alt Hacker NewsOne of the reasons modern sci-fi films (e.g., Blade Runner 2049) seem so flat to me is because of the costumes. They're always too minimal and too forgettable. There's really nothing special about the fashion in that movie.
Compare that to the hyper-maximalist 80s movie outfits. The original Blade Runner has more creativity in one outfit than pretty much the entirety of the sequel.
I wonder why that is. My guess is that it's just a symptom of the same thing that causes everyone to stop buying colorful cars, and instead default to a grayscale one: fear that being too outlandish or creative will turn off potential customers/viewers.
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There was a huge Lucasfilm book on the costume design of The Phantom Menace, it looked amazing, I would have bought it at Forbidden Planet but I was between jobs at the time.
It went into to much detail, the film has its detractors, but the book itself was fascinating. Although I still buy books I don't think I spend enough time reading them.
'Dressing a Galaxy': https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Dressing_a_Galaxy:_The_Cost...
> I wonder why that is. My guess is that it's just a symptom of the same thing that causes everyone to stop buying colorful cars, and instead default to a grayscale one: fear that being too outlandish or creative will turn off potential customers/viewers.
One aspect of it is that the sci-fi future is not really a future in general, it's a future how it was imagined at the time. In the 80s we had maximalist fashion - bright colors, shoulder pads, big hair. So the future from that time looked even more so like that.
If we look at the future as imagined in the 40s and 50s we might laugh at the silly looking robots. We'd never put robots like in a current sci-fi movie, unless as a joke. But, at the time they were not made for laughs, people thought that's what robots would really look like.
An even deeper part of this is that the future from 80s from movies that became popular also adds to how we might see the future now. Aethetics from popular movies are immortalized. Like say, you're lamenting why doesn't current sci-fi look like Blade Runner, but imagine if Blade Runner had terrible characters and bad acting. You wouldn't want that aesthetic in sci movies today. It would be associated with crap.
I would agree with you un general, but Blade Runner 2049 is not a good example, il remember clearly the coat of Ryan gosling, the dresses, etc. This film is great for that, the lights, the sets design.
https://www.chapter1-take1.com/2017/10/blade-runner-2049-cos...
I would just think that taste has changed. I was actually thinking to myself that I prefer 2049's style as I was reading through this. But I was also born in the late 90's, so I assume it could be a generational difference.
Old film makers thought they were compensating for a lack of the kind of CGI and world building options we have today, compensating with rain, mist, camera angles to hide the lack of scale, and with costumes, lots of background actors, detailed film sets, to make the world seem grander. Turns out they had actually hit a sweet spot.