World Gone Wrong SCI-FI explores the Dark side of a Future where Science, Technology, Human Ambition (or all of the above) have chipped away at personal Freedoms, Identity, or Prosperity enough to make us realize — we don’t want to go there. These stories often involve Time Travel — with the Hero hoping to somehow go back and fix things — to make the World right again.
Planet of the Apes (1968)
Planet of the Apes is an American SCI-FI film loosely based on the 1963 novel by Pierre Boulle. The film stars Charlton Heston, Roddy McDowall, Kim Hunter, Maurice Evans, James Whitmore, James Daly, and Linda Harrison. In the film, an astronaut crew crash-lands on a strange planet in the distant future. Although the planet appears desolate at first, the surviving crew members stumble upon a society in which apes have evolved into creatures with human-like intelligence and speech. The apes have assumed the role of the dominant species and humans are mute primitives wearing animal skins.
Storyline
Astronauts Taylor (Heston), Landon and Dodge awaken from deep hibernation after a near-light-speed space voyage. Their spacecraft crashes into a lake on an unknown planet; Taylor’s estimate places them in Orion’s Bellatrix System, 300 light-years from their home Solar System. Before they abandon their sinking vessel, Taylor (the mission commander) reads the ship’s chronometer as November 25, 3978 – two thousand and six years after their departure in 1972. The three astronauts have been in hibernation pods and have aged slightly less than one year. However, a fourth astronaut, Stewart, is found to be dead, having aged rapidly after her hibernation pod was compromised.
The men travel through desolate wasteland, coming across eerie scarecrow-like figures and a freshwater lake with lush vegetation. While the men are swimming, their clothes are stolen and shredded by primitive mute humans. Soon after, armed gorillas raid a cornfield where the humans are gathering food. Taylor is shot in the throat as he and the others are captured. Dodge is killed and Landon is captured in the chaos. Taylor is taken to Ape City. Two chimpanzees, animal psychologist Zira (Hunter) and surgeon Galen, save Taylor’s life, though his throat injury renders him temporarily mute.
Taylor is placed with a captive woman, whom he later names Nova (Harrison). He observes an advanced society of talking apes with a strict caste system: gorillas are the military force and laborers; orangutans oversee government and religion; and intellectual chimpanzees are mostly scientists and doctors. The ape society is a theocracy, while the apes consider the primitive humans as vermin to be hunted and either killed outright, enslaved, or used in scientific experiments. Taylor convinces Zira and her fiancé, Cornelius (McDowall), that he is as intelligent as they are by communicating through written messages and by making a paper airplane. Dr. Zaius (Evans), their orangutan superior, arranges for Taylor to be castrated against Zira’s protests. Taylor escapes and finds Dodge’s stuffed corpse on display in a museum. He is soon recaptured, and regains his voice, which alarms the apes.
A hearing to determine Taylor’s origins is convened. Taylor mentions his two comrades, learning that Landon was lobotomized and rendered catatonic. Believing Taylor either is from an unknown human tribe beyond their borders or was the subject of a mad scientist who gave him the power of speech, Zaius privately threatens to castrate and lobotomize Taylor for refusing to reveal his origins. With help from Zira’s nephew Lucius, Zira and Cornelius free Taylor and Nova and take them to the Forbidden Zone, a taboo region outside Ape City where Taylor’s ship crashed. Ape law has ruled the area out of bounds for centuries. Cornelius and Zira are intent to gather proof of an earlier non-simian civilization – which Cornelius discovered a year earlier – to be cleared of heresy; Taylor focuses on proving he comes from a different planet.
When the group arrives at the cave, Cornelius is intercepted by Zaius and his soldiers. Taylor holds them off by threatening to shoot Zaius, who agrees to enter the cave to disprove their theories. Inside, Cornelius displays remnants of a technologically advanced human society pre-dating simian history. Taylor identifies artifacts such as dentures, eyeglasses, a heart valve and, to the apes’ astonishment, a talking human doll. Zaius admits he has always known about the ancient human civilization. Taylor wants to search for answers. Zaius warns Taylor against finding an answer that he will not like, adding that the now-desolate Forbidden Zone was once a lush paradise. After Taylor and Nova are allowed to leave, Zaius has the cave sealed off to destroy the evidence, while charging Zira, Cornelius and Lucius with heresy.
Taylor and Nova follow the shoreline on horseback. Eventually, they discover the remnants of the Statue of Liberty, revealing that this supposedly alien planet is actually Earth, long after an apocalyptic nuclear war. Understanding Zaius’ earlier warning while Nova looks on in shock, Taylor falls to his knees in despair, cursing humanity for destroying the world.
