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I need ideas for dystopian games, books and movies


Clavietka

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There's an upcoming science/cultural fair in my school in Brazil. The main theme is "The challenges of pursuing a sustainable future". I am a teacher and each teacher can choose his own subtheme and have 4 groups of up to 10 students under his guidance.

 

I've imagined my subtheme to be along these lines "Dystopian futures in fiction and what they can teach us about the risks of destroying the environment".

 

I plan to have one group work with literature, another with movies and another with electronic games. I'm still unsure on what the other group can do (there are some 3 months of planning ahead).

 

What electronic games, movies and books can you guys think of that could benefit this work? And what other medium/approach could this 4th group take?

 

Thanks in advance.

BTW, I always bring gaming culture to my Literature and Portuguese classes. Nerds FTW.

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Well, maybe not the first thing you would normally think of when talking Dystopian (because The Handmaid's Tale by Atwood has been popping up in my mind for a while now....I wonder why....) but I think would be amazing to discuss from the environmental perspective is the Southern Reach Trilogy (Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance) by Jeff VanderMeer. It is absolutely Sci/Fi, and if you have seen the movie version of Annihilation, that can give you a slight idea of how the first book runs, in a very vague way that a movie adaption can. They are the kind of books that certainly contain depth beyond what is on the page. At least I thought so. I could be way off base, though, so give it a quick glance. It is a series my mind keeps going back to. 

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A Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

There is many more but that's the first one that popped into my head.

It's a fantastic 1930s dystopian novel which was made, fairly recently, into a TV show.

Edited by Sgznf
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What age are your students? Dystopian works can get very dark very quickly...

 

While the basic tenet is often that the destruction of the environment led to the situation in the work, it's usually less explored as a current issue ("let's revive bees!") than as a driver ("let's flee from those terrible people who are trying to survive through violence because civilization collapsed!").

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I would like to recommend psycho pass, a animation.

It tries to get rid of the entertainment feature of animation and tell the story as seriously as it can. Thus it is not joyfully and void show, and animation may be more attractive to young fellows.

Edited by DaybreakHayha
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It's hard to pick something that's not R-rated, but I abandoned that idea, lol. I also picked a lot of post-apocalyptic stuff. It counts as dystopia, right?

 

Movie - Mad Max 2

 

Game - I'd really like the students try to decipher the story of Journey. I think it fits well, but you need to pay attention to cutscenes. Fallout, any game in the series, I guess.

 

Book - Fahrenheit 451 and Hunger Games come to mind first, but they're less about the environment and more about the society. A Boy and His Dog might fit better. I haven't read that one, but I know that it's set in a post-war nuclear wasteland. The Fallout games took some inspiration from it. There's also a movie based on the book. Haven't seen it either.

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This is harder than I thought it would be. I have read many dystopian novels but most of them have centred around society rather than the environment like the previous poster said. I was thinking The Stand, The divergent series and Handmaid’s tale also. 

 

For games Fallout 76 comes to mind, I haven’t played the others so don’t know what they’re about but I’m guessing along the same lines. 

 

 

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A few I think that might fit:

 

 

Novels:

 

Mockingbird by Walter Tevis

The Death of Grass by John Christopher (we actually studied this book in secondary school, so I know it's appropriate!)

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - Philip K Dick

Earth Abides - George R Stewart

DrBloodmoney, Or How We All Got Along After The Bomb - Philip K Dick (yes, I love this book so much I named my PSN ID after it!)

Roadside PicnicArkady and Boris Strugatsky

The Drowned World - J G Ballard

The Road - Cormac McCarthy

 

Games:

 

Metro Series - in particular, Metro Exodus

Horizon Zero Dawn

Outer Wilds

Deliver Us The Moon

Ratchet and Clank

Lone Survivor

Fallout series

Final Fantasy VI & VII

 

 

Movies:

 

12 Monkeys

The Road

Mad Max Fury Road

The new Planet of the Apes movies

Interstellar

Don't Look Up

IO

Children of Men

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by DrBloodmoney
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Hi guys. Thank you so much for the inputs so far. I would like to emphasize that these dystopian realities have to deal with the destruction of natural resources.

From this topic I've gathered three good ideas, and I'm still open to sugestions:

 

1 - A work centered on Bioshock in contrast with Brave New World, which focuses on the lack of moral and ethics portrayed in these dystopian realities in favor of consumerism and hedonistic behavior, which can be seen in our capialist society approaching the depletion of our natural resources for similar reasons.

2 - A work centered on Frank Herbert's Dune and its resurgence in popularity with the new movie adaptation. I'd like to reflect on the Fremen people's struggles with the lack of water and compare them to the driest parts in northeastern Brazil, which for centuries has suffered with droughts and famine, even leading to separatist rebellions and banditism, portrayed on the book Rebellion in the Backlands (Os Sertões), by the Brazilian author Euclides da Cunha, which narrates one such uprising.

3 - A work centered on Final Fantasy VII and its environmentalist (and even spiritual) message, as well as its portrayal of unethic scientific experiments in pursuit of power. I could use a literary work (still unsure of which) to better flesh out this work

4 - ???

