THE FUTURE WAS NOW

A fast-paced, opinionated portrait of a magical stretch in the summer of 1982, when theaters welcomed a slate of now-iconic sci-fi and fantasy films.

Former Entertainment Weekly critic Nashawaty, author of books about Roger Corman and the cult classic Caddyshack, writes of a time when “geek would go lucratively chic.” The summer of 1982 saw the release of such memorable films as Blade Runner, Tron, Conan the Barbarian, The Road Warrior, and The Thing, none born easily. Their story begins with the arrival of George Lucas’ Star Wars in 1977, which, in the summer of 1982, would cede its box-office-champ crown to Steven Spielberg’s E.T.: The Extraterrestrial. In the five years in between, studios scrambled to get a piece of the sci-fi pie while executives watched in dismay as budgets swelled and schedules slipped. Throughout this consistently entertaining narrative, Nashawaty merrily dispenses dish. For example, he explores how postproduction is where good films can morph into classics, “that is, if everyone is on the same page.” He quickly adds that Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner was a canonical instance where everyone was very much not on the same page: Scott promised Harrison Ford, for instance, that his voiceover narration would be removed, which didn’t happen, since without it, a baffling storyline would become even more baffling. Ford reciprocated by delivering that voiceover in a monotone that sounded “like a hostage being held at gunpoint.” Two highlights in a story full of them are Nashawaty’s accounts of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s grim determination to emerge from the Conan franchise a bona fide film star, as indeed he did, and the near meltdown of the revived Star Trek franchise as critics “carved The Motion Picture like the holiday turkey it was.”

An exemplary film history that will appeal to sci-fi buffs and students of the film biz.