Has anyone else seen this movie? It presents itself as a recently-rediscovered film from 1938, complete with an introduction by Neil deGrasse Tyson, about someone time travelling to the far-off future of 2018. It’s not, but that’s a big part of the joke. It plays with the idea of how the past used to envision the future; right enough to be interesting, but wrong enough to be funny. Characters have smart phones, but still speak to an operator to place calls for them. There’s an expansive computer network called the Electromesh, but you only access it at public cafes, and it prints answers on a tickertape.
The plot, such as it is, concerns the lead-up to World War II. Scientists have discovered the powerful Formica molecule, but it becomes more potent with age. They lock it in a vault at the War Department and send the hero, Essex, 80 years into the future to get it. He meets Banky, and she leads him through the city. The War Department has become the German Consulate, and Essex and Banky have to evade Lamont Hitler (Adolph’s grandson), find the vault, and find the Formica molecule that will prevent war. Somewhere along the way, they fall in love.
Don’t expect a super-polished, Hollywood spectacle. It was made on a pretty small budget, but they did pretty well with what they had. Its heart is in the right place. And there might be a few familiar faces in it; the telephone operator is Sean Young.
I will definitely see this, because I once ran a science fiction convention based on this theme: OryCon 30-Days Of Futures Past. We featured films, television shows and movies that took place in the “far flung future” of our current past.
Sounds like it’s right up your alley. I might have been interested in attending that convention. I tend to notice what years some sci-fi movies are set in, and what those years turn out to be like. 2001: A Space Odyssey and Space: 1999 are more than twenty years ago. I’m very disappointed; I was lead to believe there would be space stations.
It seems that some movies go out of their way not to mention a year. I think I read somewhere that the original Rollerball was set in 2018, but I don’t think it says for sure; that might have been in the story that inspired the movie.
Another one that’s interesting is Until the End of the World. It was made in 1991 and set in 1999. A friend recommended it as the best near-future setting that he’d ever seen. A lot of movies present the future as too modern or too dirty. This was a great mix of both. There were some obviously futuristic cars, but plenty of 1991 cars still driving around. A character uses a video phone in a train station, but it’s all scratched and dingy like any public phone would be.
The Jetsons is supposed to take place 100 years in the future, which would put it about 2062. We have got 40 years left to get those flying cars in the air!