Remember when the 21st century seemed like an eternity away? In the latter half of the last century, Hollywood got pretty imaginative guessing what awaited us in the near-future, with ray guns or hoverboards or some other gadget that is still, in 2014, years or decades away from even having the chance of becoming commonplace. Some of these films, like 1989's " Back to the Future Part II " (which depicted flying cars as a popular form of transportation in the year 2015) took an optimistic approach, while others (take 1982's grim " Blade Runner ") held a more dystopian view -- as was certainly the case with one of the most ground-breaking sci-fi films of that era, 1984's " The Terminator ." It was conceived as a low-budget flick that would quickly be forgotten (with almost no expectations from the studio that it would ever become a success), but " The Terminator " has defied just about all predictions over the last three decades.