BLADE RUNNER

One of the rules about making the future in a movie is to base it off what is going on today. That sense of "the future is now" exists in all futuristic mvoies, just like BLADE RUNNER, where Sgt. Deckard is ordered to hunt down and kill all cyborgs in the city.

Cyborgs are seen the same way in the movie as a computer, although a great innovation it always has to follow up to humans. What is interesting about the cyborgs is their quest for perfection, a life longer than four years. But the last surviving cyborg, Roy, talks about how precious life really is, before he dies. What make the Director's Cut of BLADE RUNNER is that it gives the notion that Deckard himself is a cyborg. Of course the real dillemma is that in technical ways, we already are cyborgs.

In Chapter 6 of "Escape Velocity", Cyborging the Body Politic, it talks about how the human body has been changing and improving with cosmetic surgery and and mechanical organs. The human body is also being morphed into perfection. Usually in society the strive for perfection can people seem hollow as a doll, like Prisa in BLADE RUNNER where in the beginning she is a nice looking pleasure borg and in the end she puts on make-up and hide as one of the genetic toys in the room.

Humanity has always strive for perfection through innovation, from the first tools to the the first book to the first computer to the first blog space. The one thing I do believe we all need to ask ourselves how far do we go for perfection before humankind becomes obsolete?

TRON

With the power of computers reaching to homes everywhere in the early 1980's, the new frontier of computer generated imagery is introduced to the film industry in full feature form. The movie may lack in story, but their message of the computer world becoming more a part of our lives (like the last shot of the LA skyline) is evident.

The ability to make organic shapes created from MAGI (one of four computer companies used in making the CGI) and interacting with a human being had never been done before. Only sparingly was CGI used in earlier films. Steven Lisberger was certainly inspired by the visual effects done with breakthrough films Star Wars and Jaws. Lisberger then created the idea to bring humans from the real world into the electrical world where he knew CGI would do its job. The electronic world was certainly a very simple place, where every landscape was flat and jagged, and the heroes and villains were simply displayed in blue (hero) and red (villain) outlines. The back light animation and the technical effort to make a landscape look more real with distant shadowing was certainly a trying effort. It was the bareness yet vastness of the electronic world that makes the movie more memorable in time.

With how CGI has been throughout the years since TRON, there has always been a chance to expand on the ability to make CGI more astounding. And it is quite interesting that years after TRON, George Lucas actually started a CGI company he later sold, named PIXAR. Guess what happened after that.

THX 1138

The future is now. That is the idea used in creating the movie THX 1138, a dystopia run be recordings and computers. The environment in the movie was an underground city where people spent their days doing what recordings tell them. People take pills all day and there is no sense of humanity in this world, not in mates or even in a pre-recording in a confession booth. The only sense of humanity seen in the movie is love (making). What makes this place scary is that every dystopic feature is actually found today, at least at the time of production.

The pills people had to take in the movie to go on with their lives are just like all the ads we see on TV for Xanax, Prozac, and Zoloft, anti-depressant pills. The pre-recorded "priest" in the booth is just the same as TV evangelists who use TV to get people to believe and ask for a lot of money in return. Even the hologram of the naked chick is the same as Internet porn. Dystopic films like this show the audience a reflection of what their world is now. Unfortunately in the film, when THX reached the surface and sees the sunset, it seems that it is too late, unless the audience can make a difference.

The technical aspects of the film is understandable. George Lucas created the movie at a time where he didn't have the money or the shots to get his picture the way he wanted. By going back and re-editing the film, and adding more special effects, like the robot fixing, he gives his movie the right vision, and unless you have a keen eye on what was added even if you didn't see the original, like me, it appears seamless. How far CGI has gone to give detailed objects.