Once upon a time, movies like Back to the Future and Terminator 2 seemed like plausible futures even if there were some dystopian elements.
Now, movies like the most recent X-Men movie come along where gigantic liberties are taken with the past, present, and future, and even then, the most horrible possible future portrayed seems like a pretty, glittery impossible jewel of what could-be because what-is can't possibly lead to something so humane. Mutants dying horrible deaths at the hands of sentinels that are so adaptable that the mutants can't keep up? That's a lunatic, beautiful future compared to the kind of black hole of stupidity that humanity is working on now. Idiocracy (the movie) seems far more plausible than anything that exists now. Even if the "logical conclusions" of the movie are totally non-sensical, the initial premise (that the sane people stop reproducing and the morons reproduce copiously) is completely valid.
As dystopian futures go, many that are portrayed in movies really don't look so bad anymore.
- 1984 - meh. We're already there. It can't be so bad.
- Equilibrium - A forced loss of emotion might not be such a bad thing. Far too many really stupid results have been caused by stupid emotional reactions.
- Dredd - In the middle of a chaotic mess there might be people that actually enforce something resembling order? Sign me up.
