Newsgroup: it.arti.cinema
Titolo: The 10 most profetics sci-fi movies ever

Link postato sull'equivalente francese di IAC,
articolo tratto da "Popular Mechanics".
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/reviews/4256186.html?page=1
se volete che copio-incollo fatemi sapere.
-- 
maitre Aliboron
"Casse-toi, alors! Pauvre con..."
(N. Sarkozy (?) - feb. 2008)
http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=axDyUNWyuw8

 
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/reviews/4256186.html?page=1
Secondo me un film si può definire "profetico" quando il suo tema di base
si avvera, non quando contiene singole idee che poi si avverano più o meno
parzialmente. Ad esempio non vedo come si possa mettere Gattaca in prima
posizione solo perché sfrutta il concetto di genetic profiling (che fra
l'altro era già notissimo anche quando il film è uscito). Ancora più
insensato è mettere Minority Report al secondo posto solo perché mostra
alcune innovazioni tecnologiche che nel 2002 erano già ampiamente in
essere, mentre l'idea di base è per ora (e probabilmente per sempre) del
tutto surreale. Non parliamo poi nemmeno di Mad Max al terzo posto o di
Truman Show al quarto. Un po' più sensato "Uomini sulla Luna", anche se non
arriverei ancora a definirlo profetico (il progetto Apollo era già
nell'aria).
-- 
emboliaschizoide.splinder.com

 se volete che copio-incollo fatemi sapere.
sempre, grazie, cosi' poi valuto se cliccare sul link o meno.
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Cover what you do best, link to the rest

 sempre, grazie, cosi' poi valuto se cliccare sul link o meno.
The 10 Most Prophetic Sci-Fi Movies Ever
When Arthur C. Clarke died last week at the age of 90, science fiction-hell, 
science in general-lost one of its greatest, most forward-looking masters. 
In his honor, PM's resident geek and sci-fi buff analyzes the most eerily 
predictive, prescient films of the future. They're not necessarily the best 
movies-just the ones that got the science right, or will sometime soon.
-----------------------------
10. 2001: A Space Odyssey
Released: 1968 | Set in the year: 2001
Clarke's biggest contribution to science-the concept of placing satellites 
in geosynchronous orbit-makes the briefest of cameos in 2001. Despite its 
place in cinematic history, this movie is a particularly easy target. Once 
our own timeline slipped past the year 2001, it became obvious that, as 
measured and bleak as the film's technology seemed at the time, it was a 
work of strange optimism. Artificial intelligence is still far too dumb to 
achieve psychosis and getting to the moon-much less Jupiter-seems like as 
much of a challenge now as it was when Apollo 11 landed there, a year after 
the movie was released. Still, Clarke and Stanley Kubrick nailed the feel of 
space travel, and its eventual commercialization, in a way that still 
resonates today. And HAL 9000's calculated mutiny is plausible enough to 
ring in any NASA administrator's head, when the time comes-and it will-to 
consider the role of truly autonomous systems in manned missions.
Hits
Space tourism: The image is as indelible as those cavemen worshipping at the 
foot of the monolith: an elegant but strangely familiar-looking craft 
gliding through space. This was not a muscular rocket ship, but a space 
plane bearing Pan American's logo, like a jetliner that simply flew higher 
than the rest. (Clarke and Kubrick's business acumen was far less 
predictive. Pan Am went under in 1991 and Virgin Airways-much less Virgin 
Galactic-hadn't yet formulated as an idea in 19-year-old Richard Branson's 
brain in 1969). The inside of the craft, from the rows of empty seats to the 
weightless flight attendants, reinforced the feeling of uneventful, 
commercial air travel. In the year 2008, space tourism is far from casual, 
but 2001's prediction that one day flying to an orbital space station would 
require zero training or preparation-and the corresponding outlook Clarke 
offered PM last year-is gradually coming true.
Misses
Artificial intelligence: HAL 9000 may be too smart for his own good. He's 
also too smart, period. In the 60's many AI researchers were extremely 
optimistic, predicting full machine sentience by the end of the millennium. 
And HAL's purpose is valid-since much of the crew of Discovery One is in 
cryogenic sleep during the long trip to Jupiter, an AI could be instrumental 
to keeping the ship in working order. But in the 40 years since the movie's 
release, artificial intelligence has been a major disappointment. And any 
time an autonomous system has the power to kill, such as an armed unmanned 
vehicle, roboticists are careful to require an authorized human operator to 
actually pull the trigger, or, in HAL's case, turn off the crew's life 
support.
