5 Bizarrely Specific Things Every Sci-Fi Movie Does

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5 Bizarrely Specific Things Every Sci-Fi Movie Does

Anything is possible in science fiction! You can explore the future, delve into the past, chronicle alien civilizations, and probe the endless possibilities of time and space. The genre is limited by nothing but human imagination. Unfortunately, human imagination seems like it was depleted sometime in the 1970s, because no matter what obscure corner of the galaxy you warp to, some things never change. Like how ...

The Only Design Philosophy In The Future Is "More Angles!"

Coming up with a new sci-fi aesthetic is tough. Luckily, there's a shortcut that does about 80 percent of the work: Add some unnecessary angles! Tilt half of it, chop off a corner -- it doesn't matter how you make those angles happen, or what they might possibly be good for. Everything in the future has at least seven unnecessary zigzags.

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Universal Television
This isn’t paper; this is space paper. You can tell because they cut the corners off, as is space custom.

Most cars in modern sci-fi movies are nothing but contemporary designs with all the curves replaced by straight lines. Here's one from the original Total Recall that is so much from the future that you might almost say it looks stupid and ridiculous.

5 Bizarrely Specific Things Every Sci-Fi Movie Does
TriStar Pictures
"WAOW, LOOK AT DAT IDIOT CAHHH. DIS IS A VERY DUMB FUTAH."

The 2017 Ghost In The Shell remake took the same approach, and wound up with a "futuristic car" that more resembles a 1983 Datsun.

5 Bizarrely Specific Things Every Sci-Fi Movie Does
Paramount Pictures
And made less at the box office than a 1983 Datsun is worth.

After 2025, all windows are uselessly weird trapezoids. Here's what the poor bastards in Empire Strikes Back have to look through when they want to see outer space:

5 Bizarrely Specific Things Every Sci-Fi Movie Does
Lucasfilm
Better check your blind spot. All 26 of them.

Jupiter Ascending also knows that good science fiction is all about inconvenient angles and unnecessary corners.

5 Bizarrely Specific Things Every Sci-Fi Movie Does
Warner Bros. Pictures
It is the year 2060. Window manufacturers have gone mad, and the whole world suffers.

Here's a cockpit from Prometheus, apparently designed by a drunken spider:

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20th Century Fox
The script was written the same way.

In the future, we will invent six brand-new, never-before-seen angles, and we will use them everywhere. From the landscaping in Star Trek ...

5 Bizarrely Specific Things Every Sci-Fi Movie Does
Paramount Pictures

... to the hallways in Star Wars ...

5 Bizarrely Specific Things Every Sci-Fi Movie Does
Lucasfilm

... to the maniacally uncomfortable tables in Guardians Of The Galaxy.

5 Bizarrely Specific Things Every Sci-Fi Movie Does
Marvel Studios

It's not clear if this is all some fashion trend or the side effect of cosmic radiation on the human brain. All we know is that no one in the future can stack anything, and it takes 15 hours to measure a room for carpet.

All Aliens Eat Bugs

Here on Earth, we eat a wide variety of food. In fact, whole industries have been built around preparing, packaging, marketing, and ultimately ingesting food. Seriously, if you haven't heard of food, you should Google it. People go nuts for this stuff. But in science fiction, aliens eat insects, grubs, or worms. That's it. Aliens might have similar dinnerware and mealtime rituals, but they almost always eat swarming plates of live bugs. Take, for instance, the Klingons. They're a proud warrior race that should probably be eating seared Gorn ribeye for every meal, but instead they sit down to bowls of worms, like a bunch of chickens. They gussy them up like they're some kind of delicacy called Gagh, but look at it. It's worms.

5 Bizarrely Specific Things Every Sci-Fi Movie Does
CBS Television
The Klingons might be brave warriors, but they eat like gullible Earth catfish. TuHmoH!

In Babylon 5, a series for nerds who think Star Trek is too approachable, everyone's favorite food is Spoo. It's a bunch of cubed worms, and the best way to eat it is when it's very old. If you'd like to read more about Spoo, please find the angriest comment below describing how we obviously didn't do our research, or we would know only the Centauri prefer their Spoo to be aged.

5 Bizarrely Specific Things Every Sci-Fi Movie Does
Warner Bros. Television
And now try new Spoo: Chocolate Starlight!

If you're from outer space, all sustenance comes from slimy, wriggling worms. Here on our planet, we chop and saute and burrito, but aliens find that ridiculous. Here is the alien food from the Fallout series: a sloppy-ass worm on a metal tray.

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Bethesda Softworks
You couldn't slice that thing over a salad?

In Titan A.E., the chef, who is himself a beetle monster, is inexplicably proud to offer up Akrennian Beetle Sashimi, which is just a writhing trough of insect larva. That's like going to a human buffet and finding it filled with screaming baby monkeys. In other words, tantalizing and delicious.

Here you go: Akennian Beetle Sashimi
20th Century Fox
"No offense, chef, but ... are these, like, your kids?"

Everything In The Future Is Asian (Except The Cast)

If there's a single unifying element in modern science fiction, it's this: Asian stuff is sick as hell. From the 1980s on, we pretty much decided that any sci-fi future looks like somebody opened a Radio Shack and a Benihana in the same space. In every dork's favorite failed show, Firefly, they live in a future so Asian-influenced that people curse in fluent Mandarin, and yet none of them seem to know any Chinese people.

In Blade Runner, the entirety of Los Angeles is a grimy, rain-drenched Little Tokyo. This makes a bit more sense than LA becoming a grimy, rain-drenched El Salvador, but it still has a lot of pagodas and geisha for a multicultural cyber metropolis.

