In the middle film in the “Back to the Future” movie trilogy, main characters Marty McFly and Doc Brown use their time-traveling DeLorean car to zip ahead from 1985 to 2015, a year the now-26-year-old blockbuster hoped to depict as wildly futuristic.
The actual date the movie’s heroes arrived in “the future” was Oct. 21, 2015.
But while viewers are prone to remembering some of the more ridiculous things the flick predicted for 2015 — instant food hydrator, anyone? — the movie actually got a lot of things right. “Back to the Future Part II” offered a more accurate forecast of 2015 than it’s perhaps given credit for.
Even the item most memorable as being impossibly futuristic, the floating skateboard-like hoverboards, now don’t seem as far fetched as they did even just a few years ago, with the upstart Hendo and even luxury car maker Lexus promoting designs. That said, it’s doubtful nearly every kid on the block will have a flying skateboard by Oct. 21, so the devices aren’t as far along as “Back to the Future” guessed they’d be.
A couple other inventions from the movie exist today, as well, but aren’t nearly as widely used in real life as they were in the film. For instance, both of the McFly children from 2015 used television glasses, wearable screens that showed programs right in front of their eyes. Of course, Google Glass can do that in reality, but that product has yet to take off in any widespread way.
The 2015 president in “Back to the Future Part II” is a woman, but even if Hillary Clinton is ultimately successful in her campaign, she wouldn’t take office until early 2017.
I watched the movie recently and found a few predictions the movie was right on target about, however, then compared my findings to some Internet posts and videos circulating in recent years on the same topic. In some cases I agreed with those other posts and in some cases, I felt like they were stretching it to give the movie too much credit.
Here are the seven things that I felt are just as refined — or more — in the 2015 of reality as they were in the 1989 fantasy version:
Video calls
The older Marty McFly of 2015 at one point rushes into his study to accept an incoming call, and the image of the caller appears on a television screen. Video chats over myriad Internet programs are of course prevalent today, as people use Skype, Google Hangouts or Facetime to make face-to-face “phone calls.”
Picture-in-picture
The first two entries here involve the fancy TV at the 2015 McFly household. When Marty’s son turns on the television, he displays six different channels all at once on the same flatscreen TV. While people rarely watch that many channels at once, picture-in-picture technology has been around for several years, and sports fanatics can use it to show a number of ongoing games simultaneously. Of course, back in 1989, homes were equipped with bulky CRT televisions as opposed to the thin flatscreens of today, so the movie got that technology right as well.
Video games
At the downtown diner, Marty expertly plays an arcade game. But the performance fails to impress two young onlookers. “You mean you have to use your hands? That’s like a baby’s toy,” they say incredulously. Sure enough, video game consoles, like the Xbox and its motion-detecting Kinect sensor, do now allow you to play without handheld controllers, just by moving your body around in front of the screen.
Fingerprint scanners
The police use a thumbprint scanner to unlock the front door at the McFly household when bringing Marty’s girlfriend — and future wife — home. Fingerprint-based security devices have been commonplace in spy movies for years. And now, while they’re not on every front door in the neighborhood, they absolutely do exist, and are perhaps most commonly used to lock people’s computer devices.
Portable payment systems
While we’re on the subject of thumbprint scanners, the movie’s villain, the greedy Biff Tannen, pays for a cab by pressing his print on the driver’s portable payment machine. We’re not quite at a point of having our bank accounts connected to our fingerprint records — although that’s not beyond the realm of technological possibility — portable payment devices are quite common. Many street vendors and small business owners have tiny credit card readers that can be plugged into smartphones or tablet computers for payments on the go, like what Biff used with the taxi. In another scene, a local man asks Marty to donate to the preservation of the historic town clock tower on a similar portable payment device.
3-D movies
In the “future” 2015, Marty passes by a movie theater promoting “Jaws 19,” promoted by a 3-D shark. Sure, holographic advertisements like the one there haven’t quite been developed yet, but 3-D movies are commonplace. Nearly all blockbusters now have 3-D versions in the local theaters. As a side note, the type of comical obsession with sequels and remakes Hollywood would need to be making a “Jaws 19” is not as exaggerated as the filmmakers probably thought, either.
Modern sports
“Back to the Future Part II” foresaw a Major League Baseball team located in Miami and a sport called Slamball, both of which came true. Slamball is a version of basketball played with trampolines, increasing the likelihood of high-flying dunks. Of course, Miami has been home to a big league baseball team since 1993, four years after the movie came out (although the logo has never been an alligator, like it is in the film). But even if “Back to the Future” is right in its depiction of the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series this year (they are in the running for a playoff spot), the Cubbies wouldn’t beat Miami to do so, because both are in the National League.