Manned space exploration: The workings of the various spacecraft in 2001 are 
ambiguous, but until more efficient propulsion systems can be developed, 
none of the spaceward jaunts in the film are possible. And if getting to 
Mars seems like the biggest challenge of the century, imagine planning a 
trip to Jupiter.
Undecided
Videophones: We have the technology to turn almost every phone on the planet 
into a full-fledged videophone. But, as it turns out, most people don't want 
to put on pants to answer the phone. A two-way video feed means devoting 
your full attention to the conversation, and sacrificing nearly any kind of 
multitasking, including simply walking down the street. It's possible, 
though, that video will become a standard option for existing phones, 
allowing for occasional, but highly optional face-to-face conversations. In 
other words, users might agree to opt into video, as opposed to constantly 
opting out. Speculation aside, videophones aren't in high demand now, and 
probably never will be.
--------------------------
9. Short Circuit
Released: 1986 | Set in the year: Unspecified (but probably 1986)
Of all the robot movies in the history of science fiction, from classics 
like Metropolis and The Terminator to more recent, questionable attempts, 
like Artificial Intelligence: AI, why pick this one? Short Circuit is, by no 
stretch of the imagination, a fine film. And its protagonist, Johnny Five, 
isn't helping the case of self-aware robots-it would be a lot more 
satisfying to blow this mugging, extroverted thing to pieces than to kill an 
entire platoon of stoic Terminators. But Short Circuit got one thing right, 
which was the burgeoning field of armed ground robot development. And while 
Steve Guttenberg's lovable roboticist would prefer his creations engage in 
peaceful cohabitation with their human masters, his employer, the Nova 
Corporation, is pushing the machines on the United States military. The plot 
is too idiotic to recap, and the notion that the robots' primary purpose is 
to carry nukes behind enemy lines is deliriously weird, but the role of the 
defense industry in pushing the limits of ground robots is clear. DARPA's 
Grand and Urban Challenges might seem like the first steps toward robot 
cars, but it's the Department of Defense that's throwing the competition, 
and collecting all of the data from the various teams. Even iRobot, makers 
of the Roomba, relies on military contracts to stay profitable.
Hits
Autonomous military ground robots: Unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) are 
nowhere near as advanced as the five SAINT (Strategic Artificially 
Intelligent Nuclear Transport) robots in Short Circuit, but their basic 
construction holds up surprisingly well. They move around on tracked wheels, 
like the majority of current UGVs, and have sensor-packed heads that look a 
lot like the autonomous navigation systems planned for the Army's MULE 
robot. It's unclear why they have arms, much less the incredibly dextrous 
hands that Johnny Five uses to read books, dance with ladies, etc. 
Presumably they need some way to carry and detonate nuclear weapons, but 
it's best not to stare too long into the abyss that is Short Circuit's 
internal logic, such as it is. It's also unclear just how autonomous the 
SAINTs are, since Five's sentience is awakened by a lightning bolt. But if 
the premise is that the military will develop a ground robot that can move 
autonomously throughout the battlefield and fire at targets with integrated 
weaponry, then Short Circuit is the unlikely harbinger of the 
robot-dependent wars to come.
Misses
Lasers: Why do the SAINTs have lasers, instead of perfectly lethal rockets 
or machine guns? This is a common problem when Hollywood fumbles with 
sci-fi. Instead of running with one or two high-tech concepts, everything 
becomes fair game. So Blade Runner gets flying cars, the Terminator movies 
get beam weapons, and Johnny Five is packing a scientific breakthrough 
that's much more impressive than he is.
Artificial Intelligence: Is it worth getting into how simplistic Five's 
artificial intelligence is? If nothing else, I'd like to know what sort of 
hard drive he comes with. Those books he reads at breakneck speed have to go 
through instantaneous optical character recognition and get stored 
somewhere. Or am I being petty?
