Start spreading the news, the movie industry’s in trouble today. Or maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of your life. Reject paraphrasing Frank Sinatra, and embrace quoting Casablanca, which just so happens to be a Warner Bros. production, and if you’ve been following the news that’s being spread, you might’ve heard about a certain planned merger that could result in…
…okay, not quite a monopoly. But something closer to a monopoly than what currently exists, and in a world where plenty of companies and distributors have already been bought up and merged, it’s a bit scary from a consumer’s perspective. If you’re reading this, you’re probably a consumer. And if you consume movies, you’ve probably seen a fair few of them that look at mega-powerful companies and/or corporations that own a lot of things – or maybe even close to everything – and might be aware of some of the consequences that follow. The purpose of this ranking wasn’t to specifically look at sci-fi examples, but honestly, all the best ones did just so happen to be, partly or wholly, works of science fiction, so there you go.
10
‘Idiocracy’ (2006)
It’s boring to comment on Idiocracy being a documentary at this point, though at one time, it was a fun and increasingly not-so-absurd thing to say. Maybe it’s been over-said now, or maybe thinking about the idea of an Idiocracy future being real hits too close to home. It’s about two people from the early 2000s accidentally being placed in suspended animation for 500 years, and realizing how much the world has changed for the worse once they do wake up.
While Idiocracy is a dystopian movie, at least it’s a funny one, though the social commentary is there, buried underneath all the absurd and crude humor. Companies have become so powerful in this future that those in charge of them effectively get to run the world much more so than governments did in the past, and the humor (and nightmarish stuff) comes about from how willing those powerful people are to make the population stupider if it means they keep on getting richer.
9
‘Rollerball’ (1975)
Rollerball is not set as far into the future as Idiocracy, but it’s a similar situation, in that corporations run most of the world, and very few powerful people seem to own those corporations. It’s also a much darker dystopian movie than Idiocracy, with the title here referring to a sport known as Rollerball, which is hard to describe beyond saying that it’s like roller derby, with some influences from some other sports, and a whole lot more violent than pretty much any present-day sport.
Rollerball did potentially get the ball rolling on some other stories about dystopian futures and violent sports being played in them.
If you can count it as a sports movie, it might well be one of the more underrated ones, or can at least be considered a cult classic. It’s not as violent when watched today as it would’ve seemed 50 years ago, but Rollerball did potentially get the ball rolling (ha) on some other stories about dystopian futures and violent sports being played in them, like The Running Man, Battle Royale, and The Hunger Games.
8
‘Jurassic World’ (2015)
The first Jurassic Park had InGen, and that company certainly wanted to dominate a field that didn’t quite exist yet: making a theme park with dinosaurs that had been brought back to life, through science. That movie sees the attempt thwarted before the theme park can actually be opened, since all hell breaks loose, but you can see the lengths InGen went to throughout, particularly when it came to merchandising.
Then comes Jurassic World, quite a while later, and now there’s the Masrani Corporation, which has subsidized InGen, and that corporation seems worse and more powerful, not to mention having found “success” in actually opening a dinosaur theme park. Things go wrong because of the corporation because of course they do, and the consequences reverberate throughout subsequent films (maybe not as much as they should, since Jurassic World Dominion kind of dropped the ball on exploring how dinosaurs roaming the world would cause chaos, but oh well). Also, it sometimes feels like Universal Pictures itself kind of has a monopoly on dinosaur movies, because you don’t really see many other big-budget dinosaur movies coming out that aren’t part of the Jurassic World/Park series, even though people do still seem to really like dinosaurs.
7
‘Dune: Part Two’ (2024)
Maybe a little stretch to mention Dune here, but the story is about powerful groups/families trying to have power over the planet Arrakis, thanks to it being the only place where the valuable substance known as Spice exists. People want the Spice, because it’s just that desirable for a number of reasons, and also, all the different families/groups don’t really want to share the Spice.
Beyond Dune: Part Two, there are likely to be future consequences explored for the whole battle over the planet Arrakis, and it’s a good one to single out because of how ominously it ends. Also, it being an ongoing series produced/distributed by Warner Bros., and a pretty successful one at that, there could be changes made to future Dune films or adaptations, especially regarding theatrical releases and all that potentially scary territory.
6
‘Alien’ (1979)
It’s better to look at the overall Alien series if you want an idea of how terrible the ever-powerful Weyland-Yutani Corporation is, but you get a taste of it in the first movie. Well, Aliens was when the name was first specifically spoken, but it’s still the same company that owns the Nostromo, which is the space vessel the main characters are on, and if you want to get analytical, the main characters in this movie do seem very working-class, and they suffer greatly while undertaking work, to put it mildly.
