Jessica Chastain and Casey Affleck stand amid the cornfields in Interstellar. Photograph: Legendary Pictures/Allstar

Before Interstellar got anywhere near the CGI labs, Christopher Nolan went back to the land. Maize is the Earths last viable crop in the films near-future, and before filming began the director decided his team would go the full Jolly Green Giant. After consultation with respected agricultural authority Zack Snyder, who had grown a field of the stuff for Man of Steel, Nolans team laid down 500 acres just south of Calgary, Canada. They mowed down some with a 4x4, burned a fair load of the rest. But there was still enough maize left that Interstellar actually ended up making money on its farming offshoot.

The endless green sea of crop, the white clapboard homestead, Malick magic-hour glow breaking over the top of good ol boy narration. Interstellar, from the very first trailer, seemed so rooted in the homespun imagery of the American heartlands, I half-expected Matthew McConaughey to enter the wormhole in a rocket-boosted combine harvester.

But its only the latest in a recent group of films to cloak sci-fi futures in classic Americana: Rian Johnsons Looper (2012) posits a world dominated by China, but its climax boils down to a telekinetic dustup on a Kansas homestead; in 2011s Real Steel, Hugh Jackman and his clapped-out robot fly the flag for troubled US rust-belt industry in an age of hi-tech automaton fighting bouts; the denizens of 22nd-century Los Angeles in In Time (2011) may have potentially infinite lifespans, but they still drive around in Lincoln Continentals and loiter near the Sixth Street viaduct, noirish backdrop of choice since the 1970s. Even Transformers has been getting down-home, with Age of Extinction picking a backwoods Texas farm to host the first epic robot battle. Well see what kind of spin the forthcoming Westworld TV series, to be developed by Interstellar screenwriter Jonathan Nolan, puts on wild-west Americana.

This new wave of sci-fi Americana isnt quite retro-futurism as we know it (though Interstellars pseudo Dust Bowl-era talking-head interviews flirt with that, as do Loopers blunderbuss-armed hitmen and In Times noir fetish). Its much more austere and earnest, an assertion that timeless American values can play just as much a part in shaping the future as technological prowess.

The same self-reliance and ingenuity that hauled Americans across their continent will get them across the cosmos is Interstellars message. Its mission to the stars is led by the remnants of Nasa, and the films simple white spacesuits and blazing atmosphere-exit footage are meant to suggest continuity with the 1960s and 70s space programme, the last great period of US frontiersmanship. America can still do this, Nolan solemnly cheerleads throughout the film; his mouthpiece is McConaugheys character, Cooper, a maverick manqu who belongs among the envelope-pushing hotshots of The Right Stuff.

Alfonso Cuarn presumably agrees about the land of the free: in Gravity, Sandra Bullock might be headed for the Russian and Chinese space stations (symbolism alert!) the emerging economies of our time but only under the guidance of George Clooneys yarn-spinning, country-music-listening, old-timer space cowboy, the literal touchstone amid the void who opens the film.

Back in the real world, theres one pressing practical reason for the Americana revival. The countrys dynamic cityscapes and wisecracking gumption were once the default blockbuster mode, but the physical and spiritual presence of America on screen has been watered down as Hollywoods audience has become more global. You can see films like Gravity, Age of Extinction, Interstellar and its mentor-in-agronomics Man of Steel (which also majored in midwestern imagery) as attempts to keep the US audience on side by returning to hallowed classic scenery, while still cranking up the technological CGI blast that now powers the global blockbuster industry.

If Hollywood is working out how much allegiance it owes to America, its not surprising that Americana sci-fi also displays a worrisome side regarding the national identity. Farming, that midwest mainstay, is linked with a kind of perilous subsistence thinking in Interstellar depending on the land for food, rather than striking out in search of bold new possibilities. Cooper only practises it reluctantly. Meanwhile, Loopers hip young hitmen, sent their instructions by time-travel from crime syndicates in the future, are the ultimate US consumers. To the extent of consuming themselves: they live it up in the short term on their criminal proceeds, with the knowledge that they will one day themselves be sent back in time to be killed. Suddenly, the Kansan sugar-cane fields where they off their victims look like a regressive dumping ground for the films hi-tech, Chinese-dominated future. The hitmens retro, cravat-fetishing affectations are mocked by their paymaster: The movies that youre dressing like are just copying other movies. Do something new, huh?

Interstellar, Looper and Real Steel in which Hugh Jackmans obsolete robot Atom is forever on the verge of annihilation by newer models all pose the question: is it the end of the line for American trailblazing? Nolans film amounts to 166 minutes of agonising about whether further expansion is possible for mankind; in business terms, Hollywood currently faces a parallel dilemma of trying to find unsaturated markets and new creative paths in order to keep growing. One solution is to not to expand at all, but to rejuvenate the US economy from within. Like the post-credit-crunch boom in small business entrepreneurs detailed by New Yorker writer George Packer in his 2013 book The Unwinding; folk returning to the land and repurposing it for 21st-century needs, like biodiesel.

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Good ol' future boys: Interstellar and sci-fi's obsession with Americana