5 Futuristic Movie Toys We Want Now

By Daniel Bowen / September 25, 2012

Science fiction films set in the future are cool for so many reasons, but a lot of their coolness comes from showing us a world full of awesome things we€™ve never seen before and may never get to see in our lifetimes.

Last year, when Marty McFly€™s Nike shoes from Back to the Future were being sold online I got strangely excited, and I desperately wanted a pair. I even checked eBay pretty much every day for two weeks at first to see if I could ever afford them, and after realizing only movie stars and pop singers could actually afford them without having to take out a loan, I still checked on the site just so I could dream of what it would be like to own a pair.

I was stupid basically€ and thank God I didn€™t have the money to buy them. They were nowhere near as cool as in the film and let's face it, I would have looked fairly ridiculous walking down the street with them on (you don't know me, for all you know I would have looked awesome). That said, if many of the toys and gadgets listed here actually became a reality, I would probably consider becoming a bank robber just so I could own any one of them.

Science has brought the world so many cool things in the last 100 years. In fact, if it wasn't for these scientific advancements I certainly wouldn't be writing this post: not only would there be no Internet, there would be no computers, no films, no television... Pretty much everything cool in the world wouldn't exist. And if the last 100 years did all this, just think what the next could bring. Who knows, looking back at this list in 50 years could be like us looking back at mobile phones from the 80€™s.

So here it is, the list of 5 awesome things that I really want this year for Christmas from the movies, but I'd be lucky to get in 25 Christmas Day's time€ Here's hoping.

FYI€ As this list is Futuristic movie toys, don't expect to see anything Star Wars related. As cool as the lightsaber is, any fan of Star Wars knows that those films did not take place in the future, but €œa long time ago in a galaxy far, far away€€

5 . Virtual Reality Gaming. The Matrix

This is something that I have literally been waiting for ALL of my life. Ever since I played my first computer game (ok, so not quite all of my life) I have dreamed of completely realistic virtual reality games. If I am being completely honest, if you were to ask my five year old self whether such things would exist in the future (i.e now) I'd probably have said yes... but then I would have said the same thing about flying cars. Although there are some virtual reality gaming available to us these days, they aren't anywhere near the levels of the kind of open world the machines have created for man in The Matrix's film future. Ok, so technically "The Matrix" isn't really a game world, although, as shown during Neo's training sessions, it can easily be used as one. I'm not so keen on the idea of death in the game leading to death in real life, but thankfully this is probably one of the most ludicrous ideas in the Matrix. If and when something like this becomes available, you will surely be able to die all you like in the game world and be fine. I remember when the Eye Toy came out for the Playstation 2 how excited I was, thinking foolishly that this was the start of what would soon be an immersive gaming experience like The Matrix. The same feeling exactly re-emerged when I first saw footage of X Box Kinect: perhaps I should learn not to get my hopes up quite so high... although concept diagrams for a future X Box system look exciting, and do look to be using more virtual reality based ideas. Still, a game world as realistic as The Matrix... where you could fight and fly like a superhuman, and you could learn any single skill you wanted just by someone downloading the information into your head would be unbelievably epic. The only downside to this would be that if you had the opportunity to be as cool as you wanted in virtual reality, why would you ever want to leave? If I was Neo, I would have just said screw you Zion, I'm practically superman in this virtual existence, I couldn't care less if this world was real or not, at least in the Matrix I don't have to eat tasteless gruel.