Movies That Got it Right

The Stanley Kubrick film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, was released before man even set foot on the moon. Yet the flick was a visionary peek into the future. The movie follows spaceman Dave who is on a mission to Jupiter on a ship controlled by the computer, HAL 9000. HAL tries to take over, sabotaging Dave and killing the other guys on board. Dave realizes that HAL sucks, but I won't spoil the end. What's really important is that almost everything shown in this movie became real. Video chat, flat screen TV's, voice recognition, computers that can play chess, the list goes on. To the people of 1968, the film was simply a science fiction fantasy, but in hindsight it is clear that the movie is a 3 hour crystal ball predicting the future. If this film could so accurately tell the future 33 years before it happened, what other motion pictures could be foreshadowing what is to come?

Think back to the 1999 Disney Channel original Smart House. The directorial masterpiece by Reading Rainbow's LeVar Burton, is about a family who wins a fully programmed computer house that can make their lives better and more efficient. Smart House is controlled by PAT a 50's housewife in a circuitry disguise. Everything is going great until PAT goes crazy and locks the family inside their own home and takes over their lives. Sound familiar?

Hal 9000 [1968]/PAT [1999]

If 2001 could be so right, who's to say that Smart House is too impossible? We should not be so quick to dismiss Hollywood's "wacky" ideas. I would hate to admit to an "I told you so" from Mr. Burton.