Yahoo Movies What 2025 will be like, according to the movies
When the movies have looked ahead to 2025, they have dealt in death and dystopia. Here's hoping that the real 2025 is much happier than that.
We're now within touching distance of 2025 — yet another year that has a sci-fi flavour every time you see it written down. Wasn't it 2005 just a few minutes ago? So while we spend a long time looking back at the year just gone, we must also look ahead to the year to come.
Fortunately, movies have been looking ahead to 2025 for much longer than we have. Just as movies predicted what 2024 will be like — they were a bit off the mark with the vampire-werewolf war — they've often had a stab at guessing what 2025 could look like. Some of the predictions might be more plausible than others, but it's always worth taking a look and seeing whether any of this stuff could really happen.
Unsurprisingly, artificial intelligence plays a big role and the filmmakers of the past can't have known just how close to the bone their predictions would be. Let's take a look at some of the things 2025 has in store for us, if cinema is to be trusted.
Humans can date AI
According to: Her (2013)
There's some disagreement about whether Her is specifically set in 2025, but there's broad agreement that the year is approximately correct. With the central focus on artificial intelligence, Her slots very clearly into our current culture. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, even found himself in hot water last year when he released a voice for the newest version of ChatGPT that appeared very close to Scarlett Johansson's work in Her.
Read more: Joaquin Phoenix Had to Leave the ‘Her’ Set During Scarlett Johansson’s ‘Bizarre’ Orgasm Recording (IndieWire, 2 min read)
The movie stars Joaquin Phoenix as a man who falls hopelessly in love with an AI virtual assistant. This brings about plenty of awkward comedy and a very bizarre sex scene before a surprisingly complex final act that has plenty to say about the way AI differs from humanity. Given recent news stories about deep emotional relationships between people and chatbots, Her is not far from the real world at all.
We'll use giant robots to fight kaiju
According to: Pacific Rim (2013)
We're probably safe from the version of 2025 depicted in Pacific Rim. In that universe, kaiju first emerged from Earth's oceans in 2013, triggering humanity's innovation of the Jaegers — giant robots piloted by two people connected via a neural link. The majority of the film is set in 2025, with world leaders foregoing the funding for Jaegers in favour of building an enormous wall instead.
Read more: Charlie Hunnam Revealed The One Thing That Would Make Him Say Yes To Pacific Rim 3 (CinemaBlend, 3 min read)
There might not be any kaiju or giant robots just yet, but the idea of a short-sighted world leader building a massive wall for questionable reasons might be much closer to reality given a certain election result in America.
Game shows and sport will be totally messed up
According to: Futuresport (1998) and The Running Man (2025)
Sci-fi movies absolutely love to invent weird sports and TV shows that will take place in the future. For example, the late 90s made-for-TV movie Futuresport suggested the unimaginatively named titular game. A combination of basketball, baseball and hockey played on hoverboards, it was conceived as a way to prevent gang warfare. Look, maybe it's worth a try?
Read more: Josh Brolin to play villain in The Running Man reboot (BANG Showbiz, 2 min read)
On the darker side of things is The Running Man. The 1987 version of the Stephen King story, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, took place in 2017, but King's original novel was set in 2025. That vision of the future is returning for a new adaptation in 2025, with Edgar Wright directing and Glen Powell in the lead role.
The Running Man follows a group of game show participants who are trying to evade death while being chased by a team of elite killers. Think something like the Channel 4 show Hunted, but with life-and-death stakes. There's no sign of that in the USA just yet, but all bets are off.
New York City will be an irradiated wasteland
According to: Endgame (1983)
Again, we're probably safe from the vision of 2025 depicted in Endgame — no, not that Endgame. The film's version of 2025 is a New York City that's something of an irradiated wasteland as a result of a nuclear war decades earlier. That war, thankfully, is yet to take place in the real world.
Endgame has a lot of ideas for what might be happening in its dystopia. There are telepathic mutants, for starters — again, yet to manifest in reality — and there's yet another bizarre-sounding game show. In this case, the show involves hunters and gladiators fighting to the death. Everyone seems to have thought the 21st century would feature a lot more televised murder than we've really seen.
Kumail Nanjiani will invent time travel
According to: Hot Tub Time Machine 2 (2015)
We need to keep an eye on Kumail Nanjiani for the next 12 months. In the 2015 comedy Hot Tub Time Machine 2, the characters find themselves in the year 2025 after activating their unique time travel device in an attempt to stop one of their friends being murdered. In 2025, they come across a tech whizz called Brad — played by Nanjiani. He invents nitrotrinadium, which is the chemical responsible for powering the time machine.
Read more: Kumail Nanjiani went to counselling over negative Eternals reviews (Cover Media, 2 min read)
Even more bizarrely, Nanjiani signed on in 2019 to lead a movie based on the short story Any Person, Living or Dead. That's about a scientist who invents a home-made time machine. We'll say it again: keep an eye on Kumail Nanjiani this year.
We can buy mechanical organs
According to: Repo Men (2010)
Before director Miguel Sapochnik took the helm of some of your favourite Game of Thrones episodes, he directed this sci-fi thriller set in 2025. The key concept at the centre of Repo Men is that an enormous corporation has cornered the market on bio-engineered organs, which it sells on credit. If people are unable to make their payments, the company sends out a repo man to forcibly remove the organ. Jude Law and Forest Whitaker lead the cast of the movie as a pair of top-quality repo men. In the movie, Law's character ends up falling behind on payments for an artificial heart of his own.
Read more: Jude Law reveals 2004 remake was a "bad move" (Digital Spy, 2 min read)
This sort of corporate exploitation is everywhere in the real version of 2025 and, with innovations in 3D printing leading to rapid advancements in what we actually can do with artificial organs, the reality of Repo Men seems a lot closer than most of the predictions on this list.
We'll all have service androids
According to: The Door into Summer (2021)
The opening of Japanese sci-fi film The Door into Summer takes place in 1995 and features a character entering a 30-year period of suspended animation. When he wakes up again in 2025, he finds a world in which just about everyone has an incredibly realistic service android in their home.
There's a lot going on in the film, which also includes time travel and a lot of corporate espionage. But unfortunately, its idea of service androids doesn't seem to have come through just yet. We'll have to make do with Alexa and Roombas for the time being.
India and China will be at war
According to: Moondram Ulaga Por (2016)
Dystopian war movie Moondraam Ullaga Por — that title translates to Third World War — didn't receive great reviews when it debuted in 2016. This Tamil-language film came with a very doomy prediction for the future, taking place during a 2025 war between India and China.
Sugan Kartthi's movie followed an Indian soldier captured by his Chinese enemies. Fortunately, despite the febrile state of global politics right now, there's no sign of such a conflict unfolding in the real world. We'll keep all of our fingers crossed that it stays that way.