--------------------------
8. Soylent Green
Released: 1973 | Set in the year: 2022
That most blameless of apocalyptic menaces, overpopulation, has been with us 
for centuries. It compelled Jonathan Swift to write his satirical call for 
institutionalized cannibalism in the 18th century. And in 1973, Hollywood 
produced a no-less-sensational (but considerably less satirical) movie about 
a vastly overpopulated future, where sinister corporate types have resorted 
to secret, institutionalized cannibalism. Every day is a potential food riot 
in New York City, but every Tuesday is Soylent Green day, when the 
latest-and apparently tastiest-flavor of nutrient-rich, plankton-based 
rations is distributed. Despite that infamous (and unintentionally funny) 
final line, and despite Charlton Heston, this movie is a surprisingly bleak 
and unflinching vision of the future. And sure, I get it, the stuff is made 
out of people. But that revelation won't fix the desiccated environment or 
shrink the population to manageable levels. The world of Soylent Green is as 
doomed as its inhabitants are delicious.
Hits
Climate change: Although the potential impact of greenhouse gases on the 
environment was only beginning to be debated in the early 70s, Soylent Green 
cut to the chase. More people means more pollution, which means a future 
that's significantly hotter than the present. It's unlikely that, by 2022, 
New York City will be mired in year-round summer, but there's no longer any 
doubt that the climate is changing. And as oil prices continue to climb, the 
notion that only the rich will have air conditioning, while the middle-class 
Charlton Hestons of the world literally sweat it out, seems more likely by 
the day.
Misses
Overpopulation: It's true, the world as a whole is getting more populated. 
But 40 million New Yorkers by the year 2022? That math has never added up. 
According to census estimates, the population of New York City was close to 
7.9 million in 1970. By 2000, it had climbed to just past 8 million. By 
2025, some experts believe it will reach 9 million. In the real world, a 
million more people can make impossible situations even worse. Subways get 
more packed, traffic grinds to an absolute halt, and the electrical grid 
faces unprecedented peak loads. And 40 million could destroy a city like New 
York. But getting to 40 million in the next 100 years, much less the next 10 
or 20, is a stretch even for science fiction.
Industrial cannibalism: Corporations can sometimes be vile. And human 
beings, on rare occasion, eat other human beings. But the urge to dine on 
the so-called "long pig" is a private matter, reserved for plane crash 
survivors and the criminally insane. To think that any corporation is 
capable of planning, orchestrating and keeping a lid on an operation as 
massive as Soylent Green is to have a conspiracy theorist's view of human 
competence. Then there's the government's complicity, since at least some 
portion of the bodies are provided by the euthanasia clinics. I'm not saying 
that corporations and public servants would necessarily draw the line at 
cannibalism-who knows what anyone would do faced with this sort of 
apocalypse? But they would never expect to get away with it.
Undecided
Government-sanctioned suicide: If the world were, in fact, pushed to the 
brink of destruction by rampant overpopulation, would public opinion toward 
suicide change? Hard to say, but the idea that the government would actually 
promote euthanasia-a concept that also shows up in Children of Men-isn't as 
easy to shoot down as human-fortified snacks. In Soylent Green, the suicidal 
are provided with a clean, comfortable room. As the poison kicks in, a 
montage of nature footage plays, accompanied by your choice of music. Never 
mind the fact that your body is then unceremoniously dumped into a garbage 
truck and carted off to a heavily-guarded person-milling factory. 
Considering that the alternative is a world increasingly packed with sweaty 
Charlton Hestons, this might not be the worst-or least plausible-way to go.
---------------------------
7. Blade Runner
Released: 1982 | Set in the year: 2019
It's not that Blade Runner actually predicted much of anything. But it has 
the flavor of effortless, worldly prescience. This is a future that's both 
ravaged and fully functional. And in 10 years, the skies over Los Angeles 
might be worse, and climate change could mean weather systems that are 
heavier than we ever expected, even in sunny Southern California. But things 
probably won't be quite so apocalyptic, and there certainly won't be 
replicants with implanted memories. However, on a rainy day in any of the 
world's biggest cities, life has looked a lot like Blade Runner for years. 
From the blinding video billboards in Manhattan's Times Square and Tokyo's 
Shinjuku district to the sheer crush of human beings and crawling traffic, 
all we're missing are those neon-handled umbrellas.
Hits
Urban development: Everything feels old in Blade Runner. No one is marveling 
at the building-size projection of a geisha, because the damn thing has 
probably been there for years. The traffic clogging the streets is a 
gridlock like any other, only now there are even more cars cramming into the 
same insufficient roadways. And despite the packed-in, overcrowded streets, 
the movie's climax takes place in the city's crumbling, abandoned places, in 
hallways and on rooftops rotted through with water. The world isn't about to 
end in Blade Runner, but it's not getting any cleaner, or more efficient. 
