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deimosmasque

Ugly, Queer, Gender-Fluid, Drive-In Mutant, yes?
Moderator
Apr 22, 2018
14,324
Tampa, Fl
Demolition Man

dystopic?
Underclass of people who literally live underground and have to steal food to survive.

Speech regulated to the point that you can be fined for saying the wrong thing.

Any sort of physical contact is strictly regulated and people have become germ phobic as a result.

Prisoners have thier personalities altered as they are put in cryosleep.

All run by one guy who was not elected.
 

bwahhhhh

Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
3,176
Yeah, as far as I'm concerned the "hero" of the film is a villain alongside Dennis Leary. You basically have a perfectly happy and safe society but assholes want to curse and eat meat and just generally be unpleasant assholes so they rebel.

You can't kiss or have sex or add salt to food though!

i consider it a dystopia if you can't hunka chunka
 

THErest

Member
Oct 25, 2017
7,140
Is Minority Report really dystopic though?

It seems pretty close to our normal, only with more nonlethal weapons, self-driving cars, and the system central to the movie is called out as unethical/flawed.
 

pants

Shinra Employee
Avenger
Oct 27, 2017
3,257
The new Amazon movie Bliss has a pretty wonderful future Utopia as a core plot point, but of course its also complicated.

(theres low key the implication that its a drug induced hallucination)
 

ZackieChan

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
8,056
Isn't it pointless to have a Utopian future movie?
We all know that shit ain't happening.
Yes, we should never make movies about things that could never happen. Good take.
Taco Bell won the fast food wars. That's pretty dystopic.
To be fair, the writers couldn't have foreseen the Popeye's Chicken Sandwich.
Question, in the future timeline what do people think about original spiderman trilogy
What do they think about The Last Jedi?
Interstellar is straight up apocalyptic. They are literally abandoning a dying Earth to start fresh on a barren planet.
Yes but by the end it's pretty utopian. Looks like West Virginia after we end the filibuster.
 

mclem

Member
Oct 25, 2017
13,547
It's not terribly dystopic in 2001, as far as I can recall. Of course, whether that still counts as 'the future' is up for debate!

Wondering if Wall-E might count. Certainly at that point things have gone horribly wrong, but I'm not sure it quite fits the definition of a dystopia; it's less suffering and injustice, and more extreme indolence. I guess it depends somewhat on which criteria are paramount. It's certainly not a utopia, but I don't think that it's an either/or situation. It feels a bit... post-dystopia? Maybe that's what I'm trying to hit on.
 
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Deleted member 32005

User requested account closure
Banned
Nov 8, 2017
1,853
The new Amazon movie Bliss has a pretty wonderful future Utopia as a core plot point, but of course its also complicated.

(theres low key the implication that its a drug induced hallucination)
Hey I just watched that.
I'd say it was less "low key implication" about drugs, and more "overtly ham fisted"
 

bionic77

Member
Oct 25, 2017
30,904
I think most movies in the 50s and 60s were incredibly optimistic of the future.

Since the 70s thats harder to pick something. Demolition Man maybe?
 

Bold One

Banned
Oct 30, 2017
18,911
Her.
Is Minority Report really dystopic though?

It seems pretty close to our normal, only with more nonlethal weapons, self-driving cars, and the system central to the movie is called out as unethical/flawed.
If you even think about harming someone - large men with guns come crashing your window.
 

ZackieChan

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
8,056
There is a conflict/environmental issues in that movie.
I'm talking about a movie with no conflict and it's just Utopian society.
That doesn't happen.
There has to be some sort of crisis or problem that people have to solve.
Otherwise it's just fluff
Why do you believe that there can't be conflict or story in a utopian society?
Hell, the word "Utopia" means "no place" in the original context of the Thomas More book, indicating that it was an impossible thing to exist. This is an idea that could be explored. Your demonstrating a weird lack of imagination in storytelling with these rules of what should and shouldn't be made.
There's also lots of utopian literature, which somehow is captivating in its own right.
 

Strings

Member
Oct 27, 2017
31,597
They abolished lawyers, which I'd say is pretty dystopian. Aside from that though yeah it's not that bad of a future.
e7283ff1c29e97db9059f821d77f7eb3.gif
 

ConfusingJazz

Not the Ron Paul Texas Fan.
Member
Oct 26, 2017
3,923
China
Didn't 2015 Marty get fired from his job for having a Zoom call, cutting off the only income the family had? Sounds dystopian to me.
No, he got fired for giving his authorization to Needles to embezzle from his company. His boss was literally monitoring the account, probably knowing Needles was trying to steal from the company.
 

ShimmyShakes

Member
Nov 1, 2017
472
If you even think about harming someone - large men with guns come crashing your window.
No, I don't think that's what happens. It's not "thinking" about doing it, the precogs know you're going to do it in the future. Those are two entirely different things.

