“O-Bi, O-Ba – The End of Civilization” ( Piotr Szulkin, Poland, 1985) – a very interesting one
Andrei Tarkovsky’s “Stalker”
Logan’s Run. A utopian world turns dystopian the moment one turns 30.
Blade Runner
Brazil
Children of Men
Colossus: The Forbin Project
Alphaville
La jetée
Stalker
Sleep Dealer
Akira
2046
Renaissance
A Scanner Darkly
Timecrimes
gattaca
12 monkeys
city of lost children
dark city
the matrix
escape from new york
minority report
v for vendetta
a clockwork orange
metropolis
World on a Wire (1973, Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
Apart from those already mentioned, Luc Besson’s silent film debut Le Dernier Combat deserves a shout.
and d’oh, the terminator. i love that movie :)
don’t know if alien qualifies? maybe aliens instead
visitor of a museum – lopushansky
on the silver globe – zulawski
kin-dza-dza – daneliya
I guess you have to include the Charlton Heston “Doomsday Trilogy” (Soylent Green, The Omega Man, The Planet of the Apes.)
I’m surprised no one has mentioned Mad Max or Road Warrior.
Also:
Silent Running (1972) Douglas Trumbull
Code 46 (2003) Michael Winterbottom
Rollerball (1975) Norman Jewison The original was especially bleak.
Zardoz (1974) John Boorman (from which the Book of Eli stole a key plot point)
A Boy and His Dog
A Boy and His Dog
Beat you!! HA!
damn. also robocop :D
Gattaca
The Fifth Element
gag i hate the fifth element. but w’ever :p
edit: sorry, that was rude. lol
i’ll go away now….
Ben, would you mind giving us your definition of waht a Dystopia is? It seems the definition can vary.
Random House dictionary says:
a society characterized by human misery, as squalor, oppression, disease, and overcrowding.
Collins English dictionary says:
an imaginary place where everything is as bad as it can be
Wikipedia says:
A dystopia is, in literature, an often futuristic society that has degraded into a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise of being utopian.
There are some differences in those definitions.
gag i hate the fifth element. but w’ever :p
How come? It’s one of my very favorite movies!
I’d like to second A Boy and his Dog and Logan’s Run. Those two, though they have their faults, seem to get overlooked a lot.
i think it’s just the combination of bruce willis, milla jovovich and chris tucker. each are barely tolerable on their own but all in the same film? NO. just my personal idiosyncrasy
Hahaha, fair enough. Chris Tucker is so strangely irritating in this film, but it’s very much on purpose. That doesn’t mean you still can’t hate it. And Milla in this movie was one of my first cinematic crushes when I was in early high school so that probably contributed to the infatuation of the film as a whole. Or maybe the film as a whole contributed to the infatuation with her. I think it worked both ways.
Oh, and what about Gary Oldman???
umm i think he’s a little over the top but he seems to be having fun! awesome haircut too :)
the sets are all pretty great though. What do you think of that at least for a futuristic kind of thing?
Good points raised by Risselda. If by dystopia we mean a utopia gone wrong, or an ostensible utopia that was never desirable in the first place, then Fahrenheit 451 goes on the list.
Stalker
Tetsuo the Iron Man
Metropolis
ok it did have an interesting look and nice cinematography :)
Thankyou so much for your suggestions….Risselada i would like to adhere to your former admission… ’a society characterized by human misery….etc. ’
Haven’t seen anyone mention Never Let Me Go :)
ben taylor
I am currently writing a script on a Dystopian planet. I was wondering if we could come up with a definitive list of influential Dystopian flicks.
Here’s my first thoughts:
Outland
THX 1138
Moon
Silent running
Soylent Green
1984