A lot can happen in ten years, but perhaps not as much as you might expect. Filmmakers in the 80’s and 90’s predicted grand changes to society and technology as we prepared to enter the 21st century, but now that we’re here, how accurate were their visions?

Today, The Future Was Then looks at Timecop, the 1994 time-travel action flick starring Jean-Claude Van Damme. Interestingly, this week the Chinese government banned time-travel movies because they “disrespect history”, and after watching Timecop it’s kind of hard to argue with them.

Film: Timecop

Made In/Set In: 1994/2004

The Future 2004 Was: Time-traveling criminals, cars that drive themselves, and virtual reality sex simulators.

The Actual 2004 Was: The International Year of Rice. Also, SpaceShipOne wins the X-Prize, paving the way for consumer space travel, which is why here in 2011 we’re always going on trips into space all the time.

Plot Summary: It’s 1994, and there’s a meeting at The White House, where a guy tells some officials that time travel has been invented and that it’s already being used for nefarious purposes such as people robbing gold bars from the 1800’s and using them in the present to buy nuclear weapons, and that the government will need to set up a task force to police the time-stream against criminals. The politician’s only question after this huge flood of information: how much will the task force cost? He has absolutely NO FOLLOW-UP QUESTIONS ABOUT THE TIME TRAVEL STUFF. I can’t tell if that’s a commentary on politicians or just poor writing.

Anyway. Jean-Claude Van Damme is hired to be a Timecop and immediately his wife is killed in an explosion. Ten years later he does the thing where he mopes around watching old home movies of her to remind the audience that he is super sad. He travels into the past to stop his former partner from making money by gaming the stock market. His former partner is sentenced to be executed, and they send him back to 1929 and let him fall to his death on a busy street (huh?). Then JCVD travels back to 1994 to stop evil senator Ron Silver from making money to fund his presidential bid, but fails and has to team up with his past self to kick people in the face and do splits for no other reason than that he can do them. He saves his wife from being exploded and throws 1994 Ron Silver into 2004 Ron Silver, which you can’t do because the same matter can’t occupy the same space at the same time, or as JCVD puts it, “Zame madda cand occoopy zame zspace.” Ron Silver melts into an unconvincing blob and JCVD goes back to 2004 where his wife is still alive and they have a dorky kid.

How well did Timecop predict 2004?

Time Travel: Yeah, we’re still working on that. In the film, time travelers get into a rocket sled and shoot towards a wall at incredible speeds, and when they arrive in the past the sled is gone and they walk slowly and calmly out of a CG ripple. To return, they just push a button on a box and they reappear in the sled. I don’t get how that works at all.

Auto-driving Cars: In Timecop, JCVD gets into his ass-ugly car, which asks him where he wants to go. He says “Home”, and the car drives him home.

That seems pretty far-fetched, but in reality, 2004 was landmark year for auto-driving cars. In the first ever DARPA Grand Challenge, held in the Mojave desert in 2004, fifteen driver-less vehicles competed to see which could complete the 150 mile race with the best time.

It did not go well. Two of the fifteen cars were pulled from the race before it began, another flipped over on the starting line, and the rest suffered mechanical failures or got stuck on rocks or hills. The furthest a car got was about seven miles.

Weird Guns: I don’t know what the deal is with the 2004 guns in Timecop, it’s not explained. But they look a little different and instead of going BANG they go PEW. So. You know. THE FUTURE.

Audio Cartridges: Remember when we used to listen to music on plastic cassettes? And then we switched over to CDs? In the movie, we’ve switched back over to plastic cassettes again. They do look a little like Gameboy cartridges, though since Gameboy came out it 1989, Timecop didn’t so much predict the future as the past.

Voice-Activated Televisions: If you want to make your film futuristic, make it so appliances can be activated by saying their names.  “Door,” “television”, “lights”, and so on. The only appliance I talk to is my laptop, when it routinely drops its wireless connection, but I don’t say “Computer”, I say, “Come on, you piece of shit.”

Virtual Reality Sex Visors: Ah, remember in the past when we thought the future would be giant visors we wore to accomplish tasks like opening computer files and masturbating? Those were the days. In the film, a technician enjoys some VR sex while at work, but in reality, while head-mounted display devices still have military, engineering, and medical applications, they’ve never really caught on with consumers, who still prefer to view pornography without ten pounds of plastic and circuitry sitting on their faces.

For decades, filmmakers have looked ahead to the 21st Century, imagining it as a time of wonder and technological advancement. And here we are, wading balls-deep in the very future they so fervently imagined. The Future Was Then will examine various filmmakers’ visions and predictions of a future that we are now living in, and see how they stack up against reality.

Our first film is Freejack, the 1992 Emilio Estevez time-travel film that takes place in the distant, futuristic world of 2009. Keep in mind, I’ll just be looking objectively at the predictions the filmmakers, not actually reviewing the film itself, though it should be noted that the film in this case completely sucks.

