Face it: we already live in the future. We’ve got robot cars and computers in our pockets and Large Hadron Colliders and we aren’t stopping anytime soon. The sci-fi movies of yesterday are still wonderful but the sci-fi movies of the 21st century have face an impossible challenge: the future we could envision in the year 2000 is, in many ways, radically removed from the future we envision today, and many of the technologies we now take for granted were a pipe dream only 20 years ago.
So it’s fascinating to explore the last 20 years of science fiction motion pictures and watch filmmakers struggle to stay on the cutting edge of the cutting edge, always one step into the future, and (hopefully) never ruined by the next big leap forward. The best sci-fi movies of the 21st century (so far) have found ways to connect their big, futuristic ideas with contemporary and/or universal concerns. Our anxieties about governments, technology, artificial intelligences, unthinkable new species and our own, potentially questionable natures fuel the fiction we write about what’s in store for us tomorrow.
And these are the best works of cinematic fiction that have been told about our tomorrows, today.
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Battle Royale (2000)
BeforeThe Hunger Gamesmade blockbuster money pitting children against each other in a game of death to prop up a dystopian society,Kinji Fukusakudid it with even more acidity and ruthless commentary.Battle Royaleis about a whole class of teenaged troublemakers who are kidnapped and taken to a deserted island, where they are outfitted with explosive collars and told only one of them can survive the weekend. The unthinkable situation drives some students mad, drives others to explore ingenious alternatives, and ultimately drives the film’s bodycount to terrible extremes.
Action-packed but too unfathomably tragic to be mistaken for escapism,Battle Royaleis one of the most shocking, controversial and effective dystopian movies in many decades. Its sequel, the underappreciatedBattle Royale II, is also worth discovering: it significantly alters the original premise but seems to cannily predict a future where politically active young people are viewed by the establishment as the dangerous threat to the status quo.
A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)
Originally planned as a direct collaboration betweenSteven SpielbergandStanley Kubrick, and finished by Spielberg just two years after Kubrick’s death,A.I. Artificial Intelligencereally does lie directly at the intersection of the iconic filmmakers’ sensibilities. It’s the story of a lifelike robot child, played byHaley Joel Osment, who is programmed to love but is rejected by his would-be mother, and since he was never programmed to understand rejection, embarks on a futile quest to be a decent, human child.
Inherently emotional but objectively cynical,A.I. Artificial Intelligencetakes place at the moment when technology has only just begun to surpass the limitations of the humans who invented it, and illustrates how the introduction of a new lower class of people would be misunderstood and abused by their creators. The conclusion has been accused of maudlin sentimentality, and perhaps it is, but Spielberg can surely be forgiven for loving the hero ofA.I.enough to cut him the tiniest amount of slack.
Donnie Darko
Teenagers often feel like they’re helpless in the face of uncontrollable forces, but usually that’s just hormones. InRichard Kelly’s cult classicDonnie Darko, it’s actually a hallucination in a rabbit costume and, probably, some form of time travel.Jake Gyllenhaalstars as the title character, a disenfranchised teen who seems to be suffering from a severe mental illness, but whose visions and inexplicable deeds seem more than human, and yield results that suggest he knows things that nobody could possibly know.
The science ofDonnie Darkois oblique and challenging, and you could turn your brain around 180 degrees just trying to keep them all straight. But the important thing is the way Kelly’s film illustrates adolescent aimlessness as a strange form of wisdom. Coming up with complicated reasons for actions which otherwise could be written off as a teen angst gives daily life a creepy kind of authority and power, as though the existential confusion we all feel could be easily solved… so long as we had a sinister rabbit to tell us what to do.
S1m0ne (2001)
Largely overlooked in its release, but eerily prescient nevertheless,Andrew Niccol’s bitter sci-fi comedyS1m0nestarsAl Pacinoas a struggling filmmaker who acquires a fully digital, 100% lifelike actor and proceeds to pass her off as the real thing. In the process he reinvigorates his career and transforms the entire entertainment industry into an updated version ofThe Emperor’s New Clothes, where everyone supports the lie that “Simone” is real just to be a part of her success story.
With digital technology making leaps and bounds sinceS1m0ne’s release, and filmmakers now threatening to resurrect dead actors via CG performances, the questions Niccol raises about how the entertainment industry would treat digital performers, and whether new technologies would make filmmakers retreat back to old-fashioned techniques just to reclaim the humanity of the art form, are more relevant than ever. But it’s a clever, intriguing and funny film whether or not you’re part of the industry.
Minority Report (2002)
Spielberg made another sci-fi classic in the early 2000s withMinority Report, an adaptation of a Philip K. Dick story about a future where murders are prevented before they occur, but the would-be murderers - who technically haven’t committed a crime yet - are prosecuted exactly the same.Tom Cruisestars as a detective who discovers that he’s been accused of pre-meditated murder and tries to clear his name by finding a “minority report,” which would make a case for at least one alternate future in which he does nothing wrong.
