Imagining the future is hard, but industrial designer and "visual futurist" Syd Mead manages to convincingly pull it off time and again. Though made way back in 1982, Blade Runner is currently lauded for the fact that it still looks futuristic 25 years later, due in no small part to Mead's thoroughly imagined environments, objects and vehicles.
But what about the movies that got it wrong? Check out a rather hysterical article (with excellent photos) called 2001 to Timecop: 8 Movie Futures Already Proven Wrong, which analyzes said movies in the categories of Premise, Predictions, and Overall Accuracy. Excerpts:
- The cars in Timecop are able to navigate by themselves, with a voice activation system so advanced it can understand Jean-Claude Van Damme.
- [Robocop is set in] an indeterminate "near future," but a careful analysis of the fashions, haircuts, vehicles, and computers seen in this 1987 movie lead us to believe it took place no later than 1988.
- Ability To Record Experiences [in the movie Strange Days]: Using special "SQUID" headgear, people's sensory data can be recorded to a disc and re-experienced by anybody, literally putting them in the shoes of others. The only thing we have that's even remotely similar to this is the ability to read whiny LiveJournal entries, but this only puts us in the shoes of angsty social outcasts.
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I think is really the alchemical matching of a director with clear vision and a designer that helps him/her show it. Usually we get lead, but in Blade Runner's case, all gold.