Future ’38
- written and directed by Jamie Greenberg
- Feature Film
- Science Fiction, Comedy
- Adults
- Definite Time Travel
- English
- Future ’38, written and directed by Jamie Greenberg (Slamdance Film Festival, Park City, Utah, 24 January 2017).
In this “lost” film from 1938, fascist powers are rising in Europe, so Mr. Essex is sent forward to 2018 to retrieve a piece of formica that’s been put into a vault where, over the decades, it will have matured into superbomb material. I don’t know whether the bomb ever worked, but surprisingly, the campy film did work—at least toward the end when the full contents of the vault are revealed.
—Michael Main
If I kill you now, you will never go back in time, there is no formica bomb, and Adolf Hilter takes over the world . . . with me as his heir.
Tags
(10)
- Time Periods
- Circa AD 1930 to 1939: Essex’s time in 1938
- Circa AD 2000 to 2099: Essex goes to Banky’s time in 2018
- Timeline Models
- Single Consistent Timeline: Everything in the vault is self-consistent with a single timeline.
- Time Travel Methods
- Time Tethers: The dislocation transducer send Essex to the future and retrieves him 12 hours later.
- Themes
- Future Travelogue: The movie spoofs the form of a future travelogue.
- Rescue after the Fact: Essex repeatedly calls for things that he need to to be in the vault before he’s gone back to 1938 and put them there.
- Self-Visitation: Essex doesn’t realize it, but he meets his older self. Note: We think the younger Essex shown in the final scene is merely an artsy attempt to show the audience who the old man is.
- Real-World Tags
- Adolf Hitler: offstage
- Neal deGrasse Tyson
- World War II: At the start of Hitler’s invasions.
Variants
(1)
- Future ’38, written and directed by Jamie Greenberg (Slamdance Film Festival, Park City, Utah, 24 January 2017).