Via SFSignal, a new meme to start the week, inspired by this list of the Top 50 dystopian movies of all time. Quick now, how many have you seen?

You know the drill…copy the list and BOLD the movies you have seen. Post yours in the comments, or on your own blog (a link back here would be appreciated!)

1. Metropolis (1927)
2. A Clockwork Orange (1971)
3. Brazil (1985)
4. Wings of Desire (1987)
5. Blade Runner (1982)
6. Children of Men (2006)
7. The Matrix (1999)
8. Mad Max 2, a.k.a. The Road Warrior (1981)
9. Minority Report (2002)
10. Delicatessen (1991)
11. Sleeper (1973)
12. The Trial (1962)
13. Alphaville (1965)
14. Twelve Monkeys (1995)
15. Serenity (2005)
16. Pleasantville (1998)
17. Ghost in the Shell (1995)
18. Battle Royale (2000)
19. RoboCop (1987)
20. Akira (1988)
21. The City of Lost Children (1995)
22. Planet of the Apes (1968)
23. V for Vendetta (2005)
24. Metropolis (2001)
25. Gattaca (1997)
26. Fahrenheit 451 (1966)
27. On The Beach (1959)
28. Mad Max (1979)
29. Total Recall (1990)
30. Dark City (1998)
31. War Of the Worlds (1953)
32. District 13 (2004)
33. They Live (1988)
34. THX 1138 (1971)
35. Escape from New York (1981)
36. A Scanner Darkly (2006)
37. Silent Running (1972)
38. AI: Artificial Intelligence (2001)
39. Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984)
40. A Boy and His Dog (1975)
41. Soylent Green (1973)
42. I Robot (2004)
43. Logan’s Run (1976)
44. Strange Days (1995)
45. Idiocracy (2006)
46. Death Race 2000 (1975)
47. Rollerball (1975)
48. Starship Troopers (1997)
49. One Point O (2004)
50. Equilibrium (2002)

Runners-up:
Code 46 (2003)
The Omega Man (1971)
The Running Man (1987)
Le Dernier Combat (1983)
Avalon (2001)
No Blade of Grass (1970)

I always find these list memes interesting because they tend to illuminate patterns I wouldn’t otherwise notice. For instance, I don’t normally think of myself as liking dystopian flicks — they’re so depressing and all — but it turns out that I’ve seen quite a few of these and generally enjoyed them, and I even count a few of them among my all-time faves.

As usual with these lists, however, there are a few titles whose inclusion here I question. In my mind, a dystopian movie depicts a future society which has become hellish or is terribly broken, or both, because of sociological pressures or other human-influenced reasons. In other words, we’ve screwed ourselves in these movies, and the movie typically serves as some kind of “if this keeps up…” warning. A big exception on the list above is War of the Worlds, in which perfectly normal and pleasant 1950s America is attacked by Martians. That’s not a dystopia, in my opinion; it’s an alien-invasion story, which I suppose you could more generally lump into the disaster-flick genre. Similarly, Serenity, Total Recall, and Starship Troopers, while possessing dystopian elements to one degree or another, more properly belong to other categories: space opera, in the case of the first and third films, and plain-old 80s-style action in the case of Recall. Wings of Desire, a German film which was remade in America as City of Angels, is a downer that shows off some pretty bleak corners of post-war Berlin, but I wouldn’t call it a dystopia in the same sense that, say, Children of Men is. And the societies depicted in Minority Report and AI seem to be functioning well enough, and their respective citizens appear reasonably content, despite the ethical questions on which the movies turn and the occasional squirm-inducing sci-fi trapping. (The personalized — and highly intrusive — holographic advertising in Minority Report makes me cringe far more than the stormtroopers with their vomit-inducing “sick sticks” or even the spider-bots coming to scan your retinas you whether you want them to or not. A world where you are constantly being sold to, with no escape… arg. We’re too close to that as it is, in my opinion.) Even Blade Runner, which probably comes to most people’s minds when the subject of dystopias comes up, is arguably not a dystopian story, since (as far as we can tell) the movie’s 21st Century Los Angeles is fully functional and not altogether bad, if overcrowded and dirty. The movie is at heart a detective story not too far removed from Raymond Chandler; perhaps The Maltese Falcon should be considered a dystopian flick as well, since Sam Spade moves through a mileau not at all unlike Deckard’s Los Angeles of 2019. Well, aside from the flying cars and synthetic humanoids, of course.

Anyway, for the record, the titles on this list I would like to see but haven’t gotten around to yet are:

• Delicatessen
• Fahrenheit 451
• Dark City
• A Scanner Darkly
• Nineteen Eighty-Four
• A Boy and His Dog
• I Robot
• Strange Days
• Death Race 2000

And the ones I’ve never heard of are:

• The Trial
• Battle Royale
• The City of Lost Children
• Metropolis (2001) [Ed. note: Anyone know if this is a remake of the silent classic?]
• District 13
• One Point O
• Equilibrium
• Code 46
• Le Dernier Combat
• Avalon
• No Blade of Grass

Thanks for playing… back to the errant commas now…