future predictions

Last night I watch Escape from New York. The movie is from 1981 and its premise is that in seven years (1988 for the mathmatically challenged) crime would get bad enough that Manhattan Island would be blockaded off and turned into a prison for serious criminal offenders. In 1997 Air Force One crashes in the city and a criminal is sent into the city to rescue the President.

The actual movie bordered on outright stupidity, but I found one thing very entertaining about the movie. It tried to predict the future, and very innacurately so. I think it is a lot of fun to watch old movies that try to predict a future that is now past. It is also fun to watch new movies that try to predict what the future will be like.

Typically, a futuristic movie feels often obligated to take a somewhat politically charaged cautionary tone. If humans aren't careful the world will be dominated by a police state. The world will be on the brink of annihilation from something like nuclear fallout, pollution, or technology that has turned on humans. Mankind will have advanced technology that looks almost identical to the technology of the time when the movie was made.

I am actually surprised in the number of movies that are structured to take place within twenty years of the movie's release. Unless the movie gets some stuff right the movie will probably lose some of its timeless appeal. Movies like Soylent Green and The Running Man are not entertaining to me because they forecast an actual future, but because they were so predictably wrong about what the future would be like.

I know the purpose of futuristic stories is not accuracy, but to present a possible extreme and entertaining worst-case scenario. That doesn't mean it is not fun to tear those movies apart when they get things wrong.