I agree to the point of a regresing tech level.
You have an implanted luminescent clock (not that far in the future) and something inside everyones body to stop their whole biosystem once the clock reaches zero (seemed to me like applied nanites, shocking your heart into oblivion).
How does that hightechmagickillerthingie get inside everyone? Or doesn’t it and there are free people living in the countryside? On the sector control map of the time keepers / guardians you can see that they seem to be monitoring the cities or large urban centers but not the countryside. Why not? Did the population stop living outside of city limits? Don’t they care for outsiders because they are “degenerates on the wrong side of the wall dying by stupid things like age”?

@ Matt
From what I saw in the movie there didn’t really seem to be a government -at least a working one- left. It more seemed like the timelords each controlled certain areas of the planet. So maybe the whole setting was beyond a vast government breakdown. Or after global economic collapse that couldn’t be stopped with some haphazard political measures which allowed the timelords to push their “new, just, upright” system through…

I hesitated to queue this one. It was not great, but much better than I expected.

@ agn0sis:

I think dystopias exist on a gradual spectrum. They are basically worst case scenarios (as opposed to utopias which present the best possible outcome of social/technological progress). For those of us living in a free world, a vision of the country taken over by a mildly oppressive regime might be a dystopia. Those living in dictatorships imagine even worse conditions (complete invigilation states run by completely broken bureaucracies like in 1984 or Paranoia RPG).

@ Matt`:

Yep. The trailers made it seem much more believable. I initially thought the time on your clock would simply let you stay physically at 25 for that amount of time. If you run out of time, you just start aging at a normal pace. You have to be out of work and on the street for a few years for it to even start to show. Of course once you let yourself go, and get some gray hair people look at you differently and it is harder to get a job. The rich can afford age reversal procedures, though most don’t need them as they can keep themselves young indefinitely. Poor people tend to slowly age (maybe few days per month) until it starts to show and then they nosedive into the grave as social outcasts that no one wants to associate with. That’s sort of how I envisioned it. The sudden death is just stupid.

Haven’t seen the film, but it does seem like the idea lacks a plausible explanation of how they got to that point. People don’t naturally die at age 25, so what stops people rejecting the system entirely and just aging naturally, save for impractically complete totalitarianism.

Running out of money to pay for life extension (and hence eventually dying of old age) is quite a different thing from dying before your natural time unless you pay up to the corporate overlords. I’m not seeing how such a system could come into place without protests and riots and a few fallen governments getting in the way.

@ Liudvikas:
Obviously, you have never lived in Mexico ;) Talking seriously, I think that it is possible that a society ends up living in a dystopian situation, but it is a very gradual process. In any case, it would be important to consider how bad the situation should have to be for calling it a dystopia. A dictatorial order? A country where mega corporations have the true power? I can think of some places that have had (or have) that characteristics

@ Andrew Zimmerman:

Haven’t seen clock stoppers. The picture on the IMDB page makes it look like “Spy Kids” or something. :P

@ Liudvikas:

Exactly. There is just no reasonable path between now (a time where large portion of the population is against a death sentences or against abortions – though ironically rarely against both at the same time) to the depicted future where everyone can die at a drop of a hat due to a bounced check or a flat tire.

Some dystopias work. This one doesn’t.

@ Victoria:

Good point about the distant future. It’s actually plausible that the technology regressed because the poor had no means to innovate, and the rich had no desire. Since the system was designed to prevent social mobility there was never enough ambitious, “hungry” and motivated people to push the progress forward.

And yeah – this was probably easiest casting process ever. :P

I agree with you on the majority of points except for placement in near future – to me it felt as if it were a very distant future. Future where the technology peaked and then slowly declined because everybody felt boooored. It kinda looked like poor people were just left to die in their zones – nobody needs their labor, the system just controls their population by constantly raising the prices so that nobody makes it out of ghetto no matter how hard they work. And that probably goes on for centuries. The social commentary was lost on me because it was so in-your-face-black-and-white but what the movie actually succeded showing is the social stagnation.

Also, it felt kinda silly that your time can be easily taken from you – even the rich are not safe in that society, so they spend their days in hiding. It’s almost as if the whole deal was constructed from the outside by some higher power (I don’t mean the writers :) )

All cool stuff aside, when I watched the movie, my first thought was: Hollywood producers were probably deliriously happy to have a movie where everybody was supposed to be 25. Age is such an issue in the industry.

I just can’t take dystopias seriously. World has been getting better ever since the first human discovered fire. I can’t understand why people get such hard-ons in thinking of futures where everyone just decides to forgo common sense.

In the case of this movie everyone agrees, that it’s best for everyone to be on the verge of death, instead of having less children. Yes, makes perfect sense.

But it gracefully skirts the political and systemic issues, and instead builds up an utterly fake, one dimensional, evil corporate straw man it can safely tear down without offending anyone.

So true.

I haven’t watched the movie, but I understand that concept. Very good review, and good conclusion.
This reminds me of the simplicity of “clockstoppers” http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0157472/

Although I do not remember an political references, it had a good concept, but simplified it so that the movie would apply to the vast majority. Most people may not want to know why it could possibly work…unfortunately.