The first time I slipped a VHS tape of Blade Runner into my good old VCR, I felt like I was on the edge of a moment in history. Sure, I was just a kid, but this was an era long before “infinite” content could be streamed onto any size or shape of screen and absent “immersive,” 4K experiences. With my wires auditioning for the part of a light show and my crude speakers almost daring me to wish for retribution, my living room humbly approximated a bad version of a Blade Runner set. Still, it was home. When the first images from Ridley Scott’s dystopian world flickered outward, I was captivated.
And I still am.
Today’s science fiction can sometimes overlook that close-to-the-heart touch, opting instead for the smooth, gleaming look of digital effects. Make no mistake; there’s certainly a place for the artistry of the computer-generated image. Some stunning scenes can be laid right at the virtual feet of the 21st-century digital artist. Yet something about the older methods—models and miniatures, sets practically begging to be touched by the human hand—strikes a chord with me and seems to deliver all the more effectively an intensity of magic that, to my mind, classic sci-fi embodies. Watching Alien, for instance, one can absolutely feel the inside of the ship Nostromo; it’s not a far cry from one’s own potential lived interior.
Maybe this is why I keep coming back to these ancient classics. They offer more than just a viewing experience; they’re the means by which I can traverse earlier epochs of inventive visual storytelling. “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari”—the set for which was designed under the influence of painting and drawing—is as “unreal” in its way as the computer-generated worlds of contemporary cinema. Yet I cannot help but feel that Caligari’s Expressionist universe House on the Ridge Road: “How I Revile You,” to come up with an old-school pun for the prop divisions (in what is more or less a collection of props).
Still, it’s more lifelike than the average living room or dinette set because it has character, and (as we learn in the world of stagecraft) even the average pillow has to put in a performance as well as an actress has to.
When I contemplate the distinctions between traditional and contemporary science fiction, a single scene most commonly floats to the top: the intense chestburster sequence in Alien. That moment is burned into my brain—not for any single shocking reason but for the 360-degree experience of pure cinema it offers. You see, I’m a bit of a film school dork. I like to dissect scenes not only for their narrative legibility but also for what they signify, in terms of aesthetics and politics, to their moment of production and beyond. So, when I consider why the chestburster scene in Alien is so memorable, I’m really thinking about it from all sides—the narrative side, the aesthetic side, and the political side.
And yes, there are consequences to thinking about stuff in school.
I think the aged sci-fi films The Thing and 2001: A Space Odyssey thrive on their roughness. The puppeteered aliens, the wobbling spacecraft, and the meticulously crafted miniatures all feel like real materials put together by humans because they are. For every scene in which Carpenter’s sci-fi body-horror classic betrays its age with visible miniature sets, there are a couple of moments in which The Thing’s prosthetics team earned their paycheck by leaving the audience (and the U.S. Antarctic Research Program) very uncertain about who was human and who was not.
Each effect, each carefully crafted miniature, and each hand-manipulated puppet tells a story. These effects remind me of an earlier era when sci-fi was created by artists working with their hands, sculpting with foam and latex, and bestowing life upon inanimate models. I don’t remember the last time I came across a behind-the-scenes documentary of a movie that could rival Star Wars for sheer wow factor. When the Death Star trench run was first played back for a director’s review, the only sound accompanying the visual was the audible gasping of the folks in the editing suite.
On the other hand, when modern sci-fi filmmakers get to use CGI, it’s almost as if they’re doing the opposite of the practical effects. Sure, CGI can be awesome. The sights we saw in James Cameron’s Avatar are visual feasts—VFX supervisor’s dreams come true. But those sights, those landscapes, lack a certain quality. Part of it is that they’re just too perfect. And they feel too perfect, I think, because they’re clean. There’s no dirt, no wear, no dust to suggest that anything ever lives in or travels through them. So while we may find it charming that the remnants of the lost Apollo program are not quite realistic in the “mock up” seen in 2001: A Space Odyssey, at least the stuff seen in that way seems more likely to have a presence in, you know, space.
What really makes those old films stay with me is that when it comes to the universe of Star Wars, and for many other films I adore, there’s a model built with real-world physics standing in for the digital equivalent in the computer-generated imagery (CGI) world. There’s a history, a weightiness, a nutty obstinacy to the almost-real that’s not always there when the almost-real is created on a digital canvas. And that makes the Star Wars universe, and many other practical-effect-laden movies, seem like they’re really out there, just waiting to be explored.
