When it comes to cinema, the future is often associated with science fiction: an essential element of this art form since its birth. Who among us does not remember the image of the spacecraft crashing "into the eye" of the moon, in the film based on the novel by Jules Verne of 1902, “A Trip to the Moon”? Later, in his 1927 film “Metropolis,” Fritz Lang created a vast cityscape of Art Deco skyscrapers crisscrossed by flying cars and monorail trains. “Metropolis” is set in 2026, a few years from today. We can say with certainty that Lang's predictions will not come true.
And I'm in good company: there are many films that have made the wrong predictions. Here are 10 for you. . (There is also a video, if you want to see it: and we take this opportunity to tell you to subscribe to the new Futuroprossimo youtube channel! We are preparing others.)
Replicants, flying cars and 'cubed' video calls (Blade Runner)
In 2019, the movie “Blade Runner” shows a dark and eerie Los Angeles with huge digital billboards, smoking industrial chimneys and enormous pyramids surrounded by cars whirring in the night sky. Sure, downtown Los Angeles has developed a lot in the last 40 years, but none of this.
Ridley Scott's Los Angeles is very different - most notably the replicating humanoids, which display far greater intelligence, agility, and human likeness than today's robotic technology, which is truly rudimentary by comparison.
Yet, there is something more advanced today: in one scene, Deckard (Harrison Ford) makes a video call with Rachel (Sean Young) that seems almost ridiculous: our smartphones are much more advanced than that sort of relic used in the film: )
Judgment day (Terminator 2)
Los Angeles again, this time on August 29, 1997. In "Terminator 2" a real Apocalypse actually takes place that day. Its direct consequences are not shown, because the film jumps forward two decades, but we understand what happened. The city has been reduced to a gray wasteland littered with rubble, skeletons, and twisted steel. Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) explains that three billion people died on Judgment Day, victims of a "nuclear fire" unleashed by an evil artificial intelligence called Skynet.
Luckily, on the real August 29, 1997, there was none of this. Oh God, I'll point out one event: that day Kibble was born. Doesn't it tell you anything? Well, after a few years she would change her name to Netflix. In other words: Judgment Day was only for DVDs. At the moment. But if you consider that someone warns us that artificial intelligences are truly becoming sentient, perhaps we should take a small warning.
Extreme supranational totalitarianism (1984)
Michael Radford's “1984” is the film adaptation of George Orwell's famous novel. Like the book, the film depicts an authoritarian superstate called Oceania that covers Britain, Ireland, the Americas, Australia, New Zealand, and a large swath of southern Africa.
Guess what year it takes place? Exact. The protagonist, Winston Smith, is a humble worker for the Ministry of Truth in this country ruled by Ingsoc, a totalitarian regime that operates under the slogan “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength." Inspired by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, Ingsoc controls the population with several extreme measures, including the Thought Police, a police organization that uses microphones, telescreens, informants and other surveillance tools to eradicate "thought crime".
Fortunately, in the real 1984 there was no country called Oceania. There wasn't even a thought police, nor the concept of “thought crime”. Yet, the fear is that the predictions of "1984" are getting closer and closer to a form of reality, between Newspeak abused by the media and politicians, and the widespread use of "electronic snoops" in the form of computer Trojans.
Hunger, climate change and overpopulation (Soylent Green)
We would almost be tempted to say that this film got its predictions right. After all, hunger, climate change and overpopulation are all problems of these years, but not to the extent represented in “Soylent Green”. A 1973 film that imagined New York in 2022 (in Italy it was released with the title “2022, the survivors”) as an arid and dystopian hellscape. The film's preamble outlined the general state of humanity concentrated beyond belief in cities: dirty and dysfunctional megacities where hunger and injustice are rampant.
Ok, let's seriously compare the movie to reality. The New York of “Soylent Green” is populated by over 40 million people. Today's is home to "only" 18,8 million inhabitants. In the film, massive overpopulation puts a strain on the food supply, forcing New Yorkers to eat synthetic foods. There are comparisons, it's true: the "synthetic" food industry is growing and could be worth 10 billion dollars by 2028, but at least it's not made with human beings (sorry if I spoiled something for you, but after 50 years I feel authorized to do so).
