ABSTRACT
A plentiful diet of science fiction films envision the future of human civilization in catastrophic meltdown. Our understanding of the future comes through books and films that vividly imagine apocalyptic scenarios, and yet such visually entertaining and harrowing indictments of the future appear not to shock our present reality. Films such as The Road (2009), The Book of Eli (2010), The Colony (2013), World War Z (2013), The Wandering Earth (2019), Resident Evil (2021), and Dune (2021) visualize a world in decline where no-place exists, despotic leaders rage, and space is lawless, with rampant anarchism, a collapse of morality and degenerative humanity succumbing to recalcitrant Darwinian evolution—the survival of the fittest. Each film warns of the consequences of not reversing human impact on the earth—stopping fossil fuel pollution, disarming nuclear arsenals, destroying chemical weapons and more; expressing the failure of humanity to collectivize to secure Earth and human survival. Once saturated by these cataclysmic scenarios, there is an urgent need to re-script these predictive futures to avoid such desolation. We leave the cinema and leave it up to others—governments, organizations, activists—to do the rewriting of Earth and human survival for us, thinking we are powerless to make changes as individuals.
