Fast forward to the future
By Ben McCann
In 1902, Georges Méliès made his landmark silent film A Trip to the Moon. We follow a group of astronomers who build a bullet-shaped spaceship and launch it to the Moon using a giant cannon. Upon landing, they explore the lunar surface, encounter hostile Moon inhabitants, and eventually return to Earth with a captured alien. Space travel, rockets, Moon exploration, aliens among us. The future was born… and it looked great!
More than a century later, visionary filmmakers continue to call upon a battery of special effects techniques, costumes and designs, and CGI-generated backdrops to create compelling and convincing futurescapes. Whether great cities in the sky or underwater civilisations, dystopian wastelands or alien planets, film imagines how technological, social or environmental changes might shape humanity.
The future on film is everywhere – from the silent reels of Metropolis (1927) to the neon dreams of Blade Runner (1982); from Elysium (2013), where extreme wealth inequality means the rich live off-world and the poor stay on Earth, to Francis Ford Coppola’s wonderfully baroque and batty Megalopolis (2024), set in a futuristic New York City. These films are both mirrors and crystal balls: they reflect, and they project.
Intriguingly, we moviegoers now live in the very “future” that some of these films first imagined. So, it’s worth asking how accurate were these predictions? What did filmmakers get startlingly right, and where did they miss the mark?
One of the most accurate recent portrayals was Spike Jonze’s Her (2013), in which Joaquin Phoenix falls in love with an intelligent operating system named Samantha. Even a decade ago, the idea of emotionally responsive AI seemed far-fetched, yet today many converse daily with virtual assistants like Siri, Alexa and ChatGPT.
Very soon, we can expect hyper-immersive viewing experiences through developments in virtual reality and augmented reality
Tony Scott’s Enemy of the State (1998) warned of a future where personal data is monitored and weaponised. Today’s reality – where tech companies track location, preferences and conversations for targeted advertising and surveillance – is disturbingly close. If, like me, you first encountered gimmicks such as facial recognition and digital profiling in films, then these ‘futures’ now appear alarmingly real.
But films can occasionally offer up too ambitious or dreadful a future. Back to the Future Part II (1989) and The Fifth Element (1997) imagined a world where flying cars were commonplace by the 2000s. Add to that the hoverboards, jet packs and teleportation devices we were promised, and the gap between cinematic vision and engineering feasibility becomes even more pronounced. We’re still a long way from thriving Moon colonies (Moon, 2009) or terraformed Martian societies (Total Recall, 1990), while interstellar travel and faster-than-light propulsion remain frustratingly hypothetical.
The future of film
And what of the future of film itself? In 1895, Louis Lumière, one of the inventors of cinema, is supposed to have remarked that cinema is “an invention without a future”, a prediction that has not yet aged well. By 1927, and the arrival of sound, films could now ‘talk’ – then came colour, Smell-O-Vision, surround sound, 3-D, IMAX screens, motion capture and digital streaming. What comes next promises to be even more radical.
Anyone familiar with the Star Wars spin-off show The Mandalorian will have heard of StageCraft, the on-set video wall that instantly conjures up immersive virtual environments and allows the world-building to move in sync with the camera. Not everyone is happy about this. In 2023, swathes of Hollywood creatives went on strike to protest generative AI being used to create the first draft of TV and movie scripts. Their fears about what AI means in terms of job security and compensation feeds into similar debates about distribution platforms and streaming.
Today’s moviegoing experience is diversifying. The rise of streaming platforms like Netflix, Disney+, and Amazon Prime has shifted viewership habits from cinemas to homes, driven by convenience, affordability and accessibility. Very soon, we can expect hyper-immersive viewing experiences through developments in virtual reality and augmented reality. Imagine stepping inside a film; not just watching characters but standing beside them, walking through their world, and making decisions that shape the plot.
The days of sitting quietly through a two-hour film may be numbered. Interactive storytelling, where viewers influence plot direction, has already seen early success in projects like Black Mirror: Bandersnatch (2018) and Netflix’s You vs. Wild (2019). These experiments hint at a broader trend in film: non-linear narratives.
Future films might function more like dynamic worlds than linear scripts. You could watch a movie from different character perspectives or explore side plots that enrich the main storyline. This could usher in a new genre: cinematic gaming hybrids, where the line between film and game disappears.
This ‘choose your own adventure’ tactic might once have seemed quite quaint. But as immersive headset technology becomes lighter and more affordable, cinematic immersion could become the new standard. And with AI and machine learning, future cinema could personalise films in real time. Want a romantic ending instead of a tragic one? Prefer a different actor or soundtrack? AI could remix a film to your tastes, creating a tailored narrative experience for each viewer. Suddenly, watching films is no longer a passive activity, but one rich in immersive possibilities.
That’s not to say cinemas will vanish, but they will have to evolve. Think of them less as static movie theatres and more as multisensory entertainment spaces, similar to theme parks or escape rooms. Some may offer 4D experiences: moving seats, wind, smell, and temperature effects synchronised with on-screen action.
But there are potential downsides here. Despite the recent strikes and the industry disquiet, it is inevitable that AI tools will assist with scriptwriting, casting, editing and even directing. We’re entering an era too where digital humans – hyper-realistic virtual actors – can take on roles across multiple genres, languages, and decades.
These characters don’t age, don’t need breaks, and can be endlessly reused. We’ve already seen real actors de-aged, in The Irishman (2019) and Here (2024), so why not resurrect deceased actors? The BBC reported back in 2019 that deepfake and digital clones of long-dead actors like James Dean were being brought back to life to make new films. Ethical questions around consent, likeness rights and the role of human actors will become more urgent.
And if films do become more personalised, fears will rise that data collection will grow more invasive. Those VR headsets might look cool and chic, but what if studio executives use them to track our biometric responses, our heart rate and facial expressions? And then start to optimise their content to stop us from switching off? Audience engagement is one thing; privacy and consent another.
One of my favourite films is Multiplicity (1996) – a Michael Keaton sci-fi comedy in which he plays an overworked construction boss who clones himself three times to balance his job and his family responsibilities. Multitasking never looked so fun.
Will that ever come to pass? I’ll be back in 50 years for an update.
Dr Ben McCann SFHEA is Associate Professor of French Studies – and an avid film scholar and writer. He recently hosted (along with students from the Adelaide University Film Society) our Lumen Live! movie night in the Union House Cinema with a special screening of Bladerunner.