Minority Report presents a society with some very problematic and ethical dilemmas, but dystopian? Not even close.
 

AniHawk

No Fear, Only Math
Member
Oct 25, 2017
11,230
science fiction / films about our future tend to be reflections of the anxieties we face today, so it makes sense they're mostly/all dystopian.

bill & ted's excellent adventure is a good rare counterpoint. bttf2's future of hollow capitalism (where everything is a brand) is a pointed take on the evolution of the 80s as well as an in-joke about how idyllic the 50s were treated in bttf1.
 

Deleted member 16516

User requested account closure
Member
Oct 27, 2017
8,427
The total irradiation of Earth and the fall of the Galactic Empire wasn't very Utopian.
It led to something greater though with a godlike robot guided by the Zeroth law acting as a protector to humankind and eventually inspiring a certain individual to set-up the two Foundations and eventually heralding the answer to the issue of decay and degradation and safety from malign influences in the Universe as whole, Galaxia.
 

Dommo

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,693
Australia
The reason to set something in the future is almost always to say something about our current world state and heighten it to present a point. Drama is conflict, so this is usually done by presenting something that's bad now/has the capacity to turn bad, and then dial it up to 11 in the future. So yeah, if the future is idyllic, what's the point in it being set there? I'm not saying there'd be no reason to do so, but by and large, that isn't why we look to science fiction.

Now, it also depends on what your definition of utopian/dystopian is. Because there are quite a few films set in worlds that are 'utopian' in a traditional Western sense that are deliberately using that backdrop as irony to present something darker underneath. So for example, yeah, you're right, Minority Report is ultimately a pretty dystopian film when we explore its themes and moral quandaries, but for most people living in that space, its world is pretty utopian. Crime is at an all time low, the economy seems to be doing pretty well, the cities are thriving, it seems all-round pretty sustainable.

It's a hell of a lot more utopian-looking than say Children of Men or Blade Runner where society is utterly collapsing in on itself. It's only that it's got this extremely problematic technology at the centre of the story that makes the world feel so dystopian (And I guess the surveillance/privacy/data tracking stuff). Same could be said of Gattaca. And Her. Even the OP example of BTTF2, as AniHawk mentions above, is poking fun at the corporate/commercialised world of the 80s, so does that make it a dystopia?

So there is often a really nice spread of environments these films are set in, even if they can largely be defined as 'dystopian' in short.
 

Rodney McKay

Member
Oct 26, 2017
12,281
I always kinda liked the Dune future.

It's SOOO far in the future that a technical utopia happened, a robot apocalypse happened, and an uprising against the machines happened.

It's an anti-smart machine, sorta fuedal government system (I think it had an emperor with dukes/barons running different planets), with various planets/factions with their own beliefs/culture/idiologies.

Far from a peaceful utopia or anything, but in-line with human nature both positive and negative.
Wondering if Wall-E might count. Certainly at that point things have gone horribly wrong, but I'm not sure it quite fits the definition of a dystopia; it's less suffering and injustice, and more extreme indolence. I guess it depends somewhat on which criteria are paramount. It's certainly not a utopia, but I don't think that it's an either/or situation. It feels a bit... post-dystopia? Maybe that's what I'm trying to hit on.
I'd say it kinda applies.

Seems like the total pollution of Earth caused all of humanity to go into those cruise-liner ships, and people became so sedentary that there doesn't appear to be any war or conflict, and once they get back to Earth it appears that things stayed conflict free as they repair the planet.
 

danm999

Member
Oct 29, 2017
17,263
Sydney
The future in BTTF2 looks awful...

Is Interstellar a dystopia? Certainly by the end it isn't - it's more of a utopia than anything else.

We don't really know much about the state of human civilization at the end of Interstellar except that some humans have made it onto a habitat. The utopia that the future humans will inhabit is implied to be a long ways off.
 
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LaoJim

Member
Mar 29, 2020
226
No, he got fired for giving his authorization to Needles to embezzle from his company. His boss was literally monitoring the account, probably knowing Needles was trying to steal from the company.

Funnily enough watched this yesterday. The way I understood it was - yes, Marty was defrauding the company, but the boss says he is monitoring the call and is able to butt in on it to fire Marty. So dystopian privacy issues.

I don't think BTTF2 has a particular stand-point on the future apart from coming up with as much cool technology as possible, moving the plot along and making it clear that Marty's family is fucked up, which they are in each time period anyway.
 

Jarmel

The Jackrabbit Always Wins
Member
Oct 25, 2017
19,507
New York
Funnily enough watched this yesterday. The way I understood it was - yes, Marty was defrauding the company, but the boss says he is monitoring the call and is able to butt in on it to fire Marty. So dystopian privacy issues.

