[ashark]

Part of the problem is we've seen some of the nastiest predictions of past sci-fi come true... but in the most boring ways. 2001 has an optimistic space-ageyness to it that'd be hard to replicate now without it coming off as forced and false.

Our moon base would be covered in advertisements and each feature named after a corporate sponsor. Everyone on the Pan-Am flight (whatever we rename it to) would be some future-Youtube "personality" live casting their flight and future-gramming their in-flight meals. HAL would become vulnerable when some of his network-controlled doors and such lost their wifi connection and fell back on manual controls, turning the whole thing either comic or, if the manual controls also fail to activate and allow him to win after all, saving him even from his fate in the original film, tragicomic. All of this would come off as insufficiently pessimistic and no-worse-than-things-now to pass for an acceptable projection of our future.

Just doing a straight remake of 2001 with more iPhones won't help it, and my guess is it'll make it feel really, really weird, and not in the ways it was trying to be. Possibly laugh-out-loud funny at times. Its story isn't narrow enough, allegorical enough, or far future enough to ring true now without adding some of our cynicism. The retro-future tech of the original saves it from that scrutiny.