Film: Freejack

Made in/Set in: 1992/2009

The Future 2009 Was: Fuck-ugly cars, video phones, and devices capable of transporting people into the future so rich old people could steal their bodies.

The Actual 2009 Was: The International Year of Natural Fibres. Hum. Okay. Technology-wise, Windows 7 was released and works okay, I guess.

Plot Summary: Emilio Estevez is a race-car driver in 1991 who is whisked into the future of 2009 moments before he dies in a fiery crash. This process is known as “bonejacking”: stealing the body of someone about to die, transporting it into the future, and letting some old rich guy use it. Emilio manages to escape the clutches of the bonejackers before they can sedate him and goes on the lam, something that apparently happens so often there’s a name for these escapees: “Freejacks.” Emilio jacks freely all over the goddamn place, trying to find his 1991 girlfriend, Rene Russo, who doesn’t appear to have aged one whit in the 18 years since Emilo “died”.

Pursuing Emilio is Mick Jagger, the head bonejacker, who drives a tank and supervises a bunch of inept, go-cart driving thugs. Emilio eventually learns that Rene Russo’s boss, Anthony Hopkins, is the one who ordered Emilio’s body to be brought to the future, because Hopkins is dying and needs a new body. He is also in love with Rene Russo and figures the best way to seduce her is by using the body of her dead boyfriend. That’s not creepy or anything. Hopkins, whose mind has been downloaded into a computer, tries to take over Emilio’s body, but the process is interrupted and Emilio is free to continue his unconvincing relationship with his old (literally) girlfriend.

How well did Freejack predict the future of 2009?

Automatic Doors: Here in the film’s 2009, you can say “door” and your door will open. Wow. I’d like to point out that as far back as the 1950’s, we had automatic doors that would open and you didn’t even have to say “door” to activate them, so that seems like a step back.

There are also automatic lights in Freejack. Walk into a room and the lights go on! They got that right: we have automatic lights in our breakroom at work. Sometimes if I’m sitting in there reading the paper for a while, the lights will turn off  and I’ll have to wave my arms around until they turn back on. When this happens, I’ll say something futuristic, like: “Goddamn it, stupid lights.”

Cars: Cars in Freejack seem to come in a few different types: the bonejackers drive red go-carts, the cops drive blue motorcycles controlled by unmarked buttons, and the rich are driven around in giant ugly bubble limousines with a little uncovered pod in the front so the chauffeur gets wet if it rains, just to remind him he’s a lower form of life. The film also features a champagne delivery truck so rich people can have fresh champagne at a moment’s notice. They certainly are rich, those rich.

I haven’t seen any ugly bubble limos driving around in the real future, but the 2010 Ford Transit Connect is an eyesore of futuristic proportions.

Time Travel: We currently cannot transport people from 1992 into 2009, and that goes double for Emilio Estevez, who doesn’t have a single film credit in ’09. In 2010, he had to resort to jacking his own bones: his only credit is a film he wrote and directed himself.

The Spiritual Switchboard: This is the name of the massive computer that Anthony Hopkins’ brain is being kept alive in on the 200th floor of his building (in the future, buildings are SUPERTALL). We still can’t download our brains into computers and I don’t really want to try: my own computer is still convinced that the iPod I plug into it every single day is, in fact, a digital camera. I wouldn’t trust it to know what to do with my brain. It’d probably try to install ringtones in it.

Video Phones: If there’s one thing people in the past thought we’d be using in the future, it was video phones. Thing is, they thought we’d be using it for every call, no matter how trivial, when in reality we mainly use it for attending boring business meetings in another city or for showing our wangs to random strangers on Chat Roulette.

Mick Jagger: Score one for the film! We’ve still got Mick Jagger here in the future, and he’s still pretty darn cool.

Gosh, Things Are Expensive: Mick Jagger states that the cost of transporting a living body 18 years into the future costs $17 million. That really doesn’t sound like enough. For instance, it cost $30 million just to make the shitty film Freejack. (Its domestic gross? $17 million! Weird.)

Sectors: As Emilio is Freejacking here and there, he’s described by those chasing him as entering various “sectors.” Sci-fi futures are always full of sectors, for some reason. I guess city planners are just too busy signing for champagne deliveries to name roads and neighborhoods.

Suicide Assistance: There’s a billboard shown advertising suicide assistance, since the future is so terrible everyone wants to kill themselves, especially limo drivers because they’re so tired of getting rained on (seriously, the limo driver in the movie blows himself up with a grenade). This may be in the film because California voted on it in 1992, the same year Freejack was made, though it didn’t pass: only 46% of the state was in favor of killing themselves. Come on, California! We can do better!

Prediction Score: 2/10

Film Score: 1/10