Dreams of Futures Past: Futuristic Movies that Got it Wrong

The Movie: Blade Runner 

The Year: 2019

I’m taking a personal hit on this one since Blade Runner is one of my favorite futuristic movies of all time. Well, it was one of my favorite futuristic movies, but the year 2019 came and went, placing the film firmly in the past. It reveals a world where languages and culture have merged into a true melting pot, space travel is a common occurrence, and genetically manufactured androids are used to help make a life a little easier (so long as they don’t develop minds of their own). The world today pretty much looks nothing like how Blade Runner predicted. We don’t even have cars that can meet emission standards, much less flying ones. Then again, with how terrible people are at keeping their eyes on the road these days, it’s probably for the best that we don’t have to deal with the Z-axis yet.

The Movie: Reign of Fire 

The Year(s): 2008 and 2020

So, technically at the time of this article being written, 2020 hasn’t officially passed, and there is the slim possibility that we might be looking at a dragon infestation in the fourth quarter of the year. However, in Reign of Fire, the dragons were unleashed in 2008, giving them 12 years to turn most of the world into a smoldering pile of ash. That never happened, so unless the dragons are really ambitious and well-organized, I don’t think we’re going to have to worry about them. I have to give Reign of Fire credit for being one of the more inventive futuristic movies though. Hollywood has predicted a lot of ways that the world might end, but never in my wildest dreams did I imagine dragons as the cause.  

If it felt like I was trying to trash those futuristic movies, I totally wasn’t. Lots of them are personal favorites of mine. Others… Well, I was trying to trash a few of them. Still, good or bad, they all failed to predict the future. There are tons of other futuristic movies out there with wildly inaccurate prophecies of the world of tomorrow might have been, and if I missed one of your favorites, let me know in the comments below. Who knows, if there are enough, maybe I’ll do a sequel. After all, a new year is right around the corner and that means plenty of more futuristic movies are going to get it wrong… Hopefully.