Twelve Monkeys (1995)
12 Monkeys is an American SCI-FI thriller film directed by Terry Gilliam. It stars Bruce Willis, Madeleine Stowe, Brad Pitt, and Christopher Plummer. Set in a post-apocalyptic future devastated by disease, the film follows a convict who is sent back in time to gather information about the man-made virus that wiped out most of the human population on the planet.
Storyline
A deadly virus released in 1996 wiped out almost all of humanity, forcing survivors to live underground. A group known as the Army of the Twelve Monkeys is believed to have released the virus. In 2035, James Cole (Willis) is a prisoner living in an underground compound beneath Philadelphia. Cole is selected to be sent back in time to find the original virus to help scientists develop a cure in exchange for a reduced sentence. Cole is troubled by dreams involving a foot chase and a shooting at an airport.
Cole arrives in Baltimore in 1990, not 1996 as planned. He is arrested and incarcerated at a mental hospital on the diagnosis of Dr. Kathryn Railly (Stowe). There he encounters Jeffrey Goines (Pitt), a mental patient with extreme environmentalist and anti-corporate views. Cole is interviewed by a panel of doctors and tries to explain that the virus outbreak has already happened and cannot be prevented.
After an escape attempt, Cole is sedated and locked in a cell but he disappears and awakens back in 2035. He is interrogated by the scientists, who play a distorted voicemail message that asserts the association of the Army of the 12 Monkeys with the virus. He is also shown photos of numerous people suspected of being involved, including Goines. The scientists offer Cole another chance to complete his mission and send him back in time. Cole briefly arrives at a battlefield during World War I, where he sees another prison inmate who was sent back in time, José. Cole is shot in the leg and gets transported to 1996.
In 1996, Railly gives a lecture about the Cassandra complex to a group of scientists. At the post-lecture book-signing, Railly meets Dr. Peters, who tells her that apocalypse alarmists represent the sane vision while humanity’s gradual destruction of the environment is the real lunacy.
Cole arrives at the venue after seeing flyers publicizing it. When Railly departs, he kidnaps her and forces her to take him to Philadelphia. They learn that Goines is the founder of the Army of the 12 Monkeys before they set out in search of him. When Cole confronts Goines, he denies any involvement with the group and says that in 1990, Cole originated the idea of wiping out humanity with a virus stolen from Goines’ virologist father, Dr. Leland Goines (Plummer).
Cole is transported back to 2035, where he reaffirms to the scientists his commitment to his mission and asks to be sent back to complete it. When he finds Railly again in 1996, he tells her that he now believes himself crazy as she had suggested. Railly has discovered evidence of his time travel to the Great War which she shows him, believing he is sane. They decide to depart for the Florida Keys before the start of the plague.
Cole and Railly learn that the Army of the 12 Monkeys was not the source of the epidemic; the group’s major act of protest is releasing animals from a zoo and placing Goines’ father in an animal cage. At the airport, Cole leaves a message telling the scientists that they are on the wrong track following the Army of the 12 Monkeys and he will not return. Cole is confronted by José, who gives Cole a handgun and instructs him to follow orders. Railly spots Dr. Peters at the airport and recognizes him from a newspaper as an assistant of Goines’ father. Peters is about to embark on a tour of several cities that matches the viral outbreaks chronologically and geographically.
Cole is informed of Peters by Railly, then forces his way through a security checkpoint in pursuit of Peters. Cole draws his gun, then is shot by police. As he lies dying in Railly’s arms, she scans the crowd around her. She makes eye contact with a small boy: the young James Cole witnessing the scene of his death, which will replay in his dreams for years to come. Peters, aboard the plane with the virus, sits down next to Jones, one of the scientists from the future, who comments that her job is “insurance”. The young Cole watches a plane take off from the ground outside the airport.
The Hunger Games (2012)
The Hunger Games is an American Dystopian action film, based on the 2008 novel by Suzanne Collins. It is the first installment in The Hunger Games film series. The film stars Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson, Elizabeth Banks, Lenny Kravitz, Stanley Tucci, and Donald Sutherland. In the film, Katniss Everdeen (Lawrence) and Peeta Mellark (Hutcherson) are forced to compete in the Hunger Games, an elaborate televised fight to the death consisting of adolescent contestants from the 12 Districts of Panem.
Storyline
Panem is a dystopian nation divided into twelve districts and ruled by its Capitol. As punishment for a failed rebellion seventy-four years before, each district must choose two tributes, a boy and a girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen, to fight to the death in the annual Hunger Games until only one is left alive and declared the “Victor.” The event is televised across the Capitol and all districts.
