A Short Guide to Onscreen Dystopia

By Melanie Morningstar

There are hundreds of dystopian works, this is just a short list.

THX-1138 (1971)

George Lucas’ directing debut, made while still at film school. Unbelievably, a 50-year-old film. Humans are given drugs to suppress emotion and android police rule. One of the great dystopian films. (Also, see Equals – starring Kristen Stewart and Nicholas Hoult, featuring Guy Pearce and Jacki Weaver.)

SILENT RUNNING (1972)

Starring Bruce Dern, this is dystopia for greenies. Nature on Earth as we know it has been destroyed, and a man fights valiantly to preserve the plants and animals hurtling through space in geodesic domes; waiting for the time they can return and reforest.

SOYLENT GREEN (1973)

This is really creepy; big corporations rule the world. A cop (Charlton Heston) stumbles upon something shocking.

LOGAN’S RUN (1976)

Utopia or Dystopia? Starring Michael York and Jenny Agutter, and won a Special Academy Award for visual effects.

THREADS (1984)

A BBC series chronicling the town of Sheffield after a nuclear attack. The Day After, a slick, pathetic attempt which came out first (1983) was milquetoast and predictable. (I suspect the ABC (US) got wind of Threads and decided to jump in and make an American version). Threads follows generations through the immediate aftermath to its dystopian conclusion; extraordinarily powerful.

CHILDREN OF MEN (2006).

Moody Clive Owen, once the ordinary guy who couldn’t give a shit, becomes the good guy who cares. The film takes place in 2027, where immigrants are flocking to the only stable government left, in the UK. You can tell it’s fiction right there. In 2016, it was voted 13th on the list of Best 100 Films, voted on by 117 international film critics.

SUNSHINE (2007)

Directed by Danny Boyle, long before his Oscar win. The Earth is frozen; a team of scientists come up with a plan. A crew of astronauts will fix it all. But something (actually a kind of ridiculous plot) is amiss on the spaceship; and not even Cillian Murphy can save them. I will not give the plot away, but stick with Sunshine, it will be worth it in the end.

ELYSIUM (2013).

The 1% have gotten away from a putrid, stinking world that they created. They live on a space-station; it’s like a luxurious country club circulating Earth. What could possibly go wrong? Jodie Foster gets a chance to use her French.

BLACK MIRROR (2013 – Netflix)

A brilliantly inventive series. I first saw it on SBS one late night in 2013 and couldn’t believe my eyes. Netflix picked it up and commissioned four more series. Although inspired and well made, nothing will ever come close to the shock of seeing the first series, completely unannounced or anticipated. (See Bandersnatch – their first interactive feature on Netflix; not completely dystopian, but definitely deserves a mention).

SNOWPIERCER (2013)

This is Bong Joon-ho’s masterpiece, not Parasite. What’s left of humanity is snowbound, on a train that travels on tracks around the world. But where are they going? A climate change-fixing plan to stop global warming goes horribly 180 and creates a frozen wasteland. Then what happens? A series version is coming shortly.

3% (2016)

An excellent Brazilian dystopian series takes place in a non-descript country of slums (If you’ve been to Favela Rocinha in Rio; it doesn’t take much imagination to extrapolate). All the slum dwellers are desperate to go to “The Island”, but only 3% are chosen…stay tuned.

1983 (2018)

A Polish series that will take you for a ride, but at the end of the first episode there is a fatal flaw in the script IMHO.

THE COMMONS (2019)

This Australian series is set in a very familiar not-too-distant future. Definitely worth a watch, if it only gives you something to reflect upon. Do Australians want to see themselves on screen? Is this what we look like? What would you do to save the planet?

YEARS AND YEARS (2019)

This is a British series, also set in the not-too-distant future, but a very different take on what’s next. What price freedom? What price liberty? Sadly, it looks like there will be no season two. However, there is something quite bold about the unresolved cliffhanger.