The 15 Bleakest Dystopian Futures In Movies

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It’s not often that a movie directed by Mike Judge ranks anywhere on a sci-fi-angled “best of” list, but his satirical take on a future run by idiots is surprisingly relevant in today’s society. Idiocracy stars Luke Wilson as a man from the 21st century who hibernates 500 years into the future as the result of a government experiment gone wrong. When he wakes up, he finds the entire population of Earth has devolved into morons incapable of completing the most basic tasks.

Judge is surprisingly on-the-nose with this premise because, let’s face it, we see society getting dumber everyday whenever we turn on the television. It might not be a great movie by any means, but with the way the world is going, and the fact that the word “intellectual” is currently being used as an insult on the Senate floor, we might find the human race bearing a striking resemblance to the characters populating Idiocracy in the near future.

After Tokyo is destroyed by a devastating bomb, New Tokyo is born, a city filled with violent gangs, terrorism, poverty, and government corruption. Going beyond a traditional anime, Akira actually made waves by being an all-around great film, introducing the West to long-form anime movies and helping to popularize the cyberpunk movement.

A post-war city is nothing new, but the degree that Akira goes to show how violence has affected the world is what keeps the movie fresh today. Gone are the cheap animation seen in too many cartoon movies and the awkward, hand-drawn pornography used often in anime. Akira concentrates on telling a great story with real social implications.

As a result, Akira became a cult-classic and a great example of how animation can be just as, if not more, effective than live-action when dealing with certain subject matter.

Chock full of campy goodness, Logan’s Run is an over-the-top guilty pleasure about a future Earth that kills off its citizens before the age of 30 in order to preserve the planet’s waning resources. The movie may have been a whole lot of fun, but it does point out the unsettling scenarios surrounding the planet’s massive consumption of resources.

Even though Earth’s supply of fossil fuel is currently running out at an alarming rate, we’re hoping no one would ever enact such a brutal policy. But the whole “only people under 30” philosophy has worked so well for Hugh Hefner’s sex life that we wouldn’t be surprised if a similar idea finds its way onto the floors of Congress one day soon.

Oh, Alex Proyas, your career was going really well until you unleashed I, Robot and Knowing upon an unsuspecting public and spooked people out of ever seeing your movies again. But 1998’s Dark City is a perfect example of what Proyas can do with a great concept and some creative freedom.

Set in a world where a group of mysterious citizens, called "Strangers," have the ability to stop time and alter the memories of humans, Dark City predates The Matrix as it explores just how authentic our reality is; despite how much of a downer the premise may be, the production design and the look of the world itself is what makes Dark City stand out.

The ominous darkness that clouds the city perfectly captures the confusion and lack of visibility in the mind of every citizen. It may follow a few dystopian clichés a little too closely, but no one can deny the frightening future that Proyas put on film.

Before Frank Miller wreaked havoc on the character by writing the illogical sequels, the original RoboCop was actually a damn good and very smart action flick. Taking place in a futuristic version of Detroit that's facing financial ruin (what a novel concept), the world in RoboCop is overseen by a robotic police force meant to improve upon humans and eliminate crime.

One of the most impressive breakthroughs in this technology is RoboCop himself, a recently deceased police officer reanimated in the form of a cyborg, much like Frankenstein's monster. But it's not the countless robots that make this society a dystopia—it's the overbearing Omni Consumer Products Corporation.

The corporation is in charge of virtually everything in the city of Detroit, including security, and sees protecting its profits as more important than protecting its citizens. The Blackwater scandal that the U.S. had to deal with a few years back shows how far ahead the creators behind RoboCop were thinking when they pointed out the dangers of privatized corporate armies.

If you take 1984, Robin Hood, and The Prisoner, put them in a blender along with some single-malt scotch, you’ll get V for Vendetta. Based on the comic by Alan Moore, V For Vendetta features a society beaten down by a fascist dictatorship that routinely promotes racism, abhors homosexuality, and strips its citizens of their civil liberties all in the name of security.