But classic sci-fi has something else that modern films often lack: a quality of storytelling. You can sense its absence immediately when you watch a current-day equivalent of a classic like 2001: A Space Odyssey. You may not agree with every creative choice filmmaker Stanley Kubrick makes, but few doubt the awe and wonder favorite sequences like the Stargate scenebuild and evoke. Old-school sf, hands down, knows how to set a mood and create—or at least attempt to create—some kind of lasting emotional resonance. That’s as much what makes it great as anything else.
Consider The Terminator, for example. On the surface, it’s a movie about an unstoppable killing machine pursuing its target through the streets of Los Angeles. But there’s a sense of dread beneath that surface, a meditation on destiny and fate that’s just not explored in today’s sci-fi blockbusters—when was the last time you saw one of them grapple with the idea of survival? I saw The Terminator for the first time late one night, with the hum of the VHS player soothing in the background. The low-budget effects and gritty aesthetics gave the thing a raw, almost verité quality.
You felt Sarah Connor’s desperation; you felt the Terminator’s relentless pursuit; you felt the overwhelming stakes—none of which needed visual pyrotechnics or an overabundance of style to communicate.
Today’s sci-fi films can sometimes lack the killer instinct for atmosphere. They’re often far too eager to wow us with their visuals, neglecting true immersion—that is, nearly complete freedom from the narrative and almost total presence in the fictional world. This is not to deny that many of today’s sci-fi films don’t deserve a place in the pantheon of great flicks that can create this kind of magic. Arrival and Dune, to name two fairly recent examples, certainly possess the kind of slow-burn momentum that I find myself yearning for from the sci-fi films of today. But these two movies are rare successes in terms of the kind of deeply felt atmosphere I find myself missing more and more often when I go to see the sci-fi films of today.
I recall the moment when I stumbled upon an old, beaten copy of Dune at a garage sale and realized this was not just a discarded book but an unearthed gem. Its narrative sprawled and demanded my patience, while its step-by-step world-building absorbed me in the way that the best novels do. I had the sense that there were things to be uncovered in its hidden recesses, and that if I looked closely enough, I would discover something like the “Shai-Hulud” that Paul Atreides dreams of in the sand of Arrakis. In some alternate possibility of history where the 1984 Dune had been a success, I might think of this version as the Dune that finally arrived, in all ways except for clunky charm.
The past leaves imprints of its creators in a way that the present doesn’t always. When I watch reruns of Star Trek or replay Metroid on my long-retired NES, I’m not just revisiting a couple of precursors to my contemporary fandom; I’m reconnecting with the—you’ll have to forgive the word—ethos of those two franchises. I’m also confronting the crackling-audio imperfections of an old laserdisc and the worn edges of a VHS tape that I played the hell out of back in the ’80s.
That era of sci-fi is definitely something special. And it’s not just because I feel nostalgic for it. Filmmakers in that period took some serious risks, many times because they had no choice but to do so. I look back on a film like Blade Runner and am just duly impressed by how much it accomplishes with world-building that leans heavily on implication rather than clear-cut, explicit explanation. You’re dropped into this so-called ‘rainy’ and ‘neon-soaked’ world of the future (two adjectives that easily describe several scenes in the film) and are immediately entrusted with the job of figuring the whole thing out—and which part belongs to what—without any step-by-step guidance.
Perhaps what I miss most about the old masterpieces is the way they made me feel: that the world was bigger than what we could see on screen, that there were untraveled paths and unsolved mysteries. And I miss that sense we had, especially in the ’60s and ’70s, of our infinite potential to explore both the universe and our own minds. Invited into the dream Erwin Shaw had when writing his screenplay for The Five Pennies or when Stanley Kubrick was at work on 2001: A Space Odyssey, I always came away with a sense of awe. And after reading or watching, I contemplated the whole big thing—what I had just read or seen and what it all meant in the context of the universe.
I believe today’s science fiction could benefit from the kind of restraint the old-timers employed. It’s easy to get swept up in state-of-the-art visuals, but they seldom create the kind of wonder that sticks with you. To my mind, that’s why the classics do endure. They’re more than just stories; they’re experiences. You could even call them immersive, in a sort of anti-intuitive way. Don’t be flashy, and you’ll be as powerful as anything Kenosha can cook up an episode at a time. Imagination doesn’t have to try this hard.
