7 movies set in 2024: Highlander 2, Songbird, Apocalypse 2024…

By 2023, fiction has heralded a post-apocalyptic world dominated by pesky fungi (The Last of Us), clones remotely controlled to inhabit our place, a war between aliens, the past and the future (The Tomorrow War), a second round of limitless violence. (American Nightmare 2: Anarchy) or the future, where humans and mutants are hunted by excellent vigilantes (X-Men Days of Future Past).

Here we are now in 2024, facing a world under ecological, climatic, economic, social, political and geopolitical tension like never before. But how did the 7th art wait for this gift for years? Between COVID-23, a telepathic dog, a hole in the ozone layer, a sterile world, a virtual world, cryogenics, and a crime erased, here are seven visions of 2024 through cinema.

The AlloCiné editorial team and the entire yellow and black team wish you a five-star year and all the best in 2024.

Space Traveler (1960)

Filmed in less than two weeks (!) in Texas, this 1hr 15 “short feature”, released in US theaters at the time as part of a dual exhibition program, is a pure product of the Cold War and the fear of nuclear conflict. In Space Traveler, a military test pilot (Robert Clarke, a regular in 1950s SF) finds himself caught in a space-time rift that transports him to 2024, a sterile world after nuclear tests where the population is split between the surface. And the underground is either deaf and dumb or mutated (thanks to the iconic Jack Pierce make-up that transformed Boris Karloff into Frankenstein’s monster in 1931). For reference, the film opens with rolling credits “Star Wars style”, seventeen years before George Lucas’ space opera.

Apocalypse 2024 (1975)

Based on a screenplay by novelist Harlan Ellison, acclaimed for his anthology dangerous visions And working on the series Beyond Reality and The Fifth Dimension, Apocalypse 2024 (Boy and His Dog in the original version) immerses the audience in a devastated Earth, seven years after a world war that left rare survivors fighting for the remains. old world Among them is Vicky, played by a young Don Johnson, an outlaw teenager accompanied by a telepathic dog named Blood. This unlikely tandem traverses this post-apocalyptic world and relies on a partnership that is cynical to say the least: a man finds a dog to eat, and a dog helps a man find women to attack. Having become iconic over the years, the feature film was a major influence on George Miller’s creation of Mad Max, but also on the world of the Fallout video game.

Highlander Returns (1991)

Five years after the masterpiece, director Russell Mulcahy reunites Christoph Lambert and Sean Connery for a sequel that breeds inconsistencies and failures. A huge public, critical and financial failure Rebel version Released in 1995 and Special issue released in 2004), to the point that Highlander III is considered a true sequel to the original film, Highlander the Return still offered a dark and desperate vision of 2024, a nocturnal and humid world “à la Blade Runner” where the population survived. Cosmic radiation with laser shield protection. Originally developed by Connor McLeod (turned mortal and scientist) in 1999, the device is run twenty-five years later by a greedy corporation that taxes humanity to benefit from its protection…while the ozone layer is reformed.

Virtual Past (1999)

Completely eclipsed by the Matrix wave in the summer of 1999, Passé Virtuel (The Thirteenth Floor in the original version) is a little-known SF nugget that deserves to be (re)discovered (barely 25,000 admissions in theaters and a Blu-ray edition dated 2009). Like David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ a few months earlier, Josef Rusnak’s feature film, which crosses dark thriller and science fiction, questions virtual worlds, the border between reality and fantasy, and the possibility of artificial intelligence coming to life. While the inventor of the 1937 digital simulation is murdered after making equally fascinating and dangerous discoveries in this world, his accomplice, the prime suspect in the crime, dives into this virtual past to lead the investigation. To say more… would be a spoiler!

real (2016)

Very carefully released in French cinemas in June 2018 (barely… 663 cinemas!), Realive allows the Spanish Mateo Gil to try his hand at the sci-fi genre. Or at least in anticipation that a feature film that begins in 2024, where human cryogenic technologies are now available, fast-forwards sixty years later, to 2084, with a man condemned to an illness who decides to choose this “frozen sleep” in the hope that one day he can To wake up and care. Without points of reference and separated from the people he loves, he then discovers a world in which he has become a stranger… Matteo Gil, famous for his work as screenwriter of Alejandro Amenabar’s films, including Open Your Eyes, has already touched on this issue. Cryogenics on this film (which spawned the Vanilla Sky remake with Tom Cruise): real Thus it was born when he wondered how the men of the past could integrate into an era different from their own.

Last Days of American Crime (2020)

In 2024, the US government is preparing to launch the American Peace Initiative (API), a process based on synaptic signaling that will make it impossible for anyone to commit the slightest illegal act. It is this world, “The Last Days of American Crime,” as the film’s title suggests, that is told in the Netflix original The Last Days of American Crime, released in 2020. Written by Karl Gajdusek (Taken, Oblivion, The Last Resort series) and directed by Frenchie Olivier Megaton (Le Transporteur III, Colombiana, Taken 2 and 3), the feature film stars Edgar Ramírez in the shoes of a robber who tries to stage one last coup before API arrives. to prevent him from carrying out his project. A failed heist, as the feature film was very negatively received by critics and the public, with disastrous ratings (1.7 and 1.6 respectively on AlloCiné).

Songbird (2020)

Five years after COVID-19, it’s time for… COVID-23. That’s the closed-off world presented in Songbird, a Michael Bay production shot in commando mode in Los Angeles over two and a half weeks while the city was hit hard by the pandemic. Immune to the virus, the courier, during childbirth, crosses paths with a young woman suspected of contamination: if she is not transferred to a quarantine camp, she will try to save the impossible… Famous faces (Peter Stormare, Demi Moore, Paul Walter Hauser, Alexandra Daddario) surround Cage Apa ( Riverdale) and Sophia Carson (The Descendants), which remains the first film to be shot in Los Angeles while incarcerated.

And also…

In the pop culture department, let’s not forget that the post-Avengers Endgame Marvel universe is mostly set in 2024 (even if the year doesn’t ultimately affect the stories). Thus, Spider-Man: Far From Home / Spider-Man: No Way Home, Doctor Strange 2, The Eternals, Shang-Chi, Black Panther 2, as well as the series Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Hawkeye and She-Hulk take place in 2024. The same Refers to the summit clash of Godzilla vs. Kong, the war between vampires and lycans from Underworld: A New Era or the muscular operation led by Bruce Willis, Channing Tatum and Dwayne Johnson in GI Joe Conspiracy. Flash fans will also not forget that their heroes disappeared on the night of April 25, 2024 during his battle against the Reverse-Flash.

Songbird trailer