# Futuristic Sci-Fi Movies Set in a Year That Has Come to Pass **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 9, 2006, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/futuristic-sci-fi-movies-set-in-a-year-that-has-come-to-pass/339223 "2006-01-09T22:31:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Merkwurdigliebe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/74df32/32.png) [@Merkwurdigliebe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merkwurdigliebe)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2006, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/futuristic-sci-fi-movies-set-in-a-year-that-has-come-to-pass/339223/21 "2006-01-10T02:41:46Z")
I will mention here: “Strange Days” is set in 1999. Its kind of futuristic I suppose. Its a pretty good movie. ---
**Author:** ![Linty\_Fresh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Linty\_Fresh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Linty_Fresh)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2006, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/futuristic-sci-fi-movies-set-in-a-year-that-has-come-to-pass/339223/22 "2006-01-10T02:45:32Z")
> [@Gangster Octopus](#): > > 1997 was a very bad year, not only was it the year of Judgement Day but World War III was in full chaos and the President crashed into the Maximum Security prison of New York City in _Escape From New York_. And the earthquake to end all earthquakes happened in 2000, according to **Escape from LA**. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2006, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/futuristic-sci-fi-movies-set-in-a-year-that-has-come-to-pass/339223/23 "2006-01-10T02:46:19Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > _Max Headroom_ was set twenty minutes in the future; surely that’s happened by now. No . . . It ain’t 20 minutes into the future **yet!** 😃 ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2006, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/futuristic-sci-fi-movies-set-in-a-year-that-has-come-to-pass/339223/24 "2006-01-10T02:49:02Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > **1984** , which came to pass except for most of it. (There _was_ a guy named Wilbur who lived in England in that year.) But there was no such guy in the book, nor in the movie. (I think you mean “Winston.”) ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2006, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/futuristic-sci-fi-movies-set-in-a-year-that-has-come-to-pass/339223/25 "2006-01-10T02:51:26Z")
> [@Linty Fresh](#): > > And the earthquake to end all earthquakes happened in 2000, according to **Escape from LA**. Actually, the earthquake to end all earthquakes happened in 2005. Twice. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2006, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/futuristic-sci-fi-movies-set-in-a-year-that-has-come-to-pass/339223/26 "2006-01-10T03:00:13Z")
ITR champion writes: \> Orwell set 1984 in 1984 as a homage to this book. Cite? That’s not what I’ve read. Like Otto, I’ve read that it comes from flipping the last two digits of 1948, when Orwell wrote the book. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Blue\_Sky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d26b3c/32.png) [@Mr.Blue\_Sky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Blue_Sky)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2006, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/futuristic-sci-fi-movies-set-in-a-year-that-has-come-to-pass/339223/27 "2006-01-10T03:03:29Z")
> [@ITR champion](#): > > Edward Belamy’s novel _Looking Backward_, published in the 1800’s had the United States becoming a socialist utopia by 2001. Poverty, hunger and disease were eliminated, crime shrank to zero and everyone had a twenty-hour workweek. While Belamy didn’t exactly bat a hundred, he did forsee the appearance of shopping malls and credit cards. Read it [here](http://eserver.org/fiction/bellamy/contents.html). ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Mudd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f14d63/32.png) [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2006, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/futuristic-sci-fi-movies-set-in-a-year-that-has-come-to-pass/339223/28 "2006-01-10T03:03:30Z")
If we’re including literary work that hasn’t been adapted for film, I’ll mention Rudyard Kipling’s semi-cryptic adventure story: [ **With the Night Mail** A Story of 2000 A.D. (Together with extracts from the magazine in which it appeared)](http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/K/KiplingRudyard/prose/ActionReactions/nightmail.html) To give you an idea of the Kipling’s imagined Year 2000, a representative advertisement from the paratext which accompanies the story: > [@](#): > > [ul][li]It is now nearly a generation since the Plane was to[/li]supersede the Dirigible for all purposes. > [li] TO-DAY none of the Planet’s freight is carried _en plane_.[/li]Less than two per cent of the Planet’s passengers are carried _en plane_. > > We design, equip & guarantee Dirigibles for all purposes. > > Standard Dig Construction Company > MILLWALL and BUENOS AYRES.[/ul] ---
