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I don't think giving in a New Star Trek makeover would do any good. The whole movie only makes sense in its time. If we made a film kinda like it now with our o

by ashark 9y ago

I don't think giving in a New Star Trek makeover would do any good. The whole movie only makes sense in its time. If we made a film kinda like it now with our own ideas of what the tech should be like and how the future would look, we'd make a whole different film, not just add holographic displays or something. Story, themes, the texture of the film, it'd all be significantly different. The tech in the film is part of the perspective from which it was made, so IMO trying to update it is pointless at best and harmful at worst. I don't think that's true for all movies, but for 2001 I think it is.

jerf 9y ago
I mostly agree with that, actually. I think it could be reasonably re-adapted... it is still future tech, even if it's closer to something we can at least imagine building now. The only thing I'd grumble about, which isn't even strictly speaking disagreement, is that while I agree that Hollywood today would inevitably want to film a different story than what 2001-the-movie was, I don't know that that's a necessity brought on by our times so much as a sign of how culturally enfeebled Hollywood has become underneath the protective coating of the world's best special effects. Hollywood's horizons have really closed off in the past couple of decades. Nolan is notable here as one of the few people who still push back against this somewhat, IMHO. The ever-increasing growth of thoughtcrime in their philosophy/philosophies can be seen in how every year more and more movies of the past become unthinkable that they'd be made today.
- ashark 9y ago
  Part of the problem is we've seen some of the nastiest predictions of past sci-fi come true... but in the most boring ways. 2001 has an optimistic space-ageyness to it that'd be hard to replicate now without it coming off as forced and false. Our moon base would be covered in advertisements and each feature named after a corporate sponsor. Everyone on the Pan-Am flight (whatever we rename it to) would be some future-Youtube "personality" live casting their flight and future-gramming their in-flight meals. HAL would become vulnerable when some of his network-controlled doors and such lost their wifi connection and fell back on manual controls, turning the whole thing either comic or, if the manual controls also fail to activate and allow him to win after all, saving him even from his fate in the original film, tragicomic. All of this would come off as insufficiently pessimistic and no-worse-than-things-now to pass for an acceptable projection of our future. Just doing a straight remake of 2001 with more iPhones won't help it, and my guess is it'll make it feel really, really weird, and not in the ways it was trying to be. Possibly laugh-out-loud funny at times. Its story isn't narrow enough, allegorical enough, or far future enough to ring true now without adding some of our cynicism. The retro-future tech of the original saves it from that scrutiny.

by ashark 9y ago

jerf 9y ago

I mostly agree with that, actually. I think it could be reasonably re-adapted... it is still future tech, even if it's closer to something we can at least imagine building now. The only thing I'd grumble about, which isn't even strictly speaking disagreement, is that while I agree that Hollywood today would inevitably want to film a different story than what 2001-the-movie was, I don't know that that's a necessity brought on by our times so much as a sign of how culturally enfeebled Hollywood has become underneath the protective coating of the world's best special effects. Hollywood's horizons have really closed off in the past couple of decades. Nolan is notable here as one of the few people who still push back against this somewhat, IMHO. The ever-increasing growth of thoughtcrime in their philosophy/philosophies can be seen in how every year more and more movies of the past become unthinkable that they'd be made today.

ashark 9y ago
Part of the problem is we've seen some of the nastiest predictions of past sci-fi come true... but in the most boring ways. 2001 has an optimistic space-ageyness to it that'd be hard to replicate now without it coming off as forced and false. Our moon base would be covered in advertisements and each feature named after a corporate sponsor. Everyone on the Pan-Am flight (whatever we rename it to) would be some future-Youtube "personality" live casting their flight and future-gramming their in-flight meals. HAL would become vulnerable when some of his network-controlled doors and such lost their wifi connection and fell back on manual controls, turning the whole thing either comic or, if the manual controls also fail to activate and allow him to win after all, saving him even from his fate in the original film, tragicomic. All of this would come off as insufficiently pessimistic and no-worse-than-things-now to pass for an acceptable projection of our future. Just doing a straight remake of 2001 with more iPhones won't help it, and my guess is it'll make it feel really, really weird, and not in the ways it was trying to be. Possibly laugh-out-loud funny at times. Its story isn't narrow enough, allegorical enough, or far future enough to ring true now without adding some of our cynicism. The retro-future tech of the original saves it from that scrutiny.