The classic sci-fi storytelling quality that modern films sometimes lack goes beyond just effects. It is a subtle difference, more about tone and pacing. When I look back on movies like The Terminator or Close Encounters of the Third Kind, I think of how those tales took their time, letting tension build, letting the audience be with the characters and their struggles. They didn’t speed from one explosive set piece to the next—with a sea of effects in tow—that modern movies (of all genres) often do. Instead, they created a mood. And that’s something for which classic sci-fi is still very much admired.
Consider, for example, The Terminator. At its most basic, it’s the story of a never-ending killing machine chasing down a woman in Los Angeles. But even as I enjoyed it on that level, I picked up on the way the movie was also a meditation on fate and survival, which is something that modern sci-fi often skims over in favor of surface spectacle. I remember my first viewing well. It was dark—partly because it was late at night and partly because of the low-light, gritty aesthetic of the film. The whir of the VHS tape added to a kind of atmosphere I don’t think a DVD or streaming service can quite replicate.
Watching it felt like an event. Hearing the sounds of judgment day felt like I was catching a glimpse of something I wasn’t really supposed to see.
Today’s science fiction films can sometimes lose the essential quality of creating an atmosphere. In the quest to dazzle the audience with visuals, the filmmakers can forget that a true immersive experience comes from the systematic, almost old-fashioned method of world-building; in the kinds of films where you take a moment to breathe and appreciate the environment as much as the characters. Not that all contemporary films are this way. I would say that a couple of recent titles—Arrival and Dune—have managed to capture some of that same slow-furn magic. But they are the exceptions.
I remember when I picked up a dusty, well-worn copy of Dune at a garage sale, a find that felt like unearthing an artifact. It was the rare book that called for me to be patient, with its long-winded storytelling and elaborate make-believe. The film versions, both the 1984 and 2021 takes, managed to capture different aspects of that demand for patience. The older version, with its lousy special effects and David Lynch’s surreal vision, had to be approached with a kind of love that came from just an ambition to make a daring artifact. Meanwhile, Villeneuve’s version brings the sort of scale that modern technology allows, but honestly, there’s a part of me that loves the 1984 version for its ambition, even if it kind of bungles the filmmaking part.
The tales of the past have the creative fingerprints of their makers in a way that contemporary movies often don’t. When I watch Star Trek in syndication or play Metroid on my vintage NES, I know I’m not only revisiting my childhood; I’m also bathing in the warm glow of a there-and-then that feels more intimate, more humane, and—dare I say it?—more science-fictional-ville than the now-and-what’s-happening-next of modern life (part of which, it must be acknowledged, resembles a tired pre-scripted reality show).
That era of science fiction isn’t just about nostalgia. It’s about what happens when filmmakers take risks, often because they have no other choice. When I watch a movie like Blade Runner, I don’t just enjoy its aesthetic; I also appreciate the story it tells, in no small part because it’s a story that trusts my intelligence. I’m dropped into this rainy, neon-soaked future, and I have to piece things together for myself. This world feels alive, in part because it’s not meticulously overexplained. Something modern sci-fi often struggles with.
Or maybe over-explaining isn’t the big problem here. Maybe the realm of possibility left by stories like these is. In a time when our genre is striving for relevance, it’s also striving for a kind of realism—that all of our futuristic tech and wild notions make a kind of sense.
What I might lament the most about the old classics is their tribute to the idea that the world is more than what we see on screen. They left us with a sense of wonder and the feeling that there are worlds of mystery even in the stories we know. When I first saw 2001: A Space Odyssey, it felt like a scene-by-scene invitation into a dream that I might never fully understand. Its stately direction, the unsettling quiet of space, and the incalculable riddle of the monoliths made it feel like a true voyage into the mysterious “never-before-seen” elements of human existence.
This is precisely why, even though I relish many of the new sci-fi films coming out today, I keep going back to those ancient VHS tapes and tattered paperbacks of yore. They remind me of a time when science fiction was about more than just generating illusions to dazzle audiences. It was of a piece with our most cerebral and speculative forms of literature. And it asked, with varying degrees of explicitness, some pretty huge questions. I mean, really, All The Boys Love Mandy Lane? Starship Troopers? Gattaca? They aren’t exactly cautionary tales warning against the dangers of a future scientifically fabricated by humans.
