Back to the Future is happening now

As fans celebrate, we will take a look at what “Back to the Future” got right about technology.

Lots of movies have depicted our future — some serious, some creepy and others ... well, downright depressing.

But few have been as effective at conjuring up a rollicking image of that future as the 1989 sequel film “Back to the Future II.”

Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) and Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) may have been the film’s primary characters, but it was the futuristic gadgets that made the movie so fun. I mean, who wouldn’t want to go speeding off on a hoverboard? Or take to the skies in a flying car?

Those two gizmos from “Back to the Future II” are on the cusp of becoming a reality for some of us. But most of the other gadgets envisioned in the film are already here. Here’s what the film got right:

Flat-screen tvs, tablets, video calling

Most of us have a flat screen TV and many of us also have tablets. And video calling? Think Skype on your laptop or FaceTime on your iPhone. Marty McFly had a flat-screen TV mounted over his fireplace in 2015. Tablets were used when a local preservation society asks him to sign a petition to save the clock tower, and he received

video telephone calls from Douglas J. Needles, a rival who could goad Marty into doing foolish things.

Smart glasses

This harkens back to those tiny ads at the back of comic books that advertised X-ray glasses that could see through anything. We don’t have those yet, but we do have Google Glass, which allows wearers to record their surroundings while also viewing Internet content. Marty wore these when the McFly family of the future was sitting around the table.

Fingerprint recognition

The movie also featured fingerprint recognition, That technology has long been used as a security measure to gain access to buildings. But it’s also being used on some smart phones, which allows users to protect their private data.

Alternative energy sources

We don’t have a “Mr. Fusion Home Energy Reactor” that can convert household waste into energy to power our time machines yet. But we do have companies that are turning landfill gas into low carbon fuel for cars and trucks.

Self-lacing shoes and flying cars

As crazy as this sounds, Nike is working to create Power Laces, which will mirror the self-lacing shoes Marty McFly wore in “Back to the Future.”

Hoverboards

We’re not zipping around on these yet, but Arx Pax in Los Gatos has designed a hoverboard that uses magnets to float about an inch above the ground. Marty used one of these gravitydefying devices to escape a group of thugs.

Flying cars

We’re not living a Jetsons kind of lifestyle yet. But Terrafugia, a Woburn, Mass.-based company, has already created a road-legal aircraft called the Transition and they are working on a flying car that will take off vertically with twin rotors. Gonna’ be a bit pricey, though, at around $250,000 to $400,000.