I've been thinking about this question since seeing Logan's Run (again) recently.

First, perhaps we should define and agree on what we mean by "dated". Just because you can tell when a movie was made doesn't necessarily get it labelled as dated. Sure, you can probably tell Alien was made around 1979 based on the technical look of the film (film stock, color, lack of digital effects), but that's generally what we mean when we say something looks dated.

Usually, I think we are talking about hair, clothes, or interior design that was very much contemporary with the production of the film.

Which sci-films look dated? Which don't? Does it even matter?

Blade Runner is supposed to be the canonical well-aging SF film, I believe. It has a couple of points going for it, which are the Syd Mead work and the consciously retro look harking to film noir.

Two things I noticed the last time I saw it that threw me: the big Pan Am ad and the lack of cell phones (see: the plot point of videophoning Rachel). The latter is a problem for a lot of near-future SF films from the late 70s/early 80s and the anticipated development of cell phones continues to be one in near-future SF films up to the present.

Regarding Blade Runner, I place it in the '80s Neon Noir genre, but maybe noir, and that '80s variant, is so classic it doesn't detrimentally date the film.
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One thing about many SF films—especially pre-1970s—is that they often have a way of looking cheap. Probably because they were cheap—b-list stuff churned out in a hurry, shoddily out together. That sort of thing ages very poorly indeed.

There are a few ways of dating badly. Re: special effects. Practical effects tend to date better than CGI (or at least they did for a number of years--we won't really know how well contemporary CGI dates until more time has passed). But it shouldn't be used to criticize crappy production values, which probably looked hokey when a film first came out, too. Often, I'll also use it as Bruce mentioned--describing an obvious past aesthetic in this supposed future setting. I think I have a bias toward seeing something as tacky, hence dating badly, if the style was around during my life (e.g. Farrah F.'s hair in Logan's Run) but finding it plausibly or at least acceptably retro if it's older (e.g. Rachael's 40s hair in Blade Runner).

Logan's Run is such a prime example. It's particular 1976 aesthetic is maligned. It shouldn't really matter if the story is good, but in this case it's so noticeable that it takes you right out of the movie. There's a sort of loss of credibility.

Re: acceptable retro. I'm trying to make some kind of connection and failing between this question and the Footage in Pattern Recognition. The Footageheads have a lot of debates about the period of the film because the fashion cues and other visual markers are so ambiguous and difficult to nail down. Somehow it has something to do with that moment when a thing stops being a fashion trend and becomes a classic—both in clothing and in filmmaking.

Re: Pattern Recognition, that sounds really intriguing in a way that makes me want to read the book. I'm kind of fascinated with the transition from trendiness to classic-ness. A related thing I have noticed as I get older: sometimes fashion trends come from the top, but other times there are more proletarian trends that feel a bit tacky even when they're new. Yet once time passes, people get nostalgic enough about them that they become legitimately fashionable (or at least they gain some degree of legitimacy). I am noticing this a lot with retro 90s stuff, e.g. neon.

Re: Logan's Run, one way that it kind of works: a seemingly utopian society of people under 30 seems like kind of a perfect fit for mid-70s style. Like a giant singles bar.

Susan, you make a good point. The look of LR may not look like "the future" to us anymore, but it certainly works in the social context of the time the film was made. That works if you believe sci-fi's job is to comment on the present (1976 in this case).

It might even make sense if you were making the same story today. Looking for ways to convey that sensibility, what epitomizes a certain kind of youthful hedonism more than 70s aesthetic cues?

The "put your hands up, everybody in the club" kind of contemporary pop culture seems like a reasonable current analogue.

True! You could probably use a number of types of contemporary styles to get that feeling across...though trying to portray a sense of youthful hedonism using contemporary stuff could easily just come off as some kind of parody of hipsterism.

I've been wondering a lot recently about how well the CGI is going to hold up for crowd work (not just for battle scenes like LOTR, but in general). I've been thinking about this after watching some classic Who, where the extras are, in fact, extras.

Along those lines, I think films like Inception (again, near-future SF, but it's the one that comes to mind), where the director went to some effort to do actual effects like the zero-g fight and the walking up the bent street, are likely to last a little better. It's also another film where there was a conscious effort to be timeless/mildly retro in the costuming.

CGI is so closely tied to the technological capabilities of the time it was produced. I don't think most of it will age well. And even when the CGI rendering itself looks "real", the tendency to over-detail, over-animate, and overload still gives away that it's CGI. Even a not-great model or too few extras are going to age better.

That's true of CGI that is heavily featured, but what about when it's used in more subtle ways? Take the CGI in Zodiac for example. I'd argue that the more heavily featured CGI is, the more it advertises itself, the worse it dates. It seems like the trend now is toward less obvious CGI, which helps matters. I'm not a big CGI fan, but I do think it has been improving bit by bit in other ways as well, and I think that will help movies date better at least somewhat.