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I've t

5 minutes ago, Shipwreck24273 said:

Some movie ideas:

- The Book of Eli

- Waterworld

- The Lorax

They all have an emphasis on how precious the little bit that remains is.


Book of Eli is awesome.

I thought about a group discussing climate change, the melting of glaciers and rise of sea levels and its portrayal on Waterworld and an analysis on the failure of the movie critically and financially as well as its disastruous production

What do you think of my three other options?

Edited by Clavietka
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Books:

The blizzard - Vladimir sorokin

The swarm - Frank Schätzing

Tyranny of the Butterfly - Frank Schätzing

Something unusual but since you mentioned dune: Anathem by Neal Stephenson 

 

Movies:

dark city

The cold hour (la hora fria) 

Moon

And you wouldn't guess it: Brazil

 

Games: 

The last of us

Life is strange 

We happy few

 

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The Metro series exist both as books and video games. Depicts surviving a post nuclear world, effects on evolution radiation has, scarcity of resources, etc. Sure there are similar games like Fallout but I am not aware of others based of a book like Metro.

 

Horizon Zero Dawn I think might be a good fit. Hell, Avengers Infinity War basically centers around insuring there is enough resources by wiping out 50% of life so that might work as well.

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The Giver, The Hunger Games, and 1984 were the first books that came to mind. Surprised no one said The Giver. However, I don't think these were caused by the environment.

 

I would say The Promised Neverland is a good dystopian anime/manga. Same for Psycho-Pass, Code Geass, and Dr. Stone. I think Dr. Stone actually fits your description to a T.

 

As for video games, I think Final Fantasy 7 and Bioshock infinite fit your description really well. Other dystopian games worth mentioning that would fit are probably Fallout New Vegas and  Borderlands series. Maybe you could also throw in something like Guilty Gear, but I don't think anyone who has played it, understands the story fully unless you've done your research or followed the story since the original where all the lore comes from. But it does fit well if you read up on the lore. 

 

There's plenty of other dystopian games like Detroit Become Human, Remember Me, Neon White, Resonance of Fate (actually this one might fit really well too! The environment really goes to shit in it, and it's pretty obvious), and Mirror's Edge, but the focus is not so much on the environment. More on corruption of government.

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2 hours ago, Clavietka said:

I've t


Book of Eli is awesome.

I thought about a group discussing climate change, the melting of glaciers and rise of sea levels and its portrayal on Waterworld and an analysis on the failure of the movie critically and financially as well as its disastruous production

What do you think of my three other options?

I think they’re all good ideas, but especially #2 because of the real-world parallels in your own country.  Something like that could really resonate with your students.

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On 07.07.2022 at 0:05 AM, DrBloodmoney said:

A few I think that might fit:

 

 

Novels:

 

Mockingbird by Walter Tevis

The Death of Grass by John Christopher (we actually studied this book in secondary school, so I know it's appropriate!)

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - Philip K Dick

Earth Abides - George R Stewart

DrBloodmoney, Or How We All Got Along After The Bomb - Philip K Dick (yes, I love this book so much I named my PSN ID after it!)

Roadside PicnicArkady and Boris Strugatsky

The Drowned World - J G Ballard

The Road - Cormac McCarthy

 

Games:

 

Metro Series - in particular, Metro Exodus

Horizon Zero Dawn

Outer Wilds

Deliver Us The Moon

Ratchet and Clank

Lone Survivor

Fallout series

Final Fantasy VI & VII

 

 

Movies:

 

12 Monkeys

The Road

Mad Max Fury Road

The new Planet of the Apes movies

Interstellar

Don't Look Up

IO

Children of Men

 

Also, I would like to draw your attention to a useful service that will help students when writing their written works - https://eduzaurus.com/plagiarism-checker Here you can find a very good plagiarism checker that will allow you to write better written works.

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for the advice.
Edited by shadowy-chortle4
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Death Stranding?  That's some dystopia and sci fi gaming right there. The premise is that communications have to be restored across the continent to re-unite the people, and you have to deal with "timefall" which is essentially acid rain, it deteriorates everything you build over time.  And so much more.

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  • 3 weeks later...

The Outer Limits episode Stream of Consciousness is a good one. It's a 1984-ish dystopian setting, with a computer network called "The Stream" serving as the day's Big Brother, enslaving humans to process every bit of information out there. It does not take kindly to people rebelling against it.

Spoiler

Ryan goes on a mission to shut The Stream down and succeeds with Cheryl's help, despite its sending a squad of guards to stop him. However it comes at a price: Having relied on The Stream, everyone except Ryan ends up losing their literacy. So he'll need to teach the adults to read again in school, alongside the children. A bittersweet ending.

 

A good short story would be Larry Niven's Inconstant Moon, from the book of the same title. One night, the moon is particularly beautiful and brighter than before. It starts off like a good love story, but with a cruel twist. IM was adapted into a TOL episode.

Spoiler

Stan, a physics professor, gets a bad feeling about the moon's brightness. A little later, a disaster wrecks the Earth's climate.

 

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