Future shock: The sci-fi movies that pre­dict­ed 2019

Twen­ty nine­teen. Say it out loud and it almost sounds futur­is­tic. The movies knew it, too. A spate of ​’80s-pro­duced sci­ence fic­tion films chose to estab­lish their milieu specif­i­cal­ly in the year 2019 – but why was this? A brief bit of numero­log­i­cal research tells us that 2019 promis­es cre­ativ­i­ty, self-expres­sion and align­ment, all of which sounds pret­ty pos­i­tive. Yet, per­haps unsur­pris­ing­ly giv­en every­thing that was going on in the 1980s, sci-fi film­mak­ers offered an unde­ni­ably grim­mer out­look of 2019.

Take Rid­ley Scott’s Blade Run­ner. Its breath­tak­ing­ly bleak estab­lish­ing shot of a dystopi­an Los Ange­les cir­ca 2019, replete with cold, cor­po­rate megas­truc­tures and hell­ish flames, mer­its a men­tion in any con­ver­sa­tion regard­ing cinema’s great­est open­ings. You’ll find cre­ativ­i­ty here too – just as the numerol­o­gists pre­dict­ed – but in the film’s alter­nate 2019 the cre­ativ­i­ty of human­i­ty has result­ed in the spawn­ing of the species’ suc­ces­sor. The Nexus 6 breed of repli­cants are supe­ri­or to human beings in every way. In Scott’s dark prophe­cy, it seems the age of man is draw­ing to a close.

Humanity’s inescapable demise is evi­dent in every lev­el of Blade Runner’s con­cep­tu­al­i­sa­tion: from the emp­ty, post-mod­ern lay­er­ing of neon and light over the crum­bling ruin of 20^th cen­tu­ry archi­tec­ture, to the cyn­i­cal, moral empti­ness of Har­ri­son Ford’s pro­tag­o­nist Rick Deckard. The tit­u­lar blade run­ner believes him­self to be human and yet mem­o­rably in the film’s cli­mac­tic moments is taught a fate­ful les­son on the rich­ness of life – by a sen­tient machine, no less.

Above all, Blade Run­ner empha­sis­es humanity’s capac­i­ty for self-destruc­tion: eco­log­i­cal dis­as­ters, con­tin­u­ing eco­nom­ic polar­i­sa­tion, the grow­ing pow­er of cor­po­rate struc­tures and the emer­gence of soon-to-be-sen­tient AI all strength­en the film’s prophet­ic vision of the future. On the oth­er hand, the film also pre­dict­ed that Atari and Pan-Am would be major fea­tures of an advert-laden sky­line by this point, so maybe Scott’s crys­tal ball didn’t see everything.

Blade Runner’s belat­ed sequel, set in 2049, is itself back­dropped by the increas­ing­ly real prospect of a glob­al food cri­sis. How­ev­er, this par­tic­u­lar dooms­day fore­cast is noth­ing new for sci­ence fic­tion: 1987’s The Run­ning Man, star­ring Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger as wrong­ly con­vict­ed every­man Ben Richards, also takes 2019 as its set­ting and is char­ac­terised by mass famine and vio­lent riots. Even as far back as the ear­ly ​’80s, the orig­i­nal mind behind the film, Stephen King (writ­ing under the pseu­do­nym Richard Bach­man) under­stood that no mat­ter how dire the sit­u­a­tion may be, no one will pay much atten­tion so long as there’s some­thing decent on the telly.

In The Run­ning Man, tele­vi­sion is the opi­ate of the mass­es, with aver­age Amer­i­can cit­i­zens too read­i­ly caught up in dead­ly glad­i­a­to­r­i­al com­bat shows to wor­ry about the fact that food is run­ning out, or that art, com­mu­ni­ca­tions and music have all been banned. Much like Blade Run­ner before it, Paul Michael Glaser’s film was ahead of its time in pre­dict­ing that 2019 would result in omnipresent com­pa­nies no longer mask­ing their true intentions.