I don't think BTTF2 has a particular stand-point on the future apart from coming up with as much cool technology as possible, moving the plot along and making it clear that Marty's family is fucked up, which they are in each time period anyway.
The family in 1885 was perfectly normal and fine.
 

ConfusingJazz

Not the Ron Paul Texas Fan.
Member
Oct 26, 2017
3,923
China
Funnily enough watched this yesterday. The way I understood it was - yes, Marty was defrauding the company, but the boss says he is monitoring the call and is able to butt in on it to fire Marty. So dystopian privacy issues.

I don't think BTTF2 has a particular stand-point on the future apart from coming up with as much cool technology as possible, moving the plot along and making it clear that Marty's family is fucked up, which they are in each time period anyway.

We don't really know what "scan you just interfaced" meant. I always assumed he knew Needles was trying to rob the company, and was just trying to find out who would give authorization.
 

Siggy-P

Avenger
Mar 18, 2018
11,869
Non-dystopic sci fi settings are considerably more expensive to produce than low tech or depressing futures. It's why the brighter futures tend to be restricted to tv where a cheaper appearance is more acceptable or animated movies (both anime and western). Ie: Doctor Who, Star Trek, Futurama.
 

Conciliator

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,160
I think a big part of the reason there's not many sci-fi 'utopias' in movies is just due to practical storytelling. If the hero travels 100 years in the future and wakes up in a pod and they say to him "oh actually everything is pretty chill here, everything over the past 100 years worked out for the best and we don't really have any major problems" then that's harder to make a movie out of. It's possible, but it's harder, especially if your movie is going to run on "the good guys kill the bad guys" kind of standard movie storytelling
 

THErest

Member
Oct 25, 2017
7,140
I always kinda liked the Dune future.

It's SOOO far in the future that a technical utopia happened, a robot apocalypse happened, and an uprising against the machines happened.

It's an anti-smart machine, sorta fuedal government system (I think it had an emperor with dukes/barons running different planets), with various planets/factions with their own beliefs/culture/idiologies.

Far from a peaceful utopia or anything, but in-line with human nature both positive and negative.

So, the robot apocalypse is really a creation of Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson. When they decided to cash in on prequel books, they didn't really know what to do except rip off Terminator & Matrix. Because they're hacks.


Reading Frank's books, the references to the Butlerian Jihad make it out to be more of a social revolution. People relied too much on "thinking machines" to the point that they let their computers (and the powerful people running them) do all the thinking for them. This fucked up humanity in the long-view. The revolution, then, was people rejecting these machines and overthrowing the men who had essentially enslaved their minds and stagnated progress for so long.

Like, for example, if we realized that powerful people used Facebook to manipulate us and control our thoughts, then we fought wars to break free, destroyed Facebook, overthrew those powerful people, and then, to make sure it never happened again, we smashed literally every computer, processor, game console, calculator, and smartphone and banned such devices forever and ever.

EDIT:

While I'm here (dammit you got my brain in Dune mode), I know you didn't claim it's a utopia or anything, and it is very interesting as a world/universe, I love it, but the Imperium is absolutely monstrous. Consider the Baron Harkonnen is a man who keeps an endless supply of young sex slaves, murders at will, has his nephews do the same, oppresses populations like it's his job (and he thinks it is), and he is wealthy, powerful, noble, and respected in the Imperium. Really, he marked his nephew's coming-of-age with gladitorial slave combat, and once punished his nephew by ordering him to kill all his favorite sex slaves.

In the first two sequels books, you learn that Paul's empire is even worse. Which is why he hates it and hates himself so much. And then his son's is even worse still, lasts for millennia, and was, according to Leto himself, necessary. Frank's books are nuts, in the best way (IMO).
 
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Bold One

Banned
Oct 30, 2017
18,911
No, I don't think that's what happens. It's not "thinking" about doing it, the precogs know you're going to do it in the future. Those are two entirely different things.

Minority Report presents a society with some very problematic and ethical dilemmas, but dystopian? Not even close.
Can precogs seperate murder from manslaughter?

A world where police can crack you for something you haven't done is nuts and the whole 'they only see what you will do' was taken down in the film's conclusion.

Also, police have robot Spiders that can scan your eyes against your consent.
 

Jegriva

Banned
Sep 23, 2019
5,519
I can't think of any.

IMO there are way too many movies where the future is dystopic: Minority Report, Demolition Man, RoboCop, etc.

And that's without even mentioning things like Terminator or Matrix (obviously).
Demolition Man is the other one to come to mind.

Terminator 2 as in when the movie is set (2003?), maybe?
 
OP
OP
DiipuSurotu

DiipuSurotu

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
53,148
Non-dystopic sci fi settings are considerably more expensive to produce than low tech or depressing futures. It's why the brighter futures tend to be restricted to tv where a cheaper appearance is more acceptable or animated movies (both anime and western). Ie: Doctor Who, Star Trek, Futurama.
Good point actually!