
Johnny Mnemonic...
Human-brain interfaces ?
Blade Runner 2049, the long-awaited sequel to Ridley Scott's immeasurably influential vision of tomorrow, was released this week. And while the sci part of the sci-fi equation may be questionable in Scott's 1982 original, the production design felt so right to audiences that it has overshadowed almost every future-set movie …
The problem with all of these stories/movies is that their futuristic views are actually based on conceptual technologies that could evolve from existing or emerging tech. Its not just the embedded silicon, but the use of EEG to pull back the data. Or the use of reading EMF noise from machines to see what is going on.
You have to read the book and skip the movie. Gibson was pretty prophetic in his visions. As to Tron, its more pure fantasy, ala Lawnmower Man which would be a better example.
I'm amazed that the author skipped over Gibson's Virtual Light. (Ok, its not a movie... yet)
Or the Anime "Eden of the East" when looking at the power of the social network.
Yes. the second film continues from the first. The passage of time makes no difference. Hollywood, rather than make something new dig into past films and make sequels. I'm not talking about re-makes but sequels where the next film in the series gets progressively worse and mangles the story. Films used to be stand alone works of art, complete in themselves. Now films are made with sequels in mind.
If this new Blade Runner is any good, (or rakes in a lot of cash) they'll make a 3rd and even a 4th. Every series starts with the first one.
If this new Blade Runner is any good, (or rakes in a lot of cash) they'll make a 3rd and even a 4th. Every series starts with the first one.
So long as they allow 35 years before the next and again before the 4th for a really worthwhile script & treatment to properly mature I don't see a problem with that. And yes, I realise that means there's a good chance I won't see 3 and bugger all chance I'll see 4. Again, I don't see a problem with that.
Look,
You may not like the movie or the story line.
But I can tell you that there are people waiting to see this movie.
The original is a tough movie to follow and there's a lot of unanswered questions about the 'universe' and story line.
I agree that there's a lot of crap being made. But that's more about the numbers than a lack of creativity. The issue is that a remake / sequel has a built in audience. That if the movie was made right, you can guarantee a certain minimum return. Net new movie / plot would have more risk.
Just something to think about.
Yes, there are many shitty followups to good movies, but if the reviews are anything to go by you should probably pick a different example to complain about.
Of course, in some ways this makes it worse, because Holywood will think "hey, the remake of Blade Runner did really well, what other classic films can we dig up and ruinresurrect?"
"True self-learning AI ?"
I was a bit surprised that there wasn't an entry for self-aware AI on the list.
The first unequivocally self-aware/sentient AI that I can think of was HAL 9000, in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Whilst the plot of Metropolis revolved around a robot that could seemingly pass for human, the robot itself did not appear to be self-aware, self-motivated or even have its own character; it just did its master's bidding.
Can you have a favourite dystopia?
All far too different, and I'd have trouble choosing one. I liked the first robocop as it touched on matters of identity and memory, I enjoyed Blade runner as it touched on the idea of memory and identity, but from a completely different angle.
I think I prefer both of the above over e.g. Star Trek, as they are set, in the words of "Max Headroom" "20 minutes into the future" and address issues in a society not far removed from our own.
They're all good fun though.
Errm, "Iain M Banks' relentlessly uplifting Culture books"
Relentlessly uplifting? Were we reading the same stories? Although the Culture is nominally a utopian future surely the books largely concentrate on the negative aspects of this society. As quite often the main protagonists of the stories end up dead or badly damaged I'd hardly call them uplifting...
Dumbing down of society.
Live broadcasts of police chases - after seeing the one in the film when they're trying to capture Guy Montag, the next time I saw one was when OJ Simpson was captured.
Fake news (in connection with the police chase).
Robot dogs - I can't remember if it's in the film, but when I read the book recently, I imagined the robot dog that the firemen used to be somewhat like the one from Boston Dynamics.
Currently in a discussion with someone on the internet about these black boxes that are used by insurance companies. The idea being they make your insurance cheaper.
I point out that if someone follows your every move, then they're a stalker and they get put in to prison. But if it saves you a few quid, they give money to insurance companies willingly to do the same.
Someone then says "I'm not paranoid enough to care". And that's a shocking reflection on society. Take all of your freedom and your privacy for the sake of a few quid. Then again, it's Facebook, so you're giving some of it away for free anyway.
I've seen various basic tests of how much people are willing to give up for the sake of a bit of money, and you're right it's scary how much greed can override rationality in almost everyone, and how large corporations are exploiting this.
The perfect example is free search engines and free social media websites - if you're not the customer you're the product.
2022 is just around the corner, the year Soylent Green is set in. Plenty of time to get to that scenario, not necessarily, the overwhelming greenhouse effect just yet but the authorities attitude to the great unwashed is beginning to show through some of the more worn spots in society.
Biscuit, anyone?
Mad Max isn't SciFi is it? I thought it was just a documentary about Australia?
Not nearly enough venomous animals and plants for that. And the local humans are much too polite, gentle, calm, and reserved, and drive with far to much consideration for fellow road users. (Anyone who doubts this has not seen Sydney traffic on a weekday morning. It's not quite Mexico City or (shudder) Paris, but it's definitely well past Los Angeles.)
"Not nearly enough venomous animals and plants for that."
You aren't paying attention! The animals have all been killed off by whatever it is that has left the world in such a crappy state. Does *everything* have to be stated upfront by a character to be understood?
These fine documentaries stand as a monument to Aussie can-do-ism and poor lane discipline.
