"The future, Conan?"

It finally happened. I hoped and I wished and I prayed and finally the dream came true. There I was, sitting on my couch, flipping through my Neiman Marcus Christmas book when I saw it ... the M400 Skycar prototype, priced at a reasonable $3.5 million.

That’s right - a flying car. We’ve finally created a flying car. Sure, they don’t have one that folds up into a briefcase yet, but I’m sure we’ll get there in time. Besides, how cool does this sound, “From your garage to your destination, the M400 Skycar can cruise comfortably at 350+ MPH and achieve up to 28 miles per gallon. No traffic, no red lights, no speeding tickets. Just quiet direct transportation from point A to point B in a fraction of the time. Three dimensional mobility in place of two dimensional immobility.”

Now, I can feel some of you pulling away from me. Some of you are probably wondering, with cancer still uncured, AIDS still running rampant and gas prices on the rise, why would scientist waste time creating a flying car? Well, I pity you people.

The answer is quite simple. We need to create a flying car because its cool. We have watched years of Hollywood movies that promised us that as we entered this new millennium, our lives would be filled with cutting edge, yet completely unnecessary gadgets and gizmos. On the big screen, the future has always been filled with lasers and robots and Keanu Reeves doing bad kung fu poses.

Which brings up an interesting question - which Hollywood portrayal of the future will end up being the most accurate? It’s a tough question to answer and of course, only time will tell. But still, I was running low on ideas for a column this week, so I figured I would do my best to solve this mystery.

So what movie did I choose? My answer may surprise you, but I think the movie that will turn out being closest to reality is Demolition Man - the 1993 movie starring Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes. For those of you who haven’t seen it (which is hard for me to imagine - I mean, did I mention it stars Sylvester Stallone?), IMDB gives the following description, “A cop is brought out of suspended animation in prison to pursue an old ultra-violent enemy who is loose in a nonviolent future society.”

Now, how did I choose Demolition Man? Well, I started by analyzing the trends in these futuristic movies. The most common vision for the future seems to be one filled with robots, the aforementioned flying cars and all sorts of cool telecommunication devices (that are probably still run by Cingular and Sprint and still drop out on you during conversations and fail to get a signal when you need to make an important call, but that’s a whole different story). Usually, the future is portrayed either as a faux Utopia - somehow everyone has completely given up on free will and just decided to follow a “benevolent” dictator, who seems to want what’s best for everyone, but really has more nefarious plans on his mind and it takes an outsider (usually someone from the past) to out the dictator for the two-faced villain he really is. Or, the future is filled with robots that we all grown to trust and rely on for our everyday needs, who turn on us and go on a big killing spree. Fucking robots.

Demolition Man follows the first scenario, which to me sounds the most plausible. I mean, isn’t that pretty much what people think George Bush is trying to do now? He would like to ban abortions, censor television shows and movies and outlaw porn. In Demolition Man, their leader, Dr. Raymond Cocteau, simply picks up where Bush left off.

As Lt. Lenina Huxley (Sandra Bullock) explains to the recently thawed out John Spartan (Stallone), “Anything not good for you is bad, hence illegal. Alcohol, caffeine, contact sports, meat, bad language, chocolate, gasoline, uneducational children’s toys and anything spicy ... Abortion is also illegal, but then again, so is pregnancy if you don’t have a license.”

Another big thing in the movie is the police department’s ability to track everyone. They have cameras everywhere and can pull up surveillance video from any part of town at any time. Trust me, this one is coming too. It’s already starting - with the red light cameras and speeding cameras that we already have in place. It will be the next logical step for them, mark my words. I’m sure the government will try to install bio chips under people’s skin to allow them to track people as well.

If you aren’t convinced yet that Demolition Man paints the most clear picture of our imminent future, check this out. Huxley later tells John Spartan about a book in the Schwarzenegger Presidential Library. She explains that even though he wasn’t born in the country, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s popularity at the time caused the passing of the 61st Amendment. It was a throwaway joke when the movie came out, but Schwarzenegger was elected governor of California in 2003 and three different senators proposed amendments to the Constitution to allow naturalized citizens to become president. Eerie.

Of course, there is more to it than that. In the movie, there is a popular radio station that plays nothing but popular jingles from our time. Considering how commercial popular music has become and how many commercials actually feature rock songs, this seems like a inevitable turn of events.

Even the method of having people from our time show up in the future seems probable. Unlike a lot of futuristic movies that involve time traveling Deloreans, this movie involves cryogenically freezing people and then thawing them out in the future. As Walt Disney and Ted Williams might actually one day be able to tell you, this could totally happen.

So, have I convinced you yet? I mean, all in all, it’s not such a bad future. You have a wise-cracking Dennis Leary, doing that thing where he talks really fast and says funny stuff, helping to save the world from being so uptight. Plus, that scene where Stallone kicks Wesley Snipes’ frozen head off is totally awesome.

Joel Murphy is the creator of Hobo Trashcan, which is probably the reason why he has his own column. He also has some really hot friends. You can contact him at: murphyslaw@hobotrashcan.com