Katniss Everdeen (Lawrence) lives in District 12 with her younger sister, Primrose, her mother, and her best friend Gale Hawthorne. During the Reaping, Primrose is selected, so Katniss volunteers to take her place in the 74th Hunger Games. She and her fellow District 12 tribute, Peeta Mellark (Hutcherson), are escorted to the Capitol by their chaperone, Effie Trinket (Banks), and mentor Haymitch Abernathy (Harrelson), the only living victor from District 12. Haymitch stresses the importance of gaining sponsors, as they can provide resources during the Games. During a televised interview with Caesar Flickerman (Tucci), Peeta confesses his feelings for Katniss, which she initially sees as an attempt to attract sponsors; she later learns his feelings are genuine.
When the Games start, half of the tributes are killed in the initial brawl, while Katniss grabs supplies from the Cornucopia and flees into the forest. She avoids other tributes, but Seneca Crane, the Gamemaker, triggers a forest fire to drive her back. She encounters the Careers – Marvel, Glimmer, Cato, and Clove – and climbs a tree. Peeta, seeming to ally with them, suggests they wait her out. Hiding in a tree, Rue, the District 11 female tribute, points Katniss to a nest of Tracker Jackers, which she cuts to drop on the sleeping Careers; Glimmer dies, but Peeta and the others escape. Katniss retrieves Glimmer’s bow and arrows but falls ill from stings and hallucinates. Peeta returns, urging her to flee before escaping from the Careers himself.
Rue helps Katniss recover, and the two become friends. Rue distracts the Careers while Katniss destroys a stockpile of their supplies by triggering the mines guarding it. However, Marvel finds and impales Rue with his spear before Katniss shoots him. She comforts Rue by singing, and after she dies, she adorns her body with flowers, inciting a riot in District 11. Panem President Coriolanus Snow (Sutherland) warns Crane he is displeased about the unrest, stating the Games’ purpose is to instill fear to prevent future uprisings.
Haymitch persuades Crane to alter the rules by allowing two victors if they are from the same district, suggesting it would appease the audience. Katniss finds Peeta severely injured, and the two take shelter in a cave. Despite Peeta’s protests, Katniss leaves to get medicine for him at the Cornucopia. She is ambushed and overpowered by Clove, who gloats about Rue’s death. Thresh, District 11’s male tribute, intervenes and kills Clove. He spares Katniss once, for Rue’s sake. The medicine heals Peeta’s wounds overnight.
While hunting, Katniss hears a cannon blast signaling a death. She rushes to Peeta, who unknowingly collected deadly nightlock berries. They find Foxface, the District 5 female tribute, poisoned by the nightlock berries she ate after observing Peeta. To end the Games, Crane unleashes Mutts that kill Thresh, leaving Katniss, Peeta, and Cato as the last survivors. Cato holds Peeta hostage until Katniss shoots his hand, enabling Peeta to escape and push Cato into the Mutts. Katniss then shoots Cato to end his suffering.
Suddenly, Crane revokes the rule change for two victors. Peeta urges Katniss to shoot him, but instead, Katniss suggests they consume nightlock berries together to commit suicide. Just before they eat the berries, Crane stops the games and declares them co-victors. After the Games, Haymitch warns Katniss about the enemies her rebellion created. Snow has Crane locked in a room with night lock berries while contemplating his next move.
The Man in the High Castle (2015)
The Man in the High Castle is an American Dystopian Alternate History TV series (based on Philip K. Dick’s 1962 novel) set in a parallel universe where the Axis powers of Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan rule the world after their victory in World War II. It stars Alexa Davalos, Rufus Sewell and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa. It is set in America in the year 1962, with Hitler still alive and heading the Reich. America is partitioned into two parts: the Greater Nazi Reich and the Japanese Pacific States.
Storyline
Juliana Crane (Davalos), a San Francisco woman becomes entangled with the resistance after her half-sister, Trudy is murdered while trying to transport a film reel to Canon City, Colorado in the Neutral Zone and had given the film to Juliana just before being murdered. The film reel contained a newsreel-style footage, entitled The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, depicting an alternate history in which the Allied Forces won World War II. It was part of a series of similar newsreels being collected by someone referred to as ‘The Man in the High Castle’. Juliana decides to travel to the Neutral Zone to complete the mission of her sister, leaving behind his boyfriend Frank Fink, who is a Jew and lives in the paranoia of being caught.
In Canon City, she encounters Joe Blake, a double agent working for the Nazis under Obergruppenfuhrer John Smith (Sewell), a senior officer in the SS who previously served in the US Army. Joe is pretending to be a member of the resistance in order to find the resistance contact in Canon City, which happens to be Juliana.
