We don’t ask much from science fiction movies: entertaining plot lines, competent acting, huge explosions, and accurate predictions of the future. Many films fail to deliver on that final request, prognosticating about the world to come and screwing it up again and again. Many of these movies rely on the believability of their premise, but when that premise involves a prediction about the state of the world at a specific future date, they’re setting themselves up for failure when that day comes to pass without incident. Here are five films that forecasted doom and gloom that did not happen.

The Time Machine - 1966 Nuclear War

H. G. Wells’ 1895 novel, The Time Machine, was made into a feature film in 1960, and again in 2002. While the story has changed somewhat in each incarnation, it’s always involves a Victorian scientist traveling to the distant future where he finds humanity has devolved into two distinct groups, one savage, the other hopelessly apathetic. In the 1960 version, George, the scientist, makes several stops before ending up in the distant future. He happens to stop during World War I, World War II, and a nuclear war in 1966. The prediction that London would be nuked in ‘66, causing lava to flow in the streets, was clearly wrong, but it wasn’t a very outlandish idea. Just two years after the film’s release, in October, 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis nearly caused the United States and The Soviet Union to engage in an all-out nuclear war. If that happened, you would not want to be in Miami, and London wouldn’t be much safer.

Death Race 2000 - Homicidal Road Race

One of the finer Roger Corman-produced cult classics, this 1975 film stars David Carradine and Sylvester Stallone as race car drivers in the dystopian future of the year 2000. The Transcontinental Road Race is won not only by speed, but also by running over innocent civilians for points. The race is the only remaining sport, and one of the ways the oppressive American regime distracts the populace from government corruption. The film was remade last year by Paul W. S. Anderson, with the race taking place in a prison, where the racers are only trying to kill one another. Needless to say, this completely ruined the original concept of the film. While there weren’t any murderous car races in 2000 (that we know of), both films do cite a financial collapse as the cause of the dystopia that makes the race possible. In the case of last year’s remake, it was a little spooky when the stock market crashed about a month and a half after the film’s premiere.

Escape From New York - 1997 New York Prison Colony

John Carpenter’s 1981 film predicted that World War III, between the United States and the Soviet Union, would result in economic hardships and a skyrocketing crime rate. By 1997, the year in which the film is set, New York City is a prison colony. When Air Force One crashes in Manhattan, special ops soldier turned criminal Snake Plisskin has 24 hours to rescue the captured president and save himself and the world! Predicting in 1981 that crime would rise exponentially could’ve seemed like a safe bet. Violent crime was a growing problem throughout the 70s and 80s, in New York and elsewhere. But in the 90s New York started getting a lot safer, the violent crime rate fell 75% from 1993 to 2003. If the president were trapped in New York now, it would probably be in a long line to get discount Broadway tickets in Times Square, not held hostage by warring criminal gangs.

Terminator - Self Aware Machines by 1997

In the world of the Terminator films, humanity struggles against killer robots created by Skynet, a self-aware automated defense system. In Terminator 2: Judgement Day, it is revealed that Skynet became aware in 1997 (a bad year, apparently), starting a massive nuclear war shortly after. In the 2003 sequel, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, we learn that the nuclear holocaust was delayed until 2004. Then, in 2008, the premiere episode of The Sarah Conner Chronicles revealed that Judgement Day was actually delayed until 2011. As much as I love the Terminator franchise, that’s not a very good track record of future predictions. It also reveals a curious phenomenon shared by all the films on this list so far, I call it revisionist futurism. When a prediction doesn’t pan out, simply remake the movie (or make a sequel) that places the date further in the future, buying more time. This happened with Time Machine and Death Race, and they’re trying to get a remake of Escape From New York off the ground. If they do, you can bet that it won’t be set in 1997.

Strange Days - Dystopian Los Angeles of 1999

In this 1995 cyberpunk sci-fi film, Ralph Fiennes play Lenny Nero, a dealer of erotic recordings of brain waves which makes the listener feel as if they are experiencing the recorded events. Set against the backdrop of a tense, dystopian Los Angeles of 1999, it failed to predict exactly how technology would mediate sexual pleasure, but it still serves as an interesting barometer of the mid-90s. The film’s vision of a Los Angles suffering under a brutal police state, and the murder of a prominent hip-hop artist and anti-police activist, is clearly reflective of the race riots of a few years prior. The brain wave recordings, while not yet a reality, do illustrate the way that the porn industry is a driving force in development of new technology. If smut ever does get that realistic, learn from the mistakes of Lenny Nero and stay away from snuff films.

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There are plenty of films whose futures have yet to play out. We won’t really know, for example, if the flying cars from Back to the Future Part II will exist in 2015 for another six years. We could just wait to see if this and other predictions come true, or we could try something else: sending a e-mail to the future with the hope of hearing back about the veracity of near-future predictions! Tune in next week, where (hopefully) the future me will respond with a list of five more movies whose predictions haven’t happened yet, but are still doomed to fail. Hopefully the future me will explain how and why they didn’t work out. See you in the future!