Dystopia: an imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or environmentally degraded one. The opposite of Utopia.

Several weeks ago, Snarkerati posted a list of the Top 50 Dystopian Movies of All Time. After its release, many people took the site to task for its rather loose interpretation of the term, dystopian. Specifically, term does not mean sci-fi, or cyberpunk, or anything like that. It refers to a political or social state. That means it could take place in the future or the past. Some could consider a movie about WWII Germany a dystopian movie. A movie that has robots, grime, etc. in it does not automatically make it a dystopian movie.

One reader, a fan of the genre, commented:

This list has started a discussion in my household at to what a dystopian movie actually is. You’ve got it defined here as…

‘The simplest definition of a dystopia is as follows: An imaginary place or state in which the condition of life is extremely bad, as from deprivation, oppression, or terror.’

This is fine, and holds up to most of the list. But if you think about dystopia as the opposite of Utopia, the perfect society, you start to sharpen the idea of what a dystopian movie or novel is supposed to be.

Society goes to hell for one of three different reasons:

1. By accident: The global pandemic, the post-apocalypse, the oil suddenly runs out, the aliens take over, the machines have decided they’ve had enough, or any other natural disaster/extinction-level-event that turns the world mad in an instant. Movies based on this definition of dystopia specifically deal with the aftermath of such an event, of which The Road Warrior, A Boy and His Dog, 12 Monkeys and Children of Men (hey, all the sudden we can’t make any babies) are perfect examples.
2. On purpose: or the false-Utopia, where society has deliberately engineered itself into a demented state. In order for a movie to be of this dystopian color, it has to make a statement about the society itself. 1984, Brazil, The Handmaid’s Tale, all examples of the type, but you could also say the same for The Killing Fields or Schindler’s List (except for the imaginary part as defined above). Based on this sub-type I would not admit Starship Troopers into the list. Granted it parodies a self-imposed militaristic oligarchy but nobody in the movie seems too concerned about it. In the false-Utopia, characters are labeled criminals by the state, corporation, or whatever by doing something people would to do naturally, e.g. read a book, fall in love, form an opinion, or try to get more out of life. The false-Utopia movie is a statement against those external forces that try to suppress what it means to be human, in one form or another.
3. The third form could be considered a corollary of the second form, that is to let society as we know it today run it’s course. These movies are statements to our society now and what could happen if we just let it be: don’t let the oil run out, don’t piss off the guys with nuclear weapons, don’t make the machines too smart, don’t let xenophobia put a fascist in the prime minister’s office. This type puts some movies on the list that I wouldn’t normally think of as dystopian, like your cyberpunk variety films (Blade Runner, Ghost in a Shell, etc), but a lot of the value of these films comes from where they take place: city-settings so over-developed that they become backdrops of skyscrapers and neon lights.

Here is Snarkerati’s list with our comments:

