Although much of what we love about watching movies is their ability to transport us to far off fantasy worlds where we can experience and live out our wildest dreams, they can often prove to be eerily accurate when it comes to predicting the future.
While many of these depictions seem far-fetched at the time, a remarkable number of them have come strangely close to reality.
In this short article, we will give you a quick run-down of some of the most impressive predictions of the future made by movies!
The Cable Guy (1996)
Although it is one of Jim Carey’s lesser known — and lesser appreciated in our opinion — movies, the 1996 dark comedy made a uniquely accurate prediction about the future we now find ourselves in.
In one scene Jim Carrey’s character, the slightly odd Chip Douglas, somehow managed to predict with striking accuracy the rise of smart phone culture. In one line, Chip Douglas launches into a tirade and declares that “soon every American home will integrate their television, phone and computer!”.
Given that many American homes are now driven by cloud-based software solutions that integrate a diverse range of web-based services such as video and voice calls, movie streaming services and live TV, Chip Douglas very much hit the nail on the head!
Contagion (2011)
Perhaps one of the eeriest movie predictions — and one that certainly hits very close to home — is the bleak vision of the future set out in Steven Soderbergh’s 2011 film Contagion.
In this atmospheric 2011 thriller, Soderbergh creates a bleak near-future world in which a global pandemic has gripped the world. This leads to governments across the world struggling to contain the virus as it spreads through communities wreaking havoc in its wake. These attempts to contain the spread of the virus are undermined by the worrying spread of misinformation, with communities rapidly turning on each other in a desperate fight to survive.
Although not going quite so far as to make accurate predictions about the future Luna price — although we might forgive them for that one — Contagion is nevertheless an incredibly eerie vision of a fictious future that seems all too real given the events of the last two years.
Wall-E (2008)
Wall-E depicts a planet Earth rendered essentially uninhabitable by the ravages of climate change, with the last humans living as obese, over-indulged space tourists who communicate via video communication feeds and rely on meal replacement smoothies for nutrition.
While the vision of the obese space tourist was undoubtedly designed for comedic effect, there is an uncomfortable strain of truth that runs throughout it. In particular, our heavy reliance on virtual communication, soaring obesity rates, extreme weather events rendering parts of the planet uninhabitable and the weird rise of meal replacement products that seek to bring maximum efficiency to our lives.
These remarkable depictions are viewed by many as Wall-E accurately predicting the future — with the message behind the movie being one we should all pay heed to!
The Truman Show (1998)
Released in 1998, The Truman Show is in our opinion one of Jim Carrey’s best performances — comedic or straight! When viewed as a comment on a future that lay just a few years ahead, it also stands as a remarkably accurate prediction of the future.
Rather than predicting specific events such as price movements in the crypto market, weather events, or what the Luna crypto price will be, The Truman Show is an insightful comment on the rise and excesses of modern reality TV. While reality TV was certainly around when The Truman Show was released in 1998, it perfectly captures its excesses and risks.
The rise of 24/7 entertainment streaming, celebrity culture, smartphones and social media have only made the core message behind The Truman Show more relevant, and will certainly make it worthy of a re-watch!
2001: Space Odyssey (1968)
Widely considered one of the greatest films of all time, Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 masterwork is both a visual feast and an incredibly insightful comment on the future. Fans of the film praise it for its remarkable scientific accuracy and the prescience of many of the technological elements worked into the script.
Of the many predictions contained in the film, there are interactive computer systems akin to what we find in our modern smartphones, an international space station eerily similar to the one launched in recent years, and even forms of space tourism that look almost identical to those developed by the likes of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson. It seems that the only thing it failed to predict were the rise of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum and Luna — but we might forgive Kubrick for that!
Arguably, its eeriest and most relevant prediction relates to the errant computer that turns on the film’s main characters. This stands as an important reminder of the power we hold when creating different forms of artificial intelligence and the dangers present in such a task.
Whether or not the artificial intelligence evangelists of today will take notice of these warnings, however, remains to be seen!
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