I've just watched the original 1982
Blade Runner, it was one of the very few sci-fi movies I've never watched as I couldn't get into it when I was younger (I only watched 10 minutes of it).
I won't write too much about what happens except what is already given away at the very start of the movie just in case anyone still hasn't seen it.
Apparently in November 2019, which is just under 2 years from now at the time of writing, we will all be travelling around in flying cars and space ships with anti-gravity technology Etc. even around super high tech cities using sky roads and we will also be travelling to numerous other planets exploring and colonising (this will be accepted as the norm). There will also be replicants that are manufactured humans (somewhat similar to androids, but genetically made) that are very difficult to distinguish from normal humans that have rebelled against us, they will be banned from Earth and Blade Runners will be employed to hunt down, killing them on site (called retirement). What's odd is we will apparently be using old 4:3 CRT monitors again including sometimes even old style green screen monitors and early 1980s keyboard.
You might think I'm being a bit harsh, but in the original 1960s
Star Trek that was much earlier than Blade Runner, the viewscreen on the
Starship Enterprise wasn't CRT or even a number of CRT monitors connected together in a matrix, in fact there was a very large flatscreen 16:9 viewscreen on the bridge and no other CRT monitors were anywhere to be seen or anything else that we often see in old sci-fi set in the future such as old large reel computer tapes for instance, plus there was no keyboards and mainly voice recognition.
Mr. Spock even controlled what appeared to be a mouse on the bridge and in one episode they even used what were video disks. They might have thought it would take longer than it did, but the communicators looked like flip mobile phones that were more popular in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Medical and even other
tricorders are also starting to become a reality. They even had automatic doors that opened as you approached them (they weren't the norm in the 1960s). In fact a lot of technology that featured in Star Trek is coming true and unlike Blade Runner they also chose a more realistic year to set the series in that none of us or even anyone we ever meet younger than us will live to, not just 37 years after it was made. Blade Runner should have been set in the year 2219 or at least 2119, not 2019. In other words when they made the original Star Trek they really thought about the future and made some amazing predictions with some that may still be yet to come, they were also careful not to show obvious 1960s technology.
One big thing I can fault about both the original Star Trek and Blade Runner however is the fashions, if anything Star Trek was if anything worse in this department. If Star Trek was made well enough you wouldn't watch it and immediately know that it was made in the 1960s, the problem is the fashions looked like the 1960s including women's short skirts Etc. and even though they're trying to show a future of equal rights for women and also equal racial rights (which was quite new back then), many women were still treated like many would be in the 1960s and often like sexual objects (a very controversial episode of Star Trek at the time of broadcast involved
an interracial kiss). Probably the worst Star Trek episode for giving away that it was made in the 1960s was about space hippies that acted exactly like 1960s hippies did with the same ideas, but in space. Similar is true with Blade Runner, it's immediately clear that it was made in the 1980s just by the style, fashion and even hair styles, but it's still not as obvious as Star Trek was. If I was making a movie now set in the future I would need to be extremely careful not to use anything that shows 2017 styles what-so-ever including clothing, hairstyles or even makeup, I couldn't even use special effects that were particularly popular at this time and ideally someone watching it wouldn't know exactly when it was made in say 40 years time.
A clip from Blade Runner (1982):
LA is apparently going to be like this in less than 2 years time (at the time of writing), and retro must be the in thing even in flying cars with their on board 4:3 CRT non flat screen monitor with retro graphics. Oh and I don't know what happened to mobile phones as no-one uses them anymore and there's even a high tech phone box at the beginning of the clip. An absolutely brilliant soundtrack composed by the legendary
Vangellis however, he also composed the stunning music to timeless classic
Chariots of Fire. The special effects were also absolute state of the art for 1982 and not surprisingly won various awards, in fact they're not half bad even now (edit: surprisingly the special effects themselves were only nominated for various awards, please
click here for details).
I could look at sci-fi that has predicted the future even worse, for instance I don't remember us flying around in super high tech space ships fighting against hostile aliens around 18 years ago like in the 1970s sci-fi TV series
Space 1999. Even worse I don't remember us being at war with aliens invading Earth in a similar ridiculously high tech space fighting environment way back in 1980, the year that the 1970 sci-fi TV series
U.F.O. was set, but the high tech is also mixed with technology from 1970 like the old large reel computer tapes and 1970 fashion is in your face.
U.F.O., a much worse future prediction than even the original Blade Runner:
I can't remember it being like this way back in 1980, I really must have amnesia or something?