1. Metropolis (1927)
2. A Clockwork Orange (1971)
3. Brazil (1985)
4. Wings of Desire (1987) – I don’t think that post-war Berlin really counts as a dystopian society because the Wall and divisions were not imaginary.
5. Blade Runner (1982)
6. Children of Men (2006)
7. The Matrix (1999)
8. Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981)
9. Minority Report (2002)
10. Delicatessen (1991)
11. Sleeper (1973)
12. The Trial (1962) a story by Franz Kafka, originally titled “Der Process”.
13. Alphaville (1965)
14. Twelve Monkeys (1995)
15. Serenity (2005)
16. Pleasantville (1998) – How is being sucked into a 50’s TV show equal dystopian future? Pleasantville is a story of conflicting social forces and personal transformation set in a 1950s-era small town.
17. Ghost in the Shell (1995)
18. Battle Royale (2000)
19. RoboCop (1987)
20. Akira (1988)
21. The City of Lost Children (1995)
22. Planet of the Apes (1968)
23. V for Vendetta (2005)
24. Metropolis (2001)
25. Gattaca (1997)
26. Fahrenheit 451 (1966)
27. On the Beach (1959)
28. Mad Max (1979)
29. Total Recall (1990)
30. Dark City (1998)
31. War of the Worlds (1953)
32. District B13 (2004)
33. They Live (1988)
34. THX 1138 (1971)
35. Escape from New York (1981)
36. A Scanner Darkly (2006)
37. Silent Running (1972)
38. Artificial Intelligence: AI (2001)
39. Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984)
40. A Boy and His Dog (1975)
41. Soylent Green (1973)
42. I Robot (2004) – I, Robot is just an SF story with a robotic villain, not dystopian.
43. Logan’s Run (1976)
44. Strange Days (1995)
45. Idiocracy (2006) – It’s would be more correctly categorized as farce than a dystopian nightmare, but what really disqualifies it from consideration in any credible list is simply how truly awful the acting, plot, etc. is.
46. Death Race 2000 (1975)
47. Rollerball (1975)
48. Starship Troopers (1997) – Many reviewers glom on the "citizenship" concepts from the novel, which was barely touched on in the film. The movie had royally bad acting, and the only thing worth watching was the CGI bugs.
49. One Point O (2004)
50. Equilibrium (2002)

Honorable Mentions:

• Code 46 (2003)
• The Omega Man (1971)
• The Running Man (1987)
• Le Dernier Combat (1983)
• Avalon (2001)
• No Blade of Grass (1970)

Additions to the list we would recommend (plot summaries by IMDb):

