debtOr all the causes we have to believe that this year is the first in a long time that is not as apocalyptic as last year – Western fascism is at bay, the pandemic is slowly receding, Popeyes introduced the blackened chicken sandwich to the menu – there’s still plenty of material to work with for those prone to future panics.
The ever-present threat of climate change has gone nowhere. Something is accelerating at an exponential rate, constantly pushing the expiration date of the human species. (a sanitized way of saying “killer robots”) or the proliferation of sentient computer programs represent a significant threat. We have a hodgepodge of wars, the rise of radical conspiracy theories, and inflation from the wazu. Choose a bad omen.
Movies don’t help either. Imagining the year 2023 and looking back at a handful of films from the past is about exploring beyond the wreckage, each of which casts doubt on what cataclysm may come on an uncertain day. Some aim for social realism, others for the broader blockbuster concept of our spectacular end, but they’re all out of fear that things won’t get better any time soon. We are united…
Avengers: Endgame
The second highest-grossing film of all time has a surprisingly complex timeline, bouncing from the present to the future and returning to three distinct segments of the past. They are all split into multiple universes superimposed on each other. All you need to know is that 2023 represents the darkest timeline due to supervillain Thanos’ finger snap that vaporized half of the living population and disrupted the order of nature. Seeded Thor became depressed and escaped into food, Hulk merged human consciousness with a large green body, and Ace Archer Hawkeye became a vigilante in the wake of the death of his family. is actually a mission to restore order, given the worst-case scenario speaks to the allusion that things are not the way they were meant to be. perverted by a wrong turn somewhere along the way, but still achievable and represents a powerful form of self-soothing.
Gunbuster
The profile of anime great Hideaki Anno has expanded in recent years due to the far-reaching influence of his magnum opus, Neon Genesis Evangelion, but his first major work is more directly relevant to our present day. First broadcast as a series and then edited into a feature for theatrical release, Gunbuster chronicles the fateful Ragnarok between the Space Invaders’ insect race and humanity’s last line of mecha-suit defense. but the focus remains mainly on progress – among the young students of the training academy. Their adolescent rivalry and unrequited love, contrasted with the savagery of combat, have been shown to take a terrifying psychological toll on the youths wedged into the command center of these giant combat robots. No matter how advanced our technology is, it does not help us to anticipate the pathologies that lead to armed conflicts or to heal the wounds they leave behind.
gemini rising
What sounds like an astrology-themed thriller is actually a delightfully low-budget, coasting away from the proxy legitimacy afforded by Alien’s former star, lead man Lance Henriksen. A sci-fi chaff that leads straight to the video. He plays a colonel who oversees his research on two extraterrestrials that crash landed on Earth and is responsible for containing these dangerous creatures, but they aren’t dangerous at all. They came in peace and were helped to escape by our beautiful DEA agent/telepathic heroine. It’s nothing if not a vibrant film because of its many shortcomings.The villains were delved into at the highest levels of authority, not the scheming outsiders. At least most of the time.
Purge: Anarchy
Where the original horror franchise was set on the annual night of full pardon for all crimes, this sequel ventures into a loot-infested city. The Purge was then revealed to be a conspiracy by far-right totalitarian governments, designed as a crude method of population control to thin out hordes of the homeless and the poor, the scope of which was Spread across the country. Even if the lust for blood is too great, this deranged civil experiment still ranks as the most compelling human-made nightmare listed here, where institutionalized power indirectly pitting the lower classes against themselves and capitalizing on a long history of the wealthy scurrying out of private slave auction theaters. It starts with the premise that we are, but this also holds us accountable for the parties that made us this way.
X-Men: Days of Future Past
Before being acquired by Disney, Fox’s X-Men franchise beat out Marvel with its Chronojump storyline about rebel heroes fleeing the dystopia of tomorrow to mend their past. Professor X’s students travel back to his ’70s to nip the Sentinel in the bud on his project, telling Cassandra that a genetically engineered android will turn on the rest of civilization after exterminating its mutant prey. bring a warning. This is the same thing that mankind has repeatedly advocated since Frankenstein’s time. This is an apocalyptic prophecy that our technological grasp will soon be beyond our control, with dire consequences. It doesn’t have to be so disbelieving to see the road ending with us in the new Cybernetic Overlord’s crosshairs, all the way to the faceless attack dog’s ever-greater lines.
