Brisk and insightful ... That these and the other half-dozen movies that Nashawaty surveys have enjoyed such a long afterlife means much of this history has been previously told ... Even so, Nashawaty supplements this wealth of extant material with his own reporting ... It would be appropriate, in a book about films whose audiences identify with them in a deep and lasting way, for the author to indulge in a little autobiography. Nashawaty’s book is a bit poorer for that elision.
Breezy, anecdotal ... The prose here sometimes lapses into the shticky ... But The Future Was Now makes a convincing case that 1982 was a watershed moment, a flourishing of genre films that have become classics of their kind.
It’s a promising premise, and The Future Was Now has no shortage of juicy storylines ... The author is not just a good reporter, but also an excellent and thoughtful critic, and the book’s breakneck pace underserves this skill set.
For anyone who delights in the perpetration of human error, be it of judgment, taste, or commercial savvy, Nashawaty offers a wealth of historical evidence ... Such is Nashawaty’s command of superlatives that he merits a sci-fi yarn of his own ... To Nashawaty’s credit, his book is more privately provocative, obliging its readers to be honest with themselves.
Nashawaty frames his book by celebrating the rise of rabid genre fans—"smart and selective sensation seekers"—whose Comic-Con gathering is today a studio-sanctioned showcase. But this happy army is never fully fleshed out, and his analysis begs the question: Where were they on Blade Runner, whose thrills wowed even its ornery source novelist, Philip K. Dick?