• 28 Days Later (2002): A powerful virus escapes from a British research facility. Transmitted in a drop of blood and devastating within seconds, the virus locks those infected into a permanent state of murderous rage. Within 28 days the country is overwhelmed and a handful of survivors begin their attempts to salvage a future, little realizing that the deadly virus is not the only thing that threatens them.
• A Handmaid’s Tale (1990): Set in a Fascistic future America, The Handmaid’s Tale tells the story of Kate, a handmaid. In this America, the religious right has taken over and gone hog-wild. Kate is a criminal, guilty of the crime of trying to escape from the US, and is sentenced to become a Handmaid. The job of a Handmaid is to bear the children of the man to whom she is assigned. After ruthless group training by Serena Joy in the proper way to behave, Kate is assigned as Handmaid to the Commander. Kate is attracted to Nick, the Commander’s chauffeur. At the same time, a resistance movement begins to challenge the regime.
• Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970): Forbin is the designer of an incredibly sophisticated computer that will run all of America’s nuclear defenses. Shortly after being turned on, it detects the existence of Guardian, the Soviet counterpart, previously unknown to US Planners. Both computers insist that they be linked, and after taking safeguards to preserve confidential material, each side agrees to allow it. As soon as the link is established, the two become a new Super computer and threaten the world with the immediate launch of nuclear weapons if they are detached. Colossus begins to give it’s plans for the management of the world under it’s guidance. Forbin and the other scientists form a technological resistance to Colossus that must operate underground.
• Cube (1997): Six different people, each from a very different walk of life, awaken to find themselves inside a giant cube with thousands of possible rooms. Each has a skill that becomes clear when they must band together to get out: a cop, a math whiz, a building designer, a doctor, an escape master, and a disabled man. Each plays a part in their thrilling quest to find answers as to why they’ve been imprisoned.
• Damnation Alley (1997): A small group of survivors at a military installation who survived World War 3 attempt to drive across the desolate wasteland to where they hope more survivors are living. Hopefully their specially built vehicles will protect them against the freakish weather mutated plant and animal life and other dangers along the way.
• Eraserhead (1977): Is it a nightmare or an actual view of a post-apocalyptic world? Set in an industrial town in which giant machines are constantly working, spewing smoke, and making noise that is inescapable, Henry Spencer lives in a building that, like all the others, appears to be abandoned. The lights flicker on and off, he has bowls of water in his dresser drawers, and for his only diversion, he watches and listens to the Lady in the Radiator sing about finding happiness in heaven. Henry has a girlfriend, Mary X, who has frequent spastic fits. Mary gives birth to Henry’s child, a frightening looking mutant, which leads to the injection of all sorts of sexual imagery into the depressive and chaotic mix.
• Freejack (1992): Auto racer Alex Furlong is snatched by time travel, a split second before a fatal explosion, by Vasendak’s 21st-century team of techies, who plan to sell his healthy body to an ailing rich man at McCandless Corporation, for a mind transfer. He escapes, but has no rights in this nightmare future of violence and sleaze. The story concerns his survival, and his attempt to revive his relationship with his fiancée Julie, now 15 years older and an executive at McCandless.
• Caligula (1979): The rise and fall of the notorious Roman Emperor Caligula, showing the violent methods that he employs to gain the throne, and the subsequent insanity of his reign – he gives his horse political office and humiliates and executes anyone who even slightly displeases him. He also sleeps with his sister, organizes elaborate orgies and embarks on a fruitless invasion of England before meeting an appropriate end. There are various versions of the film, ranging from the heavily- truncated 90-minute version to the legendary 160-minute hardcore version, which leaves nothing to the imagination.
• Harrison Bergeron (1995): "All men are not created equal. It is the purpose of the Government to make them so." This is the premise of the Showtime film adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s futuristic short story Harrison Bergeron. The film centers on a young man (Harrison) who is smarter than his peers, and is not affected by the usual "Handicapping" which is used to train all Americans so everyone is of equal intelligence.
• Johnny Mnemonic (1995): In 2021, the whole world is connected by the gigantic Internet, and almost a half of the population is suffering from the Nerve Attenuation Syndrome (NAS). Johnny with an implanted memory chip in his brain was ordered to transport the over loaded information from Beijing to Newark. While Pharmakom Industries supported by yakuza tries to capture him to get the information back, the Low-tech group led by J-Bone tries to break the missing code to download the cure of NAS which Johnny carries.