It's just getting older.
Misses
Replicants: There's no delicate way of putting this: We can barely clone a 
sheep without killing it, much less grow a human outside of the womb. Clones 
tend to be frail things with persistent health problems. The only thing they 
have in common with the biological androids in Blade Runner is a shortened 
life span. To achieve a fully manufactured humanoid creature that's injected 
with memories and force-grown in order to reach physical and emotional 
adulthood in a more manageable time frame is as feasible as breaking the 
speed of light.
Off-world colonies: The purpose of the replicants is to work-and 
occasionally fight-in space, on dangerous off-world mining colonies. No 
details are provided, but they wouldn't help. The only extraterrestrial 
mining colony in our future is on the moon, and whether we'll even get there 
by 2019 is still up for debate.
Undecided
Flying cars: It's to the movie's credit that the flying cars in Blade Runner 
seem so commonplace. The drivers wear headsets, and check with air traffic 
control, and seem to avoid unnecessary shenanigans. This is how flying cars 
should work, if they were at all plausible. Unfortunately (or, depending on 
how much you trust your fellow drivers, very fortunately) flying cars that 
operate as regular cars as well as aircraft, with full 
vertical-takeoff-and-landing (VTOL) capabilities, have yet to reach 
first-generation status, much less the kind of mature product that police 
officers would be able to use in densely populated areas. But if a company 
called Urban Aeronautics can get its act together, and deliver its 
VTOL-capable, $3 million X-Hawk by 2010, flying squad cars might become a 
little less ridiculous. What Blade Runner gets right is the potential 
customers. Price and security restrictions are likely to keep the first 
flying cars out of reach for private pilots. Initial customers could include 
emergency responders, the military and law enforcement. If everything falls 
into place, including massive demand and an even more massive boost to 
police budgets, VTOL patrol vehicles could happen. Not by 2019, but possibly 
not long after.
-------------------------------
6. The Running Man
Released: 1987 | Set in the year: 2019
The movies that have the biggest cultural impact aren't necessarily the best 
ones. In fact, sometimes they're among the most embarrassing. The Running 
Man envisions a decaying 21st-century America, where Arnold Schwarzenegger's 
police chopper pilot is falsely accused of opening fire on a crowd of hungry 
rioters. He had actually refused to pull the trigger, but with a sprinkling 
of computer wizardry, re-edited footage of the incident shows him maniacally 
gunning down unarmed civilians. He's then put on the highest-ranked TV show 
in the country, where convicts try to outrun a team of hulking 
"Stalkers"-heavily-branded characters with signature weapons and comic book 
names like Buzzsaw (who uses a chainsaw) and Sub-zero (a razor-sharp hockey 
stick).
Hits
Reality game shows: American Gladiators debuted in 1989, two years after 
Running Man was released (and it has recently returned on NBC). Although it 
was presumably a competition between paired-off contestants, the syndicated 
show featured a cast of hulking "Gladiators" with names like Nitro, Ice and 
Laser. They alternately tackled contestants, bashed them with giant 
Q-tip-like sticks, and fired at their heads with tennis-ball launchers. And 
while no one was killed on American Gladiators-though one competitor 
suffered a detached retina after being beaned with a tennis ball-the era of 
vicious and borderline exploitative reality-game shows was born. Hopefully 
TV will never get as gruesome as this movie predicts, but as the number of 
television channels spirals toward the infinite, the lowest common 
denominator channel may one day be only a click away.
Misses
Video editing: Special effects, and computer-generated imagery in 
particular, have become extremely sophisticated. The most deceptive effects 
involve addition and reduction, as panoramic landscapes are digitally 
chroma-keyed behind actors filmed on green screen, and people and cars are 
stripped out of a bustling cityscape. But manipulating living beings with 
CGI requires software and CPUs from the far side of Futureland. Human speech 
and expressions are-for now-impossible to code from scratch. If the fake 
footage of Arnold's atrocity were simply a matter of creative editing, the 
premise of this movie might work. Pasting his bug-eyed laughter from, say, 
the Police Athletic League's annual volleyball tournament is almost 
feasible. But assuming that we'll reach this level of digital fabrication in 
the next ten years is silly, even by this movie's standards.