Then, Aliens named the corporation itself, and some of the later movies in the series make Weyland-Yutani further despicable, like Alien: Romulus, particularly its opening act. And then Weyland-Yutani and their dominance over making androids and just generally conquering space becomes a factor in Predator: Badlands, so the company’s a bad/powerful enough one to wreak havoc outside just the Alien series. What it does is sometimes just as scary as what the aliens themselves are capable of.
5
‘Okja’ (2017)
Bong Joon-ho likes looking at capitalism and critiquing it throughout his movies, mostly noticeably in Parasite, but there doesn’t seem to be a monopoly to blame there. It’s just a cruel system that people find themselves in, and the film explores why said system makes people treat each other like adversaries. So, it’s Bong Joon-ho’s sci-fi stuff that gets a little more focused on big and powerful companies or groups, including in Okja.
This is a somewhat light-hearted movie by the director’s standards, and features some fun performances, too, but there’s also darkness here regarding greed and animal abuse/consumption, much of it linking back to the Mirando Corporation. It looks at some real-world issues and lays out why big corporations led by powerful people probably won’t have the answers, or they might well be very good at convincing you that they do.
4
‘Snowpiercer’ (2013)
Oops, he did it again. It’s another Bong Joon-ho movie. Well, technically, Okja was him doing it again, since Snowpiercer came out before Okja, but whatever. In Snowpiercer, the monopoly is a little more abstract than just a corporation owning everything, seeing as most of the movie is set on a single train, and that train is what houses the remaining human population, since the world has become so environmentally devastated.
But the system continues to exist here, and it even thrives in the train setting, really, because all the rich people get to live at the front of the train and control everything/everyone behind them, with the poorer people at the back being stuck between continuing to live in misery or staging a revolt against the people in control at the front. The way it’s laid out and the conflict here isn’t subtle, but Snowpiercer isn’t trying to be subtle, and what it’s going for – with its boldness and intense violence – does ultimately hit hard.
3
‘Metropolis’ (1927)
What Snowpiercer did for trains, Metropolis does for cities. The city is one where rich people live higher up, having a hold on the city and making the poor people, who live far below, risk their lives and while those poor individuals also get very little themselves for all the work they do. Really, Metropolis kind of laid the groundwork for so much science fiction, especially socially conscious sci-fi. Again, like Snowpiercer, not subtle, but it works, and you can cut something some slack when it’s about 100 years old and still regrettably relevant.
There’s a lust for power and control in Metropolis over all else, and it’s interesting to consider the film in relation to historical events that have happened since 1927… to put it mildly. Fritz Lang made so many great films, but none that feel as continually relevant and timeless as Metropolis, and, even better, if you just want to appreciate this on a technical level, Metropolis also largely holds up surprisingly well.
2
‘Soylent Green’ (1973)
In Soylent Green, the Soylent Corporation is responsible for much of the world’s food production, not quite to the point where the corporation has a literal monopoly, but its power is significant. The world that’s being fed largely by said corporation is also an awful one, with all sorts of shortages (not just food) being present because of various world problems that have spiraled out of control.
The Soylent Corporation kind of makes things worse, even if it initially seems like it might be helping, especially once you get that rather famous twist regarding something to do with the food in question (the kind of twist you might know even if you’ve not seen the film). Soylent Green presents one of the most depressing dystopias in sci-fi history, and it’s another story with a big old corporation doing something very undesirable with all the power it holds.
1
‘Blade Runner’ (1982)
A few years on from Alien, Ridley Scott made another sci-fi movie that itself would extend beyond just one movie, all the while also being about the dangers of powerful futuristic corporations, with Blade Runner. The Tyrell Corporation is the one that perfected making replicants appear almost exactly the same as humans, and the conflict largely revolves around what happens when replicants go rogue in a world that already seems pretty miserable when they don’t.
There’s certainly a feeling that the Tyrell Corporation dominates, what with the giant pyramid-like building in the middle of a gloomy Los Angeles that seems to feel quite a bit like the city in Metropolis. People are desperate, everything looks dark and dirty, and while there is still technically a society, it’s somewhere on the dystopia scale overall, with the regrettable believability of that future (even if 2019 is now, admittedly, in the past) being one of the many things that make Blade Runner an absolute classic.
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