The 25 Dumbest Predictions Movies Made About the Future

Hollywood’s movers and shakers have never been the best prognosticators. If they had been, Cutthroat Island would never exist and Oblivion would only be released internationally (where audiences still actually pay money to see Tom Cruise). Sure, there are certainly many instances of a film providing prescience. But for every Wag the Dog or The Truman Show there are dozens of Timecops and Demolition Men.

Here are The 25 Dumbest Predictions Movies Made About the Future.

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Written by Jennifer M. Wood (@j_m_wood)

Set In Year: 3978
Prediction(s): Apes rule...and have the hots for Charlton Heston.

Where does one start when considering the plausibility of Planet of the Apes (or—by extension—any of its four sequels, its remake or reboot)? A trio of astronauts—led by George Taylor (Charlton Heston)—emerge from hibernation only to realize that their spacecraft has crashed onto a foreign planet where apes rule.

Last we checked, the world's smartest monkey does understand about 450 words, but he can only communicate them by pointing to symbols on a computer. Which is a far cry from the tyrannical types who rule this "alien" planet which (spoiler alert!) turns out to be Earth. To be fair, the film does take place almost 2,000 years into the future, so there's still time. The monkeys will catch up to us while we die before the Twitter whale.

Set In Year: 2019
Prediction(s): Clones hang out in their very own compound, just waiting to donate organs.

Rich folks in 2019 have got it made. For a price, they can clone themselves in the event that they need an extra kidney or something. But while the clones are waiting to be needed, they're kept in the dark about their actual purpose, and are left to yuk it up in underground facility (they've been told that a nuclear war has contaminated the Earth's surface). Again, scientists still have six years to make this giant leap happen. Maybe they'll work faster knowing the clones look like Scarlett Johansson and/or Ewan McGregor.

Set In Year: 2015
Prediction(s): Hoverboards—flying skateboards—are just as possible (and frequently employed) as time travel.

The power to travel through time is cool and all. But by the time this sequel rolled around, we'd already had four years to be impressed by (and argue the feasibility of) Michael J. Fox's 1.21 gigawatt-powered DeLorean/time machine. So his hoverboard became our new object of desire. Though director Robert Zemeckis started a rumor that they were indeed a real thing at the time (the DVD even has a featurette promoting them), it's probably a safe bet that their invention—and subsequent omnipotence—is more than two years away.

Set In Year: 1996
Prediction(s): A virus that wiped out half the world's population has forced the remaining half (including Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt) underground.

Leave it to quirky director Terry Gilliam to set his futuristic, sci-fi movie—in which a deadly virus has contaminated the Earth's surface and forced all survivors underground—just a year after its release. In order to reverse its effects, scientists have created a not-quite-perfect form of time travel, which they use to send incarcerated survivors like James Cole (Bruce Willis) back in time to uncover information on the virus' source, which is believed to be a terrorist group known as the Army of Twelve Monkeys. The film is notable for Brad Pitt's unhinged scenery-chewing—but for its ability to predict the future? Not so much. Nope, no fatal viruses or shitty time machines here!

Set In Year: 2005
Prediction(s): Robots cook, clean, and mow the yard.

If family-friendly helmer Chris Columbus knew anything about the future, at this point we would all have our very own robotic helpers. And he would look just like Robin Williams, except shinier. Which is unspeakably terrifying.

Set In Year: 2022
Prediction(s): Cannibalism solves the overpopulation problem.

If this futuristic drama—which again stars Charlton Heston—gets it right, in less than a decade we'll see the population of New York City grow by 500 percent, resulting in a lack of food and overabundance of people. But (spoiler alert!) Corporate America, as always, has got a solution: euthanize the elderly and serve them up to the hungry. In a processed form, of course, so that the masses have no idea what they're consuming. Horse meat? Sure. Human meat? Unlikely.

Set In Year: 1984
Prediction(s): The government monitors everything we see, do or say... oh, wait?

This big-screen adaptation of George Orwell's dystopian 1949 novel—which was released in the same year it was set (how long had studio execs been waiting for that opportunity?) didn't foreshadow much about what the world really looked like in the mid-1980s. But it's not so far removed from the world that surrounds us today: a pervasive government? Check! An overly-political media? Yep. Big Brother is watching!