• Judge Dredd (1995): In a dystopic future, where urban areas have grown into megacities that cover entire coastal regions, the justice system has evolved to a single person invested with the power of police, judge, jury, and executioner: the Judge. Among the Judges of Mega-City One, Judge Dredd is one of the best, and a particular favorite of the Head of the Council, Judge Fargo. But there are evil forces at work in the Justice Dept: block riots and the escape of Rico, a homicidal maniac, are only steps in a plan that ultimately lead to the sentencing of Dredd for a murder he didn’t commit. And Dredd must discover the secrets of his own past and survive to stop the evildoers.
• La Jetée (1962): In a devastated Paris in the aftermath of WWIII, The few surviving humans begin researching time travel, hoping to send someone back to the pre-war world for food, supplies and maybe a solution to their dire position. One man is haunted by a vague childhood memory that will prove fateful.
• Lektionen in Finsternis/Lessons of Darkness (1992): This film shows the disaster of the Kuwaitian oil fields in flames. In contrast to the common documentary film, there are no comments and few interviews. What must have been the hell itself is presented to the viewer in such beautiful sights and beautiful music that one has to be fascinated by it. The German title translates ‘lessons in darkness’.
• Malevil (1981): Vaguely reminiscent in mood of Polanski’s Cul-de-Sac, this is a weird – but not weird enough – post-nuclear survival drama, with assorted members of a strong cast gathering at the eponymous castle and trying to keep civilization going. After a decent start, the movie soon drifts into the usual set of dramatic options: illness, reproduction, farming, and of course the fascists in the forest.
• Modern Times (1936): The idea of the film was apparently given to Chaplin by a young reporter, who told him about the production line system in Detroit, which was turning its workers into nervous wrecks. In the film, Charlie becomes literally trapped in the machine and, in one of his finest patches of comic invention, is battered and buffeted by an automatic feeding machine introduced by his bosses to save time and money. Cured after his breakdown, he is arrested when he picks up a red flag that has fallen off the back of a lorry, and runs down the street to return it, exactly the same time as a left-wing demonstration comes round the corner. He meets ‘The Gamine’ (Paulette Goddard) in the back of the police van, who has also been arrested for stealing bread. From then on, the theme is about two nondescripts trying to get along in modern times. "Smile, though your heart is breaking …"
• Kin-Dza-Dza (1986): Russian language only Two Humans (Dyadya Vova and Skripach) accidentally find themselves on another planet after pushing the wrong button on the strange device in the hand of an odd looking alien. Planet "Plyuk" in the galaxy "Kin-Dza-Dza" looks like a desert. All the aliens look exactly like humans, and can understand Russian, because they can read thoughts, their language is limited to a few words, however. The whole paradox of Plyuk is that their civilization is much more advanced than ours in time and space traveling, weaponry and so on, but totally barbarian in the social way. The movie is a cult sensation in Russia, akin to movies such as Donnie Darko in the US.
• Quatermass and the Pit (1967): While digging a new subway line in London, a construction crew discovers first: a skeleton, then what they think is an old World War II German missile. Upon closer examination, the "missile" appears to be not of this earth! This movie examines the age-old question of how we came to be on this planet. It is surprisingly scary.
• Reign of Fire (2002): It is twenty years in the future, and the planet has been devastated by vicious fire-breathing dragons. The last vestiges of humanity now struggle for survival in at remote outposts. In a ruined castle in the English countryside, Quinn is desperately trying to hold together a band of frightened, restless survivors. As a boy, Quinn watched his mother die protecting him from one of the beasts, and is still haunted by the memory. One day, a group of American rouges shows up, led by a brash, tough-guy named Van Zam. He claims to have discovered a way to kill the dragons finally, and enlists Quinn’s help. However, doing so will force Quinn to confront his own frightening memories. This, and Quinn’s responsibilities to those that are under his protection, results in a battle of wills between the two men. In the end, events cause them both to realize that they must work together to defeat the monsters–both without and within.
• Series 7: The Contenders (2001): Ever seen the show "Survivor" and wished they would just start killing each other? Series 7 literally gives its contestants the guns. The film is not merely a satire on reality TV. It is an example of just how far people will shamelessly go for fame. Six contenders are pitted against each other in a no holds barred, kill or be killed contest. The reigning champion is Dawn, a hard-nosed, mother-to-be. We go back and forth between Dawn and the other 5 contenders to see if someone can dethrone Dawn and become the new Champion. What is the prize? How are the contestants picked? These questions are not as important as asking yourself how shameless has our society become.
• Solaris (1972): This film probes man’s thoughts and conscience, as it follows a psychologist who is sent to a space station situated over the mysterious Solaris Ocean. The two other scientists there tell the psychologist of strange occurrences in the station, and the Ocean’s eerie ability to materialize their thoughts. After being in the station for a while, the psychologist finds himself becoming very attached to it’s alternate reality.
