Sci-Fi Movies That Predicted The Future With Eerie Precision
Good sci-fi movies really get your brain whirring. Could those teleportation machines one day become a reality? Will we soon be able to drive flying cars? Has any classic movie ever successfully predicted future tech? Well, when it comes to the following films, the answer was a big fat yes! Whether by luck or excellent foresight, these sci-fi films somehow anticipated the future with an unerring accuracy.
Weird Science — 3D printers
A sci-fi comedy classic, Weird Science might have seemed pretty out there upon its release in 1985. After all, it’s about two teens who “print” a real dream woman via their computer. How could something like that ever exist in real life?
While we’re not quite at that point yet, 3D printers have emerged in the years since, creating some incredible objects in the process. In fact, you can actually buy 3D-printed models of Kelly LeBrock’s Lisa online today. They’re not life-size — and they’re inanimate — but it’s still cool to see!
The Terminator — Military drones
For technophobes, The Terminator is the ultimate nightmare. Killer A.I. that wipes out most of humanity? No, thank you! But some aspects of James Cameron’s terrifying vision of the future have come true since the film dropped in 1984.
For instance, the hunter-killer plane we see in the future-war sequences was an eerie precursor of unmanned military drones. Now, those aerial vehicles are getting more use than ever before, whether it’s with the army or the police. Fingers crossed the tech doesn’t break bad!
WarGames — Cyber Warfare
At a time when online gaming was nothing but a fanciful idea, WarGames came along with a truly wild concept. Could you start a cyber war between different nations from a computer? Today, it’s certainly a more realistic possibility. And we can’t forget about the hacking, either.
Fortunately, it hasn’t yet led to anything approaching apocalyptic, although using tactics such as Distributed Denial of Service attacks can disable certain websites by flooding them with requests. That probably wouldn’t have made for a very exciting movie plot, though!
Videodrome — YouTube
As the king of body horror, David Cronenberg has directed some of Hollywood’s most gloriously icky movies. (We're looking at you, The Fly!) But it could be argued that none are more thought-provoking than the nightmarish Videodrome. There’s a strong argument that the film might’ve predicted the problems YouTube has faced when it comes to regulating content.
Studies by groups such as Quilliam, a think-tank focused on counterterrorism, have proved that the platform can be exploited by extremists to manipulate and influence its users. That’s shockingly similar to what goes down in Cronenberg’s movie.
Star Trek: The Motion Picture — Alexa and touchscreens
After years of waiting, Trekkies finally got their wish in 1979 when Star Trek: The Motion Picture hit the big screen. Who wouldn’t want to live in that utopian future? But while humanity is not quite ready to explore the universe in a spaceship, some of the tech in Star Trek has crossed over into the real world.
To give you an example, the voice-activated computer on the Enterprise is mighty similar to the Siri and Alexa digital assistants we have today. Then there’s the touchscreens we see later in the franchise. Since 2007, touchscreens have become the norm on phones and tablets.
Blade Runner — Digital billboards
A cyberpunk masterpiece, Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner is sci-fi perfection. The movie's meditation on what it means to be human still hits hard all these decades later. And aesthetically, the movie made a bang-on prediction of what our cityscapes look like now.
The massive digital billboards that pepper Rick Deckard’s surroundings are pretty close to those we see in New York’s Times Square today. We’re still waiting patiently for the awesome flying cars, though!
The Running Man — Reality TV shows
On the surface, The Running Man may look like standard ’80s action fare, but it’s packed with wonderfully unnerving ideas about where reality television could go. In fact, there have been plenty of shows that followed its lead over the years — without all the death, of course!
Survivor is a great example. Plus, as writer Steven de Souza told the New York Post, “One of the producers of American Gladiators confessed to me that he sold that concept to the network by simply copying scenes from The Running Man off a VHS and playing it in the pitch meeting.”