The original comic was a direct shot at Margaret Thatcher’s ultra-conservative Britain from the ‘80s, but the movie is updated somewhat and takes aim at the Bush administration's distorted views on personal freedoms.

Even though V for Vendetta features a caped swashbuckler sporting a Guy Fawkes mask, the movie’s vision of the world is uncomfortably realistic; especially when you take a look at current events. The James McTeigue-directed film has the brains to match its glorious big-budget set-pieces, but it's the performance by Hugo Weaving as V that really makes the whole thing work.

That’s right, before George Lucas started making movies starring spear-wielding teddy bears and CGI cantina bands, he was once a promising young filmmaker with a serious mad-on for authority. His first, and only, true science-fiction film, THX 1138, was a disturbing look at a controlling government of the future.

Taking some inspiration from both 1984 and Brave New World, this dystopian future forbids sex and controls society through the use of brainwashing drugs. Conformity is the law of the land, and Lucas’ shattered society is truly startling, albeit a bit clichéd.

What really makes this movie work is Lucas’ low-budget, experimental editing style that helped add to the frantic tone of the flick. What’s ironic is that while Lucas created a frightening world where sex is forbidden in THX1138, his Star Wars franchise later created an army of sunshine-hating fans that routinely go a lifetime without knowing the touch of the opposite sex.

Before the Wachowski Brothers went absolutely nuts and began making surreal Speed Racer movies and undergoing sex change operations, the original Matrix was one of the most unique sci-fi films in decades. Set in a world where robots control humanity and harvest their bodies as an energy source, The Matrix takes its cues from the likes of the Terminator franchise, as well as William Gibson’s sci-fi novel Neuromancer.

Complete with mind-bending action and some surprisingly appropriate acting by Keanu Reeves, The Matrix mostly takes place in a virtual reality world created by the machines in order to pacify the humans. While this robot-led dystopian future is overshadowed by the virtual “Matrix” world for most of the movie, its influence is felt in every frame.

It's easy to forget just how revolutionary The Matrix was when it first came out, being that the sequels were so dreadful. But its blend of sci-fi action and philosophical themes led to one of the most nightmarish futures ever put on screen. 

Don’t let its bright colors and light-hearted situations fool you—Wall-E presents one of the bleakest, nastiest futures ever put on screen. In the film, Earth has been overrun by waste and human excess, so the entire population is forced to relocate in spaceships in order to find a new home. Left alone on this floating husk of trash is Wall-E, a custodian robot tasked with cleaning up Earth.

Aimed at children, Wall-E certainly provides plenty of laughs and fuzzy moments for families, but it's also a biting critique on the wasteful, slothful nature of modern society. Only concerned with personal possessions and stuffing their faces with artery-clogging junk food, the humans in this bizarre future aren’t far from where we are now as a society.

Leave it to Pixar to bring intelligence, depth, and art back to filmmaking.

Set in a world where women are incapable of having children, Children Of Men is a dark look at a humanity that knows it has no future. Thrust into complete nihilism and anarchy, Earth is now engulfed in a worldwide war, and it’s up to Clive Owen to save a young girl who has miraculously found herself pregnant.

A world full of ladies incapable of getting preggers may sound like a blessing to sexually active frat boys, but the reality is a grim one. What motivation is there for benevolence in a world that has no future? Why vote? Why do anything without the possibility of future generations to care for?

The movie may be set in the future, but director Alfonso Cuaron didn’t turn Children of Men into Star Wars. His vision of the future is presented in a logical, grounded way, without hokey sci-fi lasers and spaceships. This veil of realism makes the world of Children Of Men that much more dire.

The world of film wouldn’t be the same without Fritz Lang, the Austrian artisan of science fiction cinema. His 1927 masterpiece, Metropolis, is one of the first dystopian futures ever to be put on the screen, and it presented a world where capitalism had grown wild at the expense of the workers.