• Stalker (1979): Near a gray and unnamed city is the Zone, an alien place guarded by barbed wire and soldiers. Over his wife’s numerous objections, a man rises in the dead of night: he’s a stalker, one of a handful who have the mental gifts (and who risk imprisonment) to lead people into the Zone to the Room, a place where one’s secret hopes come true. That night, he takes two people into the Zone: a popular writer who is burned out, cynical, and questioning his genius; and a quiet scientist more concerned about his knapsack than the journey. In the deserted Zone, the approach to the Room must be indirect. As they draw near, the rules seem to change and the stalker faces a crisis.
• Tank Girl (1995): Tank Girl and her friends are the only remaining citizens living in the wasteland that is Earth, where all the remaining water is controlled by Water and Power, the mega corporation/government that runs the territory. While incarcerated at W + P, Tank Girl and her new friend Jet Girl break out and steal… a tank and a jet. After meeting some mutant kangaroo/humans, and rescuing her little girl (adopted by her friends), the kangaroos and the girls kick Water and Powers’ butt.
• The 5th Element (1997): Two hundred and fifty years in the future, life as we know it is threatened by the arrival of Evil. Only the fifth element can stop the Evil from extinguishing life, as it tries to do every five thousand years. She is helped by ex-soldier, current-cab-driver, Korben Dallas, who is, in turn, helped by Prince/Arsenio clone, Ruby Rhod. Unfortunately, Evil is being assisted by Mr. Zorg, who seeks to profit from the chaos that Evil will bring, and his alien mercenaries.
• The Body Snatchers (1978): The first remake of the paranoid infiltration classic moves the setting for the invasion from a small town to the city of San Francisco and starts as Matthew Bennell notices that several of his friends are complaining that their close relatives are in some way different. When questioned later they themselves seem changed as they deny everything or make lame excuses. As the invaders increase in number they become more open and Bennell, who has by now witnessed an attempted "replacement" realizes that he and his friends must escape or suffer the same fate. But who can he trust to help him and who has already been snatched?
• Forbrydelsens element/The Element of Crime (1984): Fischer, an ex-cop, returns to his old beat somewhere in northern Europe after a thirteen-year hiatus in Cairo. His former mentor and role model, author of a treatise called "The Element of Crime", asks him to solve a series of murders involving lottery ticket sellers. Guided by the theories put forth in the book, Fischer retraces the steps of a suspect, Harry Grey, as recorded in a three-year-old police surveillance report. A dark film set in a post-something Europe with unique visual atmosphere and kind of cult-movie status.
• The Island (2005): Lincoln Six-Echo is a resident of a seemingly Utopian but contained facility in the mid 21st century. Like all of the inhabitants of this carefully controlled environment, Lincoln hopes to be chosen to go to the "The Island" – reportedly the last uncontaminated spot on the planet. But Lincoln soon discovers that everything about his existence is a lie. He and all of the other inhabitants of the facility are actually human clones. Lincoln makes a daring escape with a beautiful fellow resident named Jordan Two-Delta. Relentlessly pursued by the forces of the sinister institute that once housed them, Lincoln and Jordan engage in a race for their lives to literally meet their makers.
• The Stepford Wives (1975): Stepford Wives is about a small suburb where the women happily go about their housework – cleaning, doing laundry, and cooking gourmet meals – to please their husbands. Unfortunately, Bobbie and Joanna discover that the village’s wives have been replaced with robots, and Joanna’s husband wants in on the action.
• Videodrome (1983): Lowlife cable TV operator Max Renn discovers a "snuff TV" broadcast called Videodrome. But Videodrome is more than a TV show – it’s an experiment that uses regular TV transmissions to permanently alter the viewer’s perceptions by giving them brain damage. Max is caught in the middle of the forces that created Videodrome and the forces that want to control it, his body itself turning into the ultimate weapon to fight them.
• Waterworld (1995): In the future, the Greenhouse Effect has taken place on a now ravaged Earth covered in water, and a mysterious drifter aids a mother and daughter in seeking Dryland, a mythical place that a group of savage bandits seek out as well.
• WestWorld (1973): A amusement park for rich vacationers. The park provides its customers a way to live out their fantasies through the use of robots that provide anything they want. Two of the vacationers choose a Wild West adventure. However, after a computer breakdown, they find that they are now being stalked by a rogue robot gunslinger.
• Zardoz (1974): In the distant future Earth is divided into two camps, the barely civilized group and the overly civilized one with mental powers. A plague is attacking the second group after which it’s members cease to have any interest in life and become nearly catatonic. When Sean Connery one of the barbarians, crosses over, the tenuous balance in their world is threatened.

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