**Author:** ![Otto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Otto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otto)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2006, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/futuristic-sci-fi-movies-set-in-a-year-that-has-come-to-pass/339223/29 "2006-01-10T03:09:25Z")
Oh duh, how could I forget that 1930 classic [Just Imagine](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0021016), which is chock full of the personal plane cars and commutes to Mars that figured so prominently in our daily lives in 1980? ---
**Author:** ![asterion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4da419/32.png) [@asterion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asterion)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2006, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/futuristic-sci-fi-movies-set-in-a-year-that-has-come-to-pass/339223/30 "2006-01-10T03:37:57Z")
> [@Tengu](#): > > I don’t think I ever saw that movie until last year, which really made me giggle. > > From about the same time, the Macross Saga of Robotech started with the crash of the SDF-1 on Macross island in 1999, after several (I think 10, but one timeline is saying the war started in 1995) years of global war. The UN would have been established as the world government last year, and the first test flights of the Valkerie Veretechs will take place this year. > > (Details are a little different for Macross itself, but the dates are still more or less the same.) Don’t forget that we had Second Impact a year later in 2000. I bet someone’s got a complete list of passed-by dates in anime. And dang it, now I can’t decide whether to watch Robotech again or if I should finally go out and get Macross and Genesis Climber Mospeada. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2006, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/futuristic-sci-fi-movies-set-in-a-year-that-has-come-to-pass/339223/31 "2006-01-10T03:44:07Z")
Cyrul Kornbluth’s “The Rocket of 1955” is probably the earliest date where the present caught up with it (it was first published in 1939). ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2006, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/futuristic-sci-fi-movies-set-in-a-year-that-has-come-to-pass/339223/32 "2006-01-10T03:56:44Z")
This thread would not be complete without mentioning a TV show that regularly gives us a look into the future. “The future, Conan?” That’s right… all the way to **the Year 2000**. _In the year 2000…_ ---
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2006, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/futuristic-sci-fi-movies-set-in-a-year-that-has-come-to-pass/339223/33 "2006-01-10T03:58:58Z")
> [@Big Bad Voodoo Lou](#): > > Geeks everywhere giggled on this past year’s New Years Day, recalling the first narrated line of Transformers: The Movie: > > “It is the year 2005.” Oh. Is THAT why my room mates were watching that a few months back? :smack: I still need to see that. Apparantly I’m some kind of half-assed 21 year old because I never watched Transformers as a kid. > [@ITR champion](#): > > A less kind fate was to be in store for England by 1984, according to G. K. Chesterton’s The Napoleon of Notting Hill. The neighborhoods of London have become separate political factions, constantly at war with each other. (Orwell set 1984 in 1984 as a homage to this book.) Well, to be fair, if he had the book take place in, say, 1977, the title wouldn’t make any sense. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![cmkeller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmkeller/32/118_2.png) [@cmkeller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmkeller)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2006, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/futuristic-sci-fi-movies-set-in-a-year-that-has-come-to-pass/339223/34 "2006-01-10T04:07:25Z")
It’s a comic book rather than a movie, but the Atomic Knights series that ran in _Strange Adventures_ during the early sixties spoke of a nuclear war that occurred in 1986. (When that actual year rolled around, DC retconned it into the whole series having been a dream by the man who (in those stories) was the primary hero, and said dream inspired him to become an individual hero called the Atomic Knight. I don’t know if he appeared at all since then.) ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2006, 4:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/futuristic-sci-fi-movies-set-in-a-year-that-has-come-to-pass/339223/35 "2006-01-10T04:57:32Z")
