Top 50 Dystopian Movies of All Time
Perhaps inspired by my list of top movie crime thrillers a couple of days ago, my pal Brian shares Snarkerati’s Top 50 Dystopian Movies of All Time. Not succumbing to just listing personal favorites, Snarkerati took fan ratings from the Internet Movie Database and Rotten Tomatoes, added them together, then found an average for each movie, which accounts for placement on the list. Pretty cool. And here’s what I find really interesting: 21 of the listed movies are right now in my personal DVD collection. Another six are movies I intend to buy when they finally come out as “special editions,” or their prices drop so low I just have to purchase them. Am I a depressing guy or what? In case you’re interested, here are the 21 dystopian films I now own (with their ranking on the abovementioned list): Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (#1), Brazil (#3), Children of Men (#6), The Matrix (#7), The Road Warrior (#8), Minority Report (#9), 12 Monkeys (#14), Serenity (#15), RoboCop (#19), Akira (#20), V for Vendetta (#23), Fahrenheit 451 (#26), Total Recall (#29), Dark City (#30), George Pal’s version of The War of the Worlds (#31), THX-1138 (#34), Escape from New York (#35), the 1984 version of Nineteen Eighty-Four (#38), A Boy and His Dog (#40), Starship Troopers (#48), and Equilibrium (#50). The six I will buy eventually are: A Clockwork Orange (#2), Blade Runner (#5), Alphaville (#13), Gattaca (#25), They Live (#33), and Artificial Intelligence: AI (#38).
Oh, and I also own one of the movies Snarkerati offers as an “honorable mention”: Code 46.
Welcome to my nightmares.
Labels: dvd, leftlibertarian, movies, scifi
posted by Wally Conger @ 11:44 AM
4 comments
4 Comments:
Now that list really ranks as very cool. I may not like to make my own lists, but I surely do like to read those made by other people.
Like you, my DVD collection -- and movie recommendations too -- have a huge intersection with that list.
I haven't seen a few of those. It always pleases me to find new prospects.
I can see a brighter future, if one very significant item gets eliminated from today's world. I suspect you would agree on that elimination.
I'm trying to think of a film set in an anarchic "utopian" future and not coming up with one.
Is War of the Worlds really a "dystopian" story? I would have thought a dystopian tale was not just an sf story where bad stuff happens, but more specifically one where the bad stuff is political or at least institutional. OK, I guess being occupied by enemy alien forces counts perhaps as political/institutional, but it still seems like a stretch ....
Roderick, this occurred to me as well. Personally, I don't consider War of the Worlds dystopian. Now, if Wells had let the Martians win, then written a sequel, we would have had a real dystopian story!
Has anyone made a Torrent of the movies on this list? I'd be interested in that.
Don't be offended by my suggestion. If you're a true anarchist, you'll realize that intellectual property is not a valid form of property. Only an abusive monopolistic government can enforce intellectual property. It is impossible, solely via contracts, to create enforceable intellectual property.
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