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.