Video: /Film Visits ‘Hollywood Dream Machines’, the World’s Largest Museum Exhibit of Sci-Fi Vehicles

At Los Angeles’s Petersen Automotive Museum, they don’t need roads – all they need is enough room to feature some of the coolest vehicles from your favorite science fiction, fantasy, and superhero films, TV shows, and video games in a new exhibit. It actually turns out they barely meet that requirement: some of the vehicles included in the exhibit are so big, they can’t fit inside the building.

The exhibit is called Hollywood Dream Machines: Vehicles of Science Fiction and Fantasy, and guests can take a close look at the DeLorean time machine from Back to the Future, Bumblebee from the Transformers franchise, two cars from Mad Max: Fury Road, multiple Batmobiles, the Warthog from the Halo video games, and many more.

/Film had a chance to visit the exhibit recently, and I’ve edited together a video showcasing some of the best vehicles on display.

Hollywood Dream Machines

In addition to being able to wander around and observe all of the little details of these vehicles and prop displays, there’s also an “immersive mixed reality experience” guests can check out:

Using Microsoft HoloLens, “Back to the Future” co-creator and producer Bob Gale will guide fans into the world of Hill Valley to tour the ins and outs of the legendary Time Machine. For those looking to explore the “Halo” universe, the “Monitor” 343 Guilty Spark will offer guests an inside look at the systems and weaponry of the mighty Warthog.

I’ll be frank: this is the worst part of the exhibit. It’s cool in theory, but you have to stand there for what feels like an eternity as the Monitor spits out Warthog specs at you; I haven’t played a Halo game in over a decade, so I’m not particularly interested in how big the tires are or how fast this fictional vehicle can go. The digital overlay does fit perfectly over the actual physical object in front of you, but that info dump really should be cut in half. The augmented reality experience then shifts over to the nearby DeLorean, where Bob Gale’s voice walks you through some of the vehicle’s specs and you see highlighted versions of the time circuits and the flux capacitor. Again, the overlay matches perfectly, but the graphics are pretty crude – it’s the equivalent of a PC game from the 1990s.

But that is a minuscule part of the overall experience, and it’s not even a requirement. So I’d recommend skipping that section entirely and spending more time gazing in awe at the vehicles from Minority Report, Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Prometheus, and more. Hollywood Dream Machines is open now and runs through March 15, 2020. General admission tickets cost $16 and can be purchased at the museum’s official website.

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