Here, America’s new cor­po­rate super­pow­ers wear their naked greed on their fig­u­ra­tive sleeve – quite lit­er­al­ly in the case of sports­wear brand adi­das, who agreed to have their logo plas­tered all over the offi­cial jump­suits of the film’s tit­u­lar game show, where con­tes­tants are hunt­ed down and slaugh­tered live before a bay­ing stu­dio audience.

The show with­in the film is pre­sent­ed and mas­ter­mind­ed by Damon Kil­lian (Richard Daw­son), a mas­ter of mis­di­rec­tion and ​‘fake news’. Not only does he use the show as a way of dis­pos­ing with incon­ve­nient whistle­blow­ers who are ready to rat him out, but at sev­er­al points dur­ing the film he has video footage doc­tored to present his own ver­sion of the truth. We now know, of course, that the Amer­i­can peo­ple throw­ing their lot in with a pop­ulist, media-spin­ning pub­lic fig­ure is not as far-fetched a prospect as it may once have seemed.

Fore­shad­ow­ing the rise of a Trump-like fig­ure is not all that The Run­ning Man got right. Its some­what idio­syn­crat­ic view of the future also fea­tures voice-acti­vat­ed smart homes, as well as the rise of real­i­ty TV. One cru­cial plot point from the orig­i­nal 1982 novel­la left out of the film sees a des­per­ate Ben Richards trade his life to destroy the insid­i­ous Games Net­work… by fly­ing a ful­ly-fuelled pas­sen­ger air­lin­er into the broadcaster’s sky­scraper headquarters.

But per­haps sci­ence fic­tion cinema’s most accu­rate pre­dic­tion for 2019 can be found in Kat­suhi­ro Ôtomo’s sem­i­nal 1988 ani­mé, Aki­ra. In this cyber­punk clas­sic, Neo-Tokyo is to host the Olympic Games in 2020, the orig­i­nal city hav­ing by reduced to rub­ble dur­ing World War Three – so, on sec­ond thoughts, maybe not so prophet­ic after all. The film also envi­sioned unruly motor­cy­cle gangs rul­ing the streets by 2019, but a moral pan­ic fol­lowed by strin­gent new laws passed in the ensu­ing decades have made motor­cy­cle gang mem­ber­ship far less pop­u­lar than before.

The motor­cy­cles of Aki­ra do form an unmis­tak­able part of the film’s iconog­ra­phy though. And with many of them plas­tered with cor­po­rate brand­ing, this is yet anoth­er dystopi­an sci-fi about the per­va­sive nature of all-pow­er­ful cor­po­ra­tions in the throes of late-stage capitalism.

Mean­while, 2005’s The Island ben­e­fit­ed from mak­ing its 2019 pre­dic­tions from a much clos­er van­tage point. The lurk­ing spec­tre of ram­pant cor­po­rati­sa­tion is still evi­dent, both in the film’s plot and in sports­wear brand Puma’s deci­sion to dress the film’s soon-to-be-organ-har­vest­ed inhab­i­tants. Even more trou­bling is the key plot device that under­pins the film: a group of clones are held cap­tive until the time comes that their dou­ble requires their vital organs, a pro­duc­tion-line approach to human organ har­vest­ing which has alleged­ly been occur­ring in Chi­na for decades in so-called ​‘black jails’.

In a hor­ri­fy­ing inver­sion of the film’s premise (where both the sub­jects and the world at large are unaware of the source of said organs) the law in Chi­na sur­rep­ti­tious­ly sup­ports this bar­bar­ic prac­tice, with a 1984 pro­vi­sion stat­ing that exe­cut­ed pris­on­ers can be used as donors, despite this statute flaunt­ing sev­er­al inter­na­tion­al human rights laws.

And so, as human­i­ty stum­bles its way through the ear­ly stages of 2019, take a moment to con­sid­er the days ahead. Will some remark­able AI cre­ation devel­op sen­tience before we’re able to pull the plug? Per­haps the End Times are already here and you’re too busy watch­ing the TV to notice? In fact, are you even sure that you are you at all? If sci­ence fic­tion cin­e­ma has taught us any­thing about these four, seem­ing­ly innocu­ous dig­its, it’s that no mat­ter how we intend to approach this year as a race, we need to be very care­ful indeed.