Back to the Future!!

By Andrew Larsen

Science fiction movies have always tried to portray what will happen in the future, and guess the coming technologies.

In 1989, “Back to the Future: Part II” took audiences for a ride 26 years into the future. In the movie, Marty McFly travels to October 21, 2015 in order to stop his future son from going to jail. The future depicted in this movie differs from the present, but how much did they get correct?

The 2015 presented in the 1989 film was actually meant to be a joke and not even close to the real future.

“Rather than trying to make a scientifically sound prediction that we were probably going to get wrong anyway, we figured, let’s just make it funny,” director, Robert Zemeckis said.

Although they had a ‘let’s just do this for fun attitude,’ the crew still did research on what technologies might be available in the year 2015. This research helped them predict many things correctly about the future like flat screen TVs mounted on walls, the ability to watch more than one channel at once and video chatting via the internet.

However, they also got a lot wrong like flying cars, food hydrators, paying by thumbprint, Jaws 19 and automated clothing.

There was a lot of pressure on Nike to release the self tying shoes featured in the movie that many viewers thought were real. Nike later released a version of their Hyperdunk Supreme shoes, which appear similar to Marty’s in July 2008, but didn’t have the self tying abilities.

The concept for a hoverboard has been explored by many groups since the release of the movie. In 2015 a record was set for a hoverboard traveling over 275 meters.  However, not a single hoverboard has sold since the release of the movie in 1989.

In the predicted future, the Chicago Cubs won the World Series in 2015.  Currently the Cubs are still in the playoffs after recently defeating the St. Louis Cardinals three games to one in the National League Division Series.

This may not be the future predicted in the movie, but many people will still sit down and celebrate October 21, 2015 by watching “Back to the Future: Part II.”