New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

The future: it's a complicated, scary world where anything can happen. Maybe robots will become sentient and destroy society. Maybe aliens will make contact with us, perhaps for peaceful reasons, but probably to try to annihilate the human race. And maybe, just maybe, gay marriage will be legalized in the United States. Yup, crazy things can happen in the future, but we'll never know until they actually happen.

Or so I thought... little did I know that one film contains all the answers to the mysteries of where the future will take us. And not way off into the future, in a couple of centuries perhaps when it won't matter to all of us wondering when the recession will end and how Sarah Palin will fare in the 2012 presidential election. There's a little Arnold Schwarzenegger masterpiece you might have heard of, called The 6th Day, which is set "in the near future...sooner than you think" (ominous, right?) In fact, considering that the film was made in 2000, they could be referring to right now! The future has arrived, people.

Yes, The 6th Day is to cloning what Time Cop is to time travel, what Minority Report is to law enforcement, and what V for Vendetta is to women's hair styles. So for those of you who haven't had time to catch this gem, I've summed up the lessons you can learn from it. Who knows how this knowledge will pay off for you in the future...

The XFL Will be Wildly Successful

Remember the Extreme Football League, AKA the XFL? It was the totally awesome to the max football league started by WWF Chairman Vince McMahon that was essentially the same as the NFL but with inferior players (with awesome names like "He Hate Me"). No? You don't remember this kickin' sports experiment that lasted an entire season before folding in a blaze of failure? Well, get with the times, people! If The 6th Day is any indication, the XFL will be huge in the near future. The opening scene takes place at a packed XFL stadium where everyone is cheering on quarterback Johnny Phoenix, the Tom Brady/Chad Ochocinco hybrid superstar of the expansion team The Roadrunners. Yeah, in the future everyone will love the XFL.

Virtual People Will Be as Fake as Arnold Schwarzenegger

Here's one thing we already know: in the future, we will have lots of virtual friends, colleagues, and even lovers. Here's one thing we didn't know until we saw The 6th Day: they will be the most disturbing creatures in existence. They will make Chucky look like a My Little Pony, and they will be so horrifyingly fake that you will beg for the relief of a scene featuring two real actors, even if both of them are Arnold Schwarzenegger. At one point, Arnold picks up a "Sim Pal" which uses the slogan "a sim pal that's fun to be with" but to an outside observer would more likely be called "a horribly deformed child that will kill you when you turn your back on it." Add to that Michael Rapaport's creepy and over-attentive virtual girlfriend and the completely oblivious virtual lawyer's and psychiatrists, and we are looking at a future that is even more awkward than the present.

Continued:       1       2