Futuristic movies are interesting, but they often fall short in regards to the future they thought we would have at the time. The world is changing, but how, we can only predict by following the current trends. Perhaps today, seeing how we have access to AI technology, we could better predict a possible future, in let’s say, 50 years. 

50 years ago, however, and even 20 years ago, there were multiple SciFi movies which predicted a future which never came to be. Here are the best of them.

2001: A Space Odyssey

This is Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece, or at least, one of his many masterpieces. Released in 1968, it got plenty of things about the future wrong. We can, of course, blame Arthur Clarke for that, the author of the eponymous book, yet the movie, while amazing, also got it wrong. In 2001, we were not even close to having sentient AIs, nor we are today, for that matter. It is a great movie, but it even used a Pan Am jet, and the company went bankrupt in 1991. 

Blade Runner

This is another masterpiece sci-fi movie, released in 1982. Starring Harrison Ford, and based upon a story from Philip K. Dick. The movie is set in a future which we fortunately haven’t seen yet. Super buildings, flying vehicles, all of that in 2019? Not likely, even though Los Angeles in 2019 has plenty of electric, self-driving cars. It’s not THAT far off. If only Tesla invented flying cars.

Back to the Future Part II

Did you really think that in the year 2015, kids would be wearing all sorts of metal suits and wildly colored clothes, have floating boards and flying cars? Well, someone did, or rather, hoped that would be the case. They also hoped that we would have shoes and sneakers which would tie themselves. That is a convenient thing that maybe shoe manufacturers should work on.

7th Street Theatre Hoquiam, WA from Hoquiam, WA, USA, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons – cropped

Terminator Salvation

We want to see John Connor fight many robots? We do, but in a movie without Arnold? Well, if Connor is played by Christian Bale and we have an amazing Sam Worthington? It passes for a good movie, but with lots of bad takes on the future. Skynet hasn’t taken over the world and robots who want to capture us and put us in a meat grinder do not exist. Such a dystopian world is really scary and we are lucky that our AIs are on a leash and still haven’t gone on a rampage. Or have they?

Gattaca

This is a very good sci-fi movie, starring Ethan Hawke. A man with inferior genes wants to be more than society allows him to. Genetic modification and improving humans is normal in this timeline. Luckily, no such thing is allowed in our present.

These are some of the best sci-fi movies you should see, but be happy that they got a lot of things about the future wrong. They are still good movies, so consider watching them, unless you already have, in which case you should watch them again.