10 Movies That Eerily Predicted Things In Real Life
2. The Decline Of Detroit - RoboCop 1 & 2
The Movie
Paul Verhoeven's masterful 1987 action-satire takes place in a dystopian future Detroit, where financial ruin and high crime rates have turned the city into a barren cesspool.
As a result, the government is forced to get in bed with a corporation, OCP, giving them complete control of Detroit's police force and allowing them to effectively gentrify the city's most run-down areas into a desirable new neighbourhood, Delta City.
The latter plot point is further explored in RoboCop 2, where Detroit ultimately ends up going bankrupt.
How It Predicted Reality
In fairness, Detroit wasn't exactly in sterling shape prior to RoboCop's release, but its decline picked up significantly in the years following.
1991 saw crime rates for the city peak, while the population declined, tourism dropped off dramatically, unemployment rose and urban blight reached unprecedented levels.
Granted, the City of Detroit never partnered up with a conglomerate in a desperate bid to better itself, but in RoboCop that's ultimately a heightened expression of Detroit's destitution.
As in RoboCop 2, Detroit ultimately ended up declaring bankruptcy back in 2013, while efforts have been made to gentrify the city in recent years.
No sign of a robot cop anywhere, though.