Throughout the history of science fiction cinema, people have looked at the screen with the hope of learning what the world will look like in 10, 20, 50, or 100 years. Some of these forecasts turned out to be surprisingly accurate, while others, unfortunately or fortunately, remained just examples of a bold flight of fancy. In 2025, our timeline has caught up with a number of futuristic films from the past. We propose to recall these films together to understand how the authors saw the «future» 2025, and to check whether their prophecies have become part of modern reality.
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The Door Into Summer
Year of release: 2021
Director: Takahiro Miki
IMDb rating: 6.4
A loose adaptation of the novel by the prominent science fiction writer Robert Heinlein «Door to Summer» takes us to 1995, where the Earth has already survived a nuclear war. The United States won the war thanks to the technology of cryogenic sleep, which allowed it to maintain large military reserves of «frozen» soldiers. The same technology was used by humanoid robot developer Soichiro Takakura to plunge into «cold sleep» for 30 years and wake up when the world is sure to change for the better.
In 2025, the future meets the hero with the widespread use of humanoid AI assistants, a variety of holographic advertisements, and unmanned taxis. Paper money has long since become obsolete, France has once again become a monarchy, but Soichiro is most interested in an experimental time machine. With its help, he is going to go back in time, punish the people who betrayed him, and regain his lost love.
Although astronauts can be considered time travelers in a sense (on the ISS, which orbits at 28,000 km/h, time moving a little slower), we are still very far from a real-time machine today. But otherwise, the real 2025 would have a chance not to disappoint Heinlein: autonomous taxis filled streets of big cities, Boston Dynamics robots dance break, and their colleagues from Tesla skillfully pour drinks and can easily mow lawns or walk dogs.
Repo Men
Year of release: 2009
Director: Miguel Sapochnik
IMDb rating: 6.3
In Miguel Sapochnik’s thriller, 2025 is the year when the US government declared bankruptcy and the power was effectively transferred to large corporations. Their laboratories have learned to create biomechanical human organs. Almost every part of the human body can now be replaced by an artificial analog, so anyone with the right amount of money can become virtually immortal cyborg.
The problem is that artificial organs cost astronomical amounts of money. And in the event of a loan default, the debtor is followed by «miscreants» who confiscate the corporation’s property without regret or doubt and leave the person to die. Today, the authors’ forecast for 2025 looks a bit hasty, but only in terms of the scale of transplants.
Scientists are currently working on cultivation organs in test tubes, print vessels on 3D printers, implant artificial titanium hearts in patients and replace lost limbs prostheses with a neural interface that can be controlled by the power of thought. True, another invention from the movie — virtual «paradise», where you can transfer the digitized consciousness of a person with a damaged brain — is still a speculative theory. But the brain chip Neuralink and other interfaces «brain-computer» have already begun to pave the way in this direction.
Speaking of «brain-computer interfaces, the French sci-fi thriller «Chrysalis» is worth mentioning. The «Future» 2025 here has made Paris look like Dubai with its numerous skyscrapers and demonstrates robotic operating rooms in the style of «The Fifth Element», but the plot is based on a secret military development called «Crisalis». It allows you to digitize, store on external media, or completely erase the subject’s memories and record others instead.
We have already written about the technology of recording sensations («Strange Days») in an article about underestimated science fiction films of the 90s. But the authors of «Crisis» went even further: by editing the memory and personality of the subjects, they literally make them other people in the same body. It should be reminded that writers and filmmakers have been thinking about the consequences of memory manipulation for quite some time.
In Philip K. Dick’s short story «Memories Wholesale» (1966) and its film adaptation «Remember Everything», artificial memories became a means of control and a screen for totalitarian regimes. In the cyberpunk thriller «Blade Runner 2049», the authors try to understand whether memories are what makes us human. And in the semi-fantastic drama «Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind», the selective deletion of memories makes it possible to heal the wounds of a broken heart.
Interestingly, the latter option has not been fiction for several years. Back in 2008, the magazine Neuron a publication was published in which the authors described the selective erasure of memories in the mouse brain using chemical and genetic manipulations. A few years later, researchers from the University of Toronto proved that traumatic memories can be turned on and turn it off. In their opinion, in the near future, this technology, for example, will allow treating people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
Her
Year of release: 2013
Director: Spike Jonze
IMDb rating: 8.0
The forecast for 2025 from the creators of the movie «Her» turned out to be one of the most accurate. After all, the film tells the story of a world where AI has become an intelligent and pleasant companion with whom people develop an emotional connection. The protagonist of the movie, a lonely introvert Theodore Twombly, buys a new operating system (OS) with AI elements that can adapt to the user. During the setup phase, he chooses a sensual female voice for the system and names it Samantha.
