We've now officially caught up with 'Blade Runner'
November, 2019, seemed like an unfeasibly long way away back in 1982.
But it's come around pretty quick, and as of today, we've caught up with the dystopian future world seen in Ridley Scott's iconic Blade Runner.
Read more: Fans spot Blade Runner coincidence in Rutger Hauer’s death
Scott – with help from sci-fi legend Philip K. Dick, who wrote the book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, on which the movie is based – foresaw flying vehicles and sentient androids in his version of 2019.
We're not quite there with the flying cars, but there are other aspects of the iconic movie which have proved prescient.
Digital billboards dominate advertising, as they did in Scott's future Los Angeles, and thanks to Siri and Alexa, we do indeed converse with our computer technology.
And those video calls happen courtesy of Skype and FaceTime.
Twitter is loving the milestone, of course.
According to #BladeRunner, which is set in November 2019, we should be waking up to this today. pic.twitter.com/BvhzeTPMx7
— Eamon (@EamonTHennedy) November 1, 2019
Blade Runner is no longer a movie set in the future #BladeRunner pic.twitter.com/QB8vuW92Vh
— Tom 🔟 (@napzagiisdead) November 1, 2019
Just a reminder that it's 2019 and we we promised flying cars.#BladeRunner2019 #bladerunner pic.twitter.com/VMbsmvfW85
— Theo (@tprstly) November 1, 2019
Blade Runner was set in November, 2019. We made it folks.#BladeRunner pic.twitter.com/o9jMZlMmgP
— James Melville (@JamesMelville) November 1, 2019
Los Angeles, november 2019. The future is now. #BladeRunner pic.twitter.com/HZcSiEMTn1
— Infinity Hill (@infinityhill_) November 1, 2019
The movie - starring Harrison Ford as a former police officer specialising in catching errant androids - emerged in the summer of 1982, and despite having since become one of the most revered sci-fi movies in cinema history, it was a disaster for Warner Bros.
Costing $30 million to make, it brought in only $32 million at the box office.
Reviews at the time were decidedly mixed too – the LA Times branded it 'Blade Crawler' for its ponderous pacing, though revered critics Pauline Kael and Roger Ebert both praised its vision.
The scene in which Rutger Hauer's homicidal android Roy Batty meets his end has been described as 'perhaps the most moving death soliloquy in cinematic history'.
Hauer died in July this year – fans of the movie noting that both he and his character Batty died at the same time.
Rutger Hauer dying in 2019, the same year that the movie Bladerunner takes place and his character Roy Batty dies is just do 2019. 😪 pic.twitter.com/ghEoshLLRR
— angie fryer (@angie_fryer) July 24, 2019
A sequel, Blade Runner 2049, directed by Denis Villeneuve, arrived in 2017, with Harrison reprising his role as Deckard, and Ryan Gosling as the replicant blade runner K, but like its predecessor, it also underperformed at the box office, despite rave reviews.