Sci-Fi Predicts the Future in Film

Science fiction has a remarkable track record of predicting the future. From inventions that seem completely futuristic to cultural or political scenarios that feel unimaginable in the real world. But both often become part of our everyday lives in the 21st century.

The 1960s show The Jetsons featured a futuristic "videophone," a concept that is now mirrored in our everyday life in the form of the ubiquitous FaceTime and Zoom. We've turned sci-fi's once-fanciful visions of technological connectivity into everyday realities and the list is extensive. For example, we've embraced mass surveillance-a concept first envisioned in George Orwell's dystopian 1984-through our daily consumption of reality television shows, from Big Brother to Love Island, all made possible with security cameras. Devices like Amazon's Alexa are eavesdropping on around 200 million of us globally and most of us don't even know it and Star Trek alone predicted tablets, touchscreens, computer assistants and more.

The sci-fi genre not only sparks innovations but can actively shape the future too, by guiding us towards developing technologies, from submarines and virtual reality. In this way the lines between science and fiction are blurred. Often sci-fi touches on the issues that environmentalists grapple with every day, for example the seminal book by Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, paints a grim picture of a world in which pesticides have annihilated wildlife, and extinguished birdsong. Which at the time was a serious reality. In sci-fi films such as Interstellar and WALL-E, film-makers too lean into this theme, envisioning an Earth that is so damaged and beyond repair that humans must venture out to the cosmos to seek a new home.

The reality today is that right now, more than 100 countries are at serious risk of degradation through desertification and wildfires burn hundreds of millions of hectares of land every single year. On top of these two realities, humans produce two billion tons of waste annually-an amount equal to more than five times the weight of the human population. Which collectively is why over three-quarters of Earth's land is currently degraded, and this figure could soar to more than 90% by 2050.

As we face the all-too-real climate crisis, what can we learn from the speculative futures created by science fiction about how to best move forward?

Cautionary Tales

Some sci-fi movies feature situations that are absolutely dire but based on real issues we are facing albeit it slightly exaggerated, such as the narrative of the film Snowpiercer which illustrates a scenario in which humanity tries to undo climate change. Director Bong Joon Ho is no stranger to biting social commentary, with movies such as Parasite and Okja under his belt, and his 2013 film is no different. In Snowpiercer, humanity's attempt to halt global warming by geoengineering a cooling agent to be shot into the atmosphere backfires disastrously, plunging the Earth into a new ice age. In a nightmarish end result, only a few thousand survivors remain, all confined aboard a perpetually moving train circling the globe battling for survival.

Further highlighting the folly of humanity, the train operates as a microcosm of previous society, rigidly divided by a strict class system that mirrors the inequalities currently plaguing our reality. The lower class is relegated to the harsh conditions of the tail end of the train, while the elite live in luxury at the front, in many ways it is similar to how marginalized populations are forced to cope with the most extreme impacts of climate change. Snowpiercer serves as a forewarning: if we don't change our destructive behaviors and the value systems that perpetuate them, the future will be apocalyptic.

Meanwhile Don't Look Up's star-studded cast (Leo, J-Law and Meryl, oh my!) features two scientists racing against time, and widespread indifference, to alert the world to an impending comet on a trajectory with planet Earth.

Director Adam McKay doesn't disguise that this sci-fi movie comes with a message, with caricatures that hit a little too close to home: a selfish president who refuses to accept the science while attempting to cover up a relationship with an adult film star; a tech billionaire who prioritizes profit over ethics and has an obsessive preoccupation with colonizing outer space; an outspoken activist who people would rather memeify than listen to; a popstar whose breakup gets more airtime than the comet; TV broadcasters who care more to distract than inform; and to top it all off, a scientifically supported yet controversially disputed as 'fake news', cataclysmic event that's threatening the Earth.

The heavy satire in the movie reveals an unfortunate truth and even though the planet killing comet is fictional, the characters' reactions to it, reflect humanity's genuine apathy to the climate crisis. When almost a quarter of Congress members are climate deniers and 40% of Americans either believe there is no evidence of climate change or that it's due to 'natural patterns', how 'fictional' is it really?

Don't Look Up sends a warning shot that it's not just one evil corporation alone or one bad world leader solely at fault, it is a collective failure of society at large to prioritize the planet's well-being, and our long term survival as a species, over short-term interests.

Glimmers of Galactic Hope

Christopher Nolan's 2014 film Interstellar follows a group of astronauts who must find a new planet for humanity to occupy after Earth is rendered uninhabitable by a global blight that has killed off almost all plant life. Taking place in the latter half of the 21st century, we see a world that is running out of food and breathable oxygen, where the threat of human extinction looms large. There seems to be no hope left for the human race until a NASA scientist finds a wormhole that could act as a cosmic shortcut to a possible Planet B and launches a risky expedition.

Of course, in our current timeline and reality, there is no Planet B. But that does not prevent Hans Zimmer's soaring soundtrack and the theoretical physicist-backed scientifically-accurate script transport you to this extraterrestrial realm. Be it only for the three-hour runtime. Interstellar allows us a glimpse into a bleak state of the world that we must never allow ourselves to reach while also finding a potential solution. What makes Nolan's movie different is that rather than the moral of the story being the inevitability of ecological collapse, he allows us to focus on the possibility of redemption and the ethos of discovery.

Other sci-fi films feature an already destroyed world that is deemed worth saving. Pixar's WALL-E imagines a distant future where humans have abandoned Earth, now a highly polluted wasteland littered with towering skyscrapers of waste and remnants of mega corporate ruin. The planet had become so contaminated by trash and greenhouse gasses that it could no longer sustain life, pushing humanity into starliners in space.

WALL-E the robot is the last remaining Waste Allocation Load Lifter: Earth-class, compacting trash into piles and collecting salvageable objects left on Earth including his latest find-a green seedling.

When EVE, a robot sent to Earth to find signs of life, arrives, she discovers WALL-E and his precious seedling. She brings WALL-E to the Axiom, a massive starliner where the human race has reached peak laziness, living in hovering recliners and drinking meals from plastic cups.

WALL-E and EVE realize that the seedling is proof that life can return to Earth. Disproving what world leaders and corporations have told the surviving population of humans. They manage to bring the seedling back to Earth, cultivate the land, restore agriculture and rejuvenate the planet. This emotional and insightful animated feature shows children and adults alike that even a ravaged world can be revived with care and determination, led by those who dare to believe in the possibility of transformation.

The heroes in these sci-fi flicks refuse to follow the status quo,each of them in some way challenges the mindsets that led to the downfall of their worlds in the first place. Whether they are robots with hearts of gold, astronomers speaking out on national television, scientists brave enough to leave their lives behind to save humanity, or rebellion leaders fighting back against the ruling class, these protagonists risk everything to fight against complacency.

We can't let time pass us by while we become the lackadaisical humans from WALL-E and Don't Look Up, so glued to screens that we can't see the world around us. Nor can we ruin the Earth so badly that relocating to another planet becomes our only option. We must harness the imaginative and valiant spirits of sci-fi heroes and educate ourselves and others about climate change so we can avoid these speculative futures becoming our reality. Only through climate education can we develop the revolutionary minds that will pave a path towards our own sustainable future.

This article is available for republishing on your website, newsletter, magazine, newspaper, or blog. The accompanying imagery is also cleared for use. Please ensure that the author's name and their affiliation with EARTHDAY.ORG are credited. Kindly inform us if you republish so we can acknowledge, tag, or repost your content. You may notify us via email at [email protected]or [email protected].

Public link

Please use the above public link if you want to share this noodl on another website.