5 Bizarrely Specific Things Every Sci-Fi Movie Does
Warner Bros. Pictures
Nothing says "Future LA" like seventh-century Japan?

And when they rebooted Total Recall to be less fun and more terrible, they decided that "the future" meant an Asian-style parasol in the hand of every extra.

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Columbia Pictures
"I don't even think it's raining." -- Colin Farrell

Even Demolition Man, a movie so stupid it imagined Pizza Hut and Taco Bell would be the food of the future (when it will clearly be Carl's Jr. and Kenny Rogers Roasters), made sure that even after all culture has been homogenized, kimonos will hang on.

5 Bizarrely Specific Things Every Sci-Fi Movie Does
Warner Bros. Pictures
An outfit that says, "My anime pillow wasn't as durable as I was promised," and a haircut that says, "Let me speak to your manager."

All of this would barely be worth mentioning, except that none of these series have an Asian person as anything but an extra, for the most part. It's as if every sci-fi universe shares a common history wherein all the important Asians were wiped out and the architects of their genocide said, "Oooh, but let's keep their furniture and robes!"

Artificial Humans Always Involve Some Kind Of Milky Liquid

If you see an android in a sci-fi movie, then it's almost guaranteed that sucker is somehow dependent on white goo. It's as if robot scientists said, "Look, we can build you a perfect replica of a person, but it only works if we fill it with satin finish house paint."

In Westworld, the process of creating a host involves submerging an almost-complete body -- full skeleton, developed muscles -- into a vat of thick milky stuff. The production crew calls it "the skin dip," and it's a protein liquid that builds all of the body's remaining tissues using sci-fi magic.

5 Bizarrely Specific Things Every Sci-Fi Movie Does
HBO
"BEHOLD AND TREMBLE AT THE HORROR MILK HAS CREATED." -- The National Dairy Council

They probably got that from the original Ghost In The Shell (seen again in the live-action remake), wherein the final stage of the Major's birth involves dipping her body into a vat of white liquid. Again, a mechanical skeleton monster goes in, and a sexy, sexy human comes out.

5 Bizarrely Specific Things Every Sci-Fi Movie Does
Paramount Pictures
"Warning: Your sex robot will ship covered in a flaky layer of dried goo. And it won't be the first time, amirite?" -- Shell Instruction Manual

The Alien franchise also features human replicants and white goo. It's just that this goo squirts out of them like a terrible milk truck accident any time they get hurt. We first saw it 1979, when Ash was torn apart in Alien.

5 Bizarrely Specific Things Every Sci-Fi Movie Does
20th Century Fox
He took it pretty well.

We saw it again in 1986, when Lance Henriksen got himself gutted in Aliens, and it happened more recently in 2017's Alien: Covenant. Basically, any time someone makes a movie about human-like robots is a great time to be a white fluid salesman.

In The Future, There Will Be One Font To Rule Them All

Any fully realized sci-fi world contains many different societies, nations, and peoples. This should mean a huge variety in graphic design and typography, but apparently there will be a moment in our future when we all come together and decide that we need only one font: Eurostile.

If the future needs to say something, it does so in Eurostile. The font was originally created by an Italian designer in 1962, and it's all sci-fi movies have needed since. Here are but a few of the universes which Eurostile has taken over, as well as a fun rhyme you can use to remember them all.

FOREIGN CONTAMINANT
Pixar
It's the only font to survive the apocalypse of Wall-E ...

MANNW D LIA BICEUBE PACIFIC RIA
Universal Pictures
... and it’s used to describe Jaegers as they battle kaiju near Bali.

KuY INTERNETE 2021
TriStar Pictures
It's the default web font in Johnny Mnemonic's time ...

DISSERIOT
TriStar Pictures
... and it beat out Jokerman and Wingdings to be the font of District 9.

ISLA NUBLAR LLANURIN
Universal Pictures
It's used on the boats docked at Jurassic World ...

OM CORP
Orion Pictures
... and you can see it in RoboCop, right behind this mean girl.

LOS ANGELES. 2154
TriStar Pictures
You may not remember Elysium, but it too used that font ...

V SCUTHBOLINO METRO
TriStar Pictures
... and so did Total Recall, on every subway and restaurant.

STATIONE ECURITY
Warner Bros. Pictures

O ENTERTAINMENT 00 Now 0 UNERINATUMAL t ComOY LADES
Sony Pictures Classics
The Lego Movie used it, as well as Moon ...

DIAGNOSIS LAUAS BYMPATOMSS BAYHNY 113/80 80 EA 67 B 170 5 o
Walt Disney Pictures
... Eurostile even showed up in the Big Hero 6 cartoon.

MP. FUSION R HOME ENERGY BEACTOR
Universal Pictures
In Back To The Future, it made energy from waste ...

Acb AL uSs
20th Century Fox
... and you can spot it in Alien 3, if you have no fucking taste.

LEVEL MAX A1
Pixar
You'll spot Eurostile in The Incredibles if you have a keen eye ...

DOMINATION
Warner Bros. Pictures
... and in Edge Of Tomorrow, as you watch Tom Cruise die.

BUG METEOR
TriStar Pictures
Starship Troopers used it too. Would you like to know more?

UFP END TRANSMISSION A4 ONAL COA a R OCOVVERY
CBS Television
Then watch Star Trek: Discovery, you font-hungry whore!

Nathan Kamal lives in Oregon, where he writes. He co-founded Asymmetry Fiction for all your fiction needs.

For more poetry like that, check out Even Superheroes Have Bad Days.

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