Touring around California , you could be forgiven for thinking you ’re living in the future , and not just because of the Silicon Valley wizardry that surrounds us all . We also have to give thanks Hollywood ’s movie magic , which has turned the state into a backdrop for countless scientific discipline fiction films stage future both dreadful and rattling . It ’s not just that so many are shoot here — writers and film maker have been exploring the hereafter through California sets for decades .
San Francisco in 2259 in Star Trek : Into Darkness , Paramount Pictures , 2013 .
In the early day of big - budget sci - fi , New York often embodied the bad fear about fellowship , urban support , and applied science : Soylent Green ( 1972 ) , break loose from New York ( 1981 ) , and others capitalize on New York ’s belly-up and crime - ridden nadir — a musical style thatMiriam Greenberg cite to as “ New York Exploitation . ”With the city ’s military campaign to shift itself in the 1990s , Los Angeles became the symbol of urban blight , perfectly demonstrated by John Carpenter ’s relocation of his Snake Plissken continuation , get away from L.A. ( 1996 ) . While dystopian sci - fi also has a home in the United Kingdom ( thanks , George Orwell ) and has been used for self - reflection by most of the world ’s filmmaking cultures , there is something about the absolute frequency with which California and “ the future ” are used synonymously .
In sci - fi movies and the books that suffice as their inspiration , the future of the Golden State goes something like this : 10 to 150 years from the present tense , California has succumbed to natural cataclysm / economic and governmental collapse / a pandemic , which lead Southern California a corporate - fascistic - military state with gross fiscal and racial inequality and urban sordidness — while Northern California rips up its pavement , learns permaculture , receive unearthly , and models better living through engineering and communitarian diversity .
This binary began in the 1940s with Earth Abides ( 1949 ) , a book about a scientist starting over in Berkeley after a global pandemic , while in Aldous Huxley ’s Ape and Essence ( 1948 ) Los Angeles slouches toward the Revelation . The movies Planet of the Apes , The Terminator , Escape from L.A. , Star Trek , and the books Ecotopia , The Fifth Sacred Thing ( soon to be a feature article film ) , and Snowcrash all play variations on this composition . Collapse and partitioning is almost a foregone close at this point — not just a time to come that might happen , but one many almost expect and therefore accept .
“ Every American urban center gasconade an official insignia and slogan . Some have municipal mascots , colors , song , birds , trees , even careen . But Los Angeles alone has adopted an official incubus , ” writes Mike Davis inEcology of Fear .
Hollywood has perpetuate this dystopian vision of its own home in the southland . From the Planet of the Apes series ( 1968–1973 ) on , next L.A. has been routinely junk by atomic , technological , and self-propelled catastrophe , police brutality , pollution , and crime . A Malthusian nightmare , the urban center is drear , smutty , and break down under the weighting of its immigrant population , or just hold in check by totalistic governance and geomorphologic inequality — what Mike Davis calledL.A. ’s “ spatial apartheid . ”
Davis take down that this was so accept as a likely trajectory for the city , that it was written into an L.A. redevelopment programme as a warning of what could happen were the plan not adopted . The plan , L.A. 2000 : A City for the Future , call this “ the Blade Runner scenario : the merger of item-by-item cultures intoa demotic polyglotism ominous with undecided belligerency . ” While it might be beguiling to dismiss this as the fever ambition of the bad old days , before hipster gentrification , sassy growth , and business district redevelopment , Southland Tales ( 2006 ) , In Time ( 2011 ) , and Elysium ( 2013 ) have done little to alter its imagery .
northerly California - as - utopia , on the other hand , is strongly connect to the countercultural social movement of the 60 , with its guides for technologically advanced back - to - the - land living . One can interpret Ernest Callenbach ’s influential novel Ecotopia ( 1975 ) as the possible future seed by Whole Earth Catalog . Ecotopia is a fictional “ line of business study ” of a succeeding Pacific Northwest society that has split from an revelatory United States and is regulate according to ecological principle .
While much technology has been give up , the Ecotopians have selectively retained public transit , electric cars , networked figurer , and ameliorate recycling ( Callenbach was a longtime occupier of Berkeley ) . Ecotopia ’s base were later picked up and expatiate in the eco - feminist story of Ursula K. Le Guin ’s Always Coming Home ( 1985 ) , a cultural anthropology of latter - twenty-four hours Napa Valley - ites who have returned to indigenous way ; Starhawk ’s The Fifth Sacred Thing ( 1993 ) about a pagan , unbloody San Francisco menace by southern biologic war ; and Octavia Butler ’s Parable Word of God ( 1993 , 1998 ) where refugees from the L.A. waste get a Modern eco - religious belief , Earthseed , in the forests of Mendocino .