Crowd scenes are usually a low point, though. It's not uncommon for them to totally pull me out of a movie with their crumminess. Given the effort involved in making crowds look bigger, is it really cheaper/more effective versus using more extras, shooting them strategically?

(I just branched off the CGI discussion into its own thread)
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After getting home from Prometheus a few weeks ago, I decided to go back and watch Alien for the first time in years. I could handle that all the computers had CRT screens which typed out text at around two characters per second, but what threw me is they actually made a noise like a daisywheel printer as they went.
There's a bunch of movies which represent computers as very flashy looking versions of whatever was current at the time; the other approach is to go for something completely distant from current technology, to take a risk - Star Trek: The Next Generation for instance.
So, I'm interested in whether you folks think that the way computers are represented is a key dating item.

If CGI has done one thing, it's made filmmakers lazy. Green screen in their friend, fix everything in post mentality. Look at 95% of in-car scenes now - everything is green screened, and everything looks fake as hell. It actually looks worse now than 1930s-50s rear-projection, and it's because there's no depth. Depth is what creates the illusion in our mind's eye, and because of that practical effects - done well - will always look better.

You can usually tell when a movie was made based on how it depicts computer technology, but oddly that doesn't make a movie feel "dated" to me. It's not quite the same as a sci-fi movie, set in the future, where people are wearing clothes that look like clothes from the year the film was actually made.

In the case of computers in movies, it's more a case of someone's "guess" at the future being either dead wrong, or overtaken/exceeded by actual technology. I tend to consider future-based sci-fi as a sort of parallel/alternate timeline, so I don't get bent out of shape when someone's vision of the future doesn't end up matching our reality.

Science Fiction should not be reduced to a right/wrong prediction about future technology.

I don't know if I'd agree with a blanket statement that practical effects will *always* look better than CGI. They are two tools that can each be used well or not, depending on the need of the scene. The problem currently is just that CGI is being over-used, and the people doing it don't seem to have the fundamentals of practical effects needed to create realistic CGI.

Practical effects won't always look better (cf Ray Harryhausen style stop motion, some of which has aged fine and some of which ... has not). But an emphasis on those techniques frequently correlates with an attention to detail that will stand up. Also I think practical effects are more expensive now compared to CGI, and (well used) money tells overall.

For me it's all about suspension of disbelief. In the Alien reference above, I'm going to make an assumption and say that you actually remember when screens were drawn slowly and you could see scan lines and such, but the daisywheel printer sounds not so much and *blam* there goes suspension. When it came out, everything was very new and our brains were busy just trying to take in the scene, rather than notice (relatively) small inconsistencies. On a larger scale, when sci fi movies take on plot points or entire themes which are disproven or become archaic over time, they either become dated or change from sci fi to fantasy.

Heads up: I am going to conclude this branch at the end of the day. Any other comments?

Sorry I'm late to the game, life got in the way. I think @Charlie got to the heart of what I was going to lead with. I think the more a scifi movie stands or falls on its plot/characters, the better it is likely to hold up. I came to this by thinking first of the great 50s movies, some of which hold up remarkably well even if some of the effects don't. Why? Because the quality of the movie didn't depend on those. I'm thinking in particular of Forbidden Planet & Day the Earth Stood Still. In Planet, the space ship & etc. might not hold up well, but I think the monster interacting with the force field and the ancient machines (aside from the computer aspects) actually do hold up pretty well. Day had few effects and holds up based on its story

So the way I view this is that there's a difference between the look and the feel being dated. A good scifi film won't feel dated even if you can tell it's old. This is why I think the original Star Wars holds its looks well, but the prequels probably won't. Story had to come first in the originals, while effects seemingly came first in the prequels.

Alien I think doesn't look dated because that's supposed to be an old not state-of-the-art ship. That's one of the things that was innovative about the movie, space travel as a grunt job with an old, worn out ship.

I think the more they try and look modern, the more quickly they look dated. Maybe setting scifi in the past is the key, or at least not trying to look futuristic.

As one who grew up on the REAL Star Wars - I typed this before your reference @Steve - and blew off homework to read Asimov's Foundation series, I too have been disgusted with the VFX / CGI crutch most of today's SciFi blockbusters lean on. As many have said above, CGI can reduce the films' shelf life / long tail ... they look dated, cheaply produced AND live in film that isn't telling an engaging story about characters we care about.

At the end of the day, the Keep It Simple Stupid approach is welcome ... does the story really need a $10m VFX sequence or can the camera be kept on our protagonist as she reacts to the Alien in front of her?

Been dying for someone to make THAT (Foundation) into a decent movie, but they'd probably do the whole Will Smith I, Robot thing to it instead. :p Another example, too, of effects over story. Just needed to stick to the story.

Getting back to looking dated, while we're not too close to the cars of Minority Report, we're getting very close to the gesture based controlling. Will that help film stay looking good, or lead to it looking old fashioned when we move past that method of interaction?

