the inventions and gadgets that have been fulfilled

He October 21 It is not just any date for lovers of cinema and technology. It’s the day when Marty McFly and Doc Brown traveled to the futurespecifically to October 21, 2015in Back to the future II.

The film, released in 1989, imagined what the world would be like 30 years later, full of impossible advances, flying cars and self-lacing sneakers. Today, in 2025, a decade after that mythical date, it is worth looking back and asking: What did the saga predict well and what remained pure science fiction?

What did happen: from video calls to the smartwatch

Although the hoverboards authentic ones still do not ply the streets, Back to the future II He got it right in several aspects that are part of everyday life today.

For example, video calls They were pure fantasy then and today they are omnipresent thanks to Teams, Zoom, FaceTime or simply WhatsApp. In the McFly house of the future, Marty talked to his boss through a large wall screen: just what we do today with smart TVs or even with assistants like Alexa and her speakers with display or with Google Nest Hub.

He was also ahead of his time with the idea of smart homeswhere everything—lights, locks, temperature—is controlled with commands or gestures. In 1989 it sounded like magic, but in 2025 it is something as everyday as turning on the oven from your cell phone.

And we must not forget the devices type wearable. In the film, the characters wear glasses with integrated screens and headphones, very similar to the smart glasses (in the case of those with a screen we have the recent example of the Meta Ray-Ban Display) or the current headphones with voice assistant. Even Marty’s children wear something suspiciously reminiscent of smartwatches today.

Finally, the film also anticipated the biometric payments and the cashless transactionswhich we now do with our cell phones or even watches and rings.

What has not yet arrived (although we keep trying)

But not everything Zemeckis imagined has come to pass. The flying carsone of the great icons of the film, continue to be a dream. There are prototypes, yes, but they are still far from circulating on the streets (or skies) en masse or from being something that is truly a milestone in the industry.

Los hoverboards are another example: those floating skateboards only work in laboratories or very specific magnetic tracks. The closest thing we have are electric scooters or skateboards, but they don’t exactly float.

Las self-lacing sneakersfor their part, did come to exist: Nike launched a limited version inspired by the film, but more as a collector’s item than as a functional garment.

and the homemade fusion reactor ‘Mr. Fusion’capable of converting trash into energy for the DeLorean, still belongs to the realm of science fiction.

We have not reached the level of holographic advertising that showed the movie, with 3D sharks coming out of the theaters. Some shop windows use holograms, but the technology is not yet massive or as spectacular as that in the film.

Beyond gadgets: a future that got it right in spirit

More than for his technical successes, Back to the future II stood out for its ability to anticipate how technology would transform our lives.

Their hyperconnected world, full of screens, data and automation, is very similar to ours, although with less neon and more touch screens.

The future of the film was not exact, but it was visionary: predicted that technology would become integrated into everyday lifethat communication would be immediate and that machines would change the way we live, work and have fun.

Almost four decades since the release of the first film in the saga, Back to the future II It’s still a fun mirror in which to compare our expectations with reality. Although we still don’t have flying cars or hover scooters.