Well yeah. What I said was mining that now is retro futurism. And that by the power of Retro Futurism, things that mine that era’s futurism tend to do it stylishly. Rather than the gritty and deliberately non-stylish many of these films shot for.
That’s what retro futurism is. Last decade’s futurism.
I’m going to disagree with on it being straight futurism though, or extrapolating the state of the art at least. Because while it wasn’t meant to be retro, Alien wasn’t exactly meant to be standard futurism either.
The intent on a lot of it was not to show the state of the art or what things would look like in the future. But to take things that were already fairly common at the time as the basis. Computers and equipment were based on normal office console/mainframe setups and industrial equipment. Clothes were normal street clothes and work coveralls. There were glass bottles of coke, paper magazines, everyone was smoking. A lot of the “in space!” aspects were rooted in what was then current in space exploration. If you sent a message you had to wait for response, just like NASA in the 60s. The space craft design was heavily rooted in early space station designs,
Much of the material culture of that film is no different than what was around the people watching the film. The most advanced stuff still closely resembled things they’d been hearing about and seeing in the culture for years. And functionally worked the same (or worse).
There were a couple of goals with that. Part linked to “truckers in space”, lived in aesthetics. Where old (by the time period of the film) tech would be the sort of cheap, durable and available you’d see in that context.
But they were also looking to show stagnation. Things hadn’t neccisarily gotten super advanced, they were just more pervasive. And in space. That now as the future bit is one of the more influential things the film did.
The most super advanced, state of the art thing in that flick is Ash the god damned robot. The crew are unfamiliar with such things, unaware it’s on board.
A bit more than that Alien is a dystopian movie. We’re seeing working class people beholden to an unseen but all controlling corporation put at risk for the sake of that corporation’s goal. The Captain (management) is the only person aware of what’s going on or able to interact with them, and is revealed not to have his crew mate’s interest at heart. The single most advanced piece of technology we see, is direct from the company. And will strangle you with milk and a paper magazine to protect the company’s goal.
This should sound a bit familiar.
You’re closer to the mark on Blade Runner. But Alien is not wedge shaped cars and sweet jam boxes. It’s green command lines and pipes. Tiny CRTs, boxy switches and inscrutable blinky lights all over everything. And a brutalist version of that circular couch from the 60’s.
Because it’s 40 years later. And that aesthetic is retro now. I didn’t, and have never seen a person argue it was meant to be retro at the time. Though from what I understand the Alien production did a lot of looking at things from about 5 years before they started. It shares quite a bit of design language with 2001, and the two often get discussed as a sort of bracket around 70’s sci-fi. With Alien being a transition point into what you’d see in the 80’s. Blade Runner on one hand, things like Brazil on the other.
Also Total Recall
