20 times movies accurately predicted the future

The 2002 Tom Cruise movie minority report unwittingly gave us a glimpse into the future of advertising. The film showed Cruise’s character receiving ads tailored to his specific interests, which is now part of daily life. 

The 1935 film The Tunnel was about the goal to build an Atlantic tunnel from England to the United States. The film featured the Channel Tunnel as an existing piece of technology, which has actually been in use since 1994. Hopefully, one day the former tunnel will exist, too. 

Not only is 2001: A Space Odyssey somehow referenced in about half of the movies we see today, but it’s also referenced in our everyday lives. The film featured tablet computers, a reality that has been part of our lives for well over a decade. 

The 2007 film I Am Legend featured an advertisement for a film about Batman against Superman. In 2016, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice premiered. 

Total Recall predicted driverless cars. While we don’t have driverless cars in every corner of the world, they do exist in some places, and it’s only a matter of time before they’re everywhere. 

The 1979 film Americathon was set in the late 1990s. It featured multiple realities about America that have since come true, including the country being in severe debt, China becoming a world power, and more. 

The film Blade Runner had multiple scenes where characters communicated via video chat. The technology for that didn’t exist at the time, but it certainly does now. We can all chat via video through our phones any time we want. 

In Back to the Future Part II, the Cubs won the World Series. The film had the team finally winning in 2015, which was a remarkably close prediction. The Cubs nearly made it to the series that year, and they won it all in 2016.  

Reality TV already existed before The Truman Show debuted, but the Jim Carrey film took it a step further, predicting the next trend in the TV genre. The Truman Show depicted the eponymous character being filmed as he lived his everyday life, a popular concept in reality TV today. 

The Running Man also predicted reality TV. The 1987 film featured multiple wild scenarios being filmed for the enjoyment of others, many of which have since come to fruition. 

The 1988 film Akira took place in 2019 and featured a dystopian Tokyo in preparation to host the 2020 Olympic Games, with some characters in the film believing the games should be canceled. In real life, Tokyo was slated to host the 2020 Olympic Games, but they had to be postponed by a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Some real-life citizens thought the games should’ve been canceled altogether that go-around.  

When The Terminator first came out, it was hard for audiences to imagine a world in which the military actually used drones for its work. Decades later, we don’t have to imagine that world. 

In the classic romantic comedy You’ve Got Mail , Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks’ characters formed a relationship through email. These days, many people communicate regularly through email, and lots of people form romantic relationships through the computer. 

Too many pieces of media predicted the COVID-19 pandemic. The 2011 film centered around a deadly virus wreaking havoc on the world. Sound familiar?

The 1985 film Brazil featured quite a few pieces of technology that came to fruition in real life. There were gadgets to aid in basic activities of daily life, and there were lots and lots of computers. 

When Her came out in 2013, the film was ridiculed for having such a ridiculous plot. How could a human fall in love with a robot? Fast forward a decade, and we’ve all read headlines about someone having a romantic relationship with an AI platform. 

The Matrix featured characters living inside virtual realities. Of course, we don’t actually live inside a digital simulation, but many of us do spend significant portions of our lives on virtual platforms. 

A Trip to the Moon, a silent film from the early 1900s, predicted the eponymous event that would take place about 70 years later. The details weren’t all correct, but the film got the gist of it right. 

The 1972 film The Man featured the United States having its first Black president. In the film, he gets the job through the order of succession after the death of the sitting president. In reality, of course, the United States’ first Black president, Barack Obama, was elected by the people. 

Christopher Nolan’s 2014 film Interstellar showed what a black hole might look like. When NASA released photographs of an actual black hole, the Interstellar rendering was incredibly similar.