There is a particular moment in an old science-fiction movie when you realize that the future has arrived. Not the good future. Not the future with flying cars and inexpensive fusion power and robot butlers who know how you like your martini.
The other future.
The one where everybody lives under a vaguely authoritarian government, the sky has turned the color of an old bruise, there are armed men standing around for no obvious reason, and some exhausted character in a trench coat is trying to explain what happened to civilization while a siren goes off in the background.
I have some bad news.
We are in that movie.
The remarkable thing about those 1980s dystopian movies was always the attention to detail. The filmmakers understood that you can’t just show us a ruined city and expect us to believe it. You have to put little signs everywhere that say: Yes, this is the future. Things have gone terribly wrong.
There would be newspapers scattered around the set with headlines like:
CANADA STILL BURNING
In 1987 that would have seemed like maybe a little much.
Today it is a weather report. Canada is, in fact, still burning. British Columbia has declared a state of emergency. More than 20,000 people have been evacuated. Millions of hectares have burned.
And the really impressive thing is that nobody had to write the headline.
Nature’s writers’ room came up with it.
This is what I mean about the 1980s being better at dystopian realism. They understood that the future wouldn’t necessarily announce itself with giant explosions. It would mostly consist of increasingly absurd things becoming routine.
The television news would say something like, “Authorities advise residents to remain indoors due to hazardous air conditions,” and then cut to a commercial for Pepsi.
You’d look out the window and the sun would be orange.
Then you’d check the weather app.
Air Quality: Dangerously Unhealthy.
Temperature: 94.
Feels Like: 103.
And then you’d go to work.
That’s the detail the old movies got right. The world doesn’t end with a trumpet blast. It ends administratively.
There are forms.
There are advisories.
There are evacuation zones.
There are increasingly complicated passwords.
There is a website that explains the emergency, but the website is temporarily unavailable.
And somewhere, a guy in a building with flickering fluorescent lights is saying, “We’re monitoring the situation.”
Meanwhile, the situation is monitoring us.
The old dystopian movies also understood something else: The people living in the future wouldn’t necessarily be screaming all the time.
They’d be tired.
They’d be annoyed.
They’d be making dinner.
They’d complain about the price of groceries and their neighbor’s dog and the Cubs’ bullpen while, in the middle distance, civilization quietly catches fire.
We’ve become remarkably good at compartmentalizing catastrophe. Canada burns. Another heat record falls. A hurricane gets stronger while the next one queues up. A city floods. A river disappears. Biff runs for President. Somewhere, somebody’s house is being carried away by water.
And we say, “Jesus.”
Then we look at our phones.
Then we order tacos.
Because what else are you supposed to do?
This is the part where the hero of the 1980s movie would finally stand up and say something inspirational about fighting back.
I’m not sure we have that character anymore. We have influencers. We have podcasters. We have a guy livestreaming the apocalypse from his car. We have Facebook and X arguing about whether the apocalypse is actually happening or whether somebody is just trying to sell you something.
And somewhere in the background, a newspaper is lying on a bench.
CANADA STILL BURNING
The headline looks ridiculous.
Which is how you know it belongs in the movie.
The only problem is that nobody is coming to yell “Cut!”