Nobusuke Tagomi (Tagawa), a high-ranking Japanese official, the Trade Minister in San Francisco meets secretly with Nazi official Rudolph Wegner to discuss their concerns about the power vacuum that will be caused by either death or forced stepping down of Adolf Hitler. Wegner fears that Hitler’s successor will use the Reich’s nuclear bombs against Japan to gain control of the rest of America. The Japanese are lagging far behind the German technology.
When the Japanese and the Nazis become suspicious of Juliana’s activities, Frank is arrested and questioned by the authorities about the whereabouts of Juliana. They kill his sister and her two children, using their Jewish heritage as an excuse for their execution, after Frank is unable to provide them any information. Frank plans to kill the Japanese Crown Prince and Pricess but finally decides against it.
Season 1 ends with Tagomi standing confused in a different world where America is going through the Cuban Missile Crisis.
It becomes clear that the film reels are not a propaganda but are realities from ALTERNATE WORLDS. It is also clear that there are more than one. The one in a film reel which has video of San Francisco being bombed by a nuclear bomb is different from the one to which Tagomi travels to at the end of the first season as he arrives in a world where Allied forces have won the war. The alternate worlds are also parallel as Juliana discovers through a film that Joe is a Nazi. But Tagomi is the only character who has been shown till now, who can travel between worlds, (and in season 2 he even goes to meet his family and finds out that his son is married to Juliana in that reality.)
(If you have not seen this entire series — be sure to check it out. You won’t be disappointed.)
The Handmaid’s Tale (2017)
The Handmaid’s Tale is an American Dystopian TV series based on the 1985 novel by Canadian author Margaret Atwood. It stars Elisabeth Moss, Yvonne Strahovski, Joseph Fiennes, Ann Dowd, O-T Fagbenle and Bradley Whitford. The plot features a dystopia following a Second American Civil War wherein a theonomic, totalitarian society subjects fertile women, called “Handmaids”, to child-bearing slavery.
Storyline
In a world where fertility rates have collapsed as a result of sexually transmitted diseases and environmental pollution, the totalitarian, theonomic government of Gilead has established its rule in the former United States in the aftermath of a civil war. Society is organized by power-hungry leaders along with a new, militarized, hierarchical régime of religious fanaticism and newly created social classes, in which women are brutally subjugated. By law, women in Gilead are forced to work in severely limited roles, including some as natal slaves, and they are not allowed to own property, have careers, handle money, or even read and write (apart from the Aunts).
Worldwide infertility has led to the enslavement of fertile women in Gilead determined by the new régime to be fallen women, citing an extremist interpretation of the Biblical account of Bilhah. These women often include those who have entered marriages following divorce (termed “adulteresses”, as divorce is not recognized under Gileadian law), single or unmarried mothers, lesbians (homosexuals being termed “gender traitors”), non-Christians, adherents of Christian denominations other than the “Sons of Jacob”, political dissidents, and academics.
These women, called Handmaids, are assigned to the homes of the ruling elite, where they must submit to ritualized rape (referred to as “the ceremony”) by their male masters (“Commanders”) in the presence of their wives with the intent of being impregnated and bearing children for them. Handmaids are given names created by the addition of the prefix Of- to the first name of the man who has them. When they are transferred, their names are changed.
Along with the Handmaids, much of society is now grouped into classes that dictate their freedoms and duties. Women are divided into a small range of social categories, each one signified by a plain dress in a specific color. A Handmaid’s outfit consists of a long red dress, a red cloak, heavy brown boots, and a white coif, with a larger white bonnet (known as “wings”) to be worn outside, which conceals her from the public view and restricts her vision.
June Osborne (Moss), renamed Offred, is the Handmaid assigned to the home of the Gileadan Commander Fred Waterford (Fiennes) and his wife Serena Joy (Strahovski), key players in the formation and rise of Gilead, who struggle with the realities of the society they helped create. During “the time before”, June was married to Luke (Fagbenle) and had a daughter, Hannah.
At the beginning of the story, while attempting to flee Gilead with her husband and daughter, June was captured and forced to become a Handmaid because of the “adultery” she and her husband committed. June’s daughter was taken and given to an upper-class family to raise, and her husband escaped into Canada. Much of the plot revolves around June’s desire to be reunited with her husband and daughter and the internal evolution of her strength to its somewhat darker version.
(Powerful storytelling not to be missed — be sure to watch the entire series!)
World Gone Wrong SCI-FI explores Dark Futures where personal Freedoms, Identity, or Prosperity are Lost — through evil Science, Technology or Human Ambition. Let us hope these tales will serve as a timely Warning to all — to NOT fall prey to those who would try to bend our will with Empty Promises to lift up a few — while trampling the rights of others underfoot.
May such grim Realities … NEVER come to pass.
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(Click image link to view YouTube video)