Star Trek, tech companies, and the death of futurism in cinema
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Re: Star Trek, tech companies, and the death of futurism in cinema
#2This is a great point. I was wondering what about the new Star Trek movie made me unhappy, beyond the Michael Bay-esque explosions and off-topic banter between characters, the annoying contemporary compulsion to be "dark" and the fact that the plot was drawn out in crayons. This is it!
The original Star Trek blew my mind -- warp speed, teleportation, colored people on the bridge! Even TNG had the replicators and the AI computer and Data. What do we get now? Tired, topical tropes of terrorists and characters recycled from the Wrath of Khan. For a recycled franchise, there isn't anything mind-blowingly new.
Re: Star Trek, tech companies, and the death of futurism in cinema
#3I guess i'd hold up the culture series, and the diamond age as my vision of futurism. Those are both decades old though.
Any suggestions for something written after, say, 2005?
Re: Star Trek, tech companies, and the death of futurism in cinema
#4I think we can see where the future is going well enough to know what it's going to look a lot less like the Enterprise and a lot more like the Borg.
It just doesn't make for good cinema.
Re: Star Trek, tech companies, and the death of futurism in cinema
#5I mention this alot to friends as well. We need new sci-fi concepts just like we need new super hero concepts.
Think about how outdated a bat signal is, why can't batman check for tweets?
Re: Star Trek, tech companies, and the death of futurism in cinema
#6Spoiler Alert, HCI elements will plateau at voice control and touch displays. Why? Because the human body is what it is. It isn't going any further than that until it jumps to something matrix style, but that movie has already been made. Alien Computer Interaction however could offer some interesting opportunities.
Forget hoverboards and dick tracy watches, Star Trek still has plenty of imaginitive technologies that don't yet exist. Between cold fusion, warp drive, teleporters, transcoders, etc... there is still plenty of good tech to make an entertaining movie with.
Re: Star Trek, tech companies, and the death of futurism in cinema
#7The latest Star Trek movie was meant as a prequel, so if the movie showcased advanced tech that's not in the original, it would look weird to the Trekkie purists.
Re: Star Trek, tech companies, and the death of futurism in cinema
#8This article brought up a good point. But while Star Trek is a vision of the future from the past, there is plenty of SciFi out there from very talented people with extremely fertile imaginations that is just waiting for some young filmmaker to take a chance on and deliver us a new Star Wars or Star Trek type franchise. The books I have run across in that have been published in more recent years cover everything from hard scifi that could be a reality today with a ton of money and the will to engineer it into existence, to the really fun theoretical stuff out there on what could be...
I myself have a preference/hope to live in the universe that Peter Hamilton conjures up in Pandora's Star. Its everything that got me into Star Trek as a kid and so much more. That is just one of many books that give me hope for our near and distant future and what could be...even if a bunch of it seems as far from reality for us as iPhones were in 1969.
Re: Star Trek, tech companies, and the death of futurism in cinema
#9I would argue that that's actually what the directors want, though. They want you to feel like the technology is something you can relate to. It makes you way more immersed in the film when you can relate to the emotions of the characters and their surroundings. If everything is too far futuristic, I think it doesn't allow you to focus on the movie's plot, but makes you over think small things. Things the director doesn't want you to spend time thinking about.
Also, I could easily see the opposite of this article being written if the movie was indeed doing what you asked for, from the technology and futurism standpoint. For example, if everyone just teleported everywhere (or something crazy like that), people would just call it ridiculous and fake. They would just complain that the movie doesn't relate to a realistic future.
I, personally, loved the new Star Trek, and thought it was incredible. I think they hit a great balance of innovation and futurism, but also still made it relevant to things we see everyday (iPhones, minimalistic designs, etc).
Re: Star Trek, tech companies, and the death of futurism in cinema
#10I had this very thought while in the movie theater. However, I chalked it up to being a re-launch of a franchise with a very established lore and universe.
This isn't just a "movie about the future". It's Star Trek. With legacy comes baggage. I'm sure there's a small encyclopedia detailing the available technology at the time the movie takes place, as well as potentially canonical books, stories, graphic novels, etc. In this context, the writers have limited wiggle room in which to dream up "tomorrow's technology".
On the flipside, it's also a bit inspiring to see that some of that which was considered sci-fi less than a generation ago is now hum-drum reality.