The Express (U.K.) memorializes today as the beginning of the month and year in which the original film Blade Runner was set: November, 2019. Several media outlets have looked at what the film did/did not predict accurately.
No flying cars, sadly, even if in Blade Runner it seemed only the police had them. LA smog is not as bad as feared, and many fewer people smoke cigarettes than the film showed.
We don't have replicants, very human-looking robots have yet to appear. And of course, we don't have off-planet colonies yet, though they seem closer than just a few years ago.
One article made the point the original film is no longer set in the future, but in an alternate present, much like The Man in the High Castle. Personally, I believe this argument is bogus. It was set 37 years in the future when released in 1982, and a bit more than that when actually conceived, written and filmed.
IOW, it was our 1982 selves looking forward nearly 4 decades. In my book, that means it will always be set in the future of the people who made it, many no longer with us. It is one of my favorite films.
Among recent looks forward, the future Los Angeles imagined in the Matt Damon/Jodie Foster 2013 film Elysium is believable, given how California is now governed. Projecting a future LA looking like an Ensenada barrio seems no great stretch. The homeless infestation on city streets is taking us in that direction.
