The future, eh? It ain’t what it used to be. There was a time when the world gazed dewy eyed onto the horizon and dreamily mused over what delights the dawn of a new age would herald. Food in pill form, perhaps? Flying cars, you say? What’s that? You believe that all pavements will be replaced by those travelator things that you get in airports? Why, that would be wonderful!

 

There were some among us, however, for whom the future did not seem so bright. We feared the breakdown of society. We shuddered at the thought of non-stop technological and scientific advancement one day becoming the proverbial noose around our collective necks. And we shit our pants at the threat of overpopulation, global warming and stuff like that. For people like us the dystopian sci-fi film, the most intriguing of all loosely defined subgenres, best projected our darkest fears and fantasies onto the silver screen (generally BBC2 at around 11pm).

 

But now I believe we actually are living in the future. Not only is it quite gobsmackingly the year 2008AD, but I have just seen a mobile phone what you can watch YouTube on. Why, just the other day I was perusing the Guardian website and observed that they had gone for the rather humdrum “Top Gear stars stall over contracts” over the alarming “Man gives birth to baby” as their headline. Yes, we’re a bit blasé when it comes to all this future shit now, ain’t we? America even appears to be on the cusp of electing a black president, which, as all keen science fiction students will tell you, is proof indeed that The Future Has Arrived.

 

What better time could there be then, to reassess some of these dark visions of the future from a bygone age, and see just how accurate they were in their predictions? Join me now on a journey back to the future (although I will not be doing the film Back to the Future, as it is not a dystopian sci-fi film. Back to the Future 2 kind of is, but I won’t be doing that, either) if you dare…

 

 

Things to Come (1936) – Written by none other than H.G. Wells (from his own novel) Things to Come does very well in getting it’s work in early. It’s not strictly the first dystopian sci-fi film (from here on in DSF), Fritz Lang’s Metropolis for example could also qualify, but I’m starting with it because it only makes sense to begin with the best prediction we’re going to hear all day. Yes, made in 1936, Things to Come predicts that four years later there will be a Second World War. It was a year off, admittedly, but we’re not going to mark it down for that, are we? Where it fares less well is in its prediction that in the aftermath of this war the world will be ruled and rebuilt by a collective of rather camp chaps calling themselves The Airmen, and that World War III will kick off in 2036 as a result of man’s first attempt to fly to the moon. That’s obviously not going to happen now.

 

(NB: Things to Come is now in the public domain, and therefore available for free on many websites. It is, of course, a little dated but is nevertheless excellent and boasts trailblazing set design and special effects which still astound)

 

 

 

The Last Man on Earth (1964) – I have opted for this version of Richard Matheson’s 1954 novel I Am Legend over the 1971 version, The Omega Man, and the 2007 version, erm, I Am Legend, for the simple reason that this one has Vincent Price in it, and the others don’t (I haven’t actually seen the 2007 version, starring Will Smith, but it is probably pants. Non?). Price stars as the titular survivor who is holed up in his bungalow listening to “jazz” on his “hi-fi”, whilst frightening, but really weak, vampire zombies waddle about outside. Can our hero, who was conveniently a scientist back in the civilised world, come up with the antidote to save these puny monsters? Or will he be doomed to spend the rest of his miserable life on his own? That is if you can really describe being plagued by vampire zombies as being truly alone. That’s one for Sartre. The film has it that these creatures came about after a bizarre plague infected the world in 1965. Now, we know this isn’t going to happen because, well, it didn’t happen. But what did happen in 1965? Well, Liverpool won the FA Cup. That definitely did happen.

 

(NB: The Last Man on Earth is also available for free on many websites. Whilst not quite up to Things to Come standard, if you like Vincent Price (and I know you do) it is well worth watching)

 

Soylent Green (1973) – We’re into the 70s now, something of a heyday for the DSF and this classic example stars none other than the late Charlton Heston, a true icon of this sort of fare, what with starring in this and The Omega Man (and to a lesser extent Planet of the Apes). Please look away now if you haven’t seen it, and you don’t want to know how it ends, but there’s no getting around this… Charlton Heston daringly plays against type as a macho, no-nonsense, beefcake police detective in an OVERPOPULATED world with CHRONIC FOOD SHORTAGE that, as a result of which leads the government to supply a STRANGE UNKNOWN FOODSTUFF called Soylent Green to the starving millions. So, there are too many people and not enough food, and the food that there is, well, nobody seems to know where it comes from? Mmmhhh… Could it be that Soylent Green is people? SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE. Yes, it could and it is. The film is set in 2022 so, to be fair, it still might happen, especially if food prices keep going the way they are. I really hope it doesn’t happen, though.

