![]() But Otomo layers the story with so many flourishes, distorted all the more by decades of other movies and shows paying homage to Akira, that it’s easy for the viewer to get lost and overwhelmed. ![]() On a plot level, Akira invariably follows a straight line, with the (more or less) heroic Kenada forced to take on his friend Tetsuo, who grows more out of control as his powers increase. But when Tetsuo stumbles on a mutant child being experimented upon by the government, his own powers begin to emerge. ![]() As the government and military struggle to maintain control, teenagers embrace nihilism and form biker gangs, including leads Kenada and Tetsuo. Based on Otomo’s manga from six years earlier, Akira takes place in a destroyed Neo Tokyo, built after the Japanese government dropped a bomb on the original city to quell the uprising of psychic mutants. But few have made it all feel so chaotic and meaningless like Akira, the groundbreaking anime movie by Katsuhiro Otomo. Lots of dystopian movies are about oppressive governments and street violence. The movie follows all of the action beats typical of the 1980s, complete with the hero’s birth, defeat, and return to glory, in which he ultimately vanquishes both gangster Clarence Boddiker ( Kurtwood Smith) and corrupt businessman Dick Jones (Ronny Cox). On the surface, Robocop takes that concept to the extreme, featuring a cyborg supercop built from the remains of a murdered Detroit police officer ( Peter Weller). “To protect and serve.” We all recognize those words as the motto for the police force, a promise that we will be made safer by the existence of the police. Lost in the morass of bureaucratic redundancies and mod-cons that do not work, fascism becomes normalized, almost banal, leaving solipsistic fantasy as the only real form of resistance. They are people just doing their job and living their lives, from the blue-collar shock troopers who mutter about their aches and pains to Sam’s friend Jack Lint (Michael Palin), a pleasant family man who hands out Christmas presents after spending the day torturing people for information. None of its baddies are maniacal hate-mongers or even ranting Hitlers. Brazil stars Jonathan Pryce as Sam Lowry, a daydreaming functionary in the bureaucratic fascist English government who finds himself branded a terrorist after dealing with black market HVAC repairman Harry Tuttle (Robert De Niro) and falling for frustrated client Jill (Kim Greist).įor all of its surreal imagery, Brazil stands out for how believable its world is. And few dystopian movies have made that point better than Terry Gilliam’s masterpiece Brazil. And yet dystopias remind us that our advancements are just baby steps and our inclinations toward fascism remain. We’d desperately like to believe that the world is getting better, that we are improving in some way. Perhaps the scariest thing about dystopia films is the way they reject our fundamental assumptions about society. Salò is easily the toughest watch on this list, stripping away all the escapist fun offered by future-set dystopias and forcing us to see ourselves at our worst. With shocking frankness, Pasolini’s camera holds on stomach-churning scenes of rape and torture, as the four men take full advantage of the ability to dehumanize their charges. It begins with four powerful leaders - the Duke, the Bishop, the Magistrate, and the President - agreeing to marry off their daughters to one another, and grows more depraved from there. Over the course of its four parts, Salò captures some of the most unsettling images ever captured on film. Of course, it’s hard to attend to those lessons while actually watching the movie. ![]() By Italy’s recent past at its most depraved, Pasolini reminded viewers of the end result of conservative leanings. Namely, he loosely adapted the Marquis de Sade’s 1785 novel 120 Days of Sodom by setting it in fascist Italy during World War II. But for his infamous Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom, Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini looked toward the past. It’s easier to talk about the problems in the present by showing what happens if they continue. Most dystopias focus on the future, and with good reason. It’s that sort of direct cinematic language that makes Metropolis such an immediate work, even nearly 100 years later. When Freder first visits the underground factories and witnesses an accident on a machine, he sees it transform into the pagan god Moloch, who devours the workers sacrificed to him. Adapting the novel by his wife Thea Gabriele von Harbou (who also wrote the screenplay), Lang infuses his story with surreal power that transmutes into undeniable anger. While modern viewers may find the parable of this world simplistic, there’s no denying the visceral shock of director Fritz Lang’s imagery.
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