The year 2019: Once a far-off time, once a vessel for writers and filmmakers to explore their hopes, dreams, and fears of the future. A time to wonder what advanced technology we’d be living with, and how much societal and moral progress we would have made. If any.
But reality has trouble keeping up with imagination. 2000 arrived without our electronics turning on us. We threw away our granite Maya calendars when 2012 came and went with nary a shower of brimstone. And 2015 gave us a third Human Centipede, yet no Mattel pink hoverboards. Will 2019 have more success?
To find out, we watched movies set in 2019 to uncover what predictive treasures they may clutch. Stuff like Blade Runner, The Running Man, The Island, Daybreakers, Geostorm, Heatseeker, Steel Frontier, 2019: After the Fall of New York, and The New Barbarians. (Akira is another 2019-set movie, though we opted to stick with live-action predictions.) Together, they form a kind of crystal ball, fragmentary and smoke-filled (seriously, the fog machine budget on these movies was NUTS), and when shaken provide a glimpse into this brave new world of 2019. Keep this gallery close at hand as the year unfolds, and see just how many of these 24 movie predictions become real.
Your very own clone to harvest some fresh organs. For the bargain price of $5,000,000.
Replicants. All manual labor will be left to these robotic mimics, including love. Automation strikes again.
MSN Search kiosks on every street.
And noodle joints on every corner.
Hovercars will be the standard mode of transportation.
Hoverbikes will eradicate app scooters.
More skytrams for public transit.
The Hyperloop train will be completed for interstate travel.
America will latch onto gruesome, violent, and very family-friendly TV like The Hate Boat, a Miller-Boyett production.
And The Running Man, where prisoners compete for top prizes like a trial by jury.
MMA tournaments will allow cybernetically enhanced fighters, to varying degrees of success.
Bendy credit cards. They come in three different flavors.
Atari returns from the dead after brisk sales of the Jaguar MiniClassicTurbo.
Whoops! An epidemic sweeps the planet, transforming most of the population into vampires.
Humans are systemically hunted, captured, and drained.
There will be blood…shortages, leading to social unrest, mass riots, and cancellation of the Rolling Stones tour.
Sensing a disturbance in the Earth’s chakra, Gerard Butler, the slumbering prince of Hollywood, awakes from his bacta tank on Rodeo Drive and unleashes his ultimate move: The Geostorm!
The Geostorm wipes out nearly all life on Earth. America becomes a lawless wasteland.
Fine dining in Los Angeles remains more or less the same.
Bubble domes on cars will become luxury standard.
Fashion of the post-apocalypse: Highlights for men.
And PLASTIC. Recycling is en vogue in 2019.
Contamination causes all women to become infertile, except for one in New York. A prisoner is sent to the Boroughs to retrieve her, or die trying. John Carpenter sues the human race for ripping off the plot of Escape From New York. We settle out of court.
The resurgence of Pokemon Go continues unabated.