 

A Boy and His Dog (1974) – A proper curio, this one, so give yourself a minute or two to digest the preposterous premise. It stars a young Don Johnson, no less, as a young scavenger living in a post-apocalyptic world. His only companion is his dog, with whom he can communicate telepathically for reasons unknown to the rest of us, and who helps him to sniff out women so he can rape them. One day Don and his dog chance upon a particularly nice young lady whom Don really wants to rape, so he follows her, sans dog, into a subterranean community. This community is all done up like a quintessential American 50s white picket-fence type of place, and is ruled over by Jason Robards. Jason Robards in clown makeup. It then turns out that Robards had Johnson lured down to this community so he could use his semen to repopulate the town by injecting it into the women cos the men are no longer up to it for some reason. You’d think Johnson would be pleased, but he decides to escape after Robard’s android henchman, Michael, starts breaking people’s necks. All good stuff. Now, A Boy and His Dog takes place in the aftermath of a nuclear war so that kind of makes it a post-apocalyptic film, which is sort of a subgenre of a subgenre, in a way (see also Mad Max, which appears to have taken its look from ABAHD), but because of the Robards bit, I say it also counts as DSF. It doesn’t exactly say when it takes place, but the prologue explaining the nuclear apocalypse bit features snippets of Nixon banging on about China and the Soviet Union, which probably places it a few generations on, maybe the 90s. Now, the threat of a nuclear holocaust doesn’t seem quite as pronounced as it did in the 70s, but I still hope it doesn’t yet happen, telepathic communication with dogs or no.

 

 

Death Race 2000 (1975) – No prizes for guessing when this one’s set, then. The legendary Roger Corman produced this pulp satire concerning a futuristic, fascist America where the national sport is a cross country race in which participants must mow down and kill as many pedestrians as possible. The Death Race’s answer to Michael Schumacher is Kill Bill’s David Carradine who must outwit a terrorist group whilst staying ahead of main rival Sylvester Stallone. Oh, yes. While we were afraid of many things at the dawn of the new millennium (the Millennium Bug, the Millennium Dome, Robbie Williams’ hit ‘Millennium’), being run over by Sylvester Stallone was not necessarily one of them. Therefore, Death Race 2000 misses by miles. Also, the way oil prices are rising, it might not be too long before nobody can afford to run anybody over. So there.

 

 

Logan’s Run (1975) – This is it. The Citizen Kane… The Vertigo… The Pee Wee’s Big Adventure of DSF. I scarcely feel the need for a quick synopsis, but nevertheless allow me to take the pleasure. Logan’s Run is all about this ace futuristic world that, funnily enough, actually looks really 70s where everybody lives in this massive domed city where they kill you when you reach 30! And not only do they kill you, but they kill you in this amazing, spinning psychedelic thing that everyone calls “Carousel” and it is Michael York’s job to shoot you if you don’t want to go along with this. But he gets a bit disillusioned and him and Jenny Agutter escape from the dome and fight this mad robot that freezes people. Then they discover the ruins of the White House, and in there they find the only person over the age of 30 they have ever seen, so they decide to take him (it’s actually Peter Ustinov) back to the dome to show people that it’s ok to be over 30.

It is a testament to the enduring power of Logan’s Run that with each subsequent birthday I enjoy, I think of myself in Logan’s Run years. As it currently stands, I would only have three years left, so thank goodness the society depicted in Logan’s Run has not come to be (although you might be forgiven for thinking otherwise if you watch MTV). But it might yet, however, as it is the only film here to really cover it’s ass in terms of time by taking place in the far-flung 23^rd Century. Kudos Logan’s Run. Kudos.