In Lang's vision, corporate fat cats live in luxury above ground; lower-class workers, meanwhile, are forced to toil below ground in order to make society run. This sickening separation between the “haves” and the “have nots” was a constant worry back in the ‘20s, and is a problem that seems to be growing more prevalent every day in our current times. 

Why is this one of the bleakest dystopias? Because it’s real! Look at the news and see the growing separation between the rich and the poor in today’s world. Look at corporate CEOs making millions of dollars that they don’t need, and then think about all of the working families that are living paycheck to paycheck in order to make those very corporations run. Lang’s film wasn’t just relevant in the ‘20s; unfortunately, it’s beginning to look more like our own real world every day.

It may not center on a future ruled by robots or malevolent aliens, but A Clockwork Orange presents a dystopian world firmly entrenched in reality, and, in many cases, is a world that's already taking shape today.

The Stanley Kubrick-directed film, which adapts Anthony Burgess' 1962 novel, focuses on a violent sociopath named Alex DeLarge (Malcolm McDowell), who commits a string of gruesome crimes during the movie’s opening minutes. But he is quickly arrested and becomes the subject of personality rehabilitation courtesy of controversial psychological conditioning.

A Clockwork Orange illustrates a government obsessed with forced conformity via psychological experiments in order to create a non-violent utopia. Unfortunately, this practice takes away human rights and choice, which is something Kubrick satirized beautifully. The movie foreshadowed the medical world’s obsession with pushing mind-altering psychiatric medication down people’s throats, in order to solve problems on the surface, while ignoring the root of these issues.

Easily one of the best sci-fi movies of all time, and definitely the most ambiguous, Blade Runner is a peek at a strange future where lifelike humanoid robots, known as “replicants," roam the planet virtually indistinguishable from actual humans. So when these replicants look and act so real, who's to say that they aren't?

In Blade Runner, based on author Philip K. Dick's 1968 novel Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, director Ridley Scott successfully created a world where humans are at the mercy of the very technology that they created. As the people of Earth begin to lose their very humanity, the line between man and android begins to blur.

Blade Runner is one of the most philosophical and imaginative films to ever come down Hollywood’s big budget pike. The depressing future that Scott and his team of special effects artists created is full of so much personality and tragic beauty that it's practically the star of the picture, not Harrison Ford.

Remember when Mel Gibson didn’t go around spouting racist one-liners like a tipsy Strom Thurman? Those were some great times, highlighted by his starring role in the fantastic Mad Max franchise. In the series, the world has devolved into a violent wasteland after the Earth’s fuel and energy supply begin to run low; warring factions roam the land and spill blood mercilessly over the last few drops of oil.

Violent, mean-spirited, and infinitely depressing, the Mad Max trilogy features the perfect cinematic dystopia because it has the best ratio of social commentary and eye-popping action. These movies are now pop-culture landmarks, and a prime example of how a small low-budget movie can still have a large scale.

Not only did people learn about the dangers of an energy shortage thanks to Gibson, but they also learned that leather pants and some spiked shoulder pads can make even the mousiest post-apocalyptic citizen look like a badass.

1984 revolves around a disturbing world where society is kept under the heel of a totalitarian government that watches its civilians' every move. Sexual desires are repressed, free thought is a thing of the past, and history is rewritten to reflect the views of the government of Oceania.

Practically defining the dystopian theme. George Orwell’s original novel was reminiscent of many of the practices that went on in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, and the movie was smart to follow the text almost flawlessly. The tale is hopeless at times, while optimistic at others, yet always engaging.

John Hurt and Richard Burton turn in great performances under the watchful eye of director Michael Radford, who provides some very creepy imagery to go along with the film's overbearing foe. With an enemy that is virtually everywhere thanks to the invasive security of Oceania, the feeling of panic and paranoia is palpable in every frame.

1984 gives you a tiny taste of what it'd be like to live every day of your life under the watchful eye of Big Brother. So much so that it should make you wary of every security camera you spot for the rest of your life.