The Terminator: What James Cameron’s classic got right about the future is pretty terrifying

Have you ever wondered why, in the year 2024, we don’t have flying cars or instant teleportation the way some of our favorite movies and TV shows predicted we would? We look at entertainment from the 70’’s and 80’s and see fantastical inventions plastered on our screens of a future that never actually ever happened. Granted, who would want to live in the bleak futures of a Mad Max or Blade Runner but I’d gladly slide my small Pizza Hut pizza into a hydrator and have it come out a fully cooked delicious meal in seconds the way they did in Back To The Future Part II, which if you think about it: the future of Back To The Future Part II now takes place in our past!

For our newest series, we wanted to take a look at movies of the past and see how they predicted the future. What they got right, what they got wrong and even what may have been invented as a direct result of their inclusion in these movies. Writers have a fantastical mind, it is their job to create, of course they have the luxury of being able to come up with a concept without ever actually having to figure out if it is logical. 

For someone like James Cameron, it would be a fever dream of a metallic torso holding kitchen knives dragging itself from an explosion that would plant the seed of an idea about a future destroyed by nuclear war and the rise of artificial intelligence, with a little time travel thrown in for good measure. The idea would lead to one of the most innovative low-budget films ever created (which has just gotten a controversial 4K re-release) where the vision of the future was not as rose-coloured as one may hope. As we approach the year in question, 2029 to be exact, in this video (embedded above) we take a look back at James Cameron’s seminal 1984 film The Terminator and figure out if Cameron himself was sent from the future to warn us of what was to come or simply just a darn good storyteller!

Here are some of the things we dig into:

Drones:

In today’s world, Drones are not just used for modern warfare, where a member of our armed forces can take out an enemy from six thousand miles away, but also for filming some of our favorite movies, creating amazing displays in our skies and even as a toy for our children. What began as a way to vanquish our enemies, is now something we buy our five-year-old for Christmas! 

AI:

Consider the recent Hollywood guild strikes and the battle they had to ensure AI didn’t steal jobs. With the rise of ChatGPT, writers fear that in the future studios will simply use artificial intelligence to craft their films and television programs. Many say that no artificial intelligence can ever match the humanity of a human, and right now if you ask ChatGPT to write something, the result is very mechanical, but with the incredible advancements in technology over just the past few years, how long is it until something can mimic true human emotion? And what other jobs are at stake? How soon before AI technology replaces manual labour, coding, drivers and more?

Time Travel:

Technically speaking, travelling through time is possible. I am merely a writer of all things entertainment who is fairly good at research, the realities of time travel do not fall under my area of expertise, but if you want to understand the true complexities of time travel and wormholes, check out the writings of Kip Thorne. If you want to keep it movie-related, check out his excellent book “The Science of Interstellar” where he discusses how the film Interstellar, which he consulted on, is actually one of the most realistic looks at how time travel would and could actually work. 

The question is: can time travel ever truly exist as depicted in something like The Terminator? For many, the idea seems to far fetched. If time travel were ever to be possible, wouldn’t we have been made aware of it by now? Wouldn’t some future person or machine have come back in time by now? Well, who is to say they haven’t?! Perhaps there are strict rules for traveling back in time such as you must blend in with your surroundings. Who is to say the person you walked by on the street an hour ago wasn’t someone from a distant future? You can’t, can you? But it would seem that as far as being able to strap into a device and travel through time, we aren’t quite there… yet!

For more on what The Terminator got right and wrong about the future watch the video above!