From the looks of it at the beginning, one can tell movies of the dystopian sci-fi genre have gained a great deal of influence from Metropolis, from Blade Runner to Dark City. Its expressionistic qualities in its geometrically fantastical massive city and the high bridges connecting the buildings makes it a towering fortress of a city that is slowly turning chaotic under oppression and robotic forces. The movement of which we see the underground workers moving in straight lines and making repetitious movements to their machines like clockwork shows how structural Fritz Lang wanted the film to look to embody how heavily structured this city is in its class division and mechanical reliance. The people below are treated as mechanical slaves while the upper class, represented by the city’s chief Joh Fredersen, live their life of luxury and power in their vast rooms and playboy routines, with only Fredersen’s son Freder brave enough to see the inequality and exploitation of the underprivileged and sets out to set things straight with the help of the idealistic Maria. At the same time as making a social/political statement about technology and society, it makes heavy use of biblical images, from the image of Babylon brought to life by the evil robotic clone of Maria to the religious figures of Freder and Maria leading the children of the workers to safety from an apocalyptic flood. It’s also telling another story about the drawbacks of technology in a way that’s similar to Frankenstein with its mad scientist Rotwang building the gold robot to replicate his lost love, which then sets out to bring chaos and destruction to the city of the workers. The characters are filled with colorful differences in their heavily emotional expressions of fear, sadness, anger, madness, joy, and sadism that they bring out the distortions of humanity that’s common in German Expressionism, from the tall dark and imposing Thin Man to the maniacally sadistic Maria clone. The look of the city isn’t CGI as we would use to see in futuristic sci-fi films or has flying cars, but its designs that are based on models and paintings brings to life what Expressionist art should be with its jagged geometrical style to look more convincing as a strange and imposing society of the future. It brings out the possibility of sci-fi as its was one of the earliest big sci-fi films of cinematic history, maybe not as colorful and action-packed as todays sci-fi blockbusters, but a nostalgic vision of the future that is epic, bizarre, and mesmerizing.