Overview & Premise
Future World is an American action film from 2018 that’s set in a post-apocalyptic world and is bathed in science fiction. It was directed by James Franco and Bruce Cheung, both of whom co-wrote the film with Jay and Jeremy Cheung. It casts Franco, Suki Waterhouse, Jeffrey Wahlberg, and Milla Jovovich. In the film, the lawless, war-ravaged, and environmentally collapsed world is blended with cyberpunk aesthetics and dystopian survivalism.
Future World heavily draws from the Mad Max franchise, depicting a world where civilization has collapsed and humanity has been reduced to tribal factions, scavengers, and cyborg outlaws. Franco’s character is framed as the figure of the story, of which the themes explore survival, identity, and compassion in a brutal new realm.
Though the film is set in an intriguing world and features a widely recognized cast, it has received poor reviews because of the lack of depth, poor direction, and a derivative story. However, it is a unique vision of an unrelentingly dangerous world bathed in despair and devoid of hope.
Plot Summary
A long time after a global war, the environment has been destroyed and human civilization has all but vanished. The world is inhabited by savage warlords, scavenger colonies, and settlements that are desperately trying to stay alive.
The story follows a character named Prince who was raised in the last remaining Oasis: a peaceful community. His mother, The Queen, is afflicted by a terminal illness and medicine is scarce. The Oasis’s safety comes at a cost: the Prince has to stay within its limits. In a Wasteland, there is a rumored laboratory that contains medicine, and the Prince desperately needs the medicine to “cure” his mother.
Warlord, a violent and unpredictable leader of a biker gang known for chaos and cruelty, is the Prince’s main enemy. Along his journey, the Prince comes across various allies and foes. Warlord is obsessed with possessing a super android known as Ash: a genetically engineered super-soldier with superior combat skills, but a faulty memory.
Ash’s flicker of human consciousness starts to wake up along with her morality as she battles with her human side after years of rigid warfare training. In escaping the Warlord’s grasp, she now partners reluctantly with the Prince. The two of them now must traverse the perilous terrain with bounty hunters and betrayal at every corner while examining identity, humanity, and the reason they exist.
The two of them have now become a team and tackled the grueling uncovering of ash’s origin. The truths they uncover as they to find the Ash’s human side, along with her transformation from a machine are devastating and push the duo to make life altering conclusion. The two find the facility with hope disguised as revelation about their interconnected futures and the intellect behind their origin tainted with the need to understand forces them to make painful choices. Eventually, Ash learns how to redefine herself to beyond the programming that shackles her.
The remains of the film and it’s composition symbolizes it’s unconcluded nature. The conclusion of the film can be viewed as the remains of the film depicting it’s unconcluded nature. The Prince goes through a rough journey that teaches him about the hardship of survival, the pain in selfless choices and the splintered hope of cultivating a future. All of these in a now doomed world.
Characters & Performances
Jeffrey Wahlberg as Prince
The protagonist displays a lack of maturity but surge of youth in the character of Wahlberg. The charm and aspirations of a young inmate are captured as he strives after his ailing mother and the burden she casts on his fragile self. Wahlberg, as her son, exhibits an admirable terminal restfulness like so many enduring a consuming sickness, as such he demonstrates their quarkily cheerful determination.
Suki Waterhouse as Ash
Waterhouse gives one of the film’s more interesting performances. As Ash, an android struggling with instincts biomechanically hardwired and human emotions, she portrays the role with an ice-cold, yet gradually softening precision. Her character’s growth revolves around the exploration of independence and self exploration, issues that are rarely tackled in film.
James Franco as Warlord
Franco fully commits to the part of the erratic chaotic villain. Warlord is a sadistic, leather-clad, tyrannical ruler who commands through fear and brute force. While his performance is frequently overdone, it complements the film’s lawless world.
Milla Jovovich as Drug Lord
Jovovich’s characterization of a chaos-loving drug matriarch is brief, but high impact. Her performance, while menacing and intense, does not explore the character fully, who is more of an impediment to the plot than fully realized characterization.
Lucy Liu as The Queen
Liu has the smallest role as the ailing mother of the prince. She is elegant, and her character does not do much beyond serve the plot as the emotional catalyst.
Themes and Interpretation
Humanity in Post-Human Times
The movie analyzes the idea of being human where morality and identity cease to exist. This becomes more pronounced with Ash, the synthetic creature, who becomes the embodiment of this concept. The tragic internal conflict she undergoes provokes a greater question for consideration: Is it possible to outlast a civilization with humanity?
Survival and Sacrifice
Violence, adaptability, and in certain situations, betrayal is the highest currency of survival in Future World. The Prince’s attempt to rescue his mother illustrates the selfless acts one must take in order to sustain life and compassion in a very hostile world.
The Cost of Power
The Warlord and Drug Lord exemplify power taken too far to the point of no return. Their strength becomes destructive when used without a conscience. The film takes a deeper look at authoritarian rule in a lawless society and the erosion of ethical boundaries in the pursuit of control.
Technology as Both Savior and Curse
The product of war, Ash, is the ultimate weapon and the potential savior. This indicates that technology, in and of itself, is not good or evil; rather, it is how it is employed that determines it. The film hints at her humanization as a sign of the potential for redemption and argues for the possibility of recovering from synthetic beginnings.
Visual Style & Direction
Looking deeper into visual elements of Future World, the color neon and retro-futurism is used in the so called cyberpunk elements. Although there are desert views, abandoned factories, and rusted cars, there are hints of a dystopian world. Overall, the visual cyber world created trying to depict a decaying world is very dull.
Costume design uses different exaggeration styles which draws inspiration from mad max. These styles also include dystopian punk; adding biker gimmicks and warlords to the mix. These tend to feel very inspiring and supported visually, World-building lacks the depth to feel alternative.
Many of the slow motion, face-to-face fighting sequences are very dull and overly dramatic. The gun shooting sequences are very bleak and devoid of tension. Overall, a lackadaisical attitude towards camera work and effort very much drains the experience.
Franco and Cheung decided to co-direct and because of this, the movie uses ton that oscillates from parody to serious. The film loses the emotional and thematic aspects of the movie that feel the thematic parts of the film. The inconsistent element of direction ends up feels two framed.
Reception & Legacy
The release of Future World went largely unnoticed and sparked an uproar of negative reviews from critics. The film was attacked for its cliché writing, shallow characters, and a complete lack of creativity. Most critics believed the film heavily relied on other known post-apocalyptic narratives, offering no new perspectives or ideas.
The film’s redeeming qualities include Waterhouse’s performance and some intriguing philosophical ideas. Unfortunately, these few compelling elements are overwhelmed by a convoluted storyline and inconsistent pacing.
Culturally and commercially, the film flopped. A Franco facepalm; it now sits as an oddity rather than a meaningful addition to the sci-fi world.
Conclusion
With aspirations of a gritty stylized narrative of unshackled survival and identity, Future World falls short of achieving its ambition. It’s a circuit board of compelling dystopian ingredients, from cyborgs and warlords to quests, even moral dilemmas. But it desperately lacks the narrative cohesion and depth required to fully captivate audiences.
The movie feels more like a collection of ideas instead of a fully fleshed vision due to the wandering influences, undeveloped characters, and inconsistent direction. That said, there is a flicker of promise hidden beneath the rubble of the film’s execution – especially with the character of Ash, a machine seeking to understand her role in a world that has long since forgotten humanity.
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