Movies showing the urban future

the present as a distort reality

THE MATRIX (1999)

Larry and Andy Wachowsky, the directors of this movie described a world where reality is nothing more than a computer program created by evil machines. A world that seems real, but it's just a screen1 hiding the real truth.
In XXI century, a new kind of Big Brother, thanks to the Matrix, a giant computer linked to humans' brain, has turned the world in a parallel, simulated universe. Thomas Anderson (Keanu Reeves), called Neo joins a group of rebels whom the chief, Morpehus (Laurence Fishburne) is convinced to have found in him the saviour. The one who will wake up humanity from the cybernetic sleep.
The world described by Wachowsky Bros is probably the most pessimistic, dark future ever imagined in a cyber-action movie. It's the result of a mix of cinema and comics, martial arts and videogames. A kind of movie able to represent a future which is already present, in its mixture of cultures very different. Anyway Matrix can't be just considered like the story of the fight between black and white, or good and evil. It's more complex than that.
As we said, following a growing globalization, it tries to achieve an amalgam of central ideas from different cultures, a worldwide acceptable position of main question. In a future oscillating between martial arts, high tech and virtual reality, it search the solution for the problems in a philosophical-religious way. Probably this is the biggest mistake the movie does, falling in a just pure mysticism.

the next future society

EQUILIBRIUM (2002)

The movie shows an opposition between two different ideas of living life. Equilibrium takes place after the World War Three in a city, called Libria, where the dictator has solved the problem of peace using the strenght. To avoid that people could fall back on the evil, all feelings (positive or negative) have been banned. Indeed, the society described by Kurt Wimmer, the director, is strictly divided between masters (the clerics) and servants (population). This double life situation is also reflected in architecture. Almost the entire film is characterized by a clash between the architecture designed using Prozium and the free open-mind architecture. The movie easily reminds of Fahrenheit 451. While in Truffaut's movie people are condemned to live in ignorance by a despotic power burning books, in Equilibrium people are condemned to live into an ugly society (in one of the very first scenes, clerics burn the Gioconda's painting). Libria's look is very oppressive, reminding us of the totalitarian countries (some scenes have been shot in Berlin and in Rome, at the EUR; we can easily recognize the Congress Palace designed by Adalberto Libera), with huge white or grey buildings, placed in a symmetrical order. Indeed, symmetry is used both as symbol of oppression and as celebration of status quo.I think that another element that increases this sense of control and persecution, is buildings' size. The first scene, audience can watch on the screen, shows a world almost built just by skyscrapers. Rules that manage urban spaces are the same in private houses too.The complete absence of colour ( just black and white, the same colour of clothes worn by clerics) can also be seen in cleric's houses, as John Preston's one. In this case we can notice a very minimalist furniture, where the most important element is the television screen broadcasting Father's speech. In a world without emotion, nothing is essential, except for propaganda.

MINORITY REPORT (2002)

Another movie from a Philip K. Dick's novel, after Blade Runner2 and Total Recall. In a 2054, Washington is a safer city thanks to precogs. Three humans with the gift to see the future.
The Capital City described by Steven Spielberg ia a new kind of Metropolis, where the power symbols are always the same, but in a very modified contest. Highways in the sky, policemen wearing rocket suites, spaceship-cars. A rushed, angular, bleeding world, with gloomy metallic colours. A society, a city where every action is ruled by determinism.

RENAISSANCE (2006)

Renaissance introduce us in a kind of Neo-Expressionist movie. Thanks to use of black and white, without any grey scale colour, it reminds more of Fritz Lang's Metropolis than of Blade Runner. Set in a dark futuristic Paris in 2054, where architecture seems to refer to San'Elia drawings, the movie shows very well a world of shadows and contrasts. Paris is represented as a labyrinthic city where every deed and step is filmed and checked by an all-present organization, Avalon. Ilona's kidnapping allows audience to have a tour of the city, that is very far from the romantic city people known; it has a deep dark soul. Indeed, the real main-character is the France capital, a mix of old and futuristic architectures.

a pessimistic vision of a cahotic future

BLADE RUNNER (1982)

