Futuristic Sci-Fi Movies Set in a Year That Has Come to Pass

I think I’m going to officially feel old when we catch up with back to the Future II in ten… no, wait, nine years time.

I’m still holding out for hoverboards

Lots of books and stories setr in years that have passed, like Fredric Brown’s neglected gem The Lights in the Sky are Stars, set at the end of the 20th century (and including the countdown to midnight 1999/2000, which was 50 years away when the book was published). It’s about an aging retired astronaut, which I found kinda neat. But the OP asked for movies.

Most of the ones that sprang immediately to mind have been said already. But I just watched the not-all-that-bad, condired-as-a-kid’s-movie The Phantom Planet, which set, IIRC, in the 1980’s. Other 1950s space flight movies were also set in a future which has passed, but I can’t recall exactly which ones named the year – things like Conquest of Space. I don’t recall if Destination Moon named the year, but, implied or stated, it’s certainly past.

2001, of course, has already been mentioned, but the film is also interesting because it gives the explicit date of HAL’s activation. The dates given in the movie and the book differ by five years. I was actually at the Computer Museum in Boston on the date given in the book, and was surprised that they weren’t aware that it was HAL’s birthday until I told them. I thought there’d be a celebration, or something. By the time the date given in the movie rolled around, the Computer Museum had ceased to exist. But MIT Press gave HAL a birthday party, which was also the time for a realease ofa book with a title like Hal’s Children.
2010 is coming, but I’ll bet no one will do anything for it.

I called the mayor’s office in Urbana, Illinois; they were similarly uninformed.

Then, too? How many times does that make it? And why don’t they just move to a Godzilla-free zone?

Things to Come, released 1930:

They made a film about the future for the 1939 World’s Fair that depicted “the world of 1960”. we didn’t get all the neat stuff they showed, of course.

What about now?

Worth a click.

Demolition Man begins in the savage flaming criminal-ruled hell that is Los Angeles, 1996. Thank goodness it’ll be reborn as utopian San Angeles by 2032! And there’ll be no murders after 2010!

But every restaurant will be a Taco Bell. And you’ll have to learn how to use the shells.

Not a movie, but the book Down To A Sunless Sea has the Earth wiped out by nuclear war in 1985, a little while after America ran out of oil and regressed to something very like barbarism.

Pshaw. We all died from nuclear fallout way back in 1964 in Nevil Shute’s On The Beach.

The Gerry Anderson series UFO (1969) was set in the year 1980. One ep actually included a reference to then-Congressman Gerald Ford!

It was mentioned in the introduction to my copy of The Napoleon of Notting Hill. In fact, I’ve seen this factoid in two different editions.

Factoid,” eh? :wink:

I’ve mentioned this before on other threads, and it doesn’t QUITE fit in under “Come to Pass” but it’s so funny.

There’s a grade B SF flick called Fatal Conflict that stars Kari Wuhrer. She’s an undercover cop on the trail of an interstellar bad guy. At one point she obtains cred as a criminal by actually going to an interstellar women’s prison. To introduce the prison scnes, there’s a matte painting of some bubble domes on a rocky plain, and it’s captioned:

Alpha Centuari Prime Women’s Correctional Facility
2029

That’s right, this movie predicts interstellar travel within 30 years (it was released in 1999). And just about the FIRST thing we’re gonna do when we get into outer space, apparently, is build women’s prisons. Well, it makes sense to ME …

Husband and I were just watching Airplane 2 the other night (the one with the lunar shuttle and William Shatner!), and I’m pretty sure that the date given in the beginning of the movie was something in the 90’s or maybe 2000. I can’t confirm it on IMDB however.

In the first few seconds of 2005, my husband demanded a flying skateboard like those featured in the aforementioned Transformers: The Movie.

The TV show Quantum Leap was supposed to have kicked off in 1999, where we’ll all drive awesome concept cars and even hookers will be able to afford earrings with flashing lights. Also, everyone will wear lots of lame. (I don’t know how to put the accent over that, but it’s lam-ay, the shiny, metallic material my prom dress was made of in 1994.)

It’s truth in advertising without the accent, as it has always been pretty damned lame as well. And I suppose hookers COULD afford earings with flashing lights…they would be pretty cheap to make with current LCD technology.

Clicked on, wandered around the site and…

HuH? Cecil, you didn’t really say this, did you? You sly old dog!

I just watched the 1960 version of The Time Machine last night. The time traveler briefly stops off in 1966, when he sees London destroyed by atomic satellite weapons. His time machine is then entombed by lava from volcanic eruptions triggered by the bombs where it remains for thousands of years until erosion uncovers it.

Of course, most of the action in the film takes place about 80,000 years later, so we still have a while to go for that.