Metropolis, filmed in 1925, the early heyday of assembly lines, was set in a dystopian 2026, in which the rich lived above ground, while the overcrowded poor lived below and worked society's machinery. It reveals more about what worried people in 1925 than it did about the future and, if it's any guide, reveals how little we know about what the next century will bring and how much time and energy we'll waste trying to predict it.

It did, however, have one redeeming feature - the most erotic robot to appear in the first century of cinematic history.