The Shiny Arm of the Law
Movie/Year: Robocop, Mid-1990s
Cops were suppose to have been replaced by giant walking terminators with slow, monotone voices at some point "in the near future" after 1987. Well, we're still waiting for our Robocops. What's our consolation? A few police departments that have adopted the Segway for official departmental use. That's like promising us a racehorse but giving us a retarded drifter wearing a saddle.


Space Stations
Movie/Year: 2001: A Space Odyssey, 2001
Pan Am was not only still in business in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, they had upgraded to interplanetary travel. Talk about high hopes. Now our airlines don't even serve food anymore, and they force you to take three connecting flights for a trip between New York and Boston. Granted, our last JetBlue flight also didn't have a sentient computer onboard that tried to kill us, so there's probably a trade-off.



Battery-Powered People
Movie/Year: The Matrix, Early 21st Century
If Morpheus from The Matrix is to be believed (and who are we to question?), then the Matrix itself was suppose to have gone online sometime at the beginning of this century, igniting a war between man and machine that was suppose to result in all of us being turned into human Duracells. Then those of us who last until 2199 are rewarded with giant mecha suits that shoot "gangsta style."


Judgment Day
Movie/Year: Terminator franchise, 2004
If the Matrix failed to do it, then Skynet was suppose to have wiped most of us off the planet. Unleashing a nuclear attack, followed by swarms of grinning skeleton-bots, Skynet would have left us no choice but to program and reprogram the same damn Terminator and keep sending him back through time to protect John Connor, despite Skynet developing cooler and much more effective Terminators almost daily. (This one's liquid metal! This one's got inflatable boobs and can control helicopters with her mind!)