(no subject)

[ewx]

Back To The Future Part II on Friday night was fun. I like the cinematic future cities that just assume continued smooth change in the visible world (as opposed to some massive catastrophe or revolution) - Minority Report is another good example, some parts turning up in suburbia indistinguishable from that of today. I think these accurately reflect how someone from fifty years ago would see the world today: strange looking cars and new buildings, weird fashions, hand-held video phones, ATMs, global computer networks (...used by anybody and everbody, can you believe it!)^[1] - but much that is familiar too. We haven't yet reached the point of tearing down everything older than ten years.

[1] oh, and Iridium: they built the satellite communications grid, beloved of SF, and it turned out to be obsolete before it was switched on.

Judge Dredd, on the other hand, goes for the opposite: apart from the occasional marker of the past it's basically all change. While the effect can be visually impressive (although they didn't do a great job of it in this case apart from a small number of scenes) it leaves you one further remove from the story. (We watched it Sunday night, it was pretty bad.)

I've been pretty tired all weekend, continuing the theme of the past week. Hopefuly next week will be better.

Comments

[simonb.livejournal.com]

To be fair to Judge Dredd, it was based to a large degree on the comic and they kept the "future city post nuclear war" theme from that - thus you can tear everything down.

That said, there are companies already working on pistols which will only fire if their owners use them, along with pistols which can fire different types of round on command (although the examples had people saying what round is to be fired which strikes me as really stupid when it comes down to it).

[ewx.livejournal.com]

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<pIf it was properly based on the comic he'd have kept his helment on! l-)</p> <p>I've no objection to the post-apocalyptic approach, I just have a soft spot for the alternative. Watching JD was another thing that made me want to watch <i>Hardware</i> again, though l-)</p>

[senji.livejournal.com]

I've always reckoned BttF2 as the weakest of the trilogy.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

...and if it was based on the comic why did he take his helmet off, eh?

[simonb.livejournal.com]

Whilst its true that they never had a scene in the comic as in the film, the comic has shown him without a helmet in the past. Often its been a back of head or top of head view and then there was the highly scarred face during the time Judge Dredd was wandering the cursed earth during the Necropolis story.

[simonb.livejournal.com]

That is why I said "based to a large degree" :)

For example the comic didn't have the whole moralising thing about cloning judges which the council had in the later stages of the film... and then there was the plot hole of how exactly did they develop the tech to create viable fully grown human clones in a matter of hours when all such research was banned and locked away.

[pjc50.livejournal.com]

I have a big soft spot for retrofuture design. The Batman animated series had this wonderful set of art deco cars and buildings with obvious near-future tech in them.