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?
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.
Cyberpunk but without the cool stuff like cyber ware or flying cars.
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…
I agree, but only about the star of Earth in that series. The Epstein drive, protomolecule, even the colonization of Mars are all not guaranteed futures in my view. But if we keep going to way we are, yeah, I can see a 50+% unemployment rate and lots of brutalist architecture.
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.
Elysium seems a good candidate.
Warhammer 40k /s
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.
Parable of the Sower.
Murderbot if we as a species ever make it that far
Ratchet & Clank
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.
Not exactly sci fi, but the TV adaptation of Handmaid’s Tale bears some striking parallels to the current renaissance that extreme right ideologies are currently enjoying. Off the top of my head…
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It shows how quickly and easily street-level enforcement of an authoritarian system can be implemented, and that there is no shortage of people willing to take on that role.
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It shows that the architects of an oppressive system aren’t necessarily “true believers” in such a system, nor are they held to the standards demanded of the average citizen.
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It shows how extremist ideologies bleed beyond the borders of one country and begin to infect others.
You can see examples of all three of these in what’s happening now.
I agree with you
I really don’t want to be living in a Margaret Atwood book.
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Wondla
Back to the Future 2’s bad timeline.
wow. Surprisingly awesome answer. Biff’s Casino IS America right now
Idiocracy 💯
It is the most unrealistic, dispite [gestures broadly to everything] because.
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President Dwayn Elezondo Mtn. Dew Herbert Comacho has a problem.
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They find the most qualified person to solve it, even though they are not sure 😉
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They (reluctantly) listen to his advice.
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Finally, once the day is saved, President Comacho does not take credit for it.
That is the most unrealistic part of the film.
Remember that’s it’s 500 years later. There will be plenty of time for things to get desperate enough that the masses will cry out for a savior, and the savior will look down and whisper, "no…
more brawndo on the plants."
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Exactly, is there any debate about this?
I mean aside from the president being much cooler and having a sort of good ending, of course.
Movie leaders too understanding even if low IQ. Sigh…
Go away, ‘batin’.
Three way tie in my book:
That episode of Black Mirror where everyone had to ride stationary bikes and were forced to watch unskippable ads if they didn’t have credits, except everything you have to watch is AI slop instead of your crush doing porn.
Or the Handmaid’s Tale, but instead of some mysterious infertility crisis, fertile women are rare because they die in pregnancy and childbirth due to anti-science rhetoric flat out killing them. (Look up “free birthing”, etc.) At some point it gets bad enough that replacing your wife is more like getting a new pet.
Maybe the hot version of The Road. We just have wars over water and resources until the plantet’s too fucked for human life, and the survivors are left roaming around making jerky out of each other until the end.
Could be all three at once. Yay!
