Director Robert Zemeckis and Universal pictures were amazingly accurate in their predictions of the future, especially considering email wasn’t even in use when the movie was released in 1989. The plot line in every movie was almost a carbon copy of the last one, but that didn’t stop the fans flooding to cinemas. The Back to the Future movie trilogies grossed $965,531,382 at the box office for Universal pictures. Michael J. Fox (24 when the first film came out) stars as Marty McFly, a typical American teenager that travels to the future, October 21, 2015. Marty’s job is to pose as his own son to prevent him from being thrown in prison.
Hoverboard
Self-Lacing Shoes
This was a marketing dream for Nike at the time. Their 2015 spin on the shoes from the future was a self-lacing shoe worn by Michael J. Fox. Nike has reproduced the shoes since then, but not with the self-lacing feature. A Canadian company has done it though – and they launched it through Kickstarter. Powerlace http://www.powerlace.com/ have paved the way with their advanced auto-lacing show technology. It might not be mainstream now, but watch this space.
Video Calls + Flat Screen TV
Considering this movie was made in the 1989, the prediction of video conferencing was very impressive. In the movie, McFly Junior is speaking with his boss on a teleconference call, also on a flat screen TV from his living room. This is a very accurate representation of how we are today with Skype, Facetime, and Google Hangouts…it’s an amazing pick from the Directors, especially considering brick mobile phones were in fashion in 1989.
TV / Phone Glasses
In the movie one of the characters answers a telephone call at the dinner table on her glasses, she is also watching TV on this device at the same time. This is not a combination we can find on the market today, nor would we want it, but the producers did get one half of the equation right. Google Glasses are a very close match to this product and the directors were spot on with their depiction of the dinner table scene where everyone is distracted with different pieces of technology.
Tablets
Director Robert Zemeckis and Steve Jobs were probably the only guys who had dreamt of the tablet in 1989. In another one of Back to The Future II’s most accurate predictions, there is a scene where Marty is asked by an old guy to sign a petition (on a tablet) to save the clock tower. The tablet he is holding thicker than today’s products, but is an impressive forecast into the future.
pressive feats of engineering. It seems like we are inching closer towards the futuristic flying car dream after all.
Fax Machines in 2015
They weren’t wrong in this predication. Fax machines are still found in most offices, I don’t know what they are used for, but they are usually there. In a scene from the movie a fax message is sent with the words ‘you’re fired’ written. It wasn’t entirely inaccurate, but the directors missed a beat with this prediction, especially given their other impressive communications picks with video calls and telephone glasses.
Dehydrated Food
It seemed so futuristic at the time, rehydrating an unrecognizable food product and producing a hot piece of pizza in seconds, but they got this one wrong. We’re such an organic, quinoa, soy latte consuming culture these days that we’ve actually gone in the other direction with our eating habits. That’s not to say that NASA haven’t been using this technology, but rehydrating food for astronauts is not a new concept and the movie missed the mark with this prediction.
