Of all modern Sci-Fi Dystopia depicted in movies, which do you think our world will most resemble or already does resemble?

Idiocracy 💯

It seems like we're shifting into Minority Report. There are actual pre crime divisions in police departments now and the surveillance state continues to grow exponentially.

Three way tie in my book:

That episode of Black Mirror where everyone had to ride stationary bikes and were forced to watch unskippable ads if they didn't have credits, except everything you have to watch is AI slop instead of your crush doing porn.

Or the Handmaid's Tale, but instead of some mysterious infertility crisis, fertile women are rare because they die in pregnancy and childbirth due to anti-science rhetoric flat out killing them. (Look up "free birthing", etc.) At some point it gets bad enough that replacing your wife is more like getting a new pet.

Maybe the hot version of The Road. We just have wars over water and resources until the plantet's too fucked for human life, and the survivors are left roaming around making jerky out of each other until the end.

Could be all three at once. Yay!

We're not there yet, but I could see a bit more fear-mongering smashing us into V For Vendetta territory

Lots of great answers here but the first that came to my mind is Gattaca.

We're in that part in the Star Trek timeline where everything is shitty.

Right now it's like Johnny Mnemonic.

In the future possibly Wall-E or Elysium (most likely Elysium).

Children of Men

Elysium - rich people living in space or enclaves; the rest of us in slums with robots and AIs controlling us.

Present day isn't Idiocracy, in the Idiocracy the president cared about his people and listened to the world's smartest man to fix the crops.

THX 1138. The police robots force us to build them and beat us if we don't. We have no idea who controls them.

1984

Children of men.

Plastics that have accumulated in our bodies are going to have massive impacts on our bodys regular functions. Covid ran rampant causing mental decline and increased weaknesses to milder diseases, leading to further degradation of our body's regular function. Authoritarianism is deep set into our politics Climate change is forcing more and more people into refugee status. The rich and wealthy continue to violate our planet for their own gain, building themselves bunkers and personal armies to defend themselves from the consequences of their actions.

Okay I'm gonna sound like an optimist, but I think The Expanse timeline, without the blue goo stuff, is a possible future.

I know it still doesn't sound good since um... there are still human rights issues and corruption, but hey, at least humans didn't go extinct. And we get to go to space.

Robocop, corporate ownership of major infrastructure, militant authoritarian police force.

I would say that we will very soon find ourselves in 1984 or perhaps Brazil, with a little bit of The Circle and Her thrown in, but overall it will be more like The Road due to climate change, unless Elysium technology has been developed by then, which is unlikely, but if so, it will certainly be used as depicted in the film.

It's not a sci-fi dystopia, but I just watched Zootopia again and the plot is harsher in hindsight. The villain is trying to gain power by turning everyone against a minority population and making them fear that minority. To think this came out before Trump's first presidency.

Cyberpunk 2077 but without any of the cool tech shit.

I dunno but I feel like if we get another year of trump, we will be doing “the running man” competition with immigrants

Feels like Judge Dredd

I'm going with "They Live".

The Running Man novel is set in 2025 and the second movie adaptation just came out. Things aren't as bad as they are portrayed there. Reality shows aren't killing people yet. But people are going on exploitative reality shows because they feel desperate for money.

Maybe recency bias, but a lot of stuff from the new Running Man hits home. Maybe not the murder TV show but (obviously minor worldbuilding spoilers):

Bifurcated society, where the have nots have to check in to enter the nice part of town. (Related story: A couple years ago, I visited America for a wedding. After the pre-wedding reception, I was walking back to my hotel through an upscale neighbourhood, in a suit. Within a half hour private security drove by, got out of the car, hand on gun and explained they'd received calls about me walking on the sidewalk. The guy then insisted he drive me to a more suitable area.)

Unions existed but reporting to them gets you blacklisted, people need work so safety regulations only exist on paper.

Veterans Affairs is taken over by the Y and reduced to a miserable hostel and not much else.