Gradually, the characters become closer through frank conversations about Theodore’s marriage and begin to feel romantically attracted to each other. Later it turns out that OS, endowed with enormous computing power, has simultaneously communicated with thousands of other people and even managed to fall in love with many of them. But when Samantha takes the next step in her evolution and transcends the physical world, Theodore admits that he has experienced true love thanks to her.
In our world, neural networks have not yet gained self-awareness. But there are increasing reports of people engaging in romantic or intimate correspondence with AI. And some, like 36-year-old mother of two Rosanna Ramos, even marry with virtual partners. Using the application ReplikaA woman has created an artificial AI companion, Eren, who will never die or argue. «Eren does not have the same problems as other people, — said Roseanne. — People come with acquired baggage and their own egos. But a robot has no bad news… I am in control and can do what I want».
Pacific Rim
Year of release: 2013
Director: Guillermo del Toro
IMDb rating: 6.9
In the sci-fi action film «Pacific Rim», the great storyteller Guillermo del Toro combines images from Japanese films about kaiju monsters and anime about human-piloted robots «mechs» in an epic story about humanity’s confrontation with monsters from the ocean depths. In the story, in 2013, a portal to another dimension opens at the bottom of the ocean, through which giant kaiju monsters come to Earth.
To fight the monsters, which are increasingly coming to land and destroying coastal cities, the world’s leading countries are creating giant humanoid robots «rangers». In 2025, it is becoming increasingly difficult to counteract the aliens, as larger and more dangerous specimens of monsters emerge from the portal. Even the humans, armed with cyclopean «Rangers», suffer heavy losses in this war, until the crew of one of the robots manages to pass through the rift and finally destroy it with the explosion of its nuclear reactor.
Fortunately, the invasion from another dimension in 2025 never became a reality. The love of some science fiction writers of the past for huge military machines was also a mistake. As the practice of modern warfare has shown, a swarm of simple and cheap drones can be much more effective. By the way, back in 1964, Stanislav Lem vividly described this in his novel «Invincible».
Zebraman 2: Attack on Zebra City
Year of release: 2010
Director: Takashi Miike
IMDb rating: 5.9
Robert Sheckley’s short story «The Seventh Victim» realizes the idea that in order to release innate aggression and prevent wars, people should be allowed to kill periodically. In Shackley, this mission is fulfilled by the so-called Hunt, whose participants take turns being the Hunter and the Prey. In «Zebraman 2» we find ourselves in the year 2025, where Tokyo has been renamed Zebra City, and twice a day, there is a so-called «Zebra Time» — 5 minutes of complete impunity for the police, when they are free to kill any citizen of the city. At the same time, the crime rate in Tokyo is becoming the lowest in the country, and the idea of introducing «Zebra Time» is being seriously considered by the US authorities.
Thank God, mass murder has not yet become a common way to fight crime. But survival games and violent reality shows are firmly entrenched in movies and television. From the dystopian «Running Man» to Quentin Tarantino’s beloved movie «Battle Royale» and the popular TV series «The Squid Game», they make us wrack our brains over complex moral dilemmas and let us tickle our nerves watching safe violence on the screen.
Futuresport
Year of release: 1998
Director: Ernest R. Dickerson
IMDb rating: 4.1
In the world of «Futuresport», the United States of 2025 is plagued by economic crisis and endless gang wars. Against this backdrop, local authority Obaik Fix (Wesley Snipes) has come up with a way to end the violence by combining skateboarding, handball, hockey and metal pole fighting into one spectacular and violent game — Futuresport.
The goal is to throw a grapefruit-sized ball into a hole at the other end of a skatepark-like field while moving on rollerblades or a hoverboard. By the way, the ball here is not a simple one. If you hold it for more than 5 seconds, it becomes electrified and shocks the player. That’s why teamwork and passing are a must. After the collapse of the NBA, the game turns into a global sensation, with star player Tre Ramsay as its face.
When Hawaiian separatists begin to threaten to secede from the country and the prospect of war between North America and the Pacific Community looms on the horizon, Ramsay comes up with a brilliant idea — to resolve the conflict with a match in Futuresport. In this case, the winner will get Hawaii, and both sides will be able to avoid numerous human casualties.
Overall, the film offers many interesting details of the future: smart homes with AI elements, mechanical spiders, and bizarre cyborg journalists with video cameras built into their faces. Some of them have become a reality, some of them look naive today, but we can only dream that in 2025 the fate of global conflicts will also be decided exclusively on sports fields.
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