A look ahead, courtesy of movies set in the next 12 months, suggests we should expect natural disasters, even more all-consuming tech and a super swine flu
Since the dawn of the 20th century and the mainstreaming of existential thought, every generation has fretted that they’re at the end of history, bearing witness to the hysterical collapse of social and political order. From the age of postwar nuclear anxiety to the sweet summers of the counterculture to the turn of the millennium, some faction always fears that they will be forced to let go of the world they understand to make way for a frightening, confusing new one. I would contend that the current generation of humans alive on Earth – having dealt over the past year with a global pandemic, incompetently attempted fascist takeovers, the fracturing and splintering of the world economy, and in some regions, the sky bursting into flame – has a more legitimate claim to that feeling than any that’s come before.
Related: Apocalypse now-ish: what can we learn from films set in 2020?