@Steven - Funny because Forbidden Planet and Day the Earth Stood Still were some of the films in my mind when I was writing my comment.
Although not a movie, the Battlestar Galactica reboot also feels like it'll hold up.
I also think that you touched another good point in your Alien reference: Movies that express a technical innovation as their core 'feature' will not age well, whereas movies that express an engaging world and/or story USING technical innovation can age well.
@Ben - I feel the same way about Star Trek vs. ST:Next Gen (TV series). Star Wars/Empire/Return had truly industry changing technical innovations, but it was the universe (and simple compelling story) which engaged everyone.

Seems to me that the more 'futuristic' technology creations in SciFi = increased probability of being dated in a decade ... but then several fictional ideas inspired real products.

To @Steven's Minority Report point, we're seeing the political cable/TV show producers & talking heads lovin' their gesture based control over large screens.

Ben, maybe the key is to make your futuristic tech "predictions" so far out and abstract, they don't date. The problem is, most people can only envision a slightly more advanced version of what we have currently.

Truly. Think of original Stat Trek with those pad like things Kirk would sign. Seemed very futuristic then, only odd thing now is why he's using a stylus. At least they fixed that in ST:TNG.

Agreed Bruce, which is back to story and need for a creative & strong screenplay that goes outside the box!

I'm optimistic that the upcoming SciFi / time travel flick Looper will be enjoyable in a decade or two!

So if a movie's timeframe for key events passes by (Terminator, for example), does that movie become Fantasy, or Science Fantasy instead of Sci Fi? And does it become dated?
Voyage to the Moon is another, although I guess since even the french didn't believe the moon had a face at that time, perhaps it was always Fantasy.

Voyage to the Moon was always fantasy/science fantasy. I think Terminator is just SF from the past. (I hesitate to call it historic, but a designator for SF that has been passed by would be useful.)

Seems like there's always a fuzzy line between sci-fi and fantasy. But usually I require sci-fi to actually have a theme or story that depends on speculative (fictional) science in some way. Star Wars is fantasy to me, not really sci-fi.

Sure, the date for Terminator has passed, but the idea of humanity being threatened by its own merger with technology still seems timely and not dated to me. It's not like, "Oh, we didn't get killer cyborgs, so Terminator is dated."

Film categories are somewhat subjective and in the eyes of the viewer / distributor. I think of Star Wars as Sci-Fi but yes, gets fuzzy with fantasy. And I loved the original Terminator back then, though worth a recent watch to see how it's held up!

That's why, as a longtime reader of SF, we preferred to think of SF as short for Speculative Fiction, which doesn't work of course if you use SciFi. For me, the difference between SF & Fantasy was always that SF has to at least give some sort of explanation for why/how things happen, even if it's just "Oh, yeah, we invented faster than light travel awhile ago", while Fantasy things can just happen. This isn't meant to judge either one, just my recollection from the past of those trying to delineate between the two and one that's mostly worked for me for the past 40 something years of reading, watching and enjoying. So Terminator's still fine by that definition, and it holds up both because the story's good (effects really are too).

Related to far out technology predictions, if you look at sf over time, especially novels, settings are getting further and further away from the time in which they're written. It makes sense. Midcentury sf was always predicting stuff about the 1990s (e.g. Star Trek's Eugenics War, which involved genetically engineered ubermensches, started in 1992, 4 years before Dolly the sheep in our world), the ever-popular Year 2000, and the beginning of the 21st century. Even before we actually passed by those years, it was painfully obvious that we wouldn't be at such an advanced point when they came. So people got smart and started setting things way further into the future or just made their subjects non-human or non-Earth people (e.g. Banks).

Although again, re: Terminator, think how few effects there are, just at the end really, everything else is really non-sf effects.

Thinking about Terminator, the last time I watched it, I found it to be rather dated, and to some earlier comments, the primary reason was because of the special effects (soundtrack is my secondary reason). The effects are non-cg; the terminator moves very differently sans Arnold-skin, very herky-jerky. The blue screen work is flat and obvious. When I saw it the first time the movie blew my mind completely. T2 still holds up better, but I guess I need to give it another 5 years and then check back.

Definitely agree on soundtrack.

@Susan - Good example of Star Trek timelines. I do still think of Star Trek as being SF (nod toward @Steven), and I don't believe it comes off dated for that reason at all (yes, there are other areas where it doesn't fair so well), and i feel the same way about Terminators timeline.

So, based on that comprehensive survey, I will draw the conclusion that SF does not become dated because it's timeline moves into our past.

With the exception that the timeline is used to beat the audience so hard that it interrupts suspension of disbelief.

So thinking of timelines and plot lines puts me in mind of 2001 Space Odyssey vs. 2010 (again the movie, actually in both cases, or the books of course). Though past the timelines of both, I'll go out on a limb (pun intended) and say that based on my memories of repeated viewings of both films, thou it's been awhile for both, 2001 is definitely less dated than 2010. The why confirms much if what's been said. The effects of both are still fine, probably a wash in terms of which look more dated (Pan Am logos and videomphones in 2001 aside) but the plot of 2001 is not era-centric while 2010 is largely a Cold War movie.