Soylent Green - Overpopulation, climate change, and food shortages
Given that the 1970s classic Soylent Green is set in 2022, it’s unsurprising that folks have recently looked to draw comparisons between the movie and modern-day life today. And boy, were the results chilling!
The film tells the tale of an overpopulated Earth feeling the pinch of climate change and struggling to manage its food sources. It’s proved to be uncomfortably accurate to reality. With a population of 8 billion in 2022, our planet has never been so crowded. As a result, concerns such as global warming and mass starvation have only become more pressing.
Star Wars — Holograms
While it may technically be set in the past, Star Wars still presented us with incredible pieces of tech that seemed impossible to replicate back in 1977. Lightsabers? Starships? Our own personal droids? Yes, please! The opening movie in the iconic franchise also showcased holograms.
Holographic technology became a reality in modern times. Thanks to some jaw-dropping advances, we’ve seen holographic projections of music stars performing at live shows. The ABBA avatars are particularly stunning!
Logan’s Run — Tinder and “digital health”
Youth is the order of the day in the memorable ’70s sci-fi flick Logan’s Run. The movie depicts a society that’s entirely made up of young people with little to no responsibilities. There’s just one catch: they’re all secretly living on borrowed time. When they turn 30, all citizens are executed.
Thankfully, that aspect of the story hasn’t come to pass just yet! But some of the technology we see does bear a resemblance to real-world inventions now. The dating teleportation circuit is pretty much a proto-Tinder, while the lifeclock mirrors the “digital health” craze brought on by Apple Watches.
Contagion — The COVID-19 pandemic
At the time of its release, Contagion’s story looked like a nightmare that could only exist in a movie. The real world couldn’t be struck down by a deadly pandemic in today’s age, right? Right? Well, now we all know just how possible a modern-day pandemic actually is. COVID-19 came along just nine years after the film hit theaters.
The way our society dealt with the crisis was eerily similar to what we saw on-screen. The supply shortages that came from panic buying? Check. The desperation to stop it spreading while searching for a vaccine? Check. Contagion feels more like a documentary these days.
The Terminator — AI-enhanced tanks
Unmanned drones aren’t the only thing that The Terminator was spot-on about. Back in 2019, it was revealed that the American military was putting together AI-enhanced tanks. We’re serious! The public pushback was considerable, though, forcing a rethink.
As Arnold Schwarzenegger said at an event in June 2023, “Today, everyone is frightened of [A.I.], of where this is gonna go. At [the] time [we made the movie], we had scratched the surface of A.I. Think about that. Now over the course of decades, it’s become a reality. So it’s not any more fantasy or kind of futuristic. It is here today.”
Fahrenheit 451 — Wireless earbuds
The future presented in the 1966 adaptation of Fahrenheit 451 was the stuff of nightmares. An authoritarian society where books are outlawed and burned en masse? Surely we’d all want to avoid that fate!
The dystopian act of book burning has come to pass in some regions. The sci-fi movie also managed to predict the eventual creation of wireless earbuds. Characters sport these throughout the film, decades before the tech became readily available to the public. Could many people have seen that coming back then?
I Am Legend — Batman V. Superman
Upon its release in 2007 audiences spotted an interesting detail in the background of a certain sequence in I Am Legend. It was a billboard for a fictional Superman and Batman movie. But in 2016, that very same idea became a reality in the form of Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice. Even the logo looks identical!
Mind you, this wasn’t just a random prediction. As director Francis Lawrence revealed to Collider, I Am Legend’s writer Akiva Goldsman had penned a version of the superhero mashup years prior, only for it to be dumped. So, the poster was kind of a personal Easter egg.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy — Instant translation
While The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is filled to the brim with crazy ideas, the Babel fish might just be the wildest. If you need reminding, it’s an animal that nestles into the characters’ ears and essentially acts as a universal translator.
