The year 2015 has finally arrived and if movie fiction has any say in the future, this year will be filled with profound, although conflicting predictions.
Although “Blade Runner” takes place in 2019, Rick Deckard [Harrison Ford] becomes a hunter, aka the eponymous “blade runner” of human-like androids gone rogue to avoid the end of the life cycle, in March 2015, which means that the existence of replicants, a reason to chase them, flying cars, buildings the size of cities and commercial space travel are only a few months away.
The immensely popular apocalyptic anime series “Neon Genesis Evangelion” also takes place in 2015. In the anime, giant biomechanical monsters known “angels” named after biblical demons attack Earth, as foretold in the Dead Sea Scrolls, and are battled by humans from the international military group NERV.
At the end of the series, after the protagonist and his fellow comrades defeat the 17th angel, the souls of humanity are merged into one collective consciousness as all life on Earth turns into a sort of goo. So that’s something to look forward to.
By 2015 in “The Sixth Day,” human cloning has been perfected, sort of, although clones are ordered to be destroyed after six days of life. This doesn’t stop a clone of Adam Gibson [Arnold Schwarzenegger], who doesn’t know he’s a clone, to join forces with his real self and kill lots and lots of bad guys with a railgun, a fictional weapon that uses superconducting magnets to fire a slug at thousands of miles per hour.
Also in 2015, the Simian Flu outbreak is set to strike and wipe out 90 percent of the human species, making room for increasingly sentient, genetically-modified apes to take over Earth and transform our world into the “Planet of the Apes.”
Most famously, on Oct. 21, 2015, a specially modified DeLorean DMC-12 will emerge in Hill Valley carrying “Back to the Future Part II” time-travelers Dr. Emmett Brown [Christopher Lloyd], Marty McFly [Michael J. Fox] and Jennifer Parker [Elizabeth Shue] from 1985.
Although flying cars, airborne traffic jams and hoverboards have yet to come into being, the 30-year-old film did get lots of predictions right, such as a professional baseball team in Miami, video games people could play without their hands, video advertising, personally-targeted ads, video conferences, webcams everywhere, computers in eyeglasses and mobile computers.
While Hollywood may create fiction about the future for us to dream about, let’s hope that the new year brings positive changes for Sedona and our world. Besides, October is still a long way off, so I’m still hoping for a hoverboard.