'Someone's going to be the first human to die on that planet'
Typical human centric viewpoint, you don't say a thing when those poor innocent robots are sent there to die. But no, I'm sure some of your best friends are robots so how could you possibly be robotist.
Don't forget Knight Rider (TV since 1982) - although I suppose the autonomous vehicles were very limited edition in that, so not exactly ubiquitous - were there ever more than 2?
Not sure if we can include Herbie (films since 1968) - autonomous, but the autonomy doesn't really seem to be created from technology.
The Fifth Element (1997) also had an autopilot mode in the cars - and not just ordinary cars, but flying cars.
I recall Fritz Lang gave us a lot more than videophones. From nutjob scientist, through life-like autonomous robot, flying personal transport to multi-level multi-lane freeways.
The drudgery of the despondent proletariat 'bashing buttons' all day long for the benefit of the fat-cat elite and populist uprising seems rather apt.
I love Rollerball. I remember seeing it (or at least some of it) when I was way too young to understand the meaning, and thinking that riding round on motorbikes giving people on roller-skates a ride looked an awful lot of fun.
So me and my brother re-enacted it the following day. That is we took turns to wear the roller-skates or be the one pulling on the bike (Raleigh Chopper since you ask) - not that we ruthlessly slaughtered our rivals for profits and the entertainment of baying crowds.
If you pedal really hard, then quickly turn the bike at the last minute before the skater lets go, of the hoop on the back of the seat you can get a fair turn of speed on the skates. And it's a lot easier to pedal with some extra resistance on the bike than to get up to those kind of speeds on skates alone.
I liked the film for different reasons when seeing it as an adult. The Running Man is also mostly great.
And my favourite bit of Robocop was the TV adverts. "Nuke 'em! The game for all the family to play."
It's funny to be an adult in the 21st Century. Living at the time predicted by so much of the scifi I read as a teenager - and to notice how much it got wrong.
Almost everything under-estimated the ubiquity of computers and overdid the speed of progress in space tech.
I always loved the atmosphere of Blade Runner and the world it helped create in my mind. Syndicate Wars gave me a massive dose of what I had imagined for this world. I wonder if I'm alone in pairing the two together in such a way. The disappointing FPS version is something I try to forget happened since it changed the feel by making it feel too generic.
It's worth noting that out of the listed titles four (Blade Runner, Terminator, Total Recall and Minority Report) are based on or inspired by Philip K. Dick's stories. Then there was alo Paycheck and Ajustment Bureau but perhaps we aren't quite ready yet for those predictions to come true.
"Second Variety". No direct attribution and different plot of course and that's why I said "inspired by". It's only my subjective opinion but does the idea of robots building other sophisticated robots, indistinguishable from humans, designed to infiltrate and kill sound kind of familiar?
The problem I always had with Star Trek was that they always underestimated the speed of computer development. In the original it consisted of flashing lights and a primitive user interface, even in the next gen when they has a sentient android, the computers were seemingly based Windows 11.
They also missed the idea of smart weapons. A photon torpedo basically fired into one direction and hoped it hit, no basic homing ability at all.
They also missed the idea of smart weapons. A photon torpedo basically fired into one direction and hoped it hit, no basic homing ability at all.
not quite right. In Star Trek VI they had photon torps home on the Bird of Prey with the advanced cloak which could fire when cloaked. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aA9fFzRd7VM There were a few other examples. Now, the quantum torpedoes used by, for example, Defiant, those were unguided.
I chanced on Terminator Genisys recently on Netflix (other streaming movie services are available) and was pleasantly surprised by it - it didn't take itself too seriously, and there was a reasonable attempt to address all the "going back in time to kill X" paradoxes.
And (obligatory reference to The Fine Article) it did rather pointedly wag a disapproving finger at the ongoing attempts to slurpunify our online presence.
"Trek creator Gene Roddenberry summed up his post-racial vision" doesn't make sense if several hundred years from now we still have the vast majority of the population in his future earth looking decidedly white, with some black, asian, etc. representation, when white folks are already a (fast shrinking) minority of the world's population.
Then again, while TV viewers accepted the first televised inter-racial kiss (Kirk / Uhuru) back in the '60s, a future where the majority, including the majority of those in positions of power, are not white is still unthinkable in western media, never mind 50 years ago.
The problem with stories of the future is we're still not very good at imagining it because we can't even see the present clearly, never mind understand it.
a future where the majority, including the majority of those in positions of power, are not white is still unthinkable in western media
Gee, I dunno. Have you ever been to meeting in "Asia" or any country in the "Middle East" (including The One, which, as I may remind people, are not White when it is convenient).
@ROLLERBALL
Also the original Deathrace 2000
Back to the Future II 1989 2015 Hoverboard
Seriously? An electric skateboard with the wheels turned sideways does not HOVER! unless you consider that split second before you hit the deck after you loose your balance as hovering? But, really, that seems more like falling with the very slim chance of missing the ground entirely.
" [...] why does Deckard need the slow and unwieldy Voight-Kampff machine to spot a skin-job when replicants can pluck eggs from boiling water and have trademarks built into their skin cells?"
False positives? Because the tests you suggest would amount to torture when performed on an actual human. And hopefully, in the future we won't do that anymore.
"Skin jobs". That's what Bryant called Replicants. In history books he's the kind of cop who used to call black men "niggers".
OK. Went the "full Monty" and saw it in iMax 3D. Rather awesome.
A great "Max Headroom" reference, and what was more astounding to me was the whole "Forbydelsens Element" thing going. If you haven't seen this film, then it's worth a look - a very dark, wet and dystopian future. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Element_of_Crime