Here's what popular sci-fi flicks thought 2015 would look like

Hollywood predicted we’d have gravity-defying means of public transport by the year 2015. Pity that that hasn’t happened yet. There’s also a whole range of other outlandish stuff that sci-fi films dreamt up. Here’s a look back — or, well, forward — at films or scenes set in 2015.

Released: 2000

What if you came home and found another you waiting there? Pet cloning and organ cloning are acceptable in the year 2015 in this Arnold Schwarzenegger film, but human cloning is forbidden under the ‘sixth day’ laws (day six in the Bible being when God apparently created man). When the law is violated, Adam Gibson (Schwarzenegger) gets cloned and replaced. The film also features some flashy Star Wars-like laser guns. And while a lady flaunts blue hair and a leather jacket, the rest of the fashion seems rather year-2000.

Real in 2015: Dolly the sheep was cloned as far back as 1996; cell cloning is an active area of medical research, though human cloning is far from being real or acceptable. Or, so we are told.

Synapse/Memory Run

Released: 1995

Cheap sets, fake-looking machine guns and TV screens that look like they belong in the 1990s and not 2015 — Synapse (or Memory Run) is one of those sci-fi films you should be glad not to have seen. Based on an outlandish idea, and plenty of gobbledegook about eternal life and finding ways to implant one person’s soul into another, the film didn’t work at the box office when it released.

Real in 2015: TV sets in 2015 look way cooler than they did in this film. As for the core idea of immortality and soul-switching, it’s safe to dismiss that as fantastical.

Shank

Released: 2010

The mildly popular British film is set in a dystopian London of 2015. Here, gangs have taken over the city. The normal social structure has collapsed, and it’s basically a violent, dangerous place — with the story extrapolated from the reality of the several such gangs that already exist in various parts of the UK.

Real in 2015: Gang-related organised crime is already a major law-and-order problem in the UK. The movie, obviously, exaggerates the same to unlikely levels.

Back To The Future Part 2

Released: 1989

It’s been 25 years since the second instalment of Steven Spielberg’s super-hit sci-fi film hit theatres. And 2015, as the film predicted it, definitely has cooler means of transportation compared to the real 2015. As Marty (Michael J Fox) and the Doc (Christopher Lloyd) arrive in the future (October 21, 2015), the future is full of cars that can fly. Marty, quite the skateboard champ, also discovers a toy he loves — a hover board, that, well, hovers, a few inches above the ground.

Real in 2015: While flying cars might yet be some time away, a Kickstarter project to develop a hover board has actually been funded successfully.

V for Vendetta

Released: 2006

The dystopian Britain of the future here is mostly the 2020s. But, in a flashback — or, as Evey Hammond (Natalie Portman) reads the memoirs of a former prisoner, Valerie — there are accounts of 2015. According to Valerie, this was when the war in Britain began, followed by the use of a biological weapon that killed a lakh, and brought in the pre sentfascist government.

Real in 2015: History has been witness to fascist regimes in the past Biological weapons are a reality too.