Hollywood Dystopia

• It takes place in the future. Sometimes only a few years but often centuries from now.
  
  
• Something happened to destroy life as we know it today. It could be a world war, a pandemic, or a cataclysmic environmental disaster.
  
  
• Human life is devalued or controlled completely. Deprivation, oppression and terror are used to control whatever humans remain. The birthrate is often controlled or suppressed.
  
  
• There is an evil force pulling the strings. It could be a totalitarian government, a multinational corporation, an alien race or robots.
  

Governmental or Societal: the societies created claims to be utopian but are really dystopian because some segment of society is excluded from the utopian dream. Exclusion can be for many different reasons including genetics. Examples of governmental/societal dystopian films include 1984 and Aeon Flux.

Cyberpunk/techno: uses elements from the hard boiled detective novel and fim noir. The evil force is at least partially technological. The alienated outsider's battle against a repressive system is a common theme. Examples of cyberpunk dystopia films include: Blade Runner and Strange Days.

Post-apocalyptic: after a great disaster either man-made or natural. The world is dirty and run down. Very little still works. Humans scrounge for survival. Examples of post-apocalyptic dystopia films include: Mad Max and A Boy and His Dog

Corporate based: control of the world has been taken over by a corporation. This corporation controls everything from food production to medical services and policing. Examples of corporate dystopia films include: Minority Report and RoboCop.

Alien controlled: the world has been taken over by aliens. Usually humans don't realize it until someone stumbles on the truth. Examples of alien control dystopia films include: Dark City and They Live

Some dystopia films have elements from more than one category. Tank Girl and The Matrix Trilogy are good examples.

In the world of 2116, a person's maximum age is strictly legislated: twenty-one years, to the day. When people reach this Lastday they report to a Sleepshop in which they are willingly executed. A person's age is revealed by their palm flower - a crystal embedded in the palm of their right hand that changes color every seven years, then turns black on Lastday.

Runners are those who refuse to report to a Sleepshop and attempt to avoid their fate by escaping to Sanctuary. Logan 3 is a Deep Sleep Operative (or Sandman) whose job is to terminate Runners using a special weapon called the Gun, an unusual revolver which can fire a number of different projectiles, including a compact net. On his own Lastday he becomes a Runner himself in an attempt to infiltrate an apparent underground railroad for runners seeking Sanctuary - a place where they can live freely in defiance of society's dictates. For most of the book, therefore, Logan is an antihero; however, his character develops a growing sympathy towards Runners and in the end he himself is truly a Runner.

Jessica 6, a contact Logan made after he chased her Runner brother Doyle 10 into Cathedral where he was killed by the vicious preteen "Cubs," helps him, despite her initial distrust of him. Francis, another Sandman and a friend of Logan, catches up with Logan and Jessica after they have managed to make it to the final staging area before Sanctuary. He reveals that he is actually the legendary Ballard, who has been helping arrange their escape. The 42-year-old Ballard is working from within the system; he believes that the computer that controls the city, buried beneath Crazy Horse Mountain, is beginning to malfunction, and that the society will die with it.

Sanctuary turns out to be an abandoned space colony near Mars. Logan and Jessica escape to the colony on a rocket that departs from a former space program launch site in Florida. Ballard remains to help others escape.

Source

Strange Days is the title of a 1995 science fiction film directed by Kathryn Bigelow and produced and co-written by James Cameron and Jay Cocks, starring Ralph Fiennes, Angela Bassett, Juliette Lewis, Tom Sizemore, and Vincent D'Onofrio. The film contains a dystopian view of the future, moral ambivalence of many of its characters and the technological and social issues raised make it an example of the cyberpunk genre in film.

Plot Summary
In December 1999, Los Angeles has become a dystopic urban nightmare beneath a heightened police tensions and civil unrest, stemming largely from the brutal murder of Jeriko One (Glenn Plummer), a hip-hop artist strongly critical of the LAPD and police brutality. Against the remaining days of the millennium, former police detective turned street hustler Lenny Nero (Ralph Fiennes) deals in 'SQUID' recordings, experiences taken directly from the cerebral cortex which when played back through a MiniDisc-like device allow a user to experience all recorded sensory inputs (sight, hearing, smell, and touch) as if experiencing it themselves. Despite his charm and suaveness, Lenny yearns for his ex-girlfriend Faith (Juliette Lewis), constantly reliving their happier times through his SQUID recordings or relying on his friend and bodyguard Lornette "Mace" Mason (Bassett) for emotional support.

While dealing erotic SQUID recordings, Lenny receives snuff "black jack" tape portraying the excruciating rape and murder of Iris (Brigitte Bako), a street prostitute he is acquainted with who recently tried to contact him before her death. Deeply troubled by both the tape and warnings Iris had made about Faith's safety (the two having been friends), and convinced that the killer will strike again, Lenny follows the leads to music industry mogul Philo Gant (Michael Wincott), Faith's new boyfriend.

As he receives more snuff tapes, Lenny and Mace eventually discover that the case is tied to both a cover-up of the murder of Jeriko One, and dark rumours of a top-secret "death squad" operating within the LAPD. As they are hunted by Philo's goons and two sinister police officers, Lenny and Mace find themselves in a race to uncover the full truth before the murderer catches up with them, and before civil war descends on Los Angeles. Meanwhile, Lenny and Mace's relationship begins to deepen and intensify as he finds out the truth about Faith, while trying to protect her.