 

(NB: If you enjoy Logan’s Run, or if you are just a bit ageist and enjoy this sort of thing generally, you should check out the simply outrageous Wild in the Streets about a 22-year-old US president who wreaks havoc on the old folks under his rule. It comes equipped with the greatest tagline in film history: “Haven’t you always wanted to put your dad in a concentration camp?” You can get it on a bargain double DVD set with Roger Corman’s similar, and similarly brilliant, Gas-s-s-s)

 

 

 

Escape from New York (1981) – Poor old Escape from New York would have done well to have paid attention to Logan’s Run shrewd pragmatism, asking us, as it does, to believe that by 1997 (1997!) the entire island of Manhattan will serve as a walled prison housing America’s deadliest convicts in a bleak future where the world has fallen foul of a Boris Johnson bewildering 400% increase in crime. Now, I first went to New York a few years ago, and stayed in Manhattan. Not only did I have a really pleasant holiday, but at no time did I see a single trace of it being employed as any kind of futuristic prison-style setup. So either a lot must have changed since 1997 or, more likely, that just never happened. It’s just as well, then, that Escape from New York is absolutely brilliant and Kurt Russell is sneeringly awesome as the ruthless antihero Snake Plissken, who must enter Manhattan and rescue the president who’s only gone and crashed his bloody plane there. Plissken would return in the undeserving sequel Escape from L.A., set in the year 2000 (2000!) by which time the entire city of Los Angeles has, erm, become an island on which lots of horrible criminals do reside like it is a big prison. But that is another story. Although, only slightly.

 

 

Demolition Man (1993) – It’s that man Stallone again, this time as 90s cop John Spartan awoken up from cryonic freezing (like what Disney and Hitler had done) in 2032 to capture similarly revived super villain Wesley Snipes. We’ve still got some 24 years to go before we can see how much of Demolition Man is to come true, but these are the things to look out for. Firstly, there’s been a massive earthquake and for some reason Los Angeles is now known as San Angeles. Secondly, all popular music has been replaced by 50s advertising jingles, but this would not be such a bad thing, considering it is preferable to Timberlake et al. Thirdly, somewhere between now and 2032, Arnold Schwarzenegger will have become President of the United States of America. Stallone is unsurprisingly thrilled upon hearing this. Most importantly, however, society has become a complete utopia where there is no violence, crime, murder or even swearing, and everybody seems to be really nice to each other, except to Dennis Leary, but he’s annoying old Dennis Leary, so who cares? The film, which is in no way knuckleheaded or reactionary, insists however that no such society could ever exist and that big lug musclemen like Stallone should have access to as many guns as they want so they can shoot the bad guys when they inevitably appear. Demolition Man is still immensely enjoyable at times, thanks in no small part to Wesley Snipes, who is not so much scene-stealing as film-kidnapping. There are also many gratuitous references to Aldous Huxley’s seminal DSF novel Brave New World shoehorned into the script, presumably to provide sufficient evidence that at least someone involved in the making of this film had actually once read a book.

 

(NB: Whilst writing about Demolition Man just now, I actually looked up the definition of the word dystopia for the first time in my life. I had always assumed it meant the opposite of utopia, but I wanted to be sure. It turns out I was correct in my lifelong held assumption)

 

So there we have it, a series of terrifying glimpses into the future (and, confusingly at times, also the past). So what have we learnt? That there is still much to fear from the future if one is wary of travelling to the moon, vampire zombies, bizarre foodstuff of untraceable origin, being raped by Don Johnson, being run over by Sylvester Stallone, turning 30, holidaying in Manhattan or Arnold Schwarzenegger becoming president. We have also learnt, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that the exact definition of dystopia IS that it means the opposite of utopia. And we have also also surely learnt by deduction that the film of George Orwell’s DSF benchmark novel 1984, starring John Hurt and Richard Burton, can’t be particularly noteworthy, and thus is NOT a glaring omission from this list.

 

Here’s to the future!      

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tags a boy and his dog charlton heston death race 2000 demolition man don johnson dystopian sci-fi escape from new york hg wells kurt russell logan's run michael york roger corman science fiction soylent green sylvester stallone the last man on earth things to come vincent price