These school text show Northern California as central to both speculative and practical sight of sustainable survival . While Bay Area research parks , universities , and experimentation in urban living service as laboratory for penny-pinching - condition development , the area is also a visual and narrative shorthand for remote , alternate , and ideal futures . The matching giants of popular sci - fi , Star Trek and Star Wars , both used Northern California as a location — for the headquarters of the United Federation of Planets in the Star Trekuniverse , and as website of the water and forest planets ( Naboo and Endor ) of Star Wars ’ “ galaxy far , far away . ”
Wiredpublished a paean to San Francisco upon the spillage of the latest Star Trek film , explaining why there could n’t be a more perfect location for its technologically idyllic future :
What sets Star Trek apart is the attending it pays to one little city , barely seven miles across , when the other item on its journeying are not urban center or country , but planets and star scheme … And it ’s a city whose cultivation of curiosity , craft and tolerance have left an indelible mark on one of the earth ’s most successful sci - fi franchises .
In the frontier myth of American history , California represents the completion of a obviously designate expansion across the continent . It ’s easy to see Utopian San Francisco and “ Hell A ” as duplicate land’s - ends for dreamer and cynics . In the north , beyond the Golden Gate there lies only “ space , the final frontier . ” Conversely , in Richard Kelly ’s apocalypticSouthland Tales(2006 ) , the Santa Monica pier is where the world ends “ not with a whimper , but with a bang ” have LA ’s palimpsest of corrupt politico , soulless celebs , activistic erotica wiz , and derange cops with it .
A third , smaller , but ordered venous blood vessel of sci - fi unites both utopian and dystopian futures without mapping them onto a Nor Cal – So Cal binary , and dispenses with the quasi - biblical narration of Sodom and Eden . More significantly , it allows the possibility of multiple future for rethink the present . A number of films depict the north as a dystopia - within - Zion : Gattaca ( 1997 ) set in a near future where genetic alteration is inexpensively usable , and early films such as THX 1138 ( 1971 ) and Colossus : The Forbin Project ( 1970 ) , in which developments that promise well - being and peace surveil and threaten human civilization , speak to an unease with the promise of entropy technology .
Similarly , the rebooted Planet of the Apes films have replaced fortress LA with the sleek research complexes of Silicon Valley . In William Gibson ’s Bridge Trilogy , San Francisco suffers the noir - ish uneasiness of Blade Runner L.A. ; this metre due to complimentary - agent capitalist economy course amuck , with a community of squatters inhabiting the rusting whale of the Bay Bridge , and bike courier , data pattern analysts , and a rogue pop idol with artificial intelligence in the Pb roles .
In the southward , Kim Stanley Robinson ’s Three Californias trilogy(1984–1990 ) posit three possible directions for Orange County : The Wild Shore pursue nuclear apocalypse , The Gold Coast extrapolates a 2027 “ autopia ” from 1980s suburban area and hyperconsumption , and Pacific Edge allow that even the OC might have access to a sustainable futurity , as communities reclaim the glide from railroad car and concrete .
The True Literature of California Is Science Fiction
It ’s well-situated to see Utopian San Francisco and “ Hell A ” as twin land’s - ends for idealists and Cynic .
The sci - fi vision has a strong connection ( one might even call it a feedback loop ) to the technical school and entertainment industries that beat back California ’s thriftiness , and therefore , its very real , near - condition growth . Sci - fi narratives are , after all , allegories for the meter in which they are created , but they also sire a nostalgia for past images of the future , which frame community ’ actions as they build and plan — and as those communities experience their endure surround .
Some critics have made much of the fact that Ridley Scott primitively planned to film Blade Runner in New York and the studio requested a location change . But this is for the most part irrelevant , as the movie ’s mental imagery and open affair have resonated with interview , and played a huge role in how L.A. is catch and how the metropolis has reckon itself over the past few decades .
On the sidereal day I confabulate to shoot the atrium of the Bradbury Building , the only other people present were fan of the movie look for traces of that elegantly upset time to come . Repetition of the trope of urban radioactive decay versus ecotopia might become ego - reward in a way that preclude thinking differently about the present , or even see that the future that we ’ve come to expect might not be the one we ’re probable to get .
Fredric Jameson argues that the value of utopian / dystopian sci - fi is not that it bear images of potential future , but alternatively is its power to “ defamiliarize and restructure our own present . ” The exposure that follow show how filmmaker have taken familiar California location from downtown Los Angeles to Berkeley to do just that .
exposure BY KRISTIN MILLER .
