I’ve always been a fan of movies set in the future. Back to the Future Part II, Mad Max come to mind. Along with those set in the future are those movies in a dystopia – that is a corrupt government where there is a nightmare senerio. Often the opposite of a utopian society. Twelve Monkeys come to mind.
Two of these futuristic dystopian films are in the news lately. One I’ve managed to catch via the web, while the other I’ve only seen previews of.
I saw Idiocracy via the web this weekend. It is set to be released on DVD tomorrow. Written and directed by Mike Judge, the same guy who gave us Beavis and Butthead, King of the Hill, and Office Space, the film depicts an unusual view of the future. Seems that Judge has a theory of how the future might be. As the smarter people decided to have less (if any children) the dumber rednecks have more and more kids. Without natural selection the stupid people reproduce at a much higher rate than the smart people, thereby making illegence less common.
After a hybernation experiment goes wrong, a very average army volunteer wakes up 500 years later to find that mankind has become stupid. This average person from the past is easily the smartest person on the planet and soon becomes a key player in the US President’s cabinet.
Judge offers some unique views of how the future might look with a dumb society…including replacing water with a Gatorade-like substance (even used for watering non-existent crops) to having Costco offering law school degrees within its massive stores the size of small cities.
Unfortunately I can easily see that dumb people are reproducting at a much higher rate than intelligent people. “They’re breeding” I tell myself when I see the 3rd or 4th child born to people who can’t handle one child. One only need to browse around Myspace (noting the netspeak) or people watch at the local Walmart store to see an example of how dumb people are these days.
I have yet to see Children of Men, only the trailer… It is one of the very few films out in recent years that I have wanted to see in the theater, rather than wait for DVD or TV. The film offers yet another bleak outlook for a futuristic society of a totalitarian police state where society is so depressed that antidepressants are given out along with rations.
What is so bleak about this society is that women have been unable to have children since 2009. The film takes place in 2027. The main character must protect a pregnant woman from the mobs and chaos.
Both Idiocracy and Children of Men are two very different movies. The former will not win any awards, but may gain a cult following much like Office Space. On the other hand, Children of Men might win an Oscar.