In Search of Tomorrow

This documentary runs over five hours and talks through the science fiction cinema of the eighties from beginning to end. Blade Runner, E.T., The Terminator, The Thing, Back to the Future and dozens more are taken one by one: how they were written, how they were shot, what happened at the box office, why they came to be counted as cult films later. The account is not chronological; it moves from subject to subject and from effect to effect. David A. Weiner directed it, and it is a sibling to the same director's work on eighties horror. A great many people were interviewed: directors, actors, effects people and writers. John Carpenter, Keith David, Clancy Brown and Wil Wheaton are among those who speak. The pace drops here and there and the running time is very long; but what is said about pre-digital effects work is not easy to find elsewhere.