Back to the old future.

The weird thing about films is when they set them in the future, but the future is really just a straight line from now to then, as if nothing has ever really happened in-between.

With the new Alien film, which is set before the old Alien films, how are they going to make the future look suitably futuristic but enough like it’s set before the future in the old films without looking old-fashioned? It’s a minefield.

Up until the new Alien film you could believe that the future shown in the films was full of grimy green-screened computers and monitors that make Teletext look high-res, but as soon as they show a more modern future in the new film, it’ll make it harder to watch the old films. See? I told you it was weird.

The difficulty with making a film set in the future is that the future has to be believable to contemporary audiences, because otherwise you spend the whole time having to explain what everything is and what it does. The alternative is to fill the future with crass product placement masquerading as antiques, like they did in I, Robot.

They say the future is unwritten – but perhaps you’d go further, and say that it’s simply unwriteable.