I Have Watched Questionable Things

I saw Blade Runner at the Music Box Theater with the agent and MrSteve this week, and boy golly, is that movie an interesting piece of strange. Also? Having your eyes smushed into your head until they turn to jelly and blood seeps out of the sockets does not seem like a particularly good way to die. But I digress.

Blade Runner was released for the first time in 1982 and was set in the future. I love movies that are set in the future because I like to know ahead of time about things that are going to happen, as evidenced by my annoying habit of firing a barrage of questions at people who are trying to enjoy a film in peace. The great thing about Blade Runner though is that the future it is set in happens to be Los Angeles in 2019, a mere 2000 miles and 12 years away*. Here is what I have learned is in store for us:

• Los Angeles will be overcast and rainy 100% of the time. MrSteve attributes this climate change to global warming, I think the weather just decided to become more appropriate. The weather is no fool.
• Additionally, the skyline of Los Angeles will be completely unrecognizable from what it looks like now and will be dominated by a pair of gigantic buildings shaped like Aztec pyramids, but that look like the Death Star or a Borg cube close up. I have to question the aesthetic tastes of today's architecture students.
• Almost everyone in Los Angeles will be of Asian descent, and apparently poor street merchants selling noodles (or information).
• Good news! We are, at most, only 12 years away from flying cars. It appears though that law enforcement will have the first crack at them.

There is one other thing I've learned from sci-fi movies, not really about the future per se but more of a life lesson. Themes from Blade Runner, the Terminator movies, Transformers, the occasional Futurama episode and Steel Magnolias** all seem to be trying to teach us the same thing: DO NOT BUILD SENTIENT ROBOTS. Even Star Trek, where we have a fine example of android perfection in Data, teaches us this lesson in his evil brother Lore who is constantly trying to kill people. I think there is little hope that if we give robots consciousness that they are going to like us and agree to be our slaves. If you give a Roomba a sense of individuality and then tell it to suck up the dirt you tracked in on your filthy shoes, you run the risk of having it choose to suck up your face instead. We've been warned.
*Mileage may vary depending on where you live.
**This is not mine. The credit for this hilarious joke belongs entirely to Heather. Thanks :-)