We probably wouldn’t be down with sticking a living thing in our lobes, but could a similar device really be invented? You bet! In 2017 Google rolled out the Pixel Buds: among other things, these pieces of in-ear tech translate different languages in seconds. They’re so cool!
The Matrix — Virtual Reality
When it comes to great sci-fi plots, The Matrix is certainly up there with the best of them. The idea that our daily lives could be part of an elaborate simulation is both fascinating and terrifying in equal measure! But where are we with VR technology today?
Well, even though it’s not quite at Matrix level yet, virtual reality headsets are readily available, allowing folks to take a more active role in their gaming. Products such as the PlayStation VR2 have a proper futuristic look about them.
Ex Machina — A.I. consciousness
Good luck naming a more thought-provoking modern sci-fi movie than Alex Garland’s fantastic Ex Machina. The discussions about A.I. consciousness and how far we should take technology are prominent throughout the film.
Rather chillingly, those same conversations are happening in the real world. You only need to look at the furor surrounding ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence tool that can compose streams of dialog when requested. Is that a sign of things to come? Watch this space, folks...
Her — Epidemic of loneliness
A beautifully sad sci-fi love story, 2013’s Her details the romance between a man and a highly advanced A.I. operating system. Now, while today’s artificial intelligence isn’t quite at that stage, the movie’s depiction of loneliness in a society connected by technology proved to be a bang-on prediction.
Even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Vivek Murthy, America’s surgeon general, believed that the U.S. had been struggling with an “epidemic of loneliness.” He partly put it down to the reliance on tech for “social interactions.”
A Trip to the Moon — Landing on the Moon
It may be only 13 minutes long, but Georges Méliès’ A Trip to the Moon was a literal game-changer in the movie industry. It’s widely seen as the very first sci-fi film, having come out in 1902. Back then, the thought of actually landing on the celestial object must’ve seemed like a complete fantasy to the audience.
Surely it wouldn’t be possible? Well, as we all know, the real first trip to the Moon took place nearly 70 years later, when Apollo 11 touched down in 1969. The astronauts didn’t get there by being fired out of a cannon, though!
Interstellar — What a black hole really looks like
When Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar hit the big screen in 2014 audiences were treated to a spectacular depiction of a black hole in space. It was unlike anything we’d seen before! But was it accurate?
There were no pictures to work from at the time, so Nolan had to rely on scientific speculation and numerical data to create his space-eating beast. In 2019, though, NASA was finally able to catch a shot of a real black hole. And boy, was it similar to the movie’s effort!
Brazil — Tech headaches
Arguably Terry Gilliam’s masterpiece, Brazil is a sci-fi drama that deftly depicts what it’d be like living in an entirely bureaucratic society. To put it bluntly, it would suck! Despite the technology at the characters’ disposal, no task is ever as straightforward as it should be.
Scarily, our tech could be moving in that direction today. Whether it’s ever-changing passwords on our growing number of devices, or constant prompts to keep them fully updated, it’s turning into something of a micromanagement nightmare.
The Fifth Element — Robot bartenders and online streamers
The Fifth Element is an absolute blast: it’s got just about everything you could want from a sci-fi action movie. But in addition to that, Luc Besson’s film also managed to make some accurate predictions about our future.
For instance, years before online streamers became a thing, Chris Tucker’s extravagant character Ruby Rhod was recording and sharing his actions to a baying crowd. And robot bartending exists now as well. Mechanical servers at The Tipsy Robot in Las Vegas, Nevada, can whip up cocktails in no time!
Gattaca — Gene editing
Like all great sci-fi stories, Gattaca poses an intriguing question: what would happen to the world if genetic editing was introduced? In the movie, the policy dictates social standing. You had to have gone through the process prior to your birth, or else you’re more prone to getting sick.
“[It] eerily anticipated our own society’s current fascination with at-home genetic tests like 23andMe,” Georgia Tech professor Lisa Yaszek told CBS News. That’s not all, though. CRISPR-Cas9 makes it possible to edit human genes; the tool appeared over a decade after Gattaca’s release.