Time in a green park is awarded by lottery and only briefly.

Ubiquitous private security.

One media network, that is free and mostly exists to pit haves vs have nots. (Pretty much social media already)

Etc. I think the part that really gets me is you don't have to imagine particularly hard to see us getting there.

Elysium seems a good candidate.

Wall-E

Not a movie yet (AFAIK), but Octavia Butler’s novel Parable of the Sower is downright uncanny.

Cyberpunk but without the cool stuff like cyber ware or flying cars.

Shadowrun.

OK, maybe without all the supernatural elements.

Idiocracy.

I don't know, I'm not sure anyone has made a movie about a boring-ass dystopia where the rich plunder everything and the rest of us are too propagandized to care no matter how desperate things get. I'm going for a special mix of Harrison Bergeron, The Day After Tomorrow and The Road ultimately. Oh and Snowcrash , but until we get there I'm sure "The Frog Boil" will be a hit when it does come out.

“A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.”

Visionary Aldous Huxley

Quality land by Marc Uwe Kling. The world is basically ruled by hyper capitalistic cooperations, people are rated by their productivity people don’t buy stuff actively, it’s bought for them by their personal AI when the algorithm thinks they need it.

The plot partly follows the presidential election between an AI powered Robot that tries to act in the interest of humanity versus a populist right wing TV cook that’s a shockingly close prediction of Trump. The other part is about the main character on his mission to refund an item he didn’t actually want.

To this day my favourite dystopian book.

Right now: Deus Ex, specifically the Adam Jensen games

in the Near future, best case we get Cyberpunk 2077, worst case we get Horizon Zero dawn’s Faro Plague

I've always thought it would be like Tank Girl but the big company is basically a merger of Amazon and Nestle.

Brazil

The Lathe of Heaven.

Someones having some really bad dreams and fucking with the timeline.

Brave New World needs an honourable mention for only looking more plausible a century later. We do like our horny birth control sex and not thinking too hard about sad things.

I hope for cyberpunk, because Star Trek (post-WWIII) isn't gonna happen. Dune or a boring version of Terminator are also in the running, possibly at the same time.

Edit: A cyberpunk phase might give way to a far future that's not exactly Star Trek, but that is similarly equal, tolerant and pleasant. I know that wasn't the question, but that's why it's the direction I'm pushing for.

If it's Dune, the last couple centuries were a blip, and the kind of violent autocratic hell that existed before that is just what human civilisation naturally looks like, so it will keep going. If it's Terminator, hopefully the AI does something nice without us, at least.

I would say we're getting dangerously close to the videogame "Freedom Fighters". Just replace Soviet Union with MAGA and New York with US and we're already there.

wiki synopsis:

The game is set in an alternate history in which the Soviet Union has invaded and occupied New York City. The player takes the role of Christopher Stone, a plumber turned resistance movement leader, fighting against the invaders in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and on Governors Island.

I forget what series of events lead to the future of Futurama.

Warhammer 40k /s

There's that episode of The Orville where social media is the law.

https://orville.fandom.com/wiki/Majority_Rule

Ratchet & Clank

I think the Wired of Serial Experiments Lain is pretty accurate.

Companies like Meta are actively trying to create an immersive digital world (the "metaverse") like the Wired.

And the Wired is symbolic of the issues with the modern internet, from the escapism and addiction to rumors to false information shaping peoples views to companies controlling the world throigh algorithms and censorship.

The multiple Lains are symbolic of how everyone can a different view of you and your opinions, often shaped by lies, and the Wired Lain which is the one of these actually controlled by her is symbolic of how we act differently online than in real life.

Masami Eiri is symbolic of companies and powerful individuals controlling online narratives and owning most of the internet you interact with.

The Phantoma game is symbolic of how the things that happen and the things that are said online have real world consequences.

It is an absolutely brilliant show which I highly recommend watching if you like visual metaphors.

Parable of the Sower.

Murderbot if we as a species ever make it that far

Wondla

Brave New World.