SummaryInside a desert oasis, a queen (Lucy Liu) lays dying as her son Prince (Jeffrey Wahlberg) travels across barren waste lands to find a near-mythical medicine to save her life. After evading violent raiders on motorbikes led by the Warlord (James Franco) and his enforcer (Cliff "Method Man" Smith), Prince meets Ash (Suki Waterhouse), the W...
SummaryInside a desert oasis, a queen (Lucy Liu) lays dying as her son Prince (Jeffrey Wahlberg) travels across barren waste lands to find a near-mythical medicine to save her life. After evading violent raiders on motorbikes led by the Warlord (James Franco) and his enforcer (Cliff "Method Man" Smith), Prince meets Ash (Suki Waterhouse), the W...
A low-rent, post-apocalyptic sci-fi tale that doesn't succeed as either homage or parody of such obvious inspirations as the Mad Max series, Future World proves as original as its title
If you hate on this movie, then you are the joke. Another instance in which brilliant film-making will get overlooked because it goes over most everyone's head.
Legendary filmmaker George Miller's Mad Max series was so influential that it spawned a wave of knock-offs across the '80s, particularly from Italy. When he's not making stoner comedies with his pal Seth Rogen, James Franco who co-directed, produced, and stars in this has shown an appreciation for the more niche variety of cinema. So it stands to reason that Future World is a loving homage to the low-budget Road Warrior wannabes that often totally missed the point of the masterpieces they were trying so hard to be. Of course all of this could just be the result of Franco calling all of his friends to come over and play Mad Max in the desert and only the ones at the bottom of his contact list actually showing up. Either way I had a lot of fun with it.
The plot revolves around a young man looking for a mythical cure for his mother's illness and coming across an android in the process that every whacked-out wasteland gangster wants to get their hands on. There's some stuff about the robot finding a soul and learning to feel, but there's no real message here. It's all action sequences, shots of desert scenery, and whatever other weirdness they could come up with to keep viewers attention. What's surprising is how well it's all put together given that it was apparently only moderately better funded than by whatever pocket change the cast had on them at the time. The somewhat barebones story is cohesively presented and has a nice flow to it. I got a kick out of the drug-fueled dance party, the slave strip club, and the fight to the death inside an abandoned motel swimming pool. It was all very post-apocalyptic and deranged. Franco, Snoop Dogg, and Milla Jovovich all seem to be having a lot of fun playing their insane characters.
Your enjoyment of this is really going to stem from just how much appreciation you have for low-grade movies. It's a throwback to the C-grade films that are just hard to find these days. The kind of flicks that you would pick up from VHS bargain bins or catch on a late night one weekend when you were a kid. No, they weren't great, but they managed to stick out in your memory as good time back when the world was simpler. Future World takes inspiration from the rather popular "Maxsploitation" rip-offs to remind us just how much fun trash cinema can be.
This movie featuring and directed by James Franco is basically Mad Max with a sexy female robot. I would not rate this as low as some people. I reserve that type of rating for the painfully bad. This movie is just something that's not worth the time to sit through.
Future World is one big post-apocalyptic and robot-gaining-sentience cliche. Nothing particularly original. No substance at all; the plot, points, dialogue, and character development are all rushed. Snoop Dog, who plays a pimp, gets the worse lines, saying b**** every other time.
Given Franco's recent accusations of sexual harassment, the exploitation here lesbian kissing and prostitutes, sometimes half-nude, in shock collars, kind of makes things cringe-worthy. One wonders how much Franco wanted this for self-gratification rather than plot reasons. Though, the film has experienced actors, they really can't do much with what they're given. The main male lead is particularly dull. The only exception is Milla Jovovich. She plays a drugged-out gang leader and manages to dish out a deliciously campy and over-the-top performance salvaging some terrible lines. I will give the movie this. Some of the fight scenes are actually pretty good, just not enough to validate Future World.
It's not a good movie, and you should have zero expectations going in, but if you have a sense of humor and 90 minutes to waste, you'll have a good laugh at James Franco, Snoop Dogg and Milla Jovovich.
Hardly seems worth writing a review after seeing all of the negative ratings. It was an awful mess. James Franco playing a villain with fuzzy orange teeth that he moons for the camera while, laughing menacingly, unconvincingly. It's almost like I could read his thoughts, did you see my yucky teeth? I'm a real bad guy huh? Completely disjointed scenes. Nothing made any sense at all.. Lucy Lieu looks like shes is permanently stuck in a shampoo commercial with long flowing linens perpetually blowing in the wind that never ends.That was supposed to be the Oasis.. funny how they don't need any roofs or protection from the elements in the Oasis. This is a good opportunity for me to rant a little about how in movies now, it doesn't seem to matter if nuclear bombs have gone off all over the ****'s almost as though the subliminal message is that we shouldn't worry about radiation, nuclear fallout and the destruction of the worlds food web. Even if some plants still grow,everyone would be poisoned in two months from eating them if not sooner.Global nuclear war is not survivable and I wish that the media would stop creating the illusion that it is.
Of course the obligatory lesbian scene to titillate heterosexual men... don't be thinking for a second that it has to do with