Top 10 Wrong Movie Predictions About the Future

Kicking off our list is the film set in 2032. Though that’s still a ways off, it’s already proven impossible since it states that there hasn’t been a single murder since 2010, let alone prisoners being cryogenically frozen since 1996. While we on the subject, imagine a world where Taco Bell is the only restaurant and yet there is no toilet paper. Seems unlikely.

Consider New York a dump? Well according to this film, things got so bad that in 1988 Manhattan became a giant maximum-security prison housing the world’s worst scum, left to form gangs and kill each other. We’re going to avoid the chance for biting social satire there and grudgingly admit that that hasn’t technically happened yet. By 1997, the planet had already emerged from World War III, while the US president was busy being kidnapped and held within said prison, instead of simply having a sex scandal with an intern. Awesome.

This prediction about the main event of 1997 being a nuclear strike by a self-aware military computer system was pretty bleak. Even bleaker was the plausible rise of skeletal robotic armies used to wipe out the rest of humanity. If you want to stick to the twisted continuity, after the events of T2, the war was postponed to 2004, but that also didn’t happen.

How about that, a time stamped prediction! Here, Stanley Kubrick’s classic predicted our colonization of space, discovery of alien artifacts and use of evil self-aware computers. Not only has space travel not advanced all that much since 1969’s moon landing, but we’re still light-years from inventing computers this evil, despite the rise of pop ups and adware. Besides, Pam Am went belly up in 1991, so that prediction was really …on the moon?

In this film, society goes off the rails in a big way in the late 1970s. This meant a financial crisis and military coup enveloping the US of A. Transformed into a fascist police state doubling as society’s church; they’ve instituted a televised annual transcontinental race based on killing innocent pedestrians. By 2000, cities are doted with giants spires and emerald domes, while the population is rife with ever-present blood lust. K, well, if you been to Boston during the Staley Cup playoffs, the last one is technically true.

Based on the 1953 dystopian novel by Ray Bradbury, this film showcased a frightening prediction of what the world would look like immediately following the atomic wars of 1990. Here, books have become outlawed. As such, the fire department are now the book burning brigade and use flame throwers to incinerate any and all literature and the dangerous ideas they contain. That means that in this future, your Kindle Fire would literally be set on fire.

If one film on this list can be said to have given itself time for its predictions to come true, it’s this one. Predicting 1980, it showcased the perfectly reasonable assumption that people would swap names for numbers, airplanes would totally replace cars, food would come in pill form, Mars was just a rocket ship away, and babies would be born from vending machines. Dang, it was so close.

This is the future we all wished for as kids. That’s right, what’s not to like, a 2015 with flying cars, weather service, rejuvenation clinics, hover boards, self drying clothing, and 19 Jaws movies! Well maybe not the last part. Interestingly, they were sort of right about two things, games no long being played with your hands and 3D movies. Well, sort of.