Science and technology have advanced incredibly in the 21st Century. It’s easier now than ever to travel to or talk to people who live halfway across the world, and we now are more connected to advanced technology than anyone could have thought possible. Science fiction, in the 20th and 21st Centuries, has strived to anticipate just how far this technological advancement would go, and what the consequences of that would be.

Of course, a lot of old sci-fi movies included tropes about the 21st Century that proved to be wrong. Indeed, it was probably too optimistic, in hindsight, to assume we would get flying cars before the end of the 90s or that the 2000s would have lifelike androids running around. Despite these incorrect predictions, though, there are some movies that were eerily accurate, or even predicted we would have technology later than we eventually got access to. In some cases, sci-fi has even been the inspiration for invention, with people wanting to emulate what they saw on television. These are some predictions, made by older sci-fi movies, that turned out to be on the money.

5 2001: A Space Odyssey — Video Calling

Video Call in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

While Star Trek may have influenced the invention of mobile phones, another 1960s piece of media imagined a different yet similarly advanced way of communicating. Set in the year 2001, Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey is an iconic journey through a vision of humanity's future from the perspective of the 1960s and is an example of what is called "hard" sci-fi: attempting to show a possible future world informed by the science of the present. Kubrick's filmmaking style and dedication to authenticity were so intense that conspiracy theorists would suggest that he was called in by NASA to fake the Moon Landing of 1969. While he may not have faked a Moon Landing, it is a testament to his vision that people thought he might have.

Part of Odyssey's future, based on a screenplay written by famed science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, was the ability to make long-distance video calls between planets. While interplanetary communication isn't a reality, video calling is something that has become much more common with improvements to cellphones and internet connections. From Skype to Zoom to Discord, our ability to call one another and transmit video at the same time emulates this old sci-fi movie's prediction.

Related: Best Futuristic Sci-Fi Movies of the 2010s, Ranked

4 The Terminator — Military Drones

Terminator 2: Judgment Day Terminator
Via Sony

The Terminator — and, for that matter, all the movies in the Terminator franchise — imagined a future where humanity tried to automate its defense industry, and things went horribly wrong. Skynet, a program made to fight wars by computer calculations, became self-aware and determined that humanity itself was a threat to its own existence and thus began a nuclear war to wipe out humans. Those left behind managed to start a resistance that fought against Skynet in the post-apocalypse, which precipitated a last-ditch effort by Skynet to send Terminators back into the past to eliminate resistance leader John Conner before he could lead a victory over the machines.

Though we have yet to see a fully automated war, remote drones have allowed militaries to strike at targets without risking the life of pilot or a soldier in the process. While these things are not exactly autonomous, like the Terminators are, they represent the ability to wage war remotely that Skynet ultimately represented. Some of the more recent movies even have Skynet models that represent military drones.

3 Star Wars — Holograms

Star Wars: A New Hope Hologram
Via Lucasfilm

While in some ways Star Wars is more fantasy than sci-fi, there are elements of science fiction that are an integral part of the franchise, from hyperspace, explaining how ships can travel between the vast expanses of space, to the existence of highly advanced androids known in the setting as "droids". The setting explores a lot of high concept sci-fi tropes, like clones or alien worlds. Most of these things are light years ahead of our technological capabilities in the real world, but one invention in particular from Star Wars exists in our world, too: holograms.

While holograms may still seem like a far-off possibility to us, at least in terms of communication like how they are used in Star Wars, we actually use holograms in a lot of conventional settings. Several musical acts make their entire performances' gimmick out of using holograms on a stage show, and those holograms have been also used to impersonate dead artists. And while holograms aren't used by the public for communication, there have been experimental uses of holograms for calls, such as in 2018 according to Verizon. VR and augmented reality technology are also similar developments inspired by a desire to be able to more fully interface with digital imagery.

Related: Here's Some of the Most Intellectual Sci-Fi Movies and the Ideas They Explore

2 Back to the Future Part II — Wearable Tech

Back to the Future Part 2 Glasses
Via Universal

Back to the Future: Part II gave the audiences of the late-80s a look into the future when they took the characters into the then-distant year of 2015. There are many technologies shown in the future. Some of them, like hoverboards, are somewhat impractical, or we simply haven't found the technology to make them work. Some are still cutting edge, but we do have them, like weather prediction technology that works second by second. One significant piece of technology, however, is in an odd place because it represents something we can totally do, but that also didn't really take off.

In Back to the Future: Part II there are glasses that have similar functionalities to modern smartphones, allowing its user to watch movies or take calls on them. Obviously, this has marked similarities to the Google Glass project, which failed. Generall,y the issues that plagued the Glass were due to marketing and unclear functionality, according to Medium. They may in fact try to revive advanced smart glasses in the future.

1 Minority Report — Targeted Ads

minority-report-targeted-ads
20th Century Fox

Of all the movies listed, Minority Report is perhaps the most prophetic. While the psychics from the movie, who are able to predict crime before it happens, may not exist, the general themes, like digital information giving corporations the ability to track and monitor individuals, ring true. While precognition is not yet a reality, the scary stories of algorithms knowing things about us before we even know those things about ourselves can make that possibility seem all too plausible. According to Forbes, a father found out his teen daughter was pregnant when she got coupons in the mail for baby clothes and other nursery items. A psychic may not be able to predict the future, but a computer, it seems, can predict information based on the wide amount of data on the internet.

In the movie, there is a scene where the main character John Anderton walks through a mall and is bombarded with advertisements that know his name and use it to try to sell him things like cars and beer. These sorts of targeted advertisements are now all too common on the internet, with companies basing their ads on information gleaned about you from your online activity.