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Sci-fi movies, especially older ones like those in the 90s, took keen pleasure in making outlandish predictions. Likewise, humanity has always been intensely optimistic about possible future achievements. Unfortunately, and sometimes, fortunately, many of these predictions never came to pass.
Between predictions of hoverboards, time travel, and space exploration, humanity had a lot of hope for its future that has yet to come to pass. At the same time, robot apocalypses, the end of the world, and humans being turned into food are also predictions that we should be glad never came to pass.
10 2001: A Space Odyssey Failed To Anticipate The End Of The Space Race
2001: A Space Odyssey is one of the classics, some might say even a monolith of the genre. This 1968 classic, set in 2001, was one of the first of its kind, and pioneered much of the technology and ideas that have become staples of the sci-fi genre.
The film follows an expedition to Jupiter, where the ship's onboard AI, HAL, goes rogue and decides to murder its crew. Among the many erroneous predictions the film makes, the biggest is that humanity would possess the technology to travel to Jupiter in 2001. While many household items nowadays provide HAL-like communication, we've thankfully yet to allow AI to govern our lives entirely.
9 Blade Runner's 2019 Is A Far Cry From Our Own
Blade Runner is set in 2019, and follows Rick Deckard, a detective of sorts in charge of hunting down replicants, human-like robots. Throughout the film, it becomes evident that these robots are more than the sum of their mechanical parts. Blade Runner explores concepts of sentience and what it means to be human. While few questions are answered, the questions themselves become most important to our understanding of the complexity of the human experience.
A deep, pondering film, Blade Runner failed to predict 2019 as it is. The skyscraper-filled mega cities of Blade Runner are not entirely alien to our modern-day world, but robot technology is nowhere near a "Tears In The Rain" type of revelation.
8 Timecop Thought We'd Have Time Travel In 1994
Timecop follows Jean-Claude Van Damme as, well, a time cop. The iconic action star must once again rise to the occasion to combat government conspiracies, US Senators, and, in a twist, time itself.
Ridiculously classic Jean-Clade Van Damme campiness aside, the predictions for the future fall flat. Timecop is set in a fictional 1994 where time travel has already been perfected, and government organizations are in place to protect time. The film was undoubtedly a ways off from our '94. However, if the movie got one thing right, it's the outdated haircuts.
7 Back To The Future Part II Foresaw Bike Helmets As A Fashion Piece
Back To The Future Part II sees Marty McFly visit an alternate 2015, where hoverboards exist, Nike shoes tighten themselves, and food can be prepared in seconds. While the latter may be almost true, people still have to microwave their meals for a bit longer. More grimly, however, the film postulates that bike helmets are a fashion item.
The time-travel classic made a lot of predictions for how the world would look in 2015, but few of them managed to land. While we eventually saw the Nike shoes featured in the film – though horribly pricy and not for anyone except collectors – we're still waiting on other items like pizza that can be made in mere seconds (not including the mere minutes it takes a super-hot oven to bake a pie) or bike helmets as outfit choices.
6 Terminator: Salvation Had An Interesting Take On 2018
When Terminator was released in 1984, the year 2018 felt like the distant future. When the spinoff/sequel Terminator: Salvation was released and finally provided fans a prolonged stay in the grim, robot-dominated future, the future first described in 1984 felt further away than ever.
Considering the movie came out in 2009 – 5 years after the in-universe Judgement Day terminates human civilization, and robots take over – it was hard to view its predictions of a robot-dominated 2018 as realistic when the iPhone was only just becoming a thing.
5 Soylent Green Makes Some Eerie Predictions That Are Thankfully Wrong
1973's Soylent Green focuses on an alternate 2022 where humanity has been devastated by world hunger, climate change, and overpopulation. An eerily familiar interpretation of the future is echoed by news networks constantly in our own 2022.
The movie, however, failed to consider that humanity's answer to these issues wouldn't be to start eating each other. The central plot twist of the film is that the Soylent company was making its food out of dead humans in a bid to combat mass starvation in an overpopulated New York.
4 Escape From New York Was Only Half Wrong About Modern-Day New York
Escape From New York follows Kurt Russell as a special forces soldier turned criminal sent into Manhattan, now a giant maximum security prison, to save the President. The movie ends with Kurt Russell destroying a tape meant to prevent World War III.
With wild predictions like Manhattan being a super-prison in 1997, Air Force One being brought down by terrorists, and the USSR still not only standing but being at war with the USA, the world of Escape From New York is an odd bit of fiction.
3 Rollerball Takes Game Show Culture To The Next Level
Rollerball depicts an alternate 2018 with no crime and no wars. Instead, nations have been replaced by corporations that control the populace. The violent game show Rollerball is now the most popular sport on Earth, with teams representing various regions.
While Rollerball's eerie predictions of a world in the clutches of corporate decision-making can only be considered half-wrong, it's hard to imagine a game show about murderous rollerblading coming onto Netflix or Disney+ anytime soon. On top of that, the film's depictions of a world without war or crime seem utopian, considering the state in which the world perpetually finds itself.
2 The Running Man Highlights A Strange Game Show Obsession With 2018
Before it was a dance move, The Running Man was a Stephen King novel and Sci-Fi movie from the '80s. Continuing an arbitrary sci-fi trend, this story is set in 2018 and features a murderous game show. Ben Richards (Arnold Schwarzenegger) has to navigate the game show in a bid to escape for freedom.
As mentioned regarding Rollerball, it's hard to imagine a murderous game show gaining any kind of ground in our own 2018 or even the modern-day, popping up on Netflix and being watched by millions. But of course, the recently announced Squid Game gameshow spinoff might lead us in a dark direction.
1 2012 Saw The Apocalypse Come And Go
Leading up to real-world 2012, people began to believe that the end of the world would coincide with the end of the Mayan calendar on December 21st, 2012. Capitalizing on the aforementioned, proven-to-be-wrong belief, 2012 (2009) imagines the doomsday scenario in big-budget ways.
While a chilling watch, 2012 came and went, and 2012 proved to be nothing more than just another disaster movie, even if it was portrayed stunningly. A solar flare never ended up heating the Earth's core enough to cause a chain of massive disasters that would nearly wipe humanity out, thankfully.