Buzz
Science fiction authors often place their narratives in humanity's distant future, exploring limitless possibilities. Within this vast imaginative space, creators can envision any destiny for our species. While some wisely set their tales thousands of years ahead, keeping their forecasts modest, others dive headfirst into scenarios like mind-controlled Gundams battling kaiju long before Tom Holland dons the Spider-man suit. In honor of those sci-fi films that dreamed up wild, improbable futures—and those that eerily got it right—here are ten cinematic predictions that either missed the mark or never will.
10 Every Terminator
The Terminator series revolves around time travel, resulting in numerous timelines. Each timeline is equally valid or invalid, and all are subject to complete overhaul with every new sequel. However, one common thread across all timelines is an exaggerated belief in the capabilities of robotics, artificial intelligence, and industrial manufacturing.
The Terminator foresaw an advanced AI achieving self-awareness by August 29th, 1997. Not only self-aware, but also powerful enough to seize control of nearly every global electronic system, operate them simultaneously, outsmart billions of humans, and produce an army of lethal robots. While humans accelerated Skynet's creation by reverse-engineering T-800 remnants from 1984, a glaring predestination paradox hardly justifies such an implausible scenario.
9. Escape from New York
Remaining in 1997, we encounter the grim portrayal of America envisioned by the 1981 film Escape From New York. The movie forecasted a 400% surge in crime rates by 1988 (not specifically violent crimes, but any crime, including minor offenses like littering), prompting state and federal authorities to transform Manhattan into a prison island. The follow-up, Escape from L.A., projected a similar dystopia, this time set in Los Angeles in 2013.
The future depicted in these films faces two major issues. First, it is excessively pessimistic, assuming that the rise in crime during the ’80s would escalate into a chaotic, lawless nightmare. Second, it portrays a government indifferent to critical factors such as assets, soft power, operational expenses, lost revenue, or the risks of equipping prisoners with an entire city’s resources and weaponry. It’s unsettling how vividly our past fears of the future were portrayed. One can only wonder what anxieties a potential third installment might reveal today.
8. Daybreakers
The 2009 film Daybreakers envisioned a world overrun by vampires by 2019. Not just blood-consuming creatures, which already exist in nature, but full-fledged mythical vampires—immortal, sunlight-averse, and embodying all the classic Transylvanian traits. Moreover, it suggested this transformation would occur within a mere decade.
One could easily dismiss the Daybreakers future as unrealistic due to its reliance on mythical creatures, but the real issue lies in its timeline. Between 2009 and 2019, a mere decade, the majority of the world transitions from human to vampire—or becomes vampire prey. (Imagine an epidemiological study on vampire transmission here.) Vampires manage to construct extensive underground networks to evade sunlight, design and mass-produce UV-protected vehicles, establish massive human blood farms, and set up advanced vampiric research facilities. It seems their true superpower is an unparalleled work ethic.
7. Blade Runner
Released in 1982, Blade Runner envisioned a 2019 where humanity had progressed far beyond our current reality. While the setting appears dystopian—overpopulated, impoverished, and corrupt—it suggests an underlying triumph of the human spirit that 2019 failed to achieve.
In this future, humanity has mastered space travel, established colonies across the galaxy (at least as far as Orion), and developed genetic engineering and AI technologies so advanced that they can create synthetic beings indistinguishable from humans. They even use this technology to resurrect endangered species. Add flying cars and holograms, and you get a 2019 vastly different from our own.
6. Barb Wire
Let’s give Barb Wire some credit. The film wasn’t designed to explore profound societal issues or be lauded for its precision, yet it managed to come surprisingly close to its imagined future. Barb Wire predicted a second U.S. civil war by 2017. While that didn’t occur, the nation did experience unprecedented political polarization and tension.
Where Barb Wire misses the mark, though, is in its assumption that a nightclub owner clad in tight leather outfits, spending hours on makeup and hair, would emerge as America’s hero. Squeezing into that leather bodysuit probably took just as much effort. Don’t misunderstand—Snake Plissken clearly styles his hair occasionally, but at least he has a special forces background to back it up.
5. Waterworld
Waterworld took a clever approach by setting its story in an unspecified distant future, with the creators hinting at a timeline around the 2500s. Given its post-apocalyptic setting, it’s hard to critique its predictions about technology or society. However, its portrayal of human evolution is another story.
In the film, Kevin Costner’s character is born with functional gills and webbed feet. Not the most flattering look, Costner. The last time our ancestors had gills was roughly 370 million years ago, so the likelihood of reactivating and repairing those genes is astronomically low. Alternatively, if these were entirely new genes, they would have had to evolve simultaneously, without any intermediate forms (unless his parents were partially mutated), and be fully functional immediately. That’s akin to two ordinary parents having a baby with fully functional octopus tentacles alongside human arms.
4. 2001: A Space Odyssey
Stanley Kubrick’s iconic 1968 sci-fi masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey earns a spot on this list for a peculiar reason: it accurately foresaw numerous technological advancements, yet failed to envision a future free from 1960s interior design.
The film’s predictions were remarkably precise, so much so that it sparked conspiracy theories about Kubrick faking the moon landing. It anticipated voice recognition, video calls, flat-screen TVs, and tablets. It even foresaw Russian-American collaboration on a space station, despite the Cold War raging in 1968. This makes it all the stranger that everyone in the movie appears to share the same fashion sense, hairstyles, and makeup as Austin Powers.
3. Snowpiercer
Snowpiercer envisions a 2014 where the world is plunged into a new ice age, with only a handful of survivors, most of whom endure extreme elitism and brutality. Aside from the 2014 timeline, this scenario feels eerily plausible. What makes Snowpiercer’s future so improbable is that its apocalypse stems from governments being overly concerned about climate change.
In Snowpiercer, the ice age was triggered by global governments uniting to combat climate change, deploying their top scientists to develop a large-scale stratospheric aerosol spray to reduce the sun’s intensity. All by 2014. While the cricket-eating and the global train tracks are somewhat believable, the notion that humanity would unite for the greater good and attempt to save the planet by 2014 is the most far-fetched idea on this list.
2. Mad Max
The original Mad Max foresaw a Gulf War in the ’80s (accurate so far) leading to oil production instability (still plausible) and resulting in social and economic chaos (spot on). But it didn’t stop there. The film envisioned a global financial meltdown, the collapse of governments, martial law declarations, and ultimately, a worldwide nuclear conflict. (There’s still time for this to unfold, by the way.)
All of this stems from an oil shortage. While the premise is debatable, the truly unrealistic aspect is how characters in Mad Max recklessly waste oil, even spraying it in celebration despite its scarcity. Gasoline, rebranded as Guzzolene, is dumped on people, spat into engines, and used to turn guitars into flamethrowers. Then again, human folly isn’t exactly unrealistic.
1. Every Star Trek
Star Trek wisely placed its primary narratives in the 2200s and 2300s, allowing ample time for nearly any technological or societal advancement to seem plausible. Beyond that, the futuristic technologies depicted in Star Trek have sparked real-world innovations, making their predictions increasingly credible. However, the franchise also detailed events leading up to the 2200s, some of which didn’t quite align with reality.
A prime example is found in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), which predicted that the 1990s would witness the Eugenics Wars, leading to genetically enhanced superhumans like Khan dominating the globe. The closest we’ve come to that since the ’90s is The Rock’s extraordinary ascent to fame.
