sci-fi horror film grabs the viewer from the first moment and never lets go, and it’s easy to see why it continues to exert such a powerful hold over audiences and the genre as a whole. What’s more, Sigourney Weaver makes the first of her memorable and indelible performances as Ellen Ripley.

H.G. Wells’ novel The Time Machine has been adapted to the screen several times, but arguably, the best version is the one released in 1960, starring Rod Taylor as H. George Wells, the protagonist who creates the time machine and explores the future. As in the novel, future humans are now split into the Eloi and the Morlocks, the latter raising the former for food. In addition to its striking visual design, which is reflective of much of 1960s sci-fi filmmaking, the film retains Wells’ interest in and engagement with both science and the structure of society.

Christopher Nolan has always been willing to take big swings with his films, and Interstellar  remains one of his most epic and beautifully-wrought creations. It stars Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway as a pair of astronauts tasked with finding a new home for humans who have made Earth virtually uninhabitable. The film engages with weighty topics, ranging from environmental justice to time travel, but at its heart, it's about the nature of humanity and the bonds that tie people together. It's one of Nolan's best films precisely because he combines his keen sense of cinematic style with a remarkably comprehensible narrative. 

At first, The Matrix,  arguably one of the most visionary and compelling pieces of sci-fi filmmaking to have emerged from the end of the 20th century, seems to be set in the present. As becomes clear as the story goes on, however, things aren’t always what they seem, and the main character, Neo (played by Keanu Reeves), is fated to become the figure who will bring about the end of the Matrix, a simulated reality created by robots that have turned humanity into their own energy source. Even now, after the story of The Matrix has expanded into both sequel films and other media, the original still has the power to amaze and terrify — the mark of truly great science fiction.

Dune: Part Two is bigger, grander, and more epic than its predecessor, and viewers get to watch as Paul Atreides slowly takes up the mantle of being the chosen one of this universe. There are some remarkable moments in this second part of Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s sci-fi classic. Who could forget, for example, those bleak moments on the Harkonnen homeworld of Giedi Prime or the sight of Paul leading his legions of Fremen to overcome the Padishah Emperor? The film brilliantly deconstructs the idea of a chosen one/messiah figure, showing the tremendous human and spiritual cost the worship of such figures inevitably entails.

Denis Villeneuve brings his formidable sci-fi sensibilities to bear in his adaptation of Dune, the beloved epic novel by Frank Herbert. In the first part, viewers meet young Paul Atreides, the heir to a noble house who ends up becoming a messiah after the treacherous Harkonnens murder his father. Though at times quite heavy and deliberate in its pacing, there’s no denying that Dune is a magnificent piece of sci-fi filmmaking, fully immersing viewers in its vision of a far-distant future where humanity has learned to exist without advanced machines. It grapples with big questions and weighty imagery and is one of those films that rewards multiple viewings.

The Alien franchise continues to be one of the most enduring sci-fi sagas, and it retains its power to be terrifying and thought-provoking. This continues in Alien: Resurrection, which once again sees Sigourney Weaver return to the role of Ripley, though in this case, she’s been resurrected, and the story takes place even further into the future. This franchise installment may never quite achieve the stupendous heights of its predecessors, but it still has more than its fair share of deeply disturbing body horror moments, and it is always a pleasure to see Weaver slip into the role with which she is most indelibly associated.

Waterworld landed with a colossal thud when it was first released, but it gradually earned significant respect in subsequent years. Its depiction of a future Earth ravaged by climate change and melting ice caps has only become more pertinent with the passing of three decades. For all of its camp moments, it still manages to be a strikingly thoughtful and provocative piece of sci-fi filmmaking. Even now, it retains a certain B-movie appeal, and its transparent silliness is, in fact, one of the main reasons that it has become a true cult classic.

Denis Villeneuve has never been a director to shy away from a challenge. In Blade Runner 2049,  he dove into the universe Ridley Scott depicted with such visual panache in the 1980s. This version, set even further in the future, stars Ryan Gosling as K, a replicant who, like Deckard, is one of those who hunt down rogue members of his own kind. In addition to having the same kind of philosophical weightiness one expects of both Villeneuve and the film’s predecessor (to say nothing of Philip K. Dıck’s original novel on which the first film was based), this sequel is a feast for the eyes. The future may not be a promising one, but it is at least filled with its own sort of terrible beauty.

Set approximately 300 years after the preceding trilogy (which ended with War for the Planet of the Apes), Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes follows a young chimpanzee named Noa as he embarks on an extraordinary journey that challenges everything he thought he knew about the world and the apes’ past. The film is a gorgeous exploration of the world that Caesar created, which has gone in some unusual directions since humanity’s descent into barbarism. Moreover, it is also a timely warning about the dangerous nature of despotism and religious fanaticism since the film’s primary villain, Proximus Caesar, uses his own interpretation of Caesar’s teachings to enforce his will on others. The future belongs to the apes, but the movie makes it clear that further conflict between humans and their simian relatives is inevitable.  

The original 1968 Planet of the Apes remains one of the most influential sci-fi films of all time, and its ending has seared itself into the collective imagination. Its story about an astronaut who crash-lands on a planet ruled by apes is a potent thought experiment regarding the limitations of human supremacy. The make-up and prosthetics used to create the apes remain compelling and chilling to watch. From the moment Charlton Heston’s Taylor crash-lands on the planet, the viewer finds themselves caught up in this strange, fascinating, and disturbing world, which seems to fly in the face of everything humanity thinks about itself and its place in the cosmos. As if that weren’t enough, the ending remains one of the most potent in cinema history.

Hollywood has long drawn on the works of visionary sci-fi author Philip K. Dıck, and Blade Runner  remains one of the most fascinating examples of this phenomenon. Directed by Ridley Scott, it depicts a bleak and noirish future world in which humans have created a race of robots known as replicants and much of the action focuses on Harrison Ford’s Rick Deckard as he hunts down those who’ve gone rogue. It’s a fascinating film not just for its way of exploring issues of sentience and artificial intelligence but also for its format history. Indeed, it has been released in several different versions, so it’s not surprising that it has become something of a cult hit.