Have you ever watched a sci-fi movie from the past that was eerily correct about the way our lives have unfolded in the future?
It’s actually not that surprising, as scientists have often cited the futuristic technology they saw in science fiction stories for inspiring them to come up with a way of making those ideas into a reality.
The Watch With Us team has put together a list of five sci-fi movies that accurately predicted the future.
And they did it so well that you may not realize how they did it until you witness some examples of the films in question.
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‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ (1968)
There’s so much happening in Stanley Cuprick‘s 2001: A Space Odyssey that you may have overlooked the astronauts watching their tablet computers while eating their space dinners. That’s because we live in an era where watching things on our tablets has become commonplace. But that technology didn’t exist in 1968. Heck, it didn’t even exist in the year 2001!
2001 also famously features one of the most memorable A.I. characters in film, the HAL 9000 (Douglas Rain). HAL is the forerunner of Siri, Alexa and every other virtual assistant you’ve ever had. Except those A.I. programs haven’t tried to murder us — yet. If artificial intelligence ever evolves to the point where it decides to collectively kill humanity, we can always point back to this film and say, “It was a really bad idea to let HAL control the ship.”
2001: A Space Odyssey is streaming on Max.
‘Minority Report’ (2002)
Thus far, Philip K. Dick’s concept of Precrime still solely exists in the realm of fantasy and sci-fi rather than in reality. Steven Spielberg‘s adaptation of Minority Report still looks a little too far in the future for a film set in 2054. But the thing this movie absolutely nailed was the relationship between people and advertising.
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As demonstrated through the movie, there’s an unprecedented amount of targeted advertising everywhere John Anderton (Tom Cruise) goes. All of the ads call out to him by name and use his previous selections and preferences as a template to sell him more stuff, even when he’s on the run from his fellow officers.
As scary as it sounds, we already live in that part of the future. Algorithms keep track of our search engine history, and it’s not uncommon to see an ad for something you mentioned offhand in a private chat. These ads may not be calling your name, but they know you all too well.
Minority Report is streaming on Paramount+.
‘The Terminator’ (1984)
A.I. plays a big role in James Cameron‘s The Terminator, but it isn’t the killer robots from the future that were accurately predicted here. The idea of physically sending out humanoid-shaped android soldiers into the field of battle became obsolete even before it was ever technically feasible. But drone warfare is very real, and Cameron nailed that part of the future.
The film features brief glimpses of humanity’s war against the machines, and one of the weapons used against people was automated drones that were armed with some heavy ordinance. Modern drones may not be as sleek as these creations from a 1984 movie, but recent reports about Ukraine using drones to take out several Russian aircraft are prime examples of why drone warfare is here to stay.
The Terminator is streaming on Max.
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‘Total Recall’ (1990)
The idea of self-driving cars didn’t start with Total Recall. But director Paul Verhoeven‘s 1990 adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s story added new wrinkle to that notion: Automated driverless cabs. On-the-run hero Quaid (Arnold Schwarzenegger) has to commandeer one of the Johnny Cabs to escape some bad guys who are out to kill him. (Fun fact: Star Trek: Voyager’s Robert Picardo lent his voice and likeness to Johnny Cab.)
In the present, Google’s Waymo automated cabs are driving around a handful of cities, including Los Angeles. There’s no need to have an actual artificial cabby in these models, and the driver’s seat is empty unless a Waymo employee is riding along. These self-driving cabs may not be perfect, but they work well enough for a part of Total Recall’s future to be a permanent part of our present.
Total Recall is streaming on Paramount+.
‘The Truman Show’ (1998)
Reality television wasn’t a new phenomenon even in 1998, but The Truman Show took things to a ridiculous new level and ended up predicting the way that reality shows have found an improbably large audience. Jim Carrey plays Truman Burbank, the star of the world’s biggest reality series, The Truman Show. Except nobody told Truman that his entire life was a lie or that everyone around him was an actor.
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The sci-fi aspect of this story is that Truman’s life plays out on a colossal soundstage where even the weather is artificial. The creator of the show, Christof (Ed Harris), may have raised Truman by proxy, but he didn’t raise an idiot. Truman eventually realizes there’s something unnatural about his life before attempting to escape, which only leads to bigger ratings for the show.
In the present, we’ve seemingly got a nation full of people who would gladly be filmed 24/7, and many of them broadcast their lives on social media. The Truman Show may not only have predicted the future, it also partially created it.
The Truman Show is streaming on Hoopla.