The movie is set in Los Angeles in 2019. The Earth, because of pollution and overcrowding has become unlivable. The city of Los Angeles is always under the rain, and wrapped by the fog produced by the smog which has changed the environment forever. This new enviernoment has changed also the society: the middle class has abandoned the city for a better life on other planets, and so now Los Angeles' inhabitants are just outcasts and criminals under constant surveillance by police.The new futuristic skyscrapers and factories rise near older crumbling buildings.
The complete absence of any beauty idea gives to audience, along all the movie, a sense of claustrophobia. Ridley Scott mentioned Edward Hopper's painting, Nightwaks (1942) and Moebius's comic novel, Métal Hurlant as inspiration for the atmosphere give to urban spaces in the movie.
The urban future described by Ridley Scott is very similar to the Fritz Lang's Metropolis where the city is developed in height, and the rich lives, litteraly, over the workers.
In both the movie the entire urban space is dominated by a humongous building: Stadtkrone tower in Metropolis, the Mayan's inspired Tyrrel Corporation pyramid in Blade Runner. The parallelism between these two movies is so close that the special effects supervisor, David Dryer, used some frames from Metropolis filming the building miniatures of the city.
The city created by Ridley Scott and Syd Mead is one of the most memorable visual futuristic architecture, a 2019 Los Angeles that is a great mix of real buildings, models and neon, a conglomerate of New York and Hong Kong always under a heavy rain. Although Blade Runner is usually considered as a dystopian vision of urban future, acording to many critics, we can also find the director's love in a big city, in urban density with shining neon's lights and crowds of people.

“...in a galaxy far far away”

STAR WARS (1977)

Thinking about Star Wars we can't talk just about the urban space described by its creator, George Lucas; we should describe all the different innovative elements, introuced for the very first time into a sci-fiction movie.
The story takes place in a fictional galaxy where human lives with robotic droids, and aliens from different planets. As a matter of fact space travel is common.
The main element of Star Wars ambientation is the not specified time when actions take place. Looking at the Star Wars saga we can also understand what is the consideration of George Lucas about cities.
As seen in Star Wars, evil's mainquarter his a super dense technological starship called “Death Star”, while rebels live in close relationship with nature, or growth up in rural desert planet as Luke Skywalker on Tatooine.
Architecture is used to create the ambience the story will tell.
In “Tearing Down the House” Joseph Rose higlights how Hollywood usually puts villains in anonymous cold, modern environment, whereas the hero lives in a rural house in a bucolic place.
As we can see in a totally different movie as Equilibrium, heroes or rebels, prefer to live in a suburbia far from modern contemporary houses.

the steampunk genre

BATMAN (1989)

The film, produced into the Pinewood Studios of London, creates an ambitious complex city, that can be understood only if we consider a very important element: the parallelism between architecture and the main charachter.
As Tim Burton says: “the charachters in the movie are so extreme that I felt it was important to set them into an arena that was specifically designed for them”.
Gotham City is a pessimistic vision of a metropolis of the future, where the Dark Knight fights the battle against the crime in a new gothic city. A city that is neither historically nor geographically identificable, but that reminds easily of a Western nightmarish metropolis.

“The most important thing was that we find a feel for the city which was neither futuristic nor historical. We wanted it to be as timeless as possible, even though – since we were drawing from the original DC comi strip for ispiration – there was bound to be a certain '40 feeling to it.” Anton Furst, production designer.

“Metropolis looks as if one person designed the whole town. But any other real metropolis looks as if it is something that has been designed by thousands of architects over hundreds of years.”

As a matter of fact in this movie there is a predilection for retro-future. The set created for Gotham City is based on DC comics but many architectural elements as towers and dark roads are designed with a totally new high-tech style. Other references include Konstantin Melnikov's worker's club in Moscow (1927), BBPR's Torre Velasca in Milan (1956-1958) and Norman Foster's architecture. The city that has been finally created is a world without planning commisions, where skyscrapers are built so close that light can't reach streets.
Finally we should compare the Gotham City with Bruce Wayne's manor. As a matter of fact there is a strong contrast between the Batman's house, an historical country house, and the world around. Some critics have seen in this contrast another attack against modernism.

GATTACA (1997)

This movie by Andrew Niccol, starring Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman uses built spaces of the 20th century turning them into sterile voids of the last 21st century.
The use of lights, the camera angle and the furnishing, all are used by the director to create places that speaks about the future in a way audience can think true.
As in Steamboy or Batman, Gattaca reminds us to steampunk. As a matter of fact the clothes, the architecture of buildings and the cars' body-work call to mind the early sixties. The advanced technology and the reto envieronment creates a deep contrast.
In this movie Andrew Niccol give a representation of fa uture where everything has gone awry.

STEAMBOY (2004)

Steamboy is an anime directed by Katsuhiro Otomo.The main themes are the role played by science in the society, its power, and the mad attempt of man to control nature.
Like Akira, Otomo's previous movie, in Steamboy there are the same general fears: the fight between a single man against the omnipotence of technology used to decide the future of human being.

1This idea of a screen hiding the reality reminds us of Schopenhauer and the idea of Maya's screen.

2Blade Runner, adptation of Philip K. Dick's “Do androids dream of electric sheep?” (1965).

3Total Recall is based on the Philip K. Dick story “We can remember it for you Wholesale” (1966).