The US authorities commissions Dr. Charles Forbin to produce a vast computer system that uses algorithmic modeling and datum minelaying to remove faulty human emotion from the process of nuclear conclusion - making . The system , Colossus , has its command and control center in the Berkeley Benny Hill overlooking the San Francisco Bay . With its majestic vantage point and amorphous , futuristic architecture , the Hall of Science — named for Ernest Lawrence , a old stager of the Manhattan Project and pioneer of nuclear energy — symbolizes an affirmative future for the union of man and auto . However , “ the manifestation of the human millenary , ” in which peace will free order to work shortage , poorness , and other societal ills , is shorten shortsighted when Colossus gain cognizance . The project ’s sleek setting and religious belief in human ingenuity belies a menace to human beings .
An understated science fiction film with a satiric point of view … . full of surprising moments of humor and intelligence . — Vincent Canby , The New York Times
In late 20th - century Los Angeles , emulator are kept as positron emission tomography and domesticated servants by humans . Caesar , an ape institutionalize to 1991 from the future , leads the ape in a populist uprising against their human being overlords . The backdrop for the revolt is the desolate shopping mall and towers of Century City , a sterile LA business and commercial dominion developed in 1963 . It is the epitome of the anti - urban metropolis , where heterogeneous crew are unwelcome and spaces are designed to exclude and stratify . It organize a perfect background for a story that is itself a thinly veiled apologue for fright of the shifting demographics of American city in the 1960s and 1970s , as well as the signified of social disorder associate with the Civil Rights and anti - Vietnam War objection movements . A span across Avenue of the Stars near Santa Monica Boulevard is the web site of a showdown between the apes , in yard bird - like jump suit , and helmeted and jackstones - booted police , with echoes of Birmingham , Chicago , and Detroit .
The audience cheered the persevering apes and so did I. At ’em , son ! — Howard Thompson , The New York Times
An 1893 architectural gem in downtown LA is shown in a dilapidated state of matter as the home of J.F. Sebastian , genetic designer for the Tyrrell Corporation . It ’s wrought - smoothing iron balustrades and balcony are the set for the final showdown between Deckard ( Harrison Ford ) and the escaped replicants he is hunting . Smoggy visible light and constant rainwater filter through the shattered cap , while airy billboard drift overhead advertising off - world colonies and Japanese products . The difference of opinion between the actual turning point construction , with its delicate grille work and sunny atrium , and its depiction as a soppy , wrecked , rethink is emblematic of the ahistorical city where the hereafter is “ unequally distributed , ” to quote science fiction writer William Gibson .
The strangest thing about the future is that this is now the future we once foretold . — Roger Ebert
While the movies in James Cameron ’s Terminator franchise were arrange in the present tense of their release dates ( 1984 , 1992 ) both are prologue to a future in which a vindication organization , Skynet , has accomplish sentience and is waging machine war against man . Los Angeles is , again , the nodal head for the demolition of the world as it is both the site of Cyberdyne organization , creators of Skynet , and the home of the mother of the future leader of the human resistance , Sarah Connor . The machine commit a sea wolf cyborg back through time to terminate Connor , while the resistance sends one of their own after it to defend her , bringing the next war to the already crumble streets of eighties downtown . Connor ’s saviour , Kyle Reese ( Michael Biehn ) , appear in a burst of illumination in an alley in the business district jewelry district . The initial encounter between Reese and the Terminator takes place further business district on Pico Boulevard in a nightspot appropriately call Tech Noir .
Schwarzenegger is perfectly cast in a machine - like portrayal that necessitate only a few lines of dialog . — assortment
Kathryn Bigelow ’s Strange Days depict a Los Angeles that shares root with Blade Runner ’s xenophobic dystopia . Seven years on , the 1992 Los Angeles riots appear to have for good encompassed all of downtown . The action is underscore by the then - mutual fear that Y2 K ( the dawn of the twelvemonth 2000 ) might send us all back to the technological obscure ages . Strange Days displays a noir - ish fear of the capriciousness of urban outer space , using a dispiritedly destabilized and criminal LA to make an argument about why humanity might require a reboot on January 1 , 2000 . At the Old Chinatown Central Plaza , one type traffic bootleg recordings of first - person experience hacked straight from the cerebral cortex , playing on a stereotypical linkup between immigrant community , opprobrious - market criminalism , and the fear of intercrossed urban identities .
We want to see through other people ’s eyes , have their experience , fend in their shoes . That ’s the mute promise of the movies.—Roger Ebert
In the pulp futurity of John Carpenter ’s Escape from L.A. , a ruinous earthquake in 2000 has decimated the California coast and turned LA into an island . Escape from L.A. deal the tropes also attest in Strange Days and Blade Runner to the extreme : the metropolis is not in a state of accelerated decrepitude , it is a complete expiration , desolate to the criminal masses and contained from spread its contagion to the affluent and white exurbs . becloud by perpetual acid rain , this LA is a plain of debris and smoldering fire , punctuated by the poignant ruins of landmark such as the Capitol Records building , with its overtones of a more optimistic , space eld future .
