5 Dystopian Future Movies
Another Sci-Friday Piece
Friends, I’ve always enjoyed science fiction movies and books. Today, I wanted to simply present a list of dystopian sci-fi films. Why focus on the negative side?
In short, I believe one of the best attributes of science fiction is the cautionary tale, the idea that we might be able to present a potentially terrifying future scenario so that we can avoid ending up there.
Thanks once again to the community of writers joining me in this Sci-Friday ongoing experiment:
for the original idea, and , , and for playing along. If you are reading this and would like to join us, just let me know in the comments or reach out, and we can set it up. These other folks are all good writers in their own right, and if you’re interested in checking their version of Sci-Friday out (top lists of everything from TV shows to board games), they’ll appreciate the support.Without further ado, here are five dystopian sci-fi films you should see.
Idiocracy
Mike Judge is today’s version of a great philosopher, akin to Socrates or Aristotle. Besides Idiocracy, he has contributed the likes of Office Space, Silicon Valley, and Beavis and Butthead to our understanding of the world. Through his lens, Judge has taken us on lesson after lesson about culture, society, and human nature.
Idiocracy is his vision of a future world where a person of average early 21st-century intelligence (Joe) finds himself the smartest human being alive.
The opening scene sets the stage better than almost any other movie I’ve ever seen:
Judge crafts a stark warning to us all: technology might not make us smarter after all. There’s long been a perception that technology allows us to become a smarter, more advanced society over time. While that’s partially true, is there any doubt that it’s easier to get by if you’re really dumb today?
The one thing Mike Judge got wrong: the timeline. Joe ends up in 2505, but I think Idiocracy is right around the corner. Echo chambers and intellectual entropy have eroded much of our critical thinking skills, and the uber-convenient technology looks more like 2025 than 2505 to me… but you be the judge (not the Mike Judge, though—that role is already taken by a national treasure).
Robocop
In spite of the justified perception that Robocop belongs in the pantheon of great action films (like Die Hard, Predator, or Raiders of the Lost Ark), this film does a great deal of heavy intellectual lifting.
Robocop depicts a future society overrun by crime and corporate control. There’s an amazing scene of catastrophic robot failure I wrote about previously. There’s speculation about what it means to be human, what death is, how consciousness works, and a whole lot more ethical and philosophical conundrums.
Here’s the official trailer from MGM:
The Matrix
If you saw The Matrix when it came out in 1999, you were probably as blown away as I was. I know, I know: everyone already knows about this movie. But seriously, it stands out as perhaps the best dystopian sci-fi film ever made, and quite possibly one of the best science fiction films, period. The cast is incredible, the dialogue flawless, and the effects phenomenal (for the time; even today, The Matrix stands up to rewatching).
The Matrix takes on the very nature of reality, something I can’t get enough of. We humans have told ourselves a story about what reality is, but it’s simply the best interpretation we can muster with our feeble five senses. Our sense of time passing may be completely wrong, and at the quantum level, what appears to be here isn’t really.
Are we living in a simulated reality today? I wrote about this for one of my first Tinfoil Tuesdays.
The film also tackles the ultimate dystopian result from technology: our very creation enslaving us. Here’s classic trailer (incredible marketing!):
Minority Report
Unlike Idiocracy, the creators of Minority Report set the future at 2054, just three short decades from now. This seems… about right.
I wrote previously about mind-reading headphones, and how they’re really a thing. You may also be aware that you can read someone’s brain scans and get an idea of an image or short video they’re thinking about, and recreate that on a computer. Yes, really.
At the same time, we’ve seen a broad rise in authoritarianism across the globe since 2016 (admittedly, this has receded in the last year or so). Governments are increasingly surveilling their citizens, gathering all sorts of data, and using it to control the populace, especially (but not exclusively) in China.
These are the two necessary components for a near-future Minority Report scenario, and this should be chilling. This film brings up ethical dilemmas galore.
Ex-Machina
In 2023, everyone is talking about AI. People are having real debates about how close we are to an AI having sentience, consciousness, and agency. We’re also talking about how long it might be until our abilities to think and reason are surpassed by our creation. Turing tests are being passed, or at least some people are claiming this to be the case.
You could say that things are getting serious with AI.
Ex-Machina gives body to this phenomenon, speculating on a very near-future (it might as well be today, really) where a lone inventor has created the first superhuman intelligence, embedded in a humanoid body.
What ensues is philosophically brilliant, and we get to see Oscar Isaac (Poe from Star Wars, Moon Knight) playing a modern version of a mad scientist/billionaire. On top of it all, it’s an A24 production (A24 has produced Oscar-winning films like Hereditary and Everything Everywhere All at Once):
These five films resonate in today's rapidly changing world.
They are cautionary tales, urging us to tread thoughtfully and ethically as we embrace the marvels of exponentially accelerating technologies. The future may be uncertain, and these dystopian visions might seem far-fetched, but the lessons they impart are both timely and timeless.
By raising awareness of potential future scenarios, we can begin to have a conversation about how to prevent some of these things from happening. If we can’t prevent them from coming to fruition, perhaps we can prepare or mitigate. In either case, the conversations are well worth having.
Threading the needle of rapid human advancement with the trade-offs of giving up control to technology is our central challenge. Help me think about this challenge by leaving a comment and joining the discussion here, or just tell me what your favorite dystopian sci-fi movies are!
The most realistic and scariest film on this list, by a long shot, is Idiocracy.
Whoa! You read my mind! Minority Report is my favorite sci-fi film, mainly because at its heart it’s a really good mystery. Love that movie.