The entire movie embodies Cassette Futurism, but IMO the self-destruct sequence is particularly great. The entire process looks so satisfying that I probably wouldn’t be able to stop myself from running it if I were one of the crew.
More of it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9CqREun_Bg
This is how a self-destruction system ought to be. An extremely long, and somewhat complicated series of hoops. Because you seriously don’t want to just accidentally flip a plastic cap and hit a button or even require a key or two.
And the only movie to depict one this way is the one where you want the ship to blow up and not be miraculously stopped at the final seconds. The tension!
This and Bladerunner is on my watchlist.
This is one of those movies that sticks with you. The aesthetic blows me away every time, from the very beginning. The sets are incredibly cassette-ey while super sleek and modern for the time, and obviously fully practical. Quite possibly my favorite movie in terms of set design. You can tell the overall design is timeless because it changes very little across the decades that they’ve been making Alien movies.
I used to call this aesthetic “industrial sci fi” and Alien was the best example I knew of. The 70s and 80s were great for sci-fi in general.
Yeah, Blade Runner is also amazing at capturing the aesthetic. I watched the final cut version of it, which is the only one that Ridley Scott got complete creative control over. Haven’t watched the other cuts but did check out the monologue voiceovers on youtube that are on some of the other cuts, and I didn’t care for them. The happy ending on some of them also seemed silly. There’s a whole Wikipedia article about the various versions lol.
Haven’t yet watched Blade Runner 2049 yet, but I’ve heard it’s worth watching. Not quite as good as the original, but not much worse.
Blade Runner 2049 is a fantastic movie. Maybe not as creative or groundbreaking as the original, but very very well done.
I liked 2049 more than the original, but it’s very close.
