Just how Future-y did 2020 Look 40 Years ago?

It's 2020, and I'm carrying on as usual, making quilts, sewing up a storm in my little shop, and subsequently I'm embroidering quilt labels as I finish them up. I always include the year and then my signature. It's easy and I enjoy the slow down needed to complete an embroidered label.
  

The number 2020 itself is a nice, solid looking number, graphically. I really like it... compared to embroidering any year since 2016 (which I liked too), this is the year I like to embroider the most so far.

It's a great design element, but I was suddenly struck by it the other day while watching an old dystopian film made in 1975 called The Ultimate Warrior, by Director, Robert Clouse. It's not a great film, in my humble opinion, but with Yul Brynner and Max von Sydow starring... and a "villain" named Carrot (OMG, Ha, ha ,ha!), it was super fun to watch. Both Jeff and I hadn't heard of it and considering we were 10 when it came out, we probably simply weren't allowed to see it. The other day we were both struck by the flash of the year... 2012....Ha!  Any year that began with a 2 was a very futuristic number back when we were ten... but the film has a less than optimistic view of the future of humanity at that point, and as so many films set in the future do. Am I right?  

from The Ultimate Warrior...

Obviously we passed 2012 eight years ago, and we aren't quite as desperate as they are in The Ultimate Warrior, but there are still reasons to suspect a not so bright future given the direction we are heading (i.e., the Climate Emergency and the rise of something that smells a lot like Authoritarianism on the wind). (on that subject, See They Live, (1988) by John Carpenter... in which they do not give a specific future year but could so easily be interpreted in the current political world, despite how goofy and heavy handed this movie can be at times.... although I'm not saying we lack goofiness in our current contemporary times... we so clearly do have loads of goofiness... ok, I digress). 

What am I trying to say? I'm not precisely sure, but I do know that when I look at the year 2020, from the perspective of a child born in the 60's, I re-examine what I thought the future would look like from that child's eyes. It's disappointing that the world isn't a more peaceful place, that the Earth isn't healthier, that our energy sources aren't completely sustainable, etc. I feel like we should be so much more advanced in these things. It made me want to take a look at other films with "Future Dates" that fall around our current time. Here are a few with the year made and the date they are set in the future.  




Metropolis (1927) - Future year 2000
The Ultimate Warrior (1975) - Future year 2012
Blade Runner (1982) - Future year 2019

2001 A Space Odyssey

A Boy and His Dog (1975) - Future year 2024
Soylent Green (1973) - Future year 2022
Escape From New York (1981) Future year 1997
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) - Future year 2001
Roller Ball (1975) - Future year 2018
The Last Man on Earth (1964) - Future year 2020
Silent Running (1972) - Future year 2001
West World (1973) - Future year 1983 

(ahem...) OK, so I'll admit that the future doesn't look so good in nearly all of these, except maybe one of them (I have a favorite), and we have advanced in certain ways, I mean we aren't scrounging in rags and crawling over the skeletons of our neighbors after all, but there's still so much more to do/fix.