The Best Movies Predicting the Future

The year in “Mr. Nobody” is 2092. Humans are practically immortal because their body cells are able to self-renew endlessly.

“Ready Player One” is set in 2045, when people use virtual reality to escape the world, which is chaotic and violent, and escape to another universe.

“The Lobster” shows a dystopian near future where single people are forced to find a partner in 45 days. If they don’t, they are turned into animals.

“Westworld” centers on a futuristicn amusement park with a theme of artificial Wild Wild West. It is populated with lifelike androids that start to malfunction.

“Star Wars” creator George Lucas showed he could master sci-fi films with 1971’s “THX.” The movie takes place in the 25th century, when members of a totalitarian society in which people are deprived of names must rebel against their overlords.

“Alita: Battle Angel” is set in the 26th century. Earth has been devastated by war and cyborgs are everywhere.

After traveling to the recent past in the first film in the trilogy, Doc Brown and Marty McFly travel to 2015 in “Back to the Future Part II.” McFly has to keep his future self out of prison without affecting the present or the past.

The 1960 sci-fi classic “The Time Machine” centers on a man who believes he can reach a utopian society by traveling into the future — but when he actually travels forward in time, he arrives in a dangerous land.

The 1981 film “Escape from New York” imagined that by 1997 Manhattan would become a maximum security prison as crime would skyrocket. When the U.S. president crash lands on the prison island, a bank robber is tasked with extracting the Ccommander-in-Cchief.

“The Fifth Element” is set in the distant future — some 250 years from now, as Earth is about to be destroyed by the Great Evil. Humanity’s only hope rests on the fifth element. A former special forces major-turned-cabbie helps the fifth element defend Earth in an adventure-filled story.

Based on a Philip K. Diсk short story, “Total Recall” is the story of a seemingly ordinary man who wants pleasant memories implanted in his head. But after something goes wrong with the procedure, his life is turned upside down and he’s told he’s a secret agent. To find answers, he has to go to Mars.

“Avatar” is one of the most successful films of all time, one of just three films to gross more than $750 million domestically. The film centers on a paraplegic Marine who uploads his consciousness into a synthetic body of a Na’vi — the species living on the moon of Pandora. He is supposed to infiltrate the Na’vi and help his employers mine resources from Pandora, but he falls in love with an alien and is torn between his duty and his feelings.

“Minority Report” is set in Washington D.C. in the year 2054. Murders have been eliminated as law enforcement can see the future and prevent killings before they happen. But when the Pre Crime program’s chief is supposedly the next killer, he unravels a conspiracy of epic proportions.

In “Interstellar,” Earth has become uninhabitable, and a newly-discovered wormhole may be humanity’s only hope. A team of astronauts must find a hospitable planet and try to make it back to Earth alive and on time.

In “Gattaca,” the future is driven by eugenics. Embryos are altered through genetic engineering and are deemed “valid.” People conceived naturally are deemed “in-valid,” or subpar.

In the year 2074, an organized crime syndicate has access to time travel, using it to send those they want dead to the past to be assassinated. When Joe, one of the syndicate’s assassins, learns he is the next target, he and his future self team up to foil the plan.

In “Upgrade,” the main character is paralyzed after a mugging. He receives an implant called STEM that gives him superhuman strength.

The sequel to “Blade Runner,” which is set in 2019, “Blade Runner 2049” is set in 2049. In the second movie, the bioengineerd humans, called replicants, are slaves. It is discovered that, contrary to what is believed, replicants can reproduce, which can lead to war between them and humans.

The classic dystopian sci-fi flick “RoboCop” is set in a crime-ridden future Detroit. A police officer who almost dies on the job has his consciousness placed in a robo-suit, making him an effective crime fighting weapon. But he soon learns the real danger isn’t the street criminals, but the company who turned him into a machine.

After the beloved sci-fi TV series “Firefly” was canceled, the characters of the show returned for one last hurrah in the movie “Serenity.” The crew of a 25th century outlaw spaceship is on the run after harboring a woman who escaped from a government testing facility in which she was given psychic powers.

In “District 9,” an alien spaceship crash lands in South Africa. Initially welcomed, eventually, the extraterrestrials are forced to live in a shanty town and are exploited for their technology. An agent in charge of monitoring the district decides to help them escape after being exposed to an alien chemical.

In Woody Allen’s 1973 film “Sleeper,” Allen’s character plays the owner of a health food store who is cryogenically frozen and wakes up 200 years later to discover that the U.S. has become a poorly-run dystopian police state and that he must infiltrate the government to derail the dictator’s master plan.

“Planet of the Apes” happens in the distant future, where people are able to fly to planets outside the solar system. On one such planet, apes have evolved into creatures that can speak and have become the rulers while humans are slaves.

The world in “Children of Men” has descended into chaos. The year is 2027, and all women have become infertile — except one. A former activist-turned-beaurocrat living in the U.K. suddenly finds himself running from the law when he is tasked with taking the pregnant refugee to safety.

“Isle of Dogs” is a stop-motion animated film from acclaimed director Wes Anderson. In the film, dogs are banished from mainland Japan due to a disease outbreak. A young boy goes to a trash island to find his former dog while trying to thwart the plans of the villainous, cat-loving Mayor Kobayashi.

“Her” is a science fiction film in which, in the near future, a lonely man falls in love with his artificial intelligence operating system.

Like many sci-fi films, “Moon” takes place in a future in which resources are scarce. In the film, astronaut Sam works alone as he mines the moon for fuel, but he begins to doubt his own sanity and distrust his employer as the loneliness takes its toll.

In “12 Monkeys,” the world of 2035 is an apocalyptic hellscape after a virus forced all of humanity to live underground. A convict is sent back in time to try to earn parole if he can figure out what caused the virus and how to stop it.

“The Matrix” is one of the most popular sci-fi films of all time. The film centers on a hacker who discovers he lives in a computer-generated world that robots use to keep humans subdued while they use people as power sources.

In “The Martian,” astronaut Mark Watney becomes accidentally stranded on the Red planet. But he is able to survive using leftover supplies, and his crew launches a daring rescue mission to bring him back home.

“Blade Runner,” released in 1982, is set in dystopian Los Angeles in 2019. In the film, genetically engineered replicants look exactly the same as people.

“A Clockwork Orange” is set in futuristic London, a welfare state, where a group of young men assault innocent people at night. The leader of the gang is finally captured and undergoes aversion therapy.

Stanley Kubrick’s sci-fi masterpiece “2001: A Space Odyssey” is one of the earliest films to provide a cautionary tale about advancing artificial intelligence. The antagonist of the film’s third section is HAL 9000 — a computer that would rather kill the crew of the spaceship Discovery than be turned off.

“Brazil” paints a dystopian picture of the future, in which society has become overcrowded, and ruled by a totalitarian bureaucracy that is over-reliant on technology.

“The Terminator” is the first movie of The Terminator franchise. Though set in the present, the movie shows a near future where robots, directed by artificial intelligence Skynet, have taken over the world. The robots’ goal is to annihilate humanity.

The future in “WALL-E” involves an Earth that has been abandoned by humans because there is too much garbage. That waste has been generated by people due to their excessive lifestyles, and Wall-E is the robot tasked with cleaning it all up.

The future, according to “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” is taken over by artificial intelligence, which has control of U.S. nuclear missiles and trigger a nuclear holocaust.