A Few Things That Old Sci-Fi Movies Got Right About Society Today

These crazy ideas sometimes turn into a reality, like a unique service or product that’s never been offered before. 

In the past, these types of light-bulb moments often ended up in sci-fi movies where anything “futuristic” got a pass because, after all, it’s just fiction, and anybody could care less if they become true or not. 

But to everybody’s surprise, a few of these sci-fi movies did get it right, and we’re now enjoying what people in the 70s and 80s only thought was too crazy ever to happen. 

Here are some things that decades-old movies got right about the future. 

Total Recall

Released in the 1990s, this American sci-fi movie starred Arnold Schwarzenegger as a troubled construction worker who was having troubling dreams about Mars. In the movie, it was 2084, and there were a lot of predictions left and right. 

One of the more accurate ones was total-body scanners in airports. The movie scene shows Schwarzenegger running through what looks like a body scanner that showed his skeleton and gun. 

In American airports, millimeter-wave machines are used to see what items are on a passenger’s body. It doesn’t show all the bones in a person’s body, but it does give a pretty accurate image of what they have on them.

Another prediction that hits close to the spot is self-driving cars. Although the ones that did the driving were actually avatars in the driver’s seat. 

Today, we have self-driving cars that are engineered with radar sensors and video cameras. All these devices work to ensure the car doesn’t hit pedestrians and stays on roads. Moreover, these cars have software that sends instructions for accelerating, braking, and steering. 

Blade Runner 

Blade Runner was regarded as one of the best science fiction films since it was released in 1982. Harrison Ford did a great job in his role, and so did the rest of the crew when they made some unusually accurate predictions. 

In the movie, one prescient depiction of the future was digital billboards that are larger than life. 

It was referred to as an outdoor advertising scheme in 2019 Los Angeles, where dynamic and live advertisements could be seen through huge billboards up in the sky. 

Today, it’s probably commonplace in all major cities all over the world. Not only do we have digital billboards that feature live and pre-recorded ads, but these billboards can have such realistic images that make it hard to distinguish which is real and which isn’t. 

The Fifth Element

You may know Bruce Willis as that man from all the Die Hard films, but he actually starred in one of the most accurate sci-fi movies ever to be made. 

The Fifth Element.

This 1997 sci-fi has made some eerily accurate predictions that everybody wondered if someone secretly traveled to the future. From artificial intelligence to home automation, this movie checks a lot of boxes. 

The Internet of Things (IoT) movement was already a thing during that time which is why it’s understandable that this movie predicted something about homes powered by smart features such as home security, smart kitchens, and video doorbells. 

Robots were also depicted in the movie to provide security for humans. Today, we have that exact technology, except that they don’t look like real human beings. They can, however, take the place of human security guards in real-life settings. 

Companies like Robot Robots invented the Robot Security System, ideal for public venues, parking lots, and logistics and data centers. 

Robocop

Robocop was convincingly spot on a certain aspect of technology widely used these days—facial recognition. 

The 1987 version of the film had a scene where one of the guys who ambushed and tortured the protagonist, Alex Murphy, recognizes RoboCop’s past self. RoboCop, during that scene, used a facial recognition program when he recalled an encounter with this person.

This scene strikes quite the resemblance in the technology that many companies, organizations, and governments rely on.  This technology is more useful for security purposes these days than how it was used in the movie.

In today’s society, we have facial recognition technology being used everywhere. From shopping malls to traffic lights, everybody’s face has gotten detected and stored in a database for security purposes.