The future is both incredibly exciting and horribly terrifying at the same time. You never know what breakthroughs will be discovered from one day to the next, nor do you know who will be in control of said innovation once it has been found, and over the last several decades Hollywood has made many promising attempts to bring the idea of future tech and all its crazy possibilities to the big screen. Some work, like Looper or The Fifth Element, but others are so facepalm worthy that the sheer idea of revisiting them makes you want to slap yourself silly. This post is dedicated to the latter.

I really wanted to love Transcendence, but sitting in a Boston press screening earlier this week I found myself slowly growing frustrated with numerous errors, flubs, and otherwise stupid things taking place on the giant screen in front of me. The idea of the singularity is one of the most talked about potential innovations of the modern age, and the possibility for its existence to do irreparable damage to our culture is very real, but somehow filmmaker Wally Pfister fails to bring any of that to life onscreen. At least, not in a way that one would deem entertaining (or in some cases, even watchable).

Should I be upset? Not really. It’s just a movie after all, and there are bound to be a handful every year that are so maddening I feel moved to scream in a crowded theater. What I feel is disappointment, and it’s certainly not the first time a film featuring future tech managed to have that impact on me. I would average 40% of all science fiction films released in the last three decades, if not more, are completely laughable. Here are 5 examples:

Long before most average people had even heard of such a thing as a singularity, The Lawnmower Man rolled into theaters with big ideas and technical limitations that make it seem horrendously dated today. The story follows a man who performs experiments involving intelligence-enhancing drugs and virtual reality. He recruits a simple-minded gardener to be a human lab rat, and at first things works out surprisingly well. The gardener, named Jobe Smith, shows almost immediate signs of mental development, but as his intelligence grows so does his ability to manipulate the world around him, and soon the scientist realizes he has lost control of his experiment.

The story means well, and the script is actually not as bad you as might imagine for a sci-fi film from the early 1990s, but the digital effects are nowhere near the level needed to pull off a cyber-set thriller in a way that is convincing to the viewer. This film looked dated when it was released, and now it’s just plain silly.

You may also want to watch the sequel, Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace.

This film is the perfect example of what happens when decent science fiction ideas go horribly, horribly, awry. Gerard Butler stars as a convict who is forced to play a deadly game in order to win his freedom. The catch, as you may have guessed, is that he is not the person in control of his body. That person, played by Logan Lerman, is a young boy with a video game addiction and too much time on his hands. Battles ensue, bullets fly, and a whole lot of good intentions and fun tech ideas builds to a lackluster villain with the weakest Achilles heel in recent sci-fi memory.

Gamer‘s biggest flaw is that it does not seem to realize the full potential of the ideas it attempts to bring to life. The application of future tech for gaming is perfectly fine, but as more of the universe begins to be revealed the central story becomes increasingly underwhelming, to the point not even King Leonidas himself can save the day.

We have to revisit the 1990s once more in order to truly appreciate the strange places future tech has gone on screen. In this alternate reality some people make a living using their heads as human storage centers for other people’s data, including Keanu Reeves’ character (Johnny). One day, a routine delivery turns into a battle for survival when Johnny learns the information stored in his mind is being sought after by the Yakuza. 90 minutes of thrilling, albeit dated and somewhat corny tech-filled action soon follows.

The action elements of this film are still fairly strong, but anytime the characters begin discussing or interacting with tech it’s hard to keep the laughter from pouring out of you like snow from an avalanche coming down a mountain. (Butthole Surfers, anyone?)

I don’t know what happened to Bruce Willis around 2006, but the quality of his performance from feature to feature has been incredibly unpredictable for close to a decade now, and Surrogates is one title that no one should ever feel the need to watch again. The film takes place in a world where everyone interacts with the world through robot surrogates, which is admittedly a badass futuristic approach to storytelling, but as soon as shit hits the fan for Willis’ character the future setting is little more than a backdrop to an otherwise by-the-number action film. The surrogates and their associated tech are all window dressings for a film most have seen a dozen times before, often with far more compelling performances.

This film is not set too far in the pretend future, but it involves tech that defies both the laws of science and plausibility to such a great extent that it warrants inclusion in this list. The story takes place in a time when the planet’s rotation is beginning to slow, which in turn causes a rise in natural disasters, and the only solution mankind can come up with is to send a team of scientists who struggle to get along in an untested rocket to the core of the earth to use experimental gear in hopes of saving everyone from the end of days. Typical filmmaker fare for Roland Emmerich, perhaps, but here even his gift for destruction porn takes a backseat to the absurdity and confusing nature of the story’s screenplay.

Written by: James Shotwell Follow @utgjames

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James Shotwell

James Shotwell is the founder of Under The Gun Review. He loves writing about music and movies almost as much as he loves his two fat cats. He's also the co-founder of Antique Records and the Marketing Coordinator for Haulix. You should probably follow him on Twitter.

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