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?
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.
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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.
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Movie leaders too understanding even if low IQ. Sigh…
Go away, ‘batin’.
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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.
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!
Lots of great answers here but the first that came to my mind is Gattaca.
I wish we had Gattaca instead of what we have. At least the shitty people would be genetically superior, for whatever that’s worth, instead of just richer.
1984
With a little bit of Brave New World and Farenheit 451 sprinkled in
“A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.”
That rat snitch thief Orwell has nothing on Aldous Huxley.
Total surveillance plus child indoctrination plus no voter interest equals total gov control
Add cyberpunk 2077 to that mix
We’re in that part in the Star Trek timeline where everything is shitty.
Tomorrow I might as well see a manifestation of Q and watch a bewildered Picard shout “You can’t judge all of humanity by this barbaric time!”
WWIII is due to start next year.
Star Trek timeline had WW3 at 1996
Gotta do the Bell Riots first
Nope, 2026.
Children of Men
I would say that we will very soon find ourselves in 1984 or perhaps Brazil, with a little bit of The Circle and Her thrown in, but overall it will be more like The Road due to climate change, unless Elysium technology has been developed by then, which is unlikely, but if so, it will certainly be used as depicted in the film.
Robocop, corporate ownership of major infrastructure, militant authoritarian police force.
Where is our hero robot?
The same place as the heroes in every other piece of fiction… non-existent.
No one’s going to ride in on a white horse and slay our dragons for us.
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.
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.
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
I’m going with “They Live”.
Okay I’m gonna sound like an optimist, but I think The Expanse timeline, without the blue goo stuff, is a possible future.
I know it still doesn’t sound good since um… there are still human rights issues and corruption, but hey, at least humans didn’t go extinct. And we get to go to space.
I’m jealous of your optimism… and in the end of Caliban’s war right now! I loved the series. I can only hope…
Not a movie yet (AFAIK), but Octavia Butler’s novel Parable of the Sower is downright uncanny.
I’ve always thought it would be like Tank Girl but the big company is basically a merger of Amazon and Nestle.
Cyberpunk but without the cool stuff like cyber ware or flying cars.
Flying cars were always dangerous and impractical in the places where they’d be needed, but I’m already in line for an implant that didn’t used to exist. Cyberware is basically just that on an elective basis, right?
We have crypto, talking computers and warfare looks like this:
Next up I’m waiting on crowded street markets lit by signage, although the trend towards delivering everything makes me doubt.
The one trope that can’t happen is corporations as government. Executives are not warlords, even if they think they are. Actual authoritarian regimes always end up looking like each other, and not like Google.
