I really do miss the 80s/90s era anti-capitalist dystopian future movies. We have the Purge series now, which has been pretty good (at least 3 and 4), but nothing approaching the massive numbers of productions ranging from They Live to Rollerboys to Robocop to Running Man and so many others.

It feels like we’ve hit a tipping point where subconsciously at least we’ve figured out we’re actually the bad guys from Red Dawn and the Wolverines are the people we’re killing, and just decided to lean into it. I’m waiting for Handmaid’s Tale to get a Birth of a Nation makeover in the next ten years.

[–] jaybone 16 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

The 80s/90s anti corporate dystopia was oddly (or maybe not so oddly) a prediction of the outcome of the other 80s/90s movies and media which were very much pro corporate propaganda. The young white male up-and-coming corporate exec, making money, driving fancy cars, was definitely an image they were selling hard in the 80s. Which seemed to align with Reagan’s view of the world.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago (1 children)

You’re absolutely right. In my memory, though, the ones that stick out the most are the ones where the hero is pro-corporate but in an anti-corporate way. I’m thinking about movies like Working Girl, 9 to 5, and Secret of My Success, and even Other People’s Money. The villains were the very straight and square boss types and the heroes were the young(er) upstarts who could out-business them. OPM was a little different but I think it fits the theme.

The main difference I’m seeing is that even in the pro-capitalism shows, it was still all about sticking it to the man. If the good guys were cops, the man was the chief of police. If the good guys were businessmen, the man was their boss. If the good guys were soldiers, the man was their CO, or the generals or politicians back in Washington.

Maybe it’s purely subjective on my part, but it seems like there’s a lot more pro-authority movies being made now. You can’t take a movie like Top Gun (which still had the shaggy haired rebel as well as one of the most homoerotic themes in mainstream cinema at the time) with something like Bill Murray in Stripes. Stripes is great comedy that I’d place almost at the level of Caddyshack, but even though both movies could have been shown by recruiters to get people to enlist, Stripes was still a goofball comedy of the slobs against the snobs (with the snobs in this case being their leadership).

I’d really like to get back into that kind of default cultural image. Cops were mostly corrupt (Serpico) or idiots (Cannonball Run), or else inept (Escape from New York, or all of those stupid Charles Bronson movies).

It just feels like we hit that point where the default is to love Big Brother.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

That sounds very much like the valourisation of what would eventually morph into "disruptive innovation."

Older money loves feeling like it's hip and cool for investing in the promising young upstart. They get to rage against the machine while driving it

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago (1 children)

This was the subject of a limited run comics series by Dark Horse called Robocop vs The Terminator that was pretty rad. It was written by Frank Miller or Sin City and The Dark Knight Rises fame who also wrote the script for Robocop 2. It kind of led to a video game as well. No idea what that was like but the comics were pretty decent as I recall.

[–] samus12345 12 points 9 months ago

The Genesis version was a bloody good time.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

I'm at the point where I'm all for robot cops.