Jetpacks! Robots! 'Tomorrowland's' Awesome Vision of the Future

Tomorrowland movie still — Inspired by the upcoming film "Tomorrowland," Disney and X Prize are inviting kids to submit their ideas for future inventions in a video competition.

(Image credit: Disney)

Spoiler alert: This story contains references to plot points in the movie "Tomorrowland."

If the movie "Tomorrowland" is anything to go by, the future will be filled with jetpacks, flying trains and, of course, evil robots.

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Who wouldn't want to get around by jetpack? Apparently the creators of "Tomorrowland," which is also the name of theme lands at many Disney parks, felt the same way. Actor George Clooney plays Frank Walker, a former boy genius who grew up to be a brilliant but disillusioned inventor. Walker builds his own jetpack in the 1960s, but the device doesn't function as well as he hopes. Luckily, it earns him a ticket to Tomorrowland, a futuristic world where jetpacks not only work, but are commonplace.

There are a number of ways to get to Tomorrowland, and one of them is by touching a tiny badge that instantly teleports you there. But the teleporter badge works only for people who have been specially handpicked for their brilliance or potential, such as teenage genius Casey. The catch is, the badge teleporters turn out to be nothing more than an advertisement for a version of Tomorrowland that no longer exists — unless Casey can convince Frank that it can be saved.

Another way to get to Tomorrowland is to take a rocket that can travel to the future, via another dimension. The rocket — which launches, improbably, from beneath the Eiffel Tower — is supposedly powered by "tachyons," hypothetical particles that can move faster than light. In reality, most physicists reject the existence of tachyons because the known laws of physics cannot explain such particles. But if it means you can travel to the future, who's complaining?

Of course, no futuristic world would be complete without artificially intelligent robots. One of the film's main characters is a childlike android named Athena, whose job is to recruit bright young humans to help avert a future global collapse and the end of civilization. Athena is not meant to have ideas or emotions, but after she meets the young Frank Walker, she finds herself developing feelings — one hallmark of humanlike intelligence, or "strong AI."

Like any good Disney film, Tomorrowland has villains. Some of these come in the form of not-so-intelligent Terminator-style robots. The bots are sent to kill Casey before she makes it to Tomorrowland, but despite their ray guns, they are thwarted by the many booby traps in Frank's house, including magnetic walls, a force field that repels intruders and a door that slices people up like a cheese grater.

Perhaps the most important piece of hypothetical technology in the film is the so-called "Thinking Machine," created by Frank Walker's nefarious counterpart, the brilliant scientist David Nix, played by Hugh Laurie. The machine acts as a giant antenna for broadcasting pessimistic thoughts into the minds of humanity, in the hopes of averting global disaster. But it backfires, and these negative thoughts about the future become a self-fulfilling prophecy. As the film's not-so-subtle message makes clear, the only thing that can save humanity from disaster is the power of positive thinking.

Tanya was a staff writer for Live Science from 2013 to 2015, covering a wide array of topics, ranging from neuroscience to robotics to strange/cute animals. She received a graduate certificate in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a bachelor of science in biomedical engineering from Brown University. She has previously written for Science News, Wired, The Santa Cruz Sentinel, the radio show Big Picture Science and other places. Tanya has lived on a tropical island, witnessed volcanic eruptions and flown in zero gravity (without losing her lunch!). To find out what her latest project is, you can visit her website.