Where have all the futures gone?

[ijon]

I actually began this as a reply to Ashkenaz's thread on atmosphere, but it seemed like it kinda grew . . .

I just finished watching a cheesy '60s Italian movie called Wild, Wild Planet, and--while it may just be my weirdness--I enjoyed it more than Star Wars:Episode III.

What I particularly enjoyed was an atmosphere of Futurism. OK, so maybe this vision of a gogo-booted future (also visible in Star Trek and some '60s Japanese movies) seems a little dated now that we live in the years they were referencing, at least they were imagining where their present would go.
When I look at SF movies today I tend to see more of the past than the future. My clearest recollection of the latest Star Wars was the moment when I chuckled, wanting to say, "Hey Obi-Wan, 'bout 2/3s of your P-38 Lightning fell off."

Ya either get it or ya don't. Move on.

Gattaca was another example. That movie was really trying to pick up on the current technological cresting in genetics, and I was really trying to like it, but I kept thinking, "Fer chrissake Blade Runner has already done a noir looking future. It worked once!"

I won't even mention The Fifth Element in this context.

If there's a point to this, it's that in the '50s and '60s there was a vision of the future, a marvelous place if we could avoid dropping the big one. The '70s was far more dystopic, what with overpopulation, pollution and what have you. But by the '80s The Terminator was borrowing it's future from an old Outer Limits episode, and I personally don't see any new visions that have supplanted the old ones.

What do you think? Is THE FUTURE paradoxically the stuff of nostalgia? Is it important to visualize where we're going, whether hopefully or with dread?

[Waldo Jeffers]

Those directors of the more contemporary movies are all influenced by the 60's movie ideas of future societies, in my opinion, so they are similar. As we progress into the actual present that they tried to portray long ago it becomes alot more mundane. I did like Total Recall and the Mad Max movies for futuristic interpretations.

[ijon]

Lavrenti Pavlovitch! Long time no see!

Well, Mad Max is post-apocalyptic, and I'm tempted to say such visions are of canceled futures. I suppose though if one is truly pessimistic about the future it would be hard to say it doesn't count, but it still seems a bit different from the evolved dystopias of, say, Soylent Green or Rollerball.
You're right on Total Recall though, that is one of the better recent ones. As for your point on modern directors returning to that '60s future look (or even '30s in some recent efforts) I agree, and while it can be fun to look at at some level I still find it kind of stale. Movies are where we visualize social ideas today, and I wonder if it's a failing that we seem to be rooting or views of the future more in the past than the present.

[Waldo Jeffers]

I really think it is a failing, we are rooting our views of the future in the past (hehe). It is almost a zeitgeist.

[donmac]

I liked the future vision presented in Minority Report. It seemed to be trying to project where things are going (although it has a lot of misses among the hits).

[ijon]

Ah, but Clockwork Orange and Blade Runner are both older movies.

I haven't seen Minority Report though. I know it's not really rational, but what tolerance I still had for Tom Cruise after Mission Impossible was killed by The Last Samurai. Still, I don't want to be dogmatic. Donmac, what particularly struck you about it?

On one level, that which I'm missing in the older movies could be argued is actually an artistic failing: a clichéd future. But I do think that represents the consensus view of the time as to where the world was going.

Let me toss a folluwup in: the '50s and '60s were marked politically by the Cold War and technologically by the new "Atomic Age" and the just emerging space technology. Today the political context is a preponderant US, Mideast unrest and maturing PRC, while the technology is the "Information Age" and emerging biotechnology.
So, if you were going to make a movie set in, say, 2025~2050 what would you assume the shape of the world to be? Not something wildcard, mind, but something the audience would look at and think, "Sure, that's plausible enough."

[Unsavory]

Nice thread, but I'm struggling to think of how I can add to it constructively. There are only so many places you can go when imagining a future, whether plausible of fantastic, and besides combinations of already existing ideas, it's a tough subject.

Were I to set a movie in 2025-2050 however, my main focus would be around the scope of politics and social change. Physically, I don't imagine things would be too much different from now. You could do whatever you please with fashion and musical trends, but besides that you'd probably have almost no vehicles running on fossil fuel and you'd have smaller computers. Lots of little handheld devices that can work quick and do fun stuff. But there's really not much to that.

The most interesting future I can think of is one that embraces the fears of today and expands upon them. The worst hasn't happened yet, (for the sake of avoiding another post-apocalyptic future) but it's drawing ever closer. There are interesting and scary laws compromising the freedom of the people. Countries who we are allied with today would be potential and considerable threats, perhaps due to our turning Iraq, Iran, and indeed any other conceivable countries in the middle east into frightening Police States.

[donmac]

ijon said:

Ah, but Clockwork Orange and Blade Runner are both older movies.

I haven't seen Minority Report though. I know it's not really rational, but what tolerance I still had for Tom Cruise after Mission Impossible was killed by The Last Samurai. Still, I don't want to be dogmatic. Donmac, what particularly struck you about it?

Then you definitely need to see Minority Report because I think it has the most compelling film-based portrayal of the future since Blade Runner. It's set about 2050 and Steven Spielberg consulted with some actual futurists for ideas on depicting life in half-a-century, and the vision is genuinely futuristic and, in a twist for Hollywood, actually positive instead of bleak. Highlights are vehicles that automatically drive on tracked highways and up the sides of buildings to park/dock directly outside someone's apartment/condo. Also depicted are little spider-like robots that police release into a building to crawl into every room and identify, via optical scanner, everyone in the building. Optical scanners are also used to scan someone and selective project advertisement aimed directly at that person.

Some farfetched stuff is shown too, such as the "Pre-Cogs" who can predict future murders (of course, that's straight from Philip K. Dick's source story), and moving vines that can entangle a burgular. But I think the movie hits more than it misses on this future vision stuff.

(BTW, I hate Tom Cruise too, going back to even before he let his arrogant nuttiness out into the public - but he's OK in this one.)

[ijon]

Donmac, you've sold me. Minority Report is on the list for my next run to the video place.

[Waldo Jeffers]

Btw, Ijon, is that Von Braun in your avatar?

[Waldo Jeffers]

The PRC would definately be the antagonist in future films of a patriotic nature.

[ijon]

Good eye, Waldo! Project Paperclip was worth every penny.

Yes, looking at the future of the next generation I think the rise of China will be as big an issue as the rise of Germany was a century ago. Hopefully it won't be the result of anything so catastrophic though.

Another development I think might be significant is Africa getting on its feet. A prof I once had whose speciality was the French Revolution noted that starving peasants don't make revolution because they're too busy trying to stay alive. The danger period is when things are improving but the memory of the bad times is still fresh. It makes me wonder if--even should we be successful in calming the Mideast--an even greater storm of anti-Western activism may be brewing.

So, is the sense that breakthrough technological change isn't something we expect in this time frame? Unsavory, that sort of seemed to be your assumption.