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Movies set in the near future which is now the past in real life. (1 Viewer)

Hunter P

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I wanted to revisit some movies which are set in the "future" but the movie is old enough now that the "future" date in the movie has passed in real life. Easy examples: 1984, 2001 and Escape from New York (set in 1997).

I get a kick out of watching shows like the old Star Trek shows where their spaceship is operated by LED push buttons. Or some 1980's movie set in the year 2000 and they pull out one of those walkie-talkie sized cell phones.:emoji_thumbsup:

The purpose of this post was to get help on identifying what other movies are set in times which are now expired.
 

Garrett Lundy

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Yeah, Terminator & Terminator 2

Soylent Green
Robocop
A whole bunch of The Outer Limit Episodes. (We should be at war with saturn about now.....)
 

todd s

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We are only 10 years from the time of Back to the Future, part 2.

Which did predict the future....In the movie. Marty sees a sign where a team from Florida wins the World Series.
 

Rob Gardiner

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Back to the Future II, the first sequel to the hit 1985 movie Back to the Future, made no prediction, correct or otherwise, about the results of the 1997 World Series.

Rather, the film predicts that the Chicago Cubs beat Miami in the 2015 World Series. Whether this eventually turns out to be true remains to be seen.


Back on topic,

Buck Rogers predicts that NASA will launch America's last deep space probe in 1987.

According to Star Trek, we should have fought the Eugenics Wars in the 1990s.
 

Leo Kerr

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Don't forget Blade Runner. I seem to remember that it takes place in 1997, but don't quote me on that - it's been some years since I've seen it.

Leo
 

Haggai

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Unless the Florida Marlins move to the American League, the Cubs aren't going to be playing them in any World Series. It is possible that the Cubs will play the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in the 2015 World Series, but I don't think it's going too far out on a limb to say that that's not exactly likely. :)
 

Pete-D

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The Transformers Movie (1985) begins in the year 2005 ... which probably sounded really futuristic back then, heh.
 

Scott Simonian

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When we hit the year 2000 some movies lost a little luster. They were no longer the "future" but had become the past. One that always sticks in my head is Strange Days. I used to love this movie a lot. (I still like it.)

For those who haven't seen it the movie opens the morning of New Year's Eve of 99'.(or maybe it was the day before New Year's Eve. I need to watch this movie again.)

Now I look at it and wonder why we still don't have some technology. In the same movie people had video answering machines, real virtual reality, [rant]they even had 16:9 tv's everywhere with native 16:9 content![/rant] I wasn't seeing that for a few years after 99'.
 

Sam Favate

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Didn't the astronauts on the TV Planet of the Apes launch in 1988? And of course, the revolution of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes happened in about 1991.
 

DavidPla

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I never really understood why they'd put a year for certain films set in the future. I'm more of a fan of "In the Not So Distant Future" or "In the VERY Distant Future" or "A Long Time Ago..." That way the film doesn't age as bad when the time comes.

Imagine if "Star Wars" opened with "32 B.C. in a Galaxy Far, Far Away"
 

Alex Spindler

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My favorite example is Escape from L.A. because Carpenter kept the timeline of the original film. The earthquake shown in the intro takes place in 1994, in keeping with the timeline, although the film was released in 1996.
I'm also reminded of the slew of movies that came out with the millenium bug as a plot point of detail, like Entrapment. I think End of Days spent some considerable amount of exposition about it happening around the millenium too.
 

GeorgePaul

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I don't think this is a trivial point: Soylent Green (the film) is set in New York City in the year 2020--presenting a scenario that may yet come to pass.

This date was changed from Harry Harrison's original novel ( Make Room! Make Room! ), which more routinely (and not as interestingly, IMHO) envisioned a world ruined and overrun by overpopulation by the year 2000.
 

Hunter P

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In what year was Robocop set?



As for my general question, I especially want to see movies that envisioned what the near future would be like so that I can guffaw at how off they are. Especially when it comes to gadgets and technology.


And to flip the topic, I wonder if there were any predictions (per se) that a filmmaker got right? For instance, having something like the cell phone in a 1940's film.

Remember those 1940's and 50's cartoons where they showed the "home of the future" and stuff? They had futuristic gadgets in there mostly for gags but I wonder if any became actual products.

I am sure there are some spy movies, like James Bond, that had some gadgets which seemed far fetched at the time but are probably in existance now. Like mini cameras and listening devices.
 

Ray H

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Weren't the characters in Demolition Man cryogenically frozen in 1996?
 

Mark Hawley

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Robocop never specified the year, it was just obvious that it took place sometime in the near future.

Ditto for Clockwork Orange and even Brazil (though since that combines a futuristic atmosphere with a noirish Thirties atmosphere, it's implied that it may take place in an alternate universe.)
 

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