How the Film ‘Her’ Draws From the Past to Tell a Story Set in a Surprisingly Optimistic Future

Filmmaker Kristian Williams who’s also known as “kaptainkristian” took an extensive look at the 2013 Spike Jonze film Her. In the resulting video essay, Williams specifically noted how the vintage style of clothing the characters wore, the seamlessly combined architecture of Los Angeles and Hong Kong and the warm colors used in each scene created a surprisingly optimistic and comforting sense of the future and the technology that comes with it.

There’s a cynicism that seeped its way into the majority of modern science fiction. Our futures have become dystopian apocalyptic totalitarian and not much else. That sense of optimism that’s so integral to the genre is rare to find these days… it brought a humanity and a warmth back to technology and depicted a time not too distant from our own