But things aren't so totalitarian.

Set In Year: The day after tomorrow
Prediction(s): Global warming begets a contemporary Ice Age.

New York City has certainly been knocked around by Mother Nature in the past couple of years, with two hurricanes, a blizzard, and one very strange earthquake. But nothing that would compare to the devastation director Roland Emmerich wreaked upon the Big Apple in this global warming-themed disaster pic, which sees the start of a new kind of Ice Age. One from which only Jake Gyllenhaal can save us.

Set In Year: 2019
Prediction(s): Cars fly; robots are sentient (and hot)!

Ridley Scott's high-tech masterpiece is one of the few future-set '80s films that has actually stood the test of time. Even if it does predict airborne vehicles, interplanetary job opportunities, and (very attractive) androids known as "replicants," which experience a range of human emotions—including homicidal rage. Hey, there are still six years left for this timeline to come true!

Set In Year: 1997? 2004? 2011? Who knows at this point?
Prediction(s): Judgment Day has occurred...three times now.

Sometimes it seems as if new Terminator projects are created simply to save face on the part of the franchise's producers that Judgment Day has yet to occur—not in 1997 as the first film predicted, nor in 2004 or 2011. You'd think that with all of the sequels, reboots, and television series, they could have gotten something right. Then along comes the abominable Terminator Salvation.

Set In Year: Near future
Prediction(s): Fallen police officers can return to work as super-human cyborgs.

Had Paul Verhoeven's vision of an unstoppable cyborg cop come to fruition, there would no longer be a need for the nearly one million men and women employed as police officers throughout the U.S. today. There probably wouldn't be much crime either.

Set In Year: 1970
Prediction(s): The Moon is a wonderful place to live.

This black-and-white sci-fi flick didn't break any box office records upon its released in 1953. In fact, its campy take on the 1970s—where the U.S. is working to colonize the moon—earned it a roasting in the first season of Mystery Science Theater 3000. But we'll give it props for assuming the president would be female.

Set In Year: 2274
Prediction(s): Life is good...until you turn 30. At which point you'll be vaporized.

Sure, we may all wish we could remain a twenty-something forever, but we're not about to vaporize our citizens when it's time for them to celebrate the big 3-0. On the bright side: Life is pretty grand up until that moment of premature departure, with sex, drugs and Internet-like porn at every turn.

Set In Year: 2018
Prediction(s): Rollerblading is badass.

There's a difference between sportsmanlike competition and no-holds barred brutality. This bleak film, directed by seven-time Oscar nominee Norman Jewison, falls very firmly into the latter category. Set in 2018, it envisions the world as one giant corporation—one where a brutal variation of Roller Derby is the only form of entertainment. And it, too, is corporate-run.

When the powers that be decide their longtime star player (James Caan) needs to retire, they have the money and power to do whatever it takes to bid him farewell, including changing the rules of the game to allow for murder. Strangely, when the movie was remade in 2002, it was re-set in the year 2005. More strangely, it voluntarily starred Chris Klein.

Set In Year: The future (obvs)
Prediction(s): An energy shortage leads to absolute anarchy.

Sure, one could say that Mad Max's forecast that dwindling natural resources would be a source of anxiety is somewhat prophetic. But the matter has yet to reduce us to a bunch of leather-clad, marauding maniacs. Perhaps the upcoming installment, due out next year, will do something to right these wrongs.

Set In Year: 2004
Prediction(s): Time travel is not only possible, but is used as a crime-fighting device.

Did every bad '90s actor make a time travel movie, or were actors in the '90s just bad? Before you answer that question, we've got three words for you (four if you count the hyphenated one): Jean-Claude Van Damme. When he's not jumping through wormholes or cruising in his self-driving car, JCVD is delivering the roundhouse kicks that made him famous. Proving that true ass-kicking transcends all decades.

Set In Year: 1999
Prediction(s): Our memories can be recorded onto a tiny disc (called a SQUID) and can then be experienced by anyone who gets a hold of said SQUID.

