Quite a few sci-fi movies take place in 2020, but they each have stark differences to the real world. There are no flying cars or hovercrafts, but virtual reality is becoming a household object, artificial intelligence is being integrated into a number of industries, and smartphones have essentially put a television into everyone's pocket.
2020 has always been a year that fascinated science fiction writers, and several sci-fi films – some released within the past decade – are set in 2020. A number of the films predicted some sort of apocalypse, many of which involved a species of creatures or aliens destroying the Earth. Thankfully, a few days into 2020 and the planet is still intact.
What's interesting is that there were several sci-fi movies that took place in 2019 - namely Blade Runner and The Island - which depicted vastly different futures, and the same can be said for all the sci-fi movies that take place in 2020.
Edge of Tomorrow
Edge of Tomorrow paints a very grim portrait of the year 2020 despite only being released six years earlier. The 2014 release, starring Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt, takes place in a version of the present where an alien species has invaded Earth and nearly decimated the population. With humans nearly extinct, a number of world powers are forced to form a global alliance called the United Defense Force in order to battle the alien threat. Cruise's character is killed early in the film, but he gets stuck in a time loop where he relives the day before his death over and over again.
Despite it being a well written film – courtesy of The Usual Suspects writer Christopher McQuarrie and Tony Award winner Jez Butterworth – Edge of Tomorrow thankfully misses on a number of its predictions. There are no aliens decimating the human population, and no grave threat exists on Earth forcing countries to band together against it.
However, one technological focus of the film was the use of powered exoskeletons for military combat. Cruise, Blunt, and a number of other soldiers wear large bodysuits in the film that are outfitted with technologies that assist them in battle. The US military initiated a $6.9 million agreement to develop the systems in 2019. They may not be anywhere close to how they were depicted in the film, but it appears the military wants to get there someday.
Pacific Rim
Guillermo Del Toro's Pacific Rim is another movie that predicted Earth would be destroyed by a non-human force in 2020. In the film, Earth is at war with Kaiju - giant monsters that emerge from a portal at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Like Edge of Tomorrow, humanity is forced to band together, creating massive robots called Jaegers that they use to fight the Kaiju. The Jaegers are captained by two soldiers at once who are ed together by a mental link called "drifting."
Again, there has yet to be an invasion that threatens humanity's existence in 2020. The invasion in Pacific Rim actually starts in 2013, so even if it happened today, it would be seven years behind schedule. But in relation to the Jaegers – which fall into the category of "mecha" that have long been a part of science fiction – there has been technology developed that is somewhat close. The Sakakibara Kikai Company in Japan designed the "Land Walker" robot in 2005, a non-functional, anime-style mech that humans can enter. The machine doesn't actually walk – rather, it shuffles on wheels – but it was technically the first ever bipedal robot to ever be built. To this day, it only shoots rubber balls, but there is hope that it could someday turn into a powerful military weapon.
Real Steel
In Real Steel, released in 2011, human boxing has been eliminated by 2020, replaced by robot boxing. Hugh Jackman plays a former boxer who turns to the fictional sport when he goes into debt. He begins to use a robot called "Atom", which is designed to take hits but not necessarily dish them out. The film plays out like a classic underdog sports movie, but with a futuristic twist.
Taking place only nine years after the film's release, Real Steel's major technological advancements come with the robot boxing. In real life, while nothing quite to this scale has ever been realized, robot boxing is definitely a thing. Two televised competitions exist – Robot Wars and Battlebots – which each have robot battles on an impressive scale. There was even a massive match between American company MegaBots and Japanese company Suidobashi that took place in 2017 and was streamed on Twitch.
It hasn't garnered the popularity that it did in the movie, but this prediction was closer to reality than some might think. Additionally, many of the robots in the film operate on voice command. Considering the prevalence of Amazon Echo, Siri, and a number of other household technologies, it was another accurate guess about how 2020 would shape up.
A Quiet Place
A Quiet Place was released closest to 2020 of any of these movies – just two years earlier, in 2018. Starring John Krasinski and Emily Blunt (and directed by Krasinski), the film enters a 2020 world where an alien species has invaded Earth, attacking anything that makes noise. Much of human society has been ravaged, with the family shacking up in an old cabin in an attempt to hide from the creatures.
Unlike the previous films on this list, A Quiet Place's vision of the "future" seemed to go back in time, technology-wise. In the opening scene, Krasinski and Blunt's child is playing with a space shuttle toy that seems straight out of the '90s. Much of the film involves the family trying to make with the outside world using a basement full of archaic-looking radio equipment – far from a high-tech vision of the future. Additionally, the cochlear implant that their deaf daughter needs to wear doesn't seem futuristic. Again, this was a film set only two years after its release, so the filmmakers were never going to invent any bold new technology. But the 2020 setting feels secondary to the story – it could have been set in 2010 and nobody would have questioned it.
Reign of Fire
Yet another film that saw a vision of today's world where humans were nearly extinct, Reign of Fire had the world under siege by dragons. Released in 2002, Reign of Fire opens with construction workers accidentally finding a cave that contains the massive beasts, who quickly repopulate and wipe out large parts of civilization. Earth's demise is hastened by the use of nuclear weapons, and by 2020, civilization is nearly gone.
Reign of Fire is more fantasy than science fiction, and there is less of a focus on technology than other films. However, the characters employ military equipment that is seldom used today. The Americans fly on a Lockheed C-5 Galaxy aircraft, which in real life was modernized in the beginning of the 21st century (the new C-5M Super Galaxy is now much more common). They also use a Chieftain tank, which was the main battle tank in the UK for decades but now is only used in Iran, Jordan, and Oman.