Rollerball — Digitizing books
We’re somewhat relieved that Rollerball’s titular sport hasn’t made the jump into the real world. The hard-hitting in the NFL and NHL is enough for us! Mind you, the 1975 cult classic did make a successful prediction about our future. In the movie, books and other reading materials are entirely digitized.
We’re already at a stage where physical copies of our favorite stories have transitioned over to hand-held devices. Then, there are apps such as Blinkist that take it a step further. Nonfiction books can be summarized in a matter of minutes with that tool.
Demon Seed — Smart home
Unlike other sci-fi horror monsters, Demon Seed’s Proteus IV doesn’t have a physical form. It’s a crazed A.I. that grows obsessed with its inventor’s spouse; it eventually takes over their property’s computer system. Given the wild events of the movie, we’re not sure if ’70s audiences would’ve welcomed fully functioning smart homes!
But the technology does exist today, happily, so far sans the psychotic tendencies. Just as Proteus does in the film, these automated systems can adjust the lighting and securely lock all windows and doors.
Back to the Future Part II — So many things!
Perhaps no movie has seen so many of its predictions come true than 1989’s Back to the Future Part II. It’s not even that the movie goes for safe bets – quite the contrary, in fact.
Chicago Cubs winning the World Series? Check. Donald Trump as president? Check. Self-lacing trainers!? Check. All of these things predicted in the second instalment of this iconic franchise somehow actually came true!
Minority Report — Personalized advertising
Steven Spielberg’s 2002 sci-fi action flick Minority Report predicted various inventions that have since become a reality, such as gesture-driven user interfaces and facial recognition software. But perhaps the most relevant of the lot is personalized advertising.
Anyone who goes on Facebook or buys items online knows how creepy it is to have something directly pointed at you based on your interests, and Minority Report portrayed this with unsettling accuracy.
The Truman Show — The intrusive nature of reality TV
This century has witnessed the rise of an ultra-invasive form of entertainment: reality television. One movie that foreshadowed the polarizing effect of this genre was 1998’s The Truman Show. Of course, reality TV shows were a thing long before this film, but its extreme ideas of voyeurism and obsessiveness around this subject was something new.
Looking at reality shows that came along after The Truman Show was released, such as Big Brother and Keeping Up with the Kardashians, it’s quite astonishing just how on point the movie was.
Total Recall — Self-driving cars
Do you remember that weird little robot that manned the self-driving car in 1990’s Total Recall? Thankfully, this guy didn’t make it into our real-life present, but automated cars have very much become a reality.
Not only do automobile giants like General Motors and Ford already have driverless cars in development, but the likes of Google and Uber have also become involved in the industry.
Metropolis — Androids
In terms of sheer creativity and foresight, the 1927 dystopian silent movie Metropolis is up there with the very best. It also helped introduce the world to the concept of androids, which are becoming a reality in the modern world.
Robots designed to look like humans have been a thing for a while now, featuring astonishingly lifelike appearances and mannerisms. They can walk, talk, and even appear to express emotions like humans, and we have to say it’s pretty creepy.
2001: A Space Odyssey — Tablets and space tourism
It’s no surprise that Stanley Kubrick’s sci-fi classic 2001: A Space Odyssey has stood the test of time, if only due to its scarily accurate portrayal of some future inventions.
The epic movie’s most substantial premonitions include the use of tablet computers, the concept of holidays in space, and the International Space Station itself. Talk about being right on the money.
Jetsons: The Movie — Robot vacuum cleaners
Who says that cartoons can’t make uncanny predictions as well? Released in 1990, Jetsons: The Movie proved this all too well when it foresaw the invention of the robot vacuum cleaner.
The film’s depiction of an automated cleaner that would take over the role of humans became a reality in 2002, when the Roomba was introduced to homes throughout the globe.