Murder TV Shows (The Running Man)
I'll make it short: reality TV today has not yet degenerated to the point of showing a real murder. However, in the 1987 film “The Running Man” (In Italy “L'implacabile”) a 2017 with shows of this kind was expected. Paul Michael Glaser's film depicts an American police state in which alleged criminals are maimed and killed on television to distract people from government tyranny and ongoing social dysfunction.
Show host Damon Killian (Richard Dawson) is very happy to tell about the inmates' suffering. But when he introduces contestant Ben Richards, a muscular big boy who has been unfairly framed, he finds out about him. Richards, you know, is played by Arnold Schwarzenegger: need I say more?
Mayan Cataclysm (2012)
Roland Emmerich's “2012” is a fun disaster movie about the Mayan prophecy that was supposed to come true on December 21, 2012, the final date of the 5.125-year-long Mayan calendar. Some have hypothesized that this date meant the end of the world: a sea of books and debates swirled around us for a long time, only for us all to realize that perhaps we had interpreted the thing wrong.
Nonetheless, none of this has stopped Sony-Columbia from spending around $ 200 million on a film that shows the destruction of nearly all of the world's famous monuments, both natural and man-made. In its own way, a liberating spectacle.
Global Infertility (The Children of Men)
“Children of Men” is a 2006 film set in 2027, and depicts the results of two decades of human infertility. A phenomenon that has destroyed most of the world and reduced the United Kingdom to a war zone. The protagonist is Theo (Clive Owen), a cynical bureaucrat enlisted to help a resistance movement fighting against the tyrannical police state that rules in those parts.
Director Alfonso Cuaron has been praised for his compelling sequences, in an English capital just more sloppy than today.
Apart from this aesthetic note, the film's predictions missed the mark: already in 2006, the year of the film's release, the English Office for National Statistics estimated that the British population would increase from 60 million in 2006 to 65 million in 2016, and to 70 million in 2028. And we're going even stronger: in 2022 the UK population is already at 68,2 million.
If he had known, Clive Owen would have saved himself a lot of trouble.
Alien Invasion (Edge of Tomorrow)
Based on the short story “All You Need Is Kill” by Japanese author Hiroshi Sikurazaka, “Edge of Tomorrow” (in Italian “Senza Domani”) is about a hostile alien invasion in the year 2015. Good luck, if you consider that it was released in 2014! The film follows Major William Cage (Tom Cruise) as he navigates a time loop and continually fights major battles against aliens who seem to know all the moves in advance.
Thankfully, we made it through 2015 without being invaded by aliens, and no army deployed troops wearing elaborate battle suits. More than anything else uncomfortable: in the film they did not carry hand weapons, but they were inside a sort of rather uncomfortable exoskeleton. Could this be why they are killed for most of the scenes?
Journeys to Jupiter (2001: A Space Odyssey)
Our 20s are seeing the start of a new space race, driven by the commercial sector rather than NASA. On July 11, 2021, Richard Branson, CEO of Virgin Galactic, went up there. on July 21 of the same year it was the turn of Jeff Bezos, the father of Amazon.
Pages of history, but nothing compared to those that describe space tourism in the film "2001: A Space Odyssey". There are manned flights there that target Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system. Today we have already sent 9 spacecraft to that planet, but they were tiny compared to the Discovery One spacecraft seen in the film.
I believe the technology will have to improve dramatically before Kubrick's predictions come true.
Jaws 19 (Back to the Future Part II)
In “Back to the Future Part II,” Marty McFly finds himself in 2015, where he attends a movie theater with a holographic “Jaws 19” billboard. The hologram advances and almost bites him! At the time the film "Jaws" was much loved and very popular, but even then I wouldn't have bet on seeing another 15 sequels (in 1989, at the release of "Back to the Future Part II", we were already at "Jaws IV" ).
Yet, I too (like Robert Zemeckis) made a mistake: I didn't consider that the void left by “Jaws” would be filled by the “Sharknado” series.
Great Jupiter!
