5 70s Sci-Fi Movies That Predicted the Future

The 1970s were a period of great scientific progress thanks to projects such as the Voyager space exploration program and various advances in laser and medical scanner technology. Even the science fiction stories of that decade were quite daring. As technology and science advanced, fears about the possible consequences of these new advances began to manifest themselves in science fiction cinema, and some of these concerns have unfortunately since been validated.

Science fiction media has generally been shown to be reliable to some extent in predicting the future, with the exception of those science fiction films that have a bit Also fantastic. There were still some very prescient films from the 70s directed by titans of the genre, including George Lucas, Stanley Kubrick and Michael Crichton. Indeed, by questioning the societal and technological concerns of the time, the screenwriters and directors behind these films were able to foresee the future with disturbing precision. With that in mind, here are five of the best sci-fi films from the 1970s that successfully predicted our present.

Based on the novel of the same name by Ira Levin, “The Stepford Wives” centers on Joanna Eberhart (Katharine Ross), a woman who moves with her husband and children from New York to the bougie community of Stepford, Connecticut. Once there, however, she realizes that she doesn’t really fit in with the other women, many of whom are completely submissive to their husbands. It turns out that the Stepford men are replacing their wives with robot replicas in order to have “perfect” wives, removing the human versions. “The Stepford Wives” is a kind of sci-fi feminism 101 and has inspired a whole host of twists on the formula (among them “Don’t Worry, Darling” by Olivia Wilde And “Companion” by Drew Hancockall of which examine how men (generally cisgender and heterosexual) might attempt to control their partners through technological means.

Unfortunately, “The Stepford Wives” became a little too real in many ways. There’s the fairly obvious example of men replacing their human partners with AI cat companions and choosing artificial relationships over real ones, but there’s also the simple fact that if you have a uterus, your body doesn’t really belong to you, at least. according to the US government. It’s a bit of a shame that “The Stepford Wives” lost its relevance for a while only to come back stronger than before – it’s an incredible story, but one day I hope it will be pure fiction.

Before writer-director George Lucas became famous for creating the “Star Wars” franchise and taking us all to a galaxy far, far away, he wrote and directed a thought-provoking dystopian film called “THX 1138.” The film stars Robert Duvall as the titular THX 1138, who lives in a future where people are anonymous drones working for a vast corporate machine. Sex is prohibited and workers are kept docile through the mandatory use of psychoactive drugs to keep them docile and numb. When THX stops taking his medication and begins to see the problems with such a system, his life changes forever and he begins to see the true horrors that keep the system in place. Some of the film’s anti-totalitarian ideals would be finding its way into the much more popular “Star Wars” propertybut this dark first Lucas film was a little too much for most audiences.

These days, it’s not too hard to see the parallels between the nightmarish universe of “THX 1138” and the American business world, where workers in warehouses, factories and fields are treated like inhuman cogs in a machine with minimal breaks and ridiculously meager incentives to continue. Many employees use drugs to survive (or to work double or triple shifts), creating a world where Lucas’ sci-fi film truly predicted the future.

This one is a bit of a cheat because, honestly, “Westworld” and “Futureworld” both operate in the same universe and predict the same horrors, and both were released in the 1970s. “Westworld” was written and directed by famed science fiction author Michael Crichton and focuses on the titular science fiction theme park, a place where advanced artificial beings are treated as disposable game pieces for human visitors to abuse. Its sequel, “Futureworld”, then reveals that there are other such parks, one of which is even run by robots, with human clones working for them. Oh, and the company that runs the parks? They use bots to record visitor information, both for basic capitalist reasons and for much more nefarious reasons.

While we don’t yet have fully conscious artificially intelligent robots in theme parks, humans treating AI creations as disposable is nothing new. Not only that, but as we get closer and closer to true artificial sentience, we get closer to these AI creations fighting back (and not just Chat GPT saying horrible things to users). Oh, and “spying on your park visitors using technology” is about as relevant as it gets, with companies monitoring our every move in the real world and digitally in order to better target ads. The HBO series “Westworld” also explored these ideas (and I did a better job), but the films “Westworld” and “Futureworld” managed to predict a little about our contemporary industrial espionage.

“The Andromeda Strain”, directed by Robert Wise and based on the novel by Michael Crichton of the same name, follows a group of scientists, doctors and nurses as they attempt to contain and control a contagious pathogen from outer space. Fortunately, as far as I know, we haven’t had to deal with real-world alien pathogens making people sick, although many pathogens on our own planet have done just that. Seeing scientists working together to try to stop the disease looks an awful lot like what happened when real doctors and scientists teamed up to try to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus and create a vaccine as quickly as possible, albeit with much less quarantine.

“The Andromeda Strain” is pretty dry, scientific stuff, but it’s a little more exciting when you can compare it to real life. Science can save us as easily as it can harm us, so hopefully we’ll have more science fiction stories predicting positive outcomes in the future (even if “The Andromeda Strain” doesn’t exactly have the most hopeful ending in the world).

Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 film “A Clockwork Orange” and the 1962 Anthony Burgess novel on which it is based. has sparked an incredible amount of controversyas concerns over copycat crimes and intense sexual violence in the film version led to the film being banned in a number of countries, including Britain. “A Clockwork Orange” is set in a dystopian future under a totalitarian regime. The elderly never leave their homes and spend their days watching television, while the young break the law and wreak havoc. Such is the case with Alex (Malcolm McDowell) and his gang of goons, who spend their days invading homes, committing sexual assaults, brutally attacking homeless people, and much more.

However, when Alex is arrested and accused of his crimes, he is subjected to a sort of brainwashing torture to try to make him change. Of course, he is not really “cured” by the procedure of Kubrick’s “A Clockwork Orange”; he simply learns to pretend for the system so that he can commit his crimes in secret. (In the original book, Alex is actually reformed by reprogramming, although this chapter was generally removed during the novel’s initial release in the United States, under the assumption that American readers would not buy this ending.)

“A Clockwork Orange” is a harsh indictment of the prison system and the failure of sanctions as a means of rehabilitation. Millions of people are or have been incarcerated in the United States, and the country itself has the highest incarceration rate in the world, creating more criminals through a broken system. And even if no one drinks moloko anymore, give it time.