Technology in the Movie Runaway (1984)

This movie predicted a lot of future technologies! Runaway, a 1984 science fiction film starring Tom Selleck, Cynthia Rhodes, Kirstie Alley, and Gene Simmons, is about a police force responsible for subduing out-of-control robots. At a glance, it seems formulaic: the typical angry police sergeant, hero cop with a tortured past, and a new partner learning the ropes... with some cheesy looking 1980s robots thrown into the mix. However, looking beneath the surface, there’s more here than meets the eye. This is a Michael Crichton written/directed film, and includes some future technology predictions. Since this movie turned 35 recently, we thought we'd check the accuracy of some of his predictions.

00:00 - Intro
00:51 - Predicting the Future: Drones
02:13 - Robots taking our jobs
02:46 - Blue Collar Robot Rebellion
03:26 - Conversations with computers
04:00 - The End of Passwords
04:34 - Flat screen TVs and Tablets
05:10 - This movie is NOT set in the future

Other technology-related topics we didn't cover that are in the movie include:
Video doorbells
Agricultural automation
Police and their relationship to the news media
Robots in medicine
Self Driving Cars

According to Wikipedia, this movie did not do well at the box office.
It definitely had some tough competition in 1984, including Terminator.
As we state in this video, part of the problem was due to the marketing of the film.
It could be described as an "alternate history" but everybody including the trailer calls it "the future" even though there was no attempt to change the city or cars like in Blade Runner...