Utopian Movies

I've just read the book Utopia and I was just wondering if there were actually any Utopian movies out there and how would you classify them as Utopian?

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Logans Run is a good one. Nobody lives past the age of 35 so there's no old people to bog down society and the people that reach the age are painlessly done away with.


Fahrenheit 451 by Truffaut is another one, and I get sick of people saying it sucks because it didn't have the hounds. While that would have been cool, it's hardly a reason to say a great movie sucks. And people need to realize that movies and books are two different ways of telling a story, so the movie is great in it's own right.

those two that I thought of right away

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the time machine (both of them, although i do prefer the first) is another good choice...

Utopia connotes an ideal society, both Logan's Run and Fahrenheit 451 are set in dystopian rather than utopian societies. The films that have gotten closest to depicting a kind of Utopia would have to be the Star Trek movies, and their entertainment value is arguable.

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Lost Horizon, from James Hilton's novel. Two major film versions have been made. The first, from 1937 directed by Frank Capra and starring Ronald Colman, Thomas Mitchell, Edward Everett Horton and others, is the better of the two. The second version was made in 1973 starring Michael York, George Kennedy, Peter Finch and others - and be warned: it's got Musical numbers. Neither is a particularly good adaptaion of the novel.

The great movie The Mosquito Coast (1986 - Peter Weir) tells the story of an American family led by a dynamic if stubbornly insane father (Harrison Ford) who leave civilization to try and set up their own Utopia in the Central American jungle.

The '50s-TV world Tobey Maguire and Reese Witherspoon find themselves transported to in Pleasantville (1998) is a kind of Utopia. The Sly Stallone Sci-Fi actioner Demolition Man presents a Utopian future free of violence - until Sly and Snipes start shooting up the joint.


And of course The Smurfs.

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I was going to make this same point, until I read Blue's post.

The problem with identifying a film with a utopian society is that something always goes wrong, and in turn, what was being presented as utopian is actually dystopian. You can't have a story with a complete utopian setting because then there'd be no conflict.

Other films that deal with utopia/dystopia: [b]Westworld, Brazil, Metropolis, A Clockwork Orange, Planet of the Apes

A couple of great books dealing with utopia/dystopia is The Giver by Lois Lowry and her follow-up Gathering Blue. Very short and easy reads (intended audience is junior high students).

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Alright I don't get it,

here's the two definitions


Utopia - An ideally perfect place, especially in its social, political, and moral aspects.

dystopia - An imaginary place or state in which the condition of life is extremely bad, as from deprivation, oppression, or terror.


I wouldn't say the condition of life is very bad at all in either Fahrenheit 451 or Logan's Run. In fact it's very good and everyone seems happy, even if it is at the cost of certain freedom's of theirs. To me they fit the definition of Utopia more than dystopia. The condition of life is very good in both films and no one is really oppressed

To me a movie like Blade Runner or the future world of The Terminator would more represent a dystopia.

On the surface they may seem utopian, but they are based on lies and deceit, which makes them neither ideal nor perfect.

I thought Utopia was "man's dream of a better world" or something like that. So wouldn't all futuristic films be more or less Utopian because they're always what the writer dream of as a better world?

Of course Logan's Run and every other movie of the type that depicts a Utopia is ultimately revealed to be less than the ideal by the end of the story. Otherwise, what the Hell would the drama arise from? Perfection uniterrupted does not a story make.

But no, not every Sci-Fi film set in the future is depicting a Utopia. Many are just the opposite (dystopia, as viddy has already defined above), from BladeRunner to The Road Warrior to everything in between.

The film follows the theme of dystopian societies. I'm not sure what year the movie is set in (I think it tries for a 50's feel) or what year the movie was made, maybe early 90's. Basically the main character finds himself tired with the laws of society and how they view intelligence as being a negative trait to possess. People who are intelligent have to wear some kind of mind control device to make them more normal and they are encouraged to breed with someone considered to have below average intelligence. Normal is the goal of this dystopian society. I remember a scene where the main character tries to find an outlet for his creative tendancies, so he meets up with other like minded people in an old houes and engages in an illegal game of chess. The place is raided and he is taken to a government facility which is the real controller of the society. Other bits of info President picked at random (like a lotto) from the population, main character gets fed up and locks himself in a control room in the facility and plays music, films etc for society to enjoy (hopefully wake up from their almost zombie like state). Could anybody who recognises this movie please give me the title, it is driving me crazy. Any help would be great.

Harrison Bergeron maybe? It was adapted with many changes from a Vonnegut story and starred Sean Astin.

Thanks for that you are spot on. How on earth you know that is beyond me, but thanks again. Now I can finally go to sleep.

Yer welcome.

I have found a lot of utopian movies to be movies that blur the lines between utopias and dystopias. What is one persons dystopia is often forced onto other people and becomes a dystopia for other people. A lot of great science fiction explores these ideas and I've actually created a list of them, ranking them from (in my opinion) best to worst. I've also talked more about this idea of blurring utopia and dystopia. I recommend checking that out:

beerandscifi(dot)com/2008/07/utopiandystopian-sci-fi-films/

Also, another movie right off the top of my head that is a musical and sort of fantastical romance is Brigadoon.

Hope that helps,
eric

Good on you, Pike! I was wondering why nobody had immediate cited Lost Horizon, which virtually defined utopia via the popular book and film. I've always thought The Man Who Would Be King is sort of a reality check on Lost Horizon in which paradise dissolves into hell when Sean Connery begins to believe his own fantasies.

The 1973 remake of Lost Horizon undoubtedly has the worse musical numbers ever written, although one of the idiotic tunes got a lot of air play on some pop stations at the time. I have totally forgotten it and the other numbers.

Soylent Green was a dystopia disguised as Utopia until one looked behind the curtain a la Wizard of Oz, which also was not what it pretended to be. The same could be said of a popular segment on The Twilight Zone TV series in which aliens come to earth to solve man's problems and illnesses, before taking spaceship loads of people for a "visit" to their planet. One such person learns too late that an alien manual entitled How to Serve Man is in reality a cook book!

Brigadoon is indeed an Utopian musical with great songs and dances. It is Utopia for most of the people who have always lived tin the small village and for Gene Kelly who loves one of the residents, but not so for cynical visitor Van Johnson and the one Scotsman who is killed trying to escape from the village.

Another utopian town that was the subject of another popular musical is Camelot.

We've talked of utopian worlds, regions, and villages, but how about the Utopian baseball diamond in A Field of Dreams? Built it and he did come.

Ah yes! Brigadoon one of my all time top ten movies!

I like many of these kinds of movies but most so called utopian socieites in movies, do hide or employ fear and loss of freedoms. Therefore they are not really any sort of utopia.

I watched Fahrenheit 451last year. I found the society quite horrible. The movie was often difficult for me to watch, due to the meanness of that society, as it was displayed in the movie.

I love Planet of the Apes but I wouldn't call it a Utopian society either. Not for the humans or the looked down on / racially profiled Gorillas. Ironically they are some of the most gentle of apes in RL.

Westworld as a sort of Disneyland for grownups came close, except for the fact it was an escape from whatever thier real lifes were like. It was nearly perfect until the machines turned evil. I LOVED that movie! It was The Terminator before The Terminator had been thought about!

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They're making a film based on Brave New World, due out in 2011, it should be better than the lame tv movies they attempted already. It can be seen as a Utopia, although personally it disturbs me and I think Huxley wrote it with that in mind. The people are given drugs by the government, to have a monogamous relationship is considered obscene and people are expected to have many sexual partners. Hmm, almost sounds like todays society, almost.

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