Star Trek and the Shiny, Boring Future
10th September 2013
Walking out of the new Star Trek, a friend of mine told me he wished the movie made an effort to show off what the future of today could look like, rather than the future of the ‘70s. I stopped for a second and realized that when you take out all the space travel, lens flares, and spandex uniforms, it wasn’t even four-decade-old predictions we were seeing in IMAX 3D, it was the technology we interact with every day. Everyone in the movie walks around carrying an iPad. They have heads-up displays projected on glass. They talk to each other on cell phones. For a series that inspired a generation of engineers to go out and make these incredible things they saw on TV, it’s hugely disappointing to see this big-screen admission that they’ve run out of ideas.
September 12th, 2013 at 07:39
No one will believe any attempt at accurately predicting the future. Such SF may be best done as comedy, either Creation of the Humanoids or Futurama.