Before she was winning groundbreaking Oscars, Kathryn Bigelow was pondering the changes Y2K might bring about with the help of her ex-husband, James Cameron. The result is this cyberpunk cult classic, in which individual memories can be recorded via one's cerebral cortex and experienced by others. As far as we know, there's no black market in memories. Unless you count iPhones.

Set In Year: 2007
Prediction(s): An earthquake forces Los Angeles to rename itself once again—now New Angeles—and crime runs amok (particularly after dark).

This video game adaptation follows the typical shot-in-the-'90s/set-in-the-future formula: The world is in a sad state and run by criminal types at every level. In this case, they're all in search of a magical medallion, which imbues its wearers with spectacular powers (and even more spectacular coordinated outfits). Thankfully, 2007 came and went without any of this happening.

Set In Year: 2001
Prediction(s): Computers run everything, and don't like it one bit.

It may be one of the most highly regarded sci-fi films of all time, but that doesn't mean there's anything realistic about the happenings in this Stanley Kubrick classic. Unless we're missing something about the frequency of space station tourism and self-aware computers bent on destroying humanity. (Though Siri has been known to sound a little bitchy on occasion.)

Set In Year: 2010
Prediction(s): See 2001: A Space Odyssey

The erroneous predictions put forth in 2001: A Space Odyssey are further perpetuated in this not-as-good sequel. Oh, and we're about to go to war with Russia.

Set In Year: 1997
Prediction(s): New York City is one big maximum-security prison.

New York City sure does seem to bear the brunt of the future's problems. In this John Carpenter cult classic, the Big Apple has morphed into a giant maximum-security prison—one where the inmates (including rogue badass/savior Snake Plissken) are definitely running the asylum. Depending on your opinion of the titular city, this movie could be prescient.

Set In Year: 2012
Prediction(s): Yet another plague. This one has killed off 90% of the population and turned the rest (minus Will Smith) into vampire-like Dark Seekers.

In the tradition of The Omega Man, I Am Legend is the latest film to put forth "the last man on Earth" trope. Or, more specifically: the last man in New York City. Ummm, yeah, cause that'll happen.

In this version, a deadly virus has wiped out most of the world's population, leaving a vampire-like species of monsters known as Dark Seekers and a couple of immune survivors (Will Smith and his trusty dog among them), who are left to fend for themselves (and not kill each other). While all of this is built in sci-fi, the most fantastical part of the movie may very well be Smith's West Village pad: how many floors is that? And right on Washington Square Park? Not a bad place to live out the end of days.

Set In Year: 2000
Prediction(s): A deadly transcontinental car race is the world's one remaining form of entertainment.

Filmmakers in the 1970s sure did have a morbid view of what the new millennium would look like. Or were rabid fans of NASCAR. In this schlocky Roger Corman pic, the United States has been demolished in the wake of a financial crisis (okay, so maybe that part's not so off). The one "organized" form of chaos is an annual transcontinental car race, in which getting to the finish line the fastest is only part of what will determine the winner: How many innocent bystanders you kill in the process is just as important, too. David Carradine and Sylvester Stallone are two of dystopia's top contenders.

Set In Year: 2009
Prediction(s): Time travel is real, and being used for very bad things.

Freejack predicted that time travel would be possible by 2009, and that it would be used in order to send criminals back in time to kidnap people for organ harvesting. It also assumed that Mick Jagger could carry a movie.

Set In Year: 2032
Prediction(s): Crime is nonexistent; a 2010 earthquake caused Los Angeles and San Diego to become one city—San Angeles; Sandra Bullock wants to bang Sylvester Stallone, but without actual penetration.

You'd have to suspend disbelief over the course of a few decades in order to accept the many erroneous premises of Demolition Man. The 1993 film is set in 1996, when a chancy cop (Sylvester Stallone) and a notorious criminal (Wesley Snipes) are both cryogenically frozen (nope!) then simultaneously thawed out (wrong!) in 2032 to resume their issues. In between, an enormous earthquake takes out most of L.A., forcing it to merge with San Diego into a brand-new city: San Angeles. Oh, and there's no crime. But the most laughable part of it all? When Sandra Bullock invites The Italian Stallion for a roll in the hay (or what he calls "The Hunka-Chunka")—except there's no touching and it's all done via virtual reality. Oh, yes. You can see it for yourself here!