> [@Thudlow Boink](#): > > This thread would not be complete without mentioning a TV show that regularly gives us a look into the future. > > “The future, Conan?” > > That’s right… all the way to **the Year 2000**. > > _In the year 2000…_ I wanted them to do a joke about that on December 30th, 1999, or so. Something like… \ “In the year two-thousand…” \ “Aw, Buffy’s a rerun.” etc. ---
**Author:** ![NoCoolUserName](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/5fc32e/32.png) [@NoCoolUserName](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NoCoolUserName)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2006, 5:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/futuristic-sci-fi-movies-set-in-a-year-that-has-come-to-pass/339223/36 "2006-01-10T05:11:12Z")
[sigh] I am amongst the unlettered and unwashed. 🙂 [The Day the Earth Stood Still](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0043456/) Tuesday, April 24, 1951 ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Borgia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/larry_borgia/32/156_2.png) [@Larry\_Borgia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Borgia)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2006, 5:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/futuristic-sci-fi-movies-set-in-a-year-that-has-come-to-pass/339223/37 "2006-01-10T05:54:41Z")
The underrated _Predator 2_ was released in 1990, and took place in 1997. ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Mudd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f14d63/32.png) [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2006, 6:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/futuristic-sci-fi-movies-set-in-a-year-that-has-come-to-pass/339223/38 "2006-01-10T06:16:27Z")
> [@NoCoolUserName](#): > > [The Day the Earth Stood Still](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0043456/) > Tuesday, April 24, 1951 Nothing futuristic about _The Day The Earth Stood Still_, though. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2006, 6:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/futuristic-sci-fi-movies-set-in-a-year-that-has-come-to-pass/339223/39 "2006-01-10T06:23:56Z")
> [@](#): > > \*The year: **1994**. From out of space comes a runaway planet, hurtling between the Earth and the Moon, unleashing cosmic destruction! Man’s civilization is cast in ruin! > > Two thousand years later, Earth is reborn… > > A strange new world rises from the old: a world of savagery, super science, and sorcery. But one man bursts his bonds to fight for justice! With his companions Ookla the Mok and Princess Ariel, he pits his strength, his courage, and his fabulous Sunsword against the forces of evil. > > He is **Thundarr, the Barbarian**!!\* > **[Thundarr the Barbarian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thundarr_the_Barbarian)** > > Thundarr the Barbarian is an American Saturday morning animated series, created by Steve Gerber and produced by Ruby-Spears Productions. The series ran for two seasons on ABC from October 4, 1980 to October 31, 1981, and was rerun on NBC in 1983. > Thundarr the Barbarian is set in a future (c. 3994) post-apocalyptic wasteland of Earth divided into kingdoms and territories, the majority of which are ruled by wizards, and whose ruins typically feature recognizable geographical features from the Un... It seems that Hanna Barbera released Thundarr the Barbarian (1981) as a “movie”. Actually, it consisted of 3 episodes of the show. … ---
**Author:** ![Khan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/3ab097/32.png) [@Khan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khan)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2006, 8:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/futuristic-sci-fi-movies-set-in-a-year-that-has-come-to-pass/339223/40 "2006-01-10T08:08:32Z")
> [@Tengu](#): > > I don’t think I ever saw that movie until last year, which really made me giggle. > > From about the same time, the Macross Saga of Robotech started with the crash of the SDF-1 on Macross island in 1999, after several (I think 10, but one timeline is saying the war started in 1995) years of global war. The UN would have been established as the world government last year, and the first test flights of the Valkerie Veretechs will take place this year. > > (Details are a little different for Macross itself, but the dates are still more or less the same.) Mobile Police Patlabor was set to start in 1998. Having seen the second movie, made in 1993 and set to take place sometime during wintertime in 2002, it seems they got things right apart from the giant robots. 'Course, apart from that it doesn’t seem like they took too many liberties. And even though the movie was released in 1988, according to Akira, Tokyo was destroyed on July 16, 1988. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/futuristic-sci-fi-movies-set-in-a-year-that-has-come-to-pass/339223.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/futuristic-sci-fi-movies-set-in-a-year-that-has-come-to-pass/339223.md?page=3)