If cinema designs tomorrow: here are the films about the future

There are many films and series, old and recent, that have imagined the future. To be honest, we have a well-founded suspicion that they helped design it.

Here is a brief compendium of the "reflections of tomorrow" for as many films about the future brought out by the entertainment industry. In parentheses what they anticipated and predicted.

1976: Logan's Run – Logan's Run (Tinder)

Logan 5 (Michael York) is looking for a date. Dressed in a toga, he controls the screen. A man appears. Swipe. Finally a woman appears: Jessica 6 (Jenny Agutter). Just when she starts to sound like a date, Jessica hesitates and says, “I felt sad. I'll start looking again. It was a mistake". The modern, chaotic dating circuit of apps like Tinder immediately comes to mind.

1982: Supercar – Knight Rider (autonomous vehicles)

What good is a self-driving car if it's not a good friend? Anyone who grew up in the 80s watching Supercars remembers KITT (Knight Industries Two Thousand) and his owner Michael Knight (David Hasselhoff). In the show KITT was as much a protagonist as Michael. Maybe more. Looking at it we thought the future was just around the corner. Today his epic echoes a bit Elon Musk and his Tesla with the Reverse Summon function.

Notes: from the photo it may come to mind that in addition to autonomous vehicles, Supercar has also provided the smartwatch. In fact that was predicted earlier, in 1931 with Dick Tracy.

1983: War Games – WarGames (Hacking)

A young man (David Lightman, played by Matthew Broderick) finds a flaw in a military computer. And he unknowingly triggers a nuclear clash. It was the nightmare of the time! Looking back then, David's IMSAI 8080 PC kit, complete with 17-inch black-and-white monitor, was stunning. There was even a modem to connect with other computers.

1990: Act of Force – Total Recall (GPS, body scanner, colonization of Mars)

Hi-tech scanners driven by artificial intelligence? It's a contemporary theme. At airports, scanners can basically interpret what is on a person's body. In Total Recall, the scanners forced Arnold Schwarzenegger into a fight!

2013: She – Her (Earbuds and AI voice assistants)

There have been films that have feared digital voice assistants, but Spike Jonze's film took the concept to a new level. A romance between a man and someone like Samantha might not seem too out of place in the near future. Even Bluetooth earbuds with a built-in assistant had not yet reached the market. But they would arrive shortly after.

1999: The Matrix (Simulated Reality)

The Wachowskis offered an alternative reality, suggesting that what we perceive is just an illusion, a virtual computer simulation that has taken over. A position that has become the subject of many studies over time. Is the reality we are experiencing real or an illusion? Whatever it is, let's just hope we can keep up with it.

2002: Minority Report (Gestural navigation and personalized announcements)

Steven Spielberg's future movie is set in 2054, but some of the technologies shown have already arrived. John Anderton, the character played by Tom Cruise, discovers that the advertisements know his name. There are also gesture interfaces and facial recognition. And they're not the scariest things. How about the robots who raid everyone, or the police jetpacks?

2008: WALL-E (exasperated automation)

The year is 2805 and the earth has become a landfill. (We're getting there!). Among the things shown in Pixar's future movie are floating holographic screens and steerable chairs. The film also focuses on some very important issues: consumerism, poor waste management, centralized control and automation. It is perhaps the most philosophically centered one. And that's what I would desperately like to see fail in predictions.