Dreams of Futures Past: Futuristic Movies that Got it Wrong
The Movie: 2012
The Year: 2012
I remember back when 2012 hit theaters, everyone was still nervous about the whole Aztec calendar supposedly predicting the end of the world. Personally, I just thought the Aztec’s hit 2012 and said, “I think that’s far enough into the future, let’s take a break and go talk to those guys in shiny clothes wandering in the jungle.” 2012 sought to take advantage of that “prophecy” with a natural disaster movie of biblical proportions. Earthquakes tore the planet asunder, unfathomable storms raged across the lands, volcanos unleashed devastating eruptions as the world tried to shake off humanity once and for all. Now, I’ll admit my college years are a bit of a blue, but I definitely don’t remember any of that actually happening.
The Movie: The Postman
The Year: 2013
Want to know something funny? When I first started working on gathering together futuristic movies that totally blew their predictions, The Postman was totally unbelievable. However, recent events have suggested that a certain troll with a distinct pumpkin complexion lurking in the bowels of the white house is actually seeking to destroy the USPS. So, while The Postman might have gotten the year wrong, it might not be totally off when it comes to the foretelling of a few loyal postmen toiling to deliver messages across a divided nation. I’ll be the first to admit that the film itself isn’t exactly “good,” but it’s shifting from fiction to fact relatively quickly. Still, because it got the year wrong, I’m still including it among the rest of these flicks.
The Movie: Back to the Future Part II
The Year: 2015
When I was a kid, the second Back to the Future movie was my favorite because of the sequence where Marty McFly and Doc Brown traveled to the far off year of 2015. Growing up, I dreamed of cruising down the street on my hoverboard to see Jaws 19 in 3-D before grabbing a Pepsi at the Cafe 80s. I guess Marty screwed that up when he fixed the timeline, because 2015 came and went, and we still don’t have hoverboards. Of all the futuristic movies to get it wrong, this was the most heartbreaking. Sure we got all sorts of other cool stuff like smartphones and video games that actually look good, but I wanted holograms and flying cars, damnit! I still love this movie, but it’s definitely one of the least accurate futuristic movies of all time. Though, there was one part that they kind of got right…
The Movie: The Running Man
The Year(s): 2017-2019
Too bad for Stephen King fans, the future predicted in The Running Man hasn’t quite come to pass. Though, with some of the horrible reality series out there, I think we’re only a stone’s throw away from watching people hunt each other for sport on TV. The film starts in 2017, when a soldier ends up in prison for refusing to open fire on civilians (something that cops have proven all too willing to do recently). Two years later, he attempts to escape and upon recapture is given a chance at fame on a TV show where modern gladiators hunt contestants. Those who survive get their freedom. Those who don’t… Well, you can probably guess. Despite getting the years wrong, I have a feeling that The Running Man series might be coming along any day now…
The Movie(s): The Terminator Franchise
The Year(s): 1997 (Judgement Day), 2004 (Rise of the Machines), 2017 (Genisys), 2018 (Salvation)
Like Mad Max, Terminator is a franchise of futuristic movies that has gotten it wrong over and over again. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad that killer androids aren’t exterminating the human race, but that doesn’t make its prediction of the apocalypse hitting in 1995 any more accurate. Of course, once the makers of the series realized 95 wouldn’t be the end of the world, they decided to mess with the timeline a bit and kept pushing the robot-apocalypse back. Throwing up their hands in frustration, the series rebooted everything once again with Dark Fate. This time they kept the year a bit ambivalent though, which is probably for the best since robots are still a long way from actually being threatening.