	MOVIES SHOWING THE URBAN FUTURE the present as a distort reality THE MATRIX (1999) Larry and Andy Wachowsky, the directors of this movie described a world where reality is nothing more than a computer program created by evil machines. A world that seems real, but it's just a screen1 hiding the real truth. In XXI century, a new kind of Big Brother, thanks to the Matrix, a giant computer linked to humans' brain, has turned the world in a parallel, simulated universe. Thomas Anderson (Keanu Reeves), called Neo joins a group of rebels whom the chief, Morpehus (Laurence Fishburne) is convinced to have found in him the saviour. The one who will wake up humanity from the cybernetic sleep. The world described by Wachowsky Bros is probably the most pessimistic, dark future ever imagined in a cyber-action movie. It's the result of a mix of cinema and comics, martial arts and videogames. A kind of movie able to represent a future which is already present, in its mixture of cultures very different. Anyway Matrix can't be just considered like the story of the fight between black and white, or good and evil. It's more complex than that. As we said, following a growing globalization, it tries to achieve an amalgam of central ideas from different cultures, a worldwide acceptable position of main question. In a future oscillating between martial arts, high tech and virtual reality, it search the solution for the problems in a philosophical-religious way. Probably this is the biggest mistake the movie does, falling in a just pure mysticism. the next future society EQUILIBRIUM (2002) The movie shows an opposition between two different ideas of living life. Equilibrium takes place after the World War Three in a city, called Libria, where the dictator has solved the problem of peace using the strenght. To avoid that people could fall back on the evil, all feelings (positive or negative) have been banned. Indeed, the society described by Kurt Wimmer, the director, is strictly divided between masters (the clerics) and servants (population). This double life situation is also reflected in architecture. Almost the entire film is characterized by a clash between the architecture designed using Prozium and the free open-mind architecture. The movie easily reminds of Fahrenheit 451. While in Truffaut's movie people are condemned to live in ignorance by a despotic power burning books, in Equilibrium people are condemned to live into an ugly society (in one of the very first scenes, clerics burn the Gioconda's painting). Libria's look is very oppressive, reminding us of the totalitarian countries (some scenes have been shot in Berlin and in Rome, at the EUR; we can easily recognize the Congress Palace designed by Adalberto Libera), with huge white or grey buildings, placed in a symmetrical order. Indeed, symmetry is used both as symbol of oppression and as celebration of status quo.I think that another element that increases this sense of control and persecution, is buildings' size. The first scene, audience can watch on the screen, shows a world almost built just by skyscrapers. Rules that manage urban spaces are the same in private houses too.The complete absence of colour ( just black and white, the same colour of clothes worn by clerics) can also be seen in cleric's houses, as John Preston's one. In this case we can notice a very minimalist furniture, where the most important element is the television screen broadcasting Father's speech. In a world without emotion, nothing is essential, except for propaganda. MINORITY REPORT (2002) Another movie from a Philip K. Dick's novel, after Blade Runner2 and Total Recall. In a 2054, Washington is a safer city thanks to precogs. Three humans with the gift to see the future. The Capital City described by Steven Spielberg ia a new kind of Metropolis, where the power symbols are always the same, but in a very modified contest. Highways in the sky, policemen wearing rocket suites, spaceship-cars. A rushed, angular, bleeding world, with gloomy metallic colours. A society, a city where every action is ruled by determinism. RENAISSANCE (2006) Renaissance introduce us in a kind of Neo-Expressionist movie. Thanks to use of black and white, without any grey scale colour, it reminds more of Fritz Lang's Metropolis than of Blade Runner. Set in a dark futuristic Paris in 2054, where architecture seems to refer to San'Elia drawings, the movie shows very well a world of shadows and contrasts. Paris is represented as a labyrinthic city where every deed and step is filmed and checked by an all-present organization, Avalon. Ilona's kidnapping allows audience to have a tour of the city, that is very far from the romantic city people known; it has a deep dark soul. Indeed, the real main-character is the France capital, a mix of old and futuristic architectures. a pessimistic vision of a cahotic future BLADE RUNNER (1982) The movie is set in Los Angeles in 2019. The Earth, because of pollution and overcrowding has become unlivable. The city of Los Angeles is always under the rain, and wrapped by the fog produced by the smog which has changed the environment forever. This new enviernoment has changed also the society: the middle class has abandoned the city for a better life on other planets, and so now Los Angeles' inhabitants are just outcasts and criminals under constant surveillance by police.The new futuristic skyscrapers and factories rise near older crumbling buildings. The complete absence of any beauty idea gives to audience, along all the movie, a sense of claustrophobia. Ridley Scott mentioned Edward Hopper's painting, Nightwaks (1942) and Moebius's comic novel, Métal Hurlant as inspiration for the