The Future continued

One thing I'm not sure we can work into our project, but would love to see...is the outdated versions of "the future." Science fiction has been around for a while and there have been some great movies, books, and television shows set in futures that are happening right now! I mean what is happening now compared to what people THOUGHT 2011 was going to look like? Now that looks like a lot of fun.


Hmmm...let's see what I can find!



The easiest to poke at is Back to the Future II (1989). Set in 2015, I'm pretty sure we won't be driving flying cars or go cursing around on hover boards. But wouldn't that have been great! The way the future is portrayed in this movie is really funny, but considering this was a comedy maybe we can forgive the inaccurate predictions for the future. Could we maybe count the Segway as being as close to a "hover board" as we want or will get to? I'm not sure that it's as cool as a hover board, but they are all over the place now! You can see Epcot, Paris, Amsterdam, and just about any tourist location by Segway.


Another favorite of mine would be the Terminator movies. The first Terminator (1984) sees a future controlled by machines after a major nuclear blast takes out most of the human race. The "Judgement Day" as it is named in the second movie is set to take place 1997. So far as I know we have not achieved artificial intellegence yet with computers, and with this kind of theory of what could happen who want to? Other than Steve Jobs returning to Apple and Dolly the cloned sheep being presented to the world I think 1997 was nuclear war free... But considering the 6 years between the first movie and the second, the special effects in the first movie were beyond laughable. I like the story in the first movie, but watching it can be tough sometimes between the clothing (accurate enough for the time) and the bad effects!




Finally, I'll take a look at a movie that was based off a graphic novel: V for Vendetta. Most of the "present" action of the original book was set in 1997. Although at the time it became a film they were not using actual dates. It was set "in the near future." The idea was that after narrowly escaping a nuclear war a more totalitarian government would take over. While none of these events have even remotely come true, it's the idea that this is one person's theory. There was a quote from one of the original authors of the novel that I really enjoyed: "The simple fact that much of the historical background of the story proceeds from a predicted Conservative defeat in the 1982 General Election should tell you how reliable we were in our roles as Cassandras" (taken from imdb.com). The quote refers to Cassandra from Greek Mythology and how she was doomed to see the future, never to be believed (sometimes the telling changes the outcomes). For some reason I really enjoyed this movie. The images and the storyline were amazing. I'm not usually in for the "heavy" stories, but this was different.