As Steven Spielberg’s “Ready Player One” hits GCC cinemas this week, Arab News has selected six of the best and bleakest portrayals of earth’s future that filmmakers have created so far.
A Clockwork Orange
Stanley Kubrick’s darkly comic, deeply disturbing dystopian crime flick tells the story of charismatic, “ultra-violent” gang leader Alex — wonderfully played by Malcolm McDowell — who agrees to submit to psychological reconditioning to render him averse to violence. Although critically acclaimed, the film’s shocking imagery led caused controversy, and Kubrick asked that the film be pulled from UK circulation two (very successful) years after its release. Of course, that just enhanced its profile.
A Clockwork Orange
The Matrix
Yeah, we know: The trilogy ended up a travesty. But the original “Matrix” was a great film — freaky, cool, and thought provoking. The Wachowskis created an immersive, fresh take on the well-worn ‘what if we’re just dreaming this world’ trope and delivered a high-octane, thrill-packed action film that blew audiences away with its ground-breaking ‘bullet-time’ special effects and did wonders for the sales of full-length leather trench coats.
The Matrix
Blade Runner
A critical and commercial flop on its release in 1982, Ridley Scott’s bleak vision of LA in 2019 — a blend of noir thriller and gothic sci-fi — has gone on to become one of the genre’s most acclaimed and influential films. His unremittingly gloomy depiction of the city perfectly matched the story’s thoughtful, understated take on AI, androids and how humanity deals with technology.
Blade Runner
Mad Max: Fury Road
There’s not much dialogue — lead actor Tom Hardy has a total of 52 lines (and a couple-hundred grunts) — but George Miller’s return to the franchise that made him (and Mel Gibson, the original Max) famous is a non-stop adrenaline rush of motor-fueled action that still manages to tell a compelling story of a post-apocalyptic world where petrol and water are more valuable than gold. And way more valuable than humans.
Mad Max Fury Road
The City of Lost Children
This beautifully shot surrealist take on the future — featuring the singular vision of French writer-director Jean-Pierre Jeunet (“Delicatessen”) — tells the story of the evil Krank, a lab-created being whose inability to dream means he ages too fast. The solution? Steal the dreams of kidnapped children for himself (with the help of a cyborg cult, obviously). Jeunet’s dreamy, hyper-stylized movie is an engrossing, disconcerting trip.
The City of Lost Children
Metropolis
Sci-fi O.G. Fritz Lang’s 1927 silent masterpiece still receives regular screenings — and still resonates — almost a century on from its release. The utopian titular city is built above a grim underworld of mistreated workers whom the young, privileged Freder decides he must help. The at-the-time jaw-dropping special effects, including the iconic robot, the art-deco-influenced cityscape, and the film’s focus on the perils of industrialization and technology all made “Metropolis” enormously influential.
Metropolis