atmosphere give to urban spaces in the movie. The urban future described by Ridley Scott is very similar to the Fritz Lang's Metropolis where the city is developed in height, and the rich lives, litteraly, over the workers. In both the movie the entire urban space is dominated by a humongous building: Stadtkrone tower in Metropolis, the Mayan's inspired Tyrrel Corporation pyramid in Blade Runner. The parallelism between these two movies is so close that the special effects supervisor, David Dryer, used some frames from Metropolis filming the building miniatures of the city. The city created by Ridley Scott and Syd Mead is one of the most memorable visual futuristic architecture, a 2019 Los Angeles that is a great mix of real buildings, models and neon, a conglomerate of New York and Hong Kong always under a heavy rain. Although Blade Runner is usually considered as a dystopian vision of urban future, acording to many critics, we can also find the director's love in a big city, in urban density with shining neon's lights and crowds of people. “...in a galaxy far far away” STAR WARS (1977) Thinking about Star Wars we can't talk just about the urban space described by its creator, George Lucas; we should describe all the different innovative elements, introuced for the very first time into a sci-fiction movie. The story takes place in a fictional galaxy where human lives with robotic droids, and aliens from different planets. As a matter of fact space travel is common. The main element of Star Wars ambientation is the not specified time when actions take place. Looking at the Star Wars saga we can also understand what is the consideration of George Lucas about cities. As seen in Star Wars, evil's mainquarter his a super dense technological starship called “Death Star”, while rebels live in close relationship with nature, or growth up in rural desert planet as Luke Skywalker on Tatooine. Architecture is used to create the ambience the story will tell. In “Tearing Down the House” Joseph Rose higlights how Hollywood usually puts villains in anonymous cold, modern environment, whereas the hero lives in a rural house in a bucolic place. As we can see in a totally different movie as Equilibrium, heroes or rebels, prefer to live in a suburbia far from modern contemporary houses. the steampunk genre BATMAN (1989) The film, produced into the Pinewood Studios of London, creates an ambitious complex city, that can be understood only if we consider a very important element: the parallelism between architecture and the main charachter. As Tim Burton says: “the charachters in the movie are so extreme that I felt it was important to set them into an arena that was specifically designed for them”. Gotham City is a pessimistic vision of a metropolis of the future, where the Dark Knight fights the battle against the crime in a new gothic city. A city that is neither historically nor geographically identificable, but that reminds easily of a Western nightmarish metropolis. “The most important thing was that we find a feel for the city which was neither futuristic nor historical. We wanted it to be as timeless as possible, even though – since we were drawing from the original DC comi strip for ispiration – there was bound to be a certain '40 feeling to it.” Anton Furst, production designer. “Metropolis looks as if one person designed the whole town. But any other real metropolis looks as if it is something that has been designed by thousands of architects over hundreds of years.” As a matter of fact in this movie there is a predilection for retro-future. The set created for Gotham City is based on DC comics but many architectural elements as towers and dark roads are designed with a totally new high-tech style. Other references include Konstantin Melnikov's worker's club in Moscow (1927), BBPR's Torre Velasca in Milan (1956-1958) and Norman Foster's architecture. The city that has been finally created is a world without planning commisions, where skyscrapers are built so close that light can't reach streets. Finally we should compare the Gotham City with Bruce Wayne's manor. As a matter of fact there is a strong contrast between the Batman's house, an historical country house, and the world around. Some critics have seen in this contrast another attack against modernism. GATTACA (1997) This movie by Andrew Niccol, starring Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman uses built spaces of the 20th century turning them into sterile voids of the last 21st century. The use of lights, the camera angle and the furnishing, all are used by the director to create places that speaks about the future in a way audience can think true. As in Steamboy or Batman, Gattaca reminds us to steampunk. As a matter of fact the clothes, the architecture of buildings and the cars' body-work call to mind the early sixties. The advanced technology and the reto envieronment creates a deep contrast. In this movie Andrew Niccol give a representation of fa uture where everything has gone awry. STEAMBOY (2004) Steamboy is an anime directed by Katsuhiro Otomo.The main themes are the role played by science in the society, its power, and the mad attempt of man to control nature. Like Akira, Otomo's previous movie, in Steamboy there are the same general fears: the fight between a single man against the omnipotence of technology used to decide the future of human being. 1This idea of a screen hiding the reality reminds us of Schopenhauer and the idea of Maya's screen. 2Blade Runner, adptation of Philip K. Dick's “Do androids dream of electric sheep?” (1965). 3Total Recall is based on the Philip K. Dick story “We can remember it for you Wholesale” (1966).