------------------------------
5. Destination Moon
Released: 1950 | Set in the year: Unspecified
Perhaps the most boring movie ever made about space travel, Destination Moon 
is remarkable because of what it wasn't. In one of those inexplicable 
Hollywood horse races, this was one of two movies released in 1950 about 
man's first trip to the moon. First came Rocketship X-M, in which, when the 
eponymous rocket runs out of fuel halfway to the moon, it somehow grinds to 
a halt in the vacuum of space. The craft ultimately lands on Mars (don't ask 
why), where the crew discovers a bustling civilization, yada yada yada. 
Destination Moon, on the other hand, is a tale of astronauts obeying 
Newtonian physics. The dramatic climax comes when the crew realizes they 
don't have enough fuel to make it back to Earth, and even after dumping all 
of their unessential gear, one of them will have to stay behind. Trust me 
when I say you won't care who dies, and that fighting some moon men with 
deadly moon spears would have been a far better finale.
Hits
Realistic spaceflight: At its best, Destination Moon is an astonishingly 
sober primer on the physics, and potential complications, of space travel. 
When the crew takes off, an extended sequence (they're all extended, really) 
shows the effects of acceleration on their grimacing faces. When its time 
for a spacewalk, the astronauts put on their suits and wait, and wait, as 
the air cycles out of the crew compartment. It's all very scientific and 
responsible-the educational equivalent of spinach slathered with milk of 
magnesia. For what it's worth, the moon also looks remarkably like it 
should. And when the rocket first leaves Earth, the crew counts down from 
30. There is such a thing as too much realism.
Commercial interest in space: The premise of the movie-private investors 
banding together to build the first manned moon rocket-is obviously dopey. 
But envisioning any level of commercial interest in space was revolutionary 
in 1950, particularly when the pulp legacy of serials like Flash Gordon was 
still so prominent.
Undecided
Nuke-powered rockets: Tempting as it is to criticize Destination Moon for 
its nuclear-powered rocket, the potential for nukes to provide both thrust 
and onboard power has been actively pursued for years. In fact, a 
nuke-powered manned vehicle has been proposed for the mission to Mars.
------------------------------
4. The Truman Show
Released: 1998 | Set in the year: Unspecified (probably an alternate 
timeline)
The Truman Show is a kind of cinematic chimera. It's part comedy, part 
drama, straddling the line between science fiction and modern-day fairy 
tale. Set in a fictional world where the most popular show is a 24-hour-feed 
of a single, painfully average guy, there's nothing blatantly predictive 
about the movie. But like The Running Man before it, it's hard to deny the 
impact The Truman Show has had on pop culture, and especially on TV 
producers. Arriving just before the explosion of reality television, the 
intentionally over-the-top story still echoes today. Purchased by a 
corporation as an infant, Truman's entire life has been a televised lie, 
with millions watching every one of his manufactured tragedies and triumphs. 
Mostly, though, Truman simply lives, and the show's popularity is its 
straightforward voyeurism. And, like Big Brother, Survivor, and every other 
reality show on the air, none of his environment is actually real.
Hits
Reality TV: It's easy to chalk up the debut of Big Brother a year after 
Truman's cinematic release to coincidence. And MTV's The Real World debuted 
long before The Truman Show, in 1992. But whether it actually predicted the 
sudden (and lasting) popularity of orchestrated realism, or simply 
capitalized on it, consider this: in 2003, Spike aired The Joe Schmo Show, 
which featured a regular guy tricked into competing on a completely fake 
reality show. Unlike Truman, Matt Gould could see the cameras, but all of 
the other contestants were paid actors, playing the part of various 
reality-show stereotypes. While Matt eventually got all of the prizes in the 
rigged contest, the show's central running joke was in the same existential 
ballpark as The Truman Show.
Misses
Weather machine: Dissecting the plausibility of an extended parable is an 
exercise in missing the point, but producing a hurricane on demand to keep 
Truman from leaving his fictional town is still pretty hard to swallow.
----------------------------
3. The Road Warrior (Mad Max 2)
Released: 1981 | Set in the year: Unspecified
In Mad Max, the world-or Australia, at least-was in trouble. Society seemed 
to be crumbling, and marauding gangs were winning the war against law 
enforcement. In the opening montage in The Road Warrior (Mad Max 2), we find 
out why. Oil shortages had led to global war, and the vaguely dystopic 
setting in the first movie was a paradise compared to the dusty 
post-apocalypse of the sequel. Mel Gibson's lonesome drifter helps a 
compound of survivors under siege from a small army of bandits sporting 
leather jockstraps for masks and lots of crossbow bolts. At stake-the 
compound's vast and enviable fuel reserves. The end of the world, it seems, 
is a sprint to decide who can consume the very last drop of oil. Which is 
why, despite the bizarre cast of characters and outlandish setting, it's 
hard to shake the feeling that The Road Warrior could happen, or at least 
start to happen, any day now.
