Buildings aren’t big enough for Blade Runner yet, and there’s still a veneer of government control.
(ETA: No one’s said it yet, but 1984 is so obvious that it wasn’t worth mentioning.)
Man, we’d be so much better off if we lived in Idiocracy. Can you imagine living in a world where the people in charge were actually concerned about the well being of the people and actively sought out the smartest people they could find to try to solve the biggest problems society was facing, and then actually listened to what they said and followed their advice? That’s basically a utopia compared to what we got.
But it’s got what plants crave!
1984
Don’t Look Up is basically reality already.
Robocop. Corps owning everything, with slums for the rest, and enforcement by unthinking machines. Except, there will be no Murphy
Rollerball (1975) has similar corporate city themes
its a common trope in the cyberpunk genre
Not a movie, but the start of the Handmaid’s Tale is quickly joining the documentary category.
Its a book and its called:
Parable of the Sower, By Octavia E. Butler.
It was scary how real it felt lol.
The Parable of the Talents was a difficult read. I think of it often. It’s a damn shame there aren’t more in the series
You know it’s serious when an Octavia gets involved. I’ll take a look.
On a lighter note, try her book ‘Wild Seed.’ A shape shifting witch encounters a body thief demon. He wants her powers, but the body dies soon after he inhabits it, so he has to ‘persuade’ her.
This book hits so close to home its traumatic to read.
spoiler
The shitbag evil president in the book literally campaigns using the motto “Make America Great Again”.
If you think that’s crazy, try books!
Not a movie but The Handmaid’s Tale.
Almost all dystopic sci-fi movies and books (including Blade Runner) are documentaries once you move past the visuals.
Soylent Green. You should really give it a watch some time, it’s about much more than it’s titular product.
Soylent Green is like a lengthy German sentence. You only find out what’s going on at the end.
Literally nobody mentioned Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World”?
We’ve already got the chemically suppressed culture of distraction and the strictly stratified social hierarchy.
Must be the shortage of orgy porgy and the high price of decent soma.
It has some great sociological observations but the parts about family and births is still ways away so I wouldn’t count it in here.
Given that most kids see their phones more than their parents, the only thing we’re missing is growing fetuses in bottles.
I remember the kids participating more like in group brainwashing sessions, not being in isolation with some device in hand
Say, blindly reciting the Pledge of Allegiance that brings some god into the equation?
That’s a better analogy, no phones involved
Catch-22 is creeping up on us.
Andor.
Isn’t andor ww2? Obviously history echoes through to today, but my reading is nazism spreading in Europe.
Season 1 is, yes. Season 2 is very much targeting today.
I’m on,y half way through, but season 2 has Gorman people speaking with French accents and forming a resistance movement. The empire is performing audits of farming and crops. messaging is by radio signal and bugs are hidden in offices with nearby people monitoring over earpieces. It still seems to be nazism from last century, but of course there are echoes in any authoritarian situation, including today.
Furthering the discussion more generally, battlestar galactica had a great season on new caprica where the humans were terrorists undermining the cyclon rulers. This was aired during gulf 2, so was very topical.
I wouldn’t focus too much on the anachronistic technology, that’s more to keep with the vibe of the original trilogy.
The farming audits, IMO, are pretty directly an analog to what ICE is doing in the US.
There’s definitely some WW2 influence and stylistic choices, if anything that’s to keep the execs willing to fund the thing, but later on you’ll see some more blatant comparisons to our modern situation.
Given the timeline between writing and release for any modern television show, it’s highly unlikely that was the intent. That it now dovetails is coincidence.
It reminds me more of Nazis as they were more methodical with data and purpose. I’d be surprised if this was written or acted after trumps inauguration. Funny, not funny, how it can echo both.
I’ve seen references to the senators speech, so I’m looking forward to that.
Yeah the disinfo theme is quite heavy handed
I was thinking Mon Mothma’s speech, in particular.
Depending how this orange madman phase turns out: Fight Club or The Purge
Rick and Morty had a purge episode
