Today’s date is October 22nd, 2015, which means it is one day past the day that Marty McFly and Doc Brown went back to the future in timeless classic Back to the Future Part II. The film, the second in the trilogy, released 26 years ago on November 22, showed us a distant future in which cars could fly, children rode on hoverboards, and lawyers were abolished. So now that we have arrived in 2015, and are living, as Robert Zemeckis’ classic film stated, the future, how exactly does his prediction compare to how the future actually turned out?
Well, we certainly don’t have flying cars, hoverboards, and lawyers are still roaming courts everywhere. However, it seems like hoverboards may be a near possibility in years to come. Several companies have been attempting to develop boards that hover on the ground, which can be rode in a fashion similar to skateboards. At the link below, you can find more information one one type of hoverboard made by company Arx Pax, entitled the Hendo Hoverboard: http://www.theverge.com/tldr/2015/10/22/9587400/hendo-hoverboard-back-to-the-future-day
Another thing of note in the film was the release of Jaws 19, and the usage of a hologram shark to promote the film. While there certainly isn’t a Jaws 19 (to date, there have only been four films in the Jaws series), shark-related film are still quite popular, as the Sharknado series and it’s popularity can testify to. However, there are many other series that have extended to lengths of 19 films, or even greater. For instance, the James Bond series is still around, with a new release coming out in a matter of weeks. The Marvel Cinematic Universe currently has 12 films released, and will reach 23 films by the end of 2019, with more films to come presumably. Holograms are not currently used as an effective method of advertising, but they have been used before. The most famous example of recent years would be in 2012, when at Coachella, a hologram of Tupac, a famous rapper who was killed in 1996, performed, giving the appearance he had risen from the dead.
It seems the one thing that the film predicted correctly however was the fact that the DeLorean, an incredibly popular car in the 1980s, would be near-completely gone from the public eye. And it has faded, as no one tends to drive this impossibly cool-looking car anymore. However, it seems that one man in particular has attempted to bring it back, by recreating the DeLorean from the film series, with a flux capacitor and all. Adam Kontras, the man responsible for this, has since made a business of this, renting it out for birthdays, corporate events and the like. The full story can be found at the following link: http://www.fastcompany.com/3052476/out-of-office-with/inside-one-mans-six-figure-delorean-time-machine-business?utm_source=mailchimp&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=fast-company-daily-newsletter&position=2&partner=newsletter&campaign_date=10212015
While the future doesn’t exactly match the predictions made in this seminal film, it’s still incredibly cool that we now live in the future, and while the Back to the Future series will now become moreso laughably nostalgic than prophetic, hopefully it won’t fade into obscurity, and will continue to be loved as it always has been.
