Personally, as is often noted, “Idiocracy” is probably tops for current events… but for the farther future, I’d go Blade Runner Universe, most likely… just for the sheer scale of total biosphere degradation and megacorp control. How about you?
Parable of the Sower.
Murderbot if we as a species ever make it that far
Ratchet & Clank
Cyberpunk but without the cool stuff like cyber ware or flying cars.
Brave New World needs an honourable mention for only looking more plausible a century later. We do like our horny birth control sex and not thinking too hard about sad things.
I hope for cyberpunk, because Star Trek (post-WWIII) isn’t gonna happen. Dune or a boring version of Terminator are also in the running, possibly at the same time.
Edit: A cyberpunk phase might give way to a far future that’s not exactly Star Trek, but that is similarly equal, tolerant and pleasant. I know that wasn’t the question, but that’s why it’s the direction I’m pushing for.
If it’s Dune, the last couple centuries were a blip, and the kind of violent autocratic hell that existed before that is just what human civilisation naturally looks like, so it will keep going. If it’s Terminator, hopefully the AI does something nice without us, at least.
Warhammer 40k /s
Wondla
Present day isn’t Idiocracy, in the Idiocracy the president cared about his people and listened to the world’s smartest man to fix the crops.
I’m pretty sure the idiot president thing has a shelf life, even. We’ll be back to clean-cut fascist dictators soon enough.
The Expanse.
We have an optimist here.
You think the Expanse is optimistic? Did you read it?
No, only seen the show. Just a bit of nuking south america and water slavery. Seems optimistic enough, but perhaps the books show it’s worse then it looks in the show. But the post asks about movies, not books.
I mean, even in the show things are pretty bleak. There’s a bit where we see how earth is… not great unless you’re super wealthy.
But on the bright side, they do have UBI
Yes…
Quality land by Marc Uwe Kling. The world is basically ruled by hyper capitalistic cooperations, people are rated by their productivity people don’t buy stuff actively, it’s bought for them by their personal AI when the algorithm thinks they need it.
The plot partly follows the presidential election between an AI powered Robot that tries to act in the interest of humanity versus a populist right wing TV cook that’s a shockingly close prediction of Trump. The other part is about the main character on his mission to refund an item he didn’t actually want.
To this day my favourite dystopian book.
Idiocracy.
The movie was written as a joke, but unfortunately society decided to use it as a road map.
Elysium seems a good candidate.
I think the Wired of Serial Experiments Lain is pretty accurate.
Companies like Meta are actively trying to create an immersive digital world (the “metaverse”) like the Wired.
And the Wired is symbolic of the issues with the modern internet, from the escapism and addiction to rumors to false information shaping peoples views to companies controlling the world throigh algorithms and censorship.
The multiple Lains are symbolic of how everyone can a different view of you and your opinions, often shaped by lies, and the Wired Lain which is the one of these actually controlled by her is symbolic of how we act differently online than in real life.
Masami Eiri is symbolic of companies and powerful individuals controlling online narratives and owning most of the internet you interact with.
The Phantoma game is symbolic of how the things that happen and the things that are said online have real world consequences.
It is an absolutely brilliant show which I highly recommend watching if you like visual metaphors.
It’s not a sci-fi dystopia, but I just watched Zootopia again and the plot is harsher in hindsight. The villain is trying to gain power by turning everyone against a minority population and making them fear that minority. To think this came out before Trump’s first presidency.
Also the cops can do whatever they want with impunity.
By the end, judy is BFs with the biggest mob boss in town, who she knows kills people.
That bugged me too. I also saw Zootopia 2 today. SPOILER ALERT Nick leads a prison break with seemingly no consequences in the end
Well, this isn’t a unique concept. The fact it goes horrible pretty quickly and people keep falling for it is the truly impressive part.
The Running Man novel is set in 2025 and the second movie adaptation just came out. Things aren’t as bad as they are portrayed there. Reality shows aren’t killing people yet. But people are going on exploitative reality shows because they feel desperate for money.
Not too far away yet.
There is a squid games reality show which is based on a game where they kill people, and they pretend to kill them in the show so it’s being normalized.
And Mr beast has his gameshow which is similar, where they treat the contestants inhumanly just for the convenience of the production.
I dunno but I feel like if we get another year of trump, we will be doing “the running man” competition with immigrants
That’s way to plausible for my liking…
…but can we just fence off Florida for the “Arena”?
I don’t think it’ll be just immigrants.