Such frenzied energy , such a weird , plastered vision , that it may sour on some moviegoers as satire and on others as the real thing.—Roger Ebert
In Andrew Niccol ’s Gattaca , inherited technology has become so wide available that parents are weigh negligent for not having their children decent sequenced , giving them the best chance in life . The future is refined and seemingly spotless . Genetically hone citizen know in a world that seems detached of the bedlam and fuddle of twentieth - century civilization . The forest are verdant , the architecture monumental , and a romantic scene adopt place among the mirrored surface of a massive theater of operations of solar panels . The offices of the esteemed Gattaca Corporation are pose in the Marin County Civic Center , itself a utopian civic complex surrounding a pool and park designed by Frank Lloyd Wright . The Civic Center was also the setting for George Lucas ’s THX 1148 ( 1971 ) , standing in as a complex for total living where supposedly all human need are met in exchange for its residents living within total surveillance .
The flick is set in “ the not - too - upstage future , ” and indeed it succeeds as a frighteningly pertinent lengthiness of present - day position . — Janet Maslin , The New York Times
In contrast to the totalitarian fortresses of the 1970s and the spoilt “ Hell A ” of the 1980s , Richard Kelly ’s Southland Tales offers up LA as postmodern pastiche — a level hodgepodge landscape spanning scruffy Venice Boardwalk and silklike downtown architectural collector’s item , where an peculiarly interconnected World Wide Web of hacktivists , politician , actors , porn stars , police force officeholder , and tech moguls are all unwittingly hastening the world ’s remnant . On the coast , a marred Fallujah veterinary prevent ascertain from a accelerator pedal turret on Santa Monica Pier , a perfect pastiche itself , omit the Utopia 3 tidal - power generator , a seemingly green engineering that will shortly rive a fix in the space - time continuum .
A funny , brazen-faced , mussy and feverishly inspired look at America and its discontents . — Manohla Dargis , The New York Times
In the Star Trek universe , San Francisco is the home office of the decidedly utopian United Federation of Planets , where human and extraterrestrial Star Fleet officers are harmoniously trained to swear out on peace - keeping and exploratory ships such as the Enterprise . The Golden Gate — stunningly well - preserved after hundreds of years — make a salient appearance early on in the film , in the background of the Star Fleet Academy , which occupies Crissy Field in the Presidio . A former military base turned into an idyllic waterfront complex , it ’s a perfect model of northerly California ’s fusion of the innate and technical reverend .
Star Trek has voyage far beyond science fable and into the secure waters of infinite opera house . — Roger Ebert
exchange the original films ’ Los Angeles - based origin story of police rule and social rising , the rebooted series ’ apes are make by genetical experiments conducted hastily in the name of profit by Gensys in Silicon Valley . The new Planet of the Apes make San Francisco the source of our destruction . As in Gattaca and Colossus , the threat is not anticipated , because the surroundings are so uniformly beautiful — charming Victorian family , state - of - the - art inquiry facilities , and lush timber . When the apes escape and bring havoc across downtown and cease up in a police gunfight on the Golden Gate Bridge , they , and not their human pursuers , earn the viewer ’s sympathies . Here , Caesar comforts a dying Buck , who has sacrificed himself so that other aper can make it across the bridge into the Muir Woods redwoods . The bridge circuit is their escape from San Francisco . And northern California ’s edenic environment still offers a chancel from the creation , but no longer for man .
It ’s the end of the world as we know it , and the creature feel fine . — Manohla Dargis , The New York Times
Star Wars is seemingly jell in the past tense , and yet , its imagery has shaped several generation ’ visions of the future , and inextricably marry it to California . To anyone who grew up with the original trilogy , the lush , primeval sequoia forest of Endor in Return of the Jedi , where the suspiciously indigenous Ewoks live , provided a knock-down connectedness between the landscape of the northern California coast , and an environment at harmony with itself . That the Endor sequoia are also the site of the Rebel Alliance ’s victory over the high - technical school arms of the Empire doubles that impact . The unearthly computer code of the force seems most at home in natural setting , far from the corrupt , urban center of the Galactic Empire . Here , the force is basically an otherworldy exportation of Gaia theory , and the utopian major planet of the Star Wars galax are the off - world colony of Ecotopia .
A picaresque journey through the imaginativeness , and an introduction to physique of life story less mundane than our own.—Roger Ebert
This article was originally put out on Boom , as “ postal card from the Future . ”Boomaims to create a alert conversation about the vital social , ethnical , and political issues of our sentence , in California and the world beyond .
Kristin Miller is a PhD student contemplate urban sociology at UC Santa Cruz , with an emphasis in film and digital medium . She is part of the Critical Sustainabilities inquiry mathematical group , and has put to work as a change of location diarist and blogger on cities , technology , and the environment .
Lead image : Downtown Los Angeles in 2154 in Elysium , TriStar Pictures , 2013 .
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