Marty McFly travelled forward in time to 21 October, 2015 in Back To The Future II. He found flying cars, hoverboards and some far-out fashion. How much did the film get right about today?
A SWEET RIDE
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Hoverboards have become an obsession for teenage boys and amateur designers ever since Marty McFly jumped on one in Back to the Future II. Technically speaking, a handful of inventors with money and time on their hands have succeeded in creating forms of the hoverboard, but they are a long way off being mass produced, affordable or reliable enough for the average Joe to use. They won't be under the Christmas tree anytime soon.
UP, UP AND AWAY
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Everyday people driving cars capable of flying? We aren’t even close.
Sure, there are drones, but even those give us headaches. A few of them have been involved in near misses with commercial flights in an already congested airspace. How could we possibly introduce more traffic up there?
SUPERSIZE ME
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The McFly family kitchen had a hydrator that could enlarge the size of a pizza 10-fold in only seconds. Microwave dinners have come a long way - you can now buy roast dinners with all the trimmings - but there’s nothing close to this sci fi culinary fantasy.
HUMAN INTERFACE
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Maybe if faxes were as efficient as the ones portrayed in the movie they wouldn't have become as close to extinction as they are now. When Marty McFly senior is fired after going behind his boss's back, he receives confirmation of the bad news by way of a fax within seconds of his termination. It comes out through a slot in his briefcase and a device in the wall.
The same scene sees McFly snr and his boss speak to each other via video phone, similar to Skype - a nice, accurate take on the future - but the closest the movie gets to predicting the internet is when the boss says "I was monitoring that scan you just interfaced".
And the movie couldn't have imagined the vastness of the internet, its immediacy or the pervasiveness of the mobile phone.
But it did a good job of predicting our pre-occupation with personal electronics, featuring multipurpose glasses that users wore to watch TV or answer calls. Google Glass, anyone?
POWER DRESSING
McFly was delighted when the Nike shoes he donned on did themselves up and Nike recently confirmed rumours that they are working on boots with "power laces", inspired by the shoes in the film.
The film's other fashion predictions haven't eventuated. Early on the movie, Doc Brown pulls Marty's jean pockets inside to help him to "fit in", as that's how the kids are wearing their clothes in 2015. Pretty tame, really.
A version of this story was first published on radionz.co.nz.