Hits
Resource wars: Not everyone agrees that oil is running out. But it's hard to 
dispute the skyrocketing price of crude. The extent of the current crisis 
has yet to be defined, but nations are scrambling to find new sources of 
oil, and to develop alternative power generation. A report commissioned by 
the Department of Defense in 2003 warned of the potential for military 
conflict over dwindling resources, and British Defense Secretary John Reid 
made a similar prediction in a 2006 speech. Some experts claim that resource 
wars are already here, pointing to the potential impact of water shortages 
on the conflict in Darfur. And all political hand-wringing aside, if you 
live in Somalia, or Darfur, The Road Warrior seems a lot like everyday life. 
With roving warlords, the constant threat of violence, and a society in 
tatters, the only thing that's missing is a hero. Because in the real world, 
no one's really coming to the rescue.
Misses
Flamethrowers: This is a minor gripe, but if all fuel production has ground 
to a halt, would anyone, even the fuel-rich compounders, bother to use 
flamethrowers? Or are flamethrowers the flamboyant, post-apocalyptic 
equivalent of driving a stretch Hummer?
----------------------------
2. Minority Report
Released: 2002 | Set in the year: 2054
Back in the hoary old days of Tom Cruise's superstardom, Minority Report was 
just another box office home run. The story was neo-noir, with a detective 
on the run for a murder he hasn't yet committed. But the convoluted plot 
line, full of psychic visions and nonpsychic betrayals, isn't what most 
people remember about this movie. They remember that scene where Cruise 
whips through images and data with his hands, and the creepy holographic ads 
that yelp from cereal boxes and greet you by name at the Gap. Minority 
Report is a vision of a sleek future that feels plausible, full of 
believable-looking gadgets and essentially free of all violent crime. The 
pushy ads and unnerving psychics are just part of the package.
Hits
Display technology: When we first saw Microsoft's innovative multitouch 
interface, Surface, I said what everyone says. "It's just like Minority 
Report." And it's what people say about Jeff Han's larger, wall-mounted 
touchscreens, watching him deftly shuffle through windows with his fingers. 
Microsoft is fine with the association-Han is not. He points out that, since 
Cruise's character is dealing with holographic images floating around 
himself, the interface lacks the tactile feedback of tapping and sliding 
your hands across a screen. That might be the case, but between Han, 
Microsoft and the iPhone, touch-based computing is here to stay. And 3D 
displays, which were a key trend at this year's Consumer Electronics Show, 
are also on the verge of commercial viability. I'm not predicting a 
holographic, gesture-controlled computer in the near future, or even the 
less sophisticated holographic ads and camcorder footage that shows up in 
the movie. But if Surface is already available in 2008, it's hard to imagine 
that we'll be using mice and 2D monitors in 2054.
Self-driving cars: Adaptive braking and autonomous cruise control are 
already a reality for luxury cars. So in nearly 50 years, will cars reach 
full autonomy? Scientists and automakers would argue that a driverless world 
is a significantly safer and less congested one, and that incremental 
improvements will eventually add up to robotic chauffeurs. The head of 
Stanford's DARPA Urban Challenge team, which placed second in the driverless 
race, predicts self-driven cars by 2030. That deadline might feel a little 
tight, but 2054 is much more forgiving.
Misses
Precognition: Without getting into a debate about whether psychic powers 
exist, here are some facts. Parapsychology has all but disappeared from 
academia in the United States, and is on a downward slide overseas. There is 
no significant government funding for any experiments related to psychic 
phenomenon. In other words, whatever you may or may not believe, 
state-sponsored precognition doesn't exist. To assume that the next two 
decades will see a sudden breakthrough in observable psychic ability, as 
well as the bureaucratic and budgetary momentum to install those psychics as 
part of a crime-prevention initiative, is about as far-fetched as believing 
that future presidential administrations will start relying on Ouija boards.
