They Saw It Coming! 7 Films That Eerily Predicted the Future

Stanley Kubrick‘s 2001: A Space Odyssey seemed to foresee what would happen in the future.

In the 1968 epic science fiction film, astronauts use rectangular, wireless screens to perform tasks that resemble iPads and tablets in shape and function.

In some scenes, astronauts communicate via video calls, even though similar devices and applications had not yet been invented at the time of the film’s release.

Just like 2001: A Space Odyssey, the Harrison Ford-led film Blade Runner features giant, colorful screens and explores environmental deterioration. The plot strangely anticipated present events, including AI and voice-activated devices.

Starring Matt Damon, Contagion follows the story of a woman who dies of a mysterious infection after returning home from Hong Kong. The same illness kills her son, although her husband seems to be immune to it.

What begins as an isolated case becomes a worldwide epidemic, almost prophetically hinting at the occurrence of the COVID-19 pandemic that has caused over 7 million deaths globally.

Overpopulation, environmental degradation and food shortages are foreshadowed in the 1973 sci-fi/thriller film Soylent Green. The narrative strikingly encapsulates the society’s most pressing concerns, offering a poignant preview of today’s world.

Released on March 16, 1979, The China Syndrome is about a TV reporter and a cameraman tasked to create a routine story about a nuclear power plant, which later suffers a near-meltdown.

Nearly two weeks after its release, the Three Mile Island Unit 2 reactor had a partial meltdown. The event, which occurred at 4 a.m. on March 28, 1979, near Middleton, Pa., became the most serious accident in the history of U.S. commercial nuclear power plants. There were no injuries or adverse health effects reported at the time.

The rise of reports about humanoid robots is an unsettlingly accurate foresight of the events in James Cameron‘s The Terminator. In the Arnold Schwarzenegger-led film, a cyborg hunts down a young woman whose unborn son is destined to trigger a war between mankind and the machines.

Although many of the technologies in the film exist today, the depicted cohabitation of robots and humans remains to be seen.

The Towering Inferno, starring Steve McQueen and Paul Newman, highlights careless building practices that lead to fire in a state-of-the-art San Francisco skyscraper.

Inspired by the construction of the World Trade Center in 1966, the film parallels real-life events, including the 2017 Grenfell Tower Fire in London that claimed 72 lives.