A timeless movie is one that transcends the era it was produced in. Most filmmakers make movies with the hope that they’ll be talked about fondly for generations to come. To that end, a lot of movies try to break conventions, either through storytelling or special effects, to set a standard for years to come.
However, it’s simply impossible for a film to completely hide its age. This doesn’t refer to technical changes over time, such as the improvement of special effects or camera quality. But from the style of clothing that the characters wear to the props that the film uses, there are a number of ways that a film can date itself through its own artistic vision.
10 Alien’s Nostromo Is A Collection Of Retro Tech (1979)
Alien is a classic horror/sci-fi fusion that takes advantage of its setting to deliver an unforgettable experience. The aesthetic design of Alien, one that it shares with other science fiction films of this era, is referred to as “retro-futurism.” In Alien specifically, it takes the form of a cramped spaceship full of clunky technology. These design choices contribute to the film’s effective scares and suffocating atmosphere. The film broke ground in a lot of ways, but its vintage computers and bulky corridors ultimately mark it as a product of ’70s filmmaking.
9 Total Recall Has Huge Trackers (1990)
A story about false memories and Mars-based espionage, the world of Total Recall is a unique environment with tons of creative potential but, like Alien, it dates itself with its vision of what future technology will look like.
The computers used in the film, among other elements, are what marks it as a product of its time. Specifically, when watching the nasal tracker removal scene — still certainly a harrowing sequence — it’s impossible to forget how there are many devices today that can track locations but are a fraction of the size of the one shown in that scene.
8 The Breakfast Club Feels Like An ’80s High School Drama (1985)
The Breakfast Club tells many interesting stories through its main cast. The film itself is timeless in terms of content, focusing on the stresses of school life on young people. Even so, the way that the film presents itself, from the clothing the kids wear to the way that they speak, embodies a dated concept of how high school students behave. Granted, the point of the film is that just because someone looks like a “jock” or a “nerd” doesn’t mean they should judged based on those stereotypes, and the movie is absolutely still worth watching even with its design choice. Regardless, the film has an undeniably ’80s high school aesthetic.
7 Back To The Future 2’s Hill Valley Looks The Same After 30 Years (1989)
Back to the Future 2 is widely regarded as one of the best films of its decade. Given that its plot revolves around time travel, it’d be easy to talk about how the film incorrectly predicted what 2015 would look like. However, what’s more interesting about the 2015 portrayed in Back to the Future 2 is how it still looks like a town in the ’80s.
Even the townspeople are dressed in the same style of clothing as Marty McFly’s home time period of 1985. On the whole, there aren’t many substantial aesthetic changes in the 30-year time jump.
6 2001: A Space Odyssey Has A Surprising Lack Of Technology (1968)
Another retro-futurist film, often cited as one of the most well-made films of all time, 2001: A Space Odyssey shows its age in the same way that Alien and Total Recall do. A lot of its technology is extremely outdated, with many of the computers looking bulky and outright impractical by today’s standards. The space station has elevator attendants and other workers dressed in old uniforms and, the most telltale sign of all, Dr. Heywood Floyd walks around with a folder full of papers instead of a high-tech tablet.
5 Tron Features Virtually Empty VR Space (1982)
Tron is an extremely influential sci-fi film, but its aesthetic features the bizarre body suits and bright neon that the era was obsessed with. As one of the first ever examples of CGI in film, some of Tron‘s scenes don’t look all too bad, even by today’s standards. However, it envisions a virtual world that’s mostly a dark void broken up by solid-colored neon architecture and lengthy hallways.
Applicable for the time, since computers had less power and there wasn’t nearly as much going on within their processors as there are now. Today, virtual worlds are places of limitless potential, and Tron‘s simply looks outdated in scope.
4 The Lawnmower Man Looks Like A ’90s Video Game (1992)
Like Tron, The Lawnmower Man is a proponent of body suits and bright neon. It’s also a strong showing for early ’90s CGI, an era where even CGI text was needlessly flamboyant. It may not hold up too well today, but this isn’t an indictment of the quality of its effects. Rather, the virtual world in this film features vast, ultimately empty landscapes with popping colors and angular graphics akin to PC games from that era, a feat that’s just not technologically impressive anymore. It does get bonus points for correctly predicting, for the most part, what commercial VR would look like: bulky headsets and a helplessly complicated home setup.
3 Logan’s Run Forgets How Architecture Works (1976)
Logan’s Run is a troubled but nonetheless iconic production, tackling a number of engaging themes such as utopia, dystopia and hedonism. Regardless, it feels overwhelmingly like a product of the ’70s.
Its vision of the future features a frankly bizarre idea of what futuristic architecture will look like and a fashion sense that largely looks like ordinary ’70s fashion with an extra splash of neon. The film also includes copious amounts of chrome and a robot meant to seem dangerous, but is so clunky in motion that it’s hard to feel threatened by it.
2 The Fifth Element Is Sheer ’90s (1997)
From its music to each character’s fashion sense to Ruby Rhod in general, The Fifth Element is camp to the point of weaponization. In terms of its action, this film features Star Wars-esque flying cars as well as a hip-hop opera scene, and Bruce Willis’ portrayal of Korben Dallas feels a lot like John McClane in space.
Leeloo’s fish-out-of-water experience makes for many humorous moments with love interest Korben, and Ruby Rhod adds an enigmatic energy to the whole affair. For many viewers, these aspects give the movie its charm, but regardless, it’s all too easy to peg this as a ’90s film.
1 Final Destination 5 Shocked Its Audience With A Twist That Wouldn’t Work Anymore (2011)
A movie showing its age isn’t inherently a bad thing. In the case of 2011’s Final Destination 5, it’s integral to what makes the film’s plot work as well as it does. The big plot twist in this movie is that it’s secretly a prequel to the first Final Destination. There are subtle hints of this throughout the movie, such as the inability to text and the characters’ slightly-off fashion senses. With the twist being what it was, it could only have worked at the time the movie came out and forever marks the film as a product of the time it was trying to imitate. In the moment, though, it worked like a charm.
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