Minority Reportis a bold and exciting chase film about a wrongly accused man, and at its core Spielberg treats the story like a Hitchcockian thrill ride. He also packs the film with updated concepts in futurism, and successfully predicts at least some recent developments, like digital advertising targeted specifically at individual consumers based on their previous activities. But best of all, Spielberg’s film tackles the serious moral and ethical ramifications of keeping the world peaceful at the cost of rational justice. It’s one of the smartest and most innovative blockbusters of the century so far.
28 Days Later (2002)
The zombie genre had been popular for many years beforeDanny Boylecame around to it. But Boyle, working from a screenplay byAlex Garland(who would go on to write and/or direct several other movies on this list), effectively reinvented the idea with28 Days Later. It would have been enough that Boyle’s film popularized the idea of zombies running, instead of merely shambling, infusing28 Days Laterwith an adrenaline junkie sensibility that completely changed the horrifying dynamics. But he also filmed the whole thing with consumer grade video cameras, infusing an otherwise ridiculous concept with a docudrama realism that was impossible to disregard.
28 Days Laterpushed the post-apocalyptic zombie virus genre forward, making way for Zack Snyder’sDawn of the Deadremake, the comic book seriesThe Walking Deadand beyond. It’s also a ripping good sci-fi/horror yarn in-and-of itself. Cillian Murphy stars as a comatose man who wakes up four weeks after the zombie apocalypse, and his journey takes him from claustrophobic strife to gleeful shopping sprees to horrifying militaristic dehumanization. Effectively,28 Days Lateris a modern day remake of Romero’s original trilogy -Night of the Living Dead,Dawn of the DeadandDay of the Dead- compressing the history of the genre into a new, modern package that re-legitimized the whole concept and became, in the process, one of the most influential films of the century so far.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
If it was possible to manipulate the human mind at will, what would we use that technology for?Michel Gondry’s bittersweet love story starsJim Carrey, giving arguably his finest performance, as a man who learns his wife has erased every memory of their relationship to help her move on, and decides to undergo the procedure himself to rid himself of extraneous pain. WhereEternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mindgoes from their absolute, maddening brilliance, as we witness all those memories getting warped and erased from the inside of the protagonist’s mind, as he fights - and repeatedly fails - to rescue the happy memories from the seemingly unstoppable torrent of erasure.
Co-written by Gondry andCharlie Kaufman,Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mindis a beautifully realized sci-fi story that capitalizes on all the visual tricks in Gondry’s extensive, quirky arsenal. But best of all it uses all that futuristic technology and ingenious imagery to illustrate, in an extremely specific way, a universal human experience: the desire to rid ourselves of our pain and trauma often overshadows our even greater need to learn from past mistakes and cling to the positivity that shapes us into better, more loving people. Intensely soulful and cinematically distinctive,Eternal Sunshineis another modern classic.
Primer (2004)
Time travel is, in even the silliest of sci-fi movies, absurdly complicated and difficult to wrap your head around. Rather than shy away from the complexities of travel through time and, potentially, screwing up the past, present and future, writer/directorShane Carruth’s fiendish low-budget thrillerPrimerdives headlong into the impossible, weaving a narrative about two scientists who invent a means of traveling through time and discover - gradually, and to their horror - that they may have already used it.
To watchPrimerfor the first time is to get completely lost in a sea of details and paradoxes, to the extent that after you watch it you may need to watch an online primer about the plot ofPrimer. But like all the best puzzles there’s no greater reward than solving it, because once you unravel Carruth’s labyrinthine storyline you realize that it’s always made sense, it just took a mad genius to figure out it.
Children of Men (2006)
It’s the near future, and no new children have been born on the planet earth in decades. With no explanation or cure in sight, it seems as though humanity only has one generation left before perpetuating the species becomes impossible.Alfonso Cuaron’s pulse-poundingChildren of Mennever gets into the hard science of why the human race is imperiled. It’s more concerned about what an undeniable sense of impending doom would do to the world at large, and how far we’d go to save the planet or find an excuse to keep making the same old, horrible mistakes.
Children of MenstarsClive Owenas a civil servant who must protect a refugee who, somehow, has given birth to the first baby in two decades. Along their perilous journey Cuaron uses many of the bravura cinematic techniques he’s been developing throughout his long career, with one-take action sequences and digital trickery to transform a seemingly intimate story into a gigantic, all-or-nothing mini-epic about the fate of the world. Exquisitely crafted and extremely intense,Children of Menis a stunner.
Idiocracy (2006)
After mercilessly skewering turn of the century office drudgery inOffice Space, filmmakerMike Judgeset his sights on the future, where - despite everythingStar Trektried to preach to us - it sure as heck looks like everyone is getting dumber.IdiocracystarsLuke Wilsonas an exceptionally mediocre everyman who’s cryogenically frozen and wakes up in a distant future where society has devolved into dunderheaded sociopolitical and economic chaos, in which the government’s knowledge of environmentalism is so abominably backward they’ve been using energy drinks on plants instead of water.
At its best,Idiocracydoesn’t seem all that far-fetched. At its worst its a cynical but laugh-out-loud sci-fi comedy that turns every expectation we have about futuristic stories upside down. Judge mercilessly lampoons contemporary society by taking our most illogical and self-destructive tendencies to their logical extremes, wagging his finger at us in a way that also makes us giggle.
