Reality seldom aligns with fiction, and such is the case for films of the past set in 2022. From low-budget cringe-fests like The Dark Side of the Moon to big-budget sci-fi spectacles like Geostorm, films set in 2022 are often desolate, dangerous places.
As 2022 approaches for real, some of the portents predicted in such movies are harbingers that it would be wise to heed. Others, however, drift too far into the fantastical to truly be given consideration as an accurate depiction of what the year might actually have in store.
Soylent Green (1973)
Gen X'ers and fans of Saturday Night Live likely remember one thing about this film: the late Phil Hartman's impression of star Charlton Heston, and the lampooning of the film's trailer which spoiled the premise. Still, there are elements of the plot of this classic sci-fi movie that isn't too far off the mark.
The world of Soylent Green, for example, is facing a climate crisis. The planet is overpopulated. And supply chain issues plague the delivery of food. That's where the similarities end, however, unless there's a secret plan afoot in the coming year to turn an abundant problem into a source of sustenance.
The Dark Side Of The Moon (1990)
Even as a direct-to-video release, The Dark Side of the Moon is a forgettable one, but its version of 2022 is rather amusing. Nuclear-armed satellites are apparently a thing, as is the disappearance of the space shuttle Discovery — lost in the Bermuda Triangle, of all places.
As it turns out, the coordinates for the earthbound Triangle correspond with the far side of the moon, where a maintenance ship encounters the Discovery and finds the Devil inhabiting one of the dead bodies aboard it. It's further proof that Hollywood writers were certain we'd be further along in our quest to explore the stars, but beyond that, there's little to indicate that the 2022 of The Dark Side of the Moon is worth any viewer's time.
Alien Intruder (1993)
Thanks to his role as Lando Calrissian in the Star Wars franchise, Billy Dee Williams was still a respectable star in 1993, but even he couldn't save this cringe-worthy sci-fi film set in 2022. There's not much to the plot — convicts are sent on an interstellar rescue mission and end up turning on one another thanks to a virtual reality vixen — but Williams tries his best to carry it as the ship's captain.
The future imagined in Alien Intruder is one in which humans are frequent travelers to deep space and can live out sexual fantasies in virtual reality, but the plot that incorporates those elements is so bad, it's difficult to tell whether they're truly predictive narrative devices or a screenwriter's sci-fi fantasy. Critics at the time lambasted the film, which hasn't aged any better — as entertainment or a portent of things to come.
Time Runner (1993)
Billy Dee Williams wasn't the only Star Wars actor to land a leading role in a 1993 sci-fi film set in 2022. In one of his less-than-iconic roles, Mark Hamill stars as Michael Raynor, a military captain who disappears into the past via a mysterious wormhole that opens shortly after aliens attack his space station.
The film borrows heavily from The Terminator franchise, but the biggest 2022 moments again showcase a future that has yet to come to pass: Humans manning interstellar military outposts and traveling to space as nonchalantly as flying overseas. While commercial spaceflight has indeed come to pass, the 2022 of reality has a ways to go before it catches up with the fictional setting of Time Runner.
No Escape (1994)
Of all the older movies set in 2022, No Escape has the flashiest pedigree, starring Ray Liotta, Ernie Hudson, Lance Henriksen, and directed by Martin Campbell, who would go on to helm The Mask of Zorro and the superior Bond entries GoldenEye and Casino Royale. The story of a penal colony that may or may not have inspired The Hunger Games, No Escape imagines a future in which the for-profit prison system has been supercharged.
Absalom, the island central to the story, is a place where prisoners have divided into factions and have inexplicably obtained weapons like a rocket launcher. Satellites and patrol boats monitor the inmates, and while viewers don't get much of a glimpse of the rest of the outside world, the 2022 of No Escape seems like a place where a great deal of time and effort has gone into a plot device that better serves a fictional narrative than reality.
Deathwave (2009)
In imagining 2022, filmmakers seem to draw from two wells: political and/or social dystopia, or climate crisis. Deathwave, a Thai film, is part of the latter camp, as a desperate scientist tries to warn the government of Thailand that an impending typhoon means certain doom.
Of all the movies set in 2022, Deathwave may be the most realistic: Deadly typhoons continue to ravage the Pacific Rim, and Pacific island nations stand to suffer the most from climate change. While the special effects may not measure up to Hollywood's standards, the message at the heart of the film isn't outside the realm of possibilities for what the future may hold.
The Purge (2013)
Set eight years after an economic collapse, the 2022 of The Purge imagines an America where crime is kept to an unimaginable minimum thanks to a 12-hour period every year in which every crime is legal. A wildly successful flick that made 30 times its budget, The Purge spawned a franchise full of colorful characters but sparked a number of existential questions about what the future might look like.
For one, it operates on the assumption that criminals are content to wait for a once-a-year event to satiate their urges. For another, it imagines that average suburbanites likely harbor hidden psychopathic tendencies that are given free rein during The Purge. Whether or not either presumption is true makes for a fascinating debate, especially set against the widening divide in the current political climate.
Geostorm (2017)
Satellites sent into orbit to help stabilize the climate go haywire, and it's up to Gerard Butler to save the planet in this big-screen disaster movie. While climate change has certainly caused bigger and more catastrophic natural disasters in recent years, the technology to control those is still confined to the minds of scientists and Hollywood screenwriters.
It's a lofty goal, to control such disasters with technology that can neutralize a typhoon — or, on the flip side of that coin, superheat a city to the point that tornados of fire ravage the urban landscape — and given the debate around climate change, it would be an ideal Deus ex machina to take care of current climate woes. When governments can't agree on solutions to the problem, however, it's unlikely 2022 will see them agree to a joint satellite program that controls the weather.
Safer At Home (2021)
It was just a matter of time before an industrious filmmaker turned COVID-19 into a post-apocalyptic film: Safer at Home imagines a United States in late 2022 where COVID has mutated so often that 31 million Americans have died and some cities are placed under martial law.
In this instance, it's Los Angeles, but while various strains of COVID are concerning, it'll take a radically mutated variant to get the country to a similar state by the end of the new year. Given that the film ends as the United Kingdom ceases to exist as a country, it's difficult to imagine 2022 taking as drastic a turn as the minds of Safer at Home developed into the film's plot.
The Tomorrow War (2021)
To be fair, the bulk of The Tomorrow War is set in the year 2051, when soldiers from the future travel back in time to recruit volunteers for a campaign against aliens on the verge of a victory that means humanity's extinction. If there's one nugget that can be gleaned from the 2022 scenes, however, it's that fans of Scotland and Brazil have an exciting World Cup championship game to watch.
Of course, the real World Cup won't wrap until December 2022, but a creative license for the sake of sci-fi drama can be overlooked. Hopefully, the sequel — which was announced shortly after the Chris Pratt vehicle debuted on Amazon Prime Video — gives viewers a closer look at whatever contemporary setting serves as the backdrop, whether it's 2022 or some future year.