Watching movies, you’d think that the end of the world is the coolest thing that could happen to planet Earth.
From stylish techno-nightmares like The Matrix to the post-apocalyptic wastelands of Mad Max: Fury Road, sci-fi dystopia movies provide a certain kind of anti-escapist fantasy.
And we won’t lie: we’d love to wear leather dusters and fight evil computer programs.
Today, Watch With Us rounds up five of our favorite sci-fi dystopia movies, ranked from best to merely great.
Read on and see if any of your favorite movies made the cut.
5. ‘Wall-E’ (2008)
Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class, AKA WALL-E, is the lone trash-collecting robot left on a derelict Earth covered in mountains of trash. Still, WALL-E can find pockets of joy and beauty on the empty planet, while trying to tidy up as best he can. But after collecting garbage alone for 700 years (and not getting any further with it), WALL-E has become lonely — and so he develops an intense affection for a sleek, scanner bot named EVE. The lovesick WALL-E follows EVE all the way into space, where he finds humans residing on a giant spaceship.
WALL-E was an ambitious experiment for Disney and Pixar at the time: a children’s film that features no dialogue for the first 45 minutes. But WALL-E beat the odds and became another classic in Pixar’s roster of hits, a sweet and poignant exploration of the humanity found in dark times. The film does a terrific job of conveying deep emotion not just through a lack of words, but through a lack of expression. Despite its outlook on Earth’s future, WALL-E is unflinchingly optimistic and a rare feel-good dystopian film in the sub-genre.
4. ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ (2015)
In the ravaged wastelands following the collapse of civilization, loner Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy) does whatever it takes to survive. When Max is captured by cronies of the tyrannical despot Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne), he manages to escape and sneak onto Joe’s armored war rig set out to retrieve more oil and ammunition. But the war rig’s driver, Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron), has other plans: she’s going to make a daring dash to freedom, with Joe’s enslaved wives in tow. Thus begins a madcap chase across the desert as Max allies with Furiosa to free not just themselves, but all of Joe’s oppressed people.
While Mad Max: Fury Road is actually the fourth installment of a franchise that began all the way back in the ’70s, widespread feeling is that Fury Road is handily the best. The Mad Max movies started with George Miller directing Mel Gibson as Max in 1979, yet Miller seems to have only cultivated even more directorial zeal and spirit in his older age. Fury Road is a nonstop, high-octane thrill ride from start to finish, with practical car stunts that will blow your mind. But it’s not all just meathead action — Theron and Hardy sustain the film’s solid emotional crux.
3. ‘Children of Men’ (2006)
In the far-off year of (gulp) 2027, two decades of human infertility render the world on the brink of collapse. War, depression and oppressive police states plague the planet, and a disillusioned bureaucrat named Theo Faron (Clive Owen) is kidnapped by a militant group led by his estranged ex-wife Julian (Julianne Moore). Julian offers Theo money in exchange for the safe passage of a young refugee woman named Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey). When Theo discovers that the woman is pregnant, he understands he has to do whatever it takes to secure her safety and that of the human race.
Children of Men is a riveting science fiction drama, a moving portrait of faith in the face of despair and a flat-out exhilarating political thriller. Alfonso Cuarón adapts P. D. James’ novel into a tour de force of visual complexity and technical masterwork (the one-shot car ambush scene is iconic; you’ll know it when you see it). The brilliance of Cuarón’s dystopia is that it’s utterly ordinary, yet totally bereft — and still, it ends on a glimmer of hope.
2. ‘Blade Runner’ (1982)
Threatened by his old boss to go back to work, Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) resumes his job as a blade runner, a person who tracks down and “kills” bioengineered humanoids known as replicants. Deckard must hunt for four replicants who have illegally escaped to Earth: Leon (Brion James), Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer), Pris (Daryl Hannah) and Zhora (Joanna Cassidy). The replicants have returned to Earth in search of their creator, longing for their short life spans to be lengthened. In the meantime, Deckard finds himself falling for a beautiful replicant assistant named Rachael (Sean Young).
Blade Runner is one of those movies whose cultural cache is so strong, you’d be forgiven if you had no idea that it was a major flop upon release. Now, it is regarded widely as one of the best science fiction films ever made, resulting in the 2017 sequel Blade Runner 2049. The film nimbly fuses neo-noir mystery with sci-fi action, in a world made strikingly rich due to detailed production design, immersive sound and practical sets and miniatures. Blade Runner has influenced countless sci-fi films in its wake, such as Ex Machina, The Matrix and Ghost in the Shell (1995).
1. ‘The Matrix’ (1999)
Ordinary computer programmer Thomas Anderson (Keanu Reeves) moonlights as a hacker named Neo and digs into a mystery surrounding the “Matrix.” His research catches the attention of a hacker named Trinity (Carrie-Ann Moss), who informs Neo that a mysterious figure named Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) can answer all his questions. Neo learns the unfortunate truth — that the world he knows is a simulation, and that AI took over the real world, using artificially conceived humans to power it. Morpheus increasingly believes Neo to be humanity’s messiah, but first Neo has to prove himself, master the Matrix and defeat an evil program known as Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving).
If you’ve never seen The Matrix, one viewing is all it takes to understand why the movie has maintained such a chokehold on pop culture through the years. With an easily accessible narrative, the Wachowskis blend exciting action, a thrilling adventure atmosphere, state-of-the-art special effects and a particularly romantic love story into a film experience that is basically everything you could want out of a well-made blockbuster. The movie probed tech anxieties of the time while burdening us with a lasting question: Do we really live in the Matrix?