Maglev cars: Self-driving cars make sense. But magnetically levitating cars 
that climb buildings? It makes for a swell video-game-ish action scene, but 
has little to do with actual maglev technology, which is progressing at a 
glacial pace.
Undecided
Jet packs: It's a sad fact of life, but the jet-pack industry is a phantom 
market. That could change, however, if enough people risk their incredibly 
rich and/or stupid lives in the coming years to allow jet-pack makers to 
improve on the basic design. So if jet packs were to, pun intended, take off 
right this minute, or within the next couple of years, it's possible that by 
2054 they would be fuel-efficient enough to stay airborne as long as the 
ones in this movie, and light enough to not blow your ACL every time you 
land. It probably won't happen, but it could. And we all want it to, so it 
should.
Iris scans: The mandatory, frequent iris scans, which serve as a security 
tool as well as a marketing one (the Gap holo-greeter has specific 
suggestions for Cruise's characters, based on the shopping history 
associated with his eyeballs) are completely feasible, given the increasing 
high-tech scrutiny of Americans. However, its more likely that the 
technology will have at least some failure rate, similar to tag-detection 
systems at retail stores, acting more as an aid to security personnel than a 
self-contained security measure.
E-paper: The wirelessly updated e-paper newspapers are considerably prettier 
and more flexible than the Kindle, but that technology could easily become 
commonplace within the movie's timeline. But if holographic technology is as 
advanced as it appears to be, why bother with any tangible display surface?
-------------------------------
1. Gattaca
Released: 1997 | Set in the year: Unspecified
The mark of a truly prescient sci-fi film is when, after stumbling over a 
lengthy description of the complex moral dimensions surrounding a given 
topic, you realize you've been wasting your time. "Oh, right. It's like 
Gattaca." Since this slow-burn cult classic was released, the murky 
bioethics of genetic profiling have snapped into focus. Relegated to the 
status of "in-valid" due to a subpar DNA profile, Ethan Hawke's protagonist 
sets up a complicated identity-swapping scheme to secure a spot as an 
astronaut. The technology on display in the movie is still years away, but 
the central message-that genetic oppression can become institutionalized 
before anyone notices-is increasingly relevant. I should also point out that 
the writer and director of Gattaca, Andrew Niccol, wrote the screenplay for 
one of my other picks, The Truman Show. It's not that I'm a Niccol groupie, 
but he seems to have a knack for getting to some of the biggest issues of 
our time, just barely ahead of schedule.
Hits
Genetic profiling: The fear factor has been working the edges for years: 
Will the babies of tomorrow be selectively bred for certain traits? Is 
eliminating Down syndrome worth the ethical dilemma of allowing parents to 
choose their child's gender? Still, what Gattaca poses is an even more 
plausible crisis: If we can use genes to find out who's biologically suited 
to specific tasks, and to calculate estimated life spans for every newborn, 
how would that reorganize our society? If, for example, we knew that the 
odds were against a given presidential candidate to survive a single term in 
office, would anyone vote for him or her? And, as British authorities have 
recently proposed, if we can identify the genes associated with criminal 
behavior, why not test every single child, and create a pre-emptive database 
of would-be offenders? Genetic profiling can clearly be abused, but it could 
also save lives. Scientists are currently working to identify which genes 
indicate an increased chance of weight gain, which could help fend off 
obesity for future generations. But is it worth the risk of saddling whole 
segments of the population with the stigma of the dreaded "fat" gene? 
Genetic engineering is still centuries away, but the opportunity to decimate 
free will, by way of well-intentioned genetic early warnings, has already 
arrived.
Undecided
Manned exploration: Since Gattaca isn't set in a particular time, there's no 
way to gauge the plausibility of the protagonist's dream, which is to get 
his genetically inferior, possibly short-lived self into space. His first 
assignment is to reach Titan, one of Saturn's moons, which would set this 
movie way into the future. But since there are no pop-culture references, 
and everything is so perfectly fascist and minimal, Gattaca is adrift in its 
own timeline. It's wherever you want it to be, which is one of the reasons 
it's so successful in its sci-fi ambitions.
-------------------------
-- 
maitre Aliboron
In un film si vede Bruce Lee uccidere Chuck Norris.
E' l'effetto speciale piu' costoso di tutta la storia del cinema. 

 The 10 Most Prophetic Sci-Fi Movies Ever
Niccol si piazza al numero 1 e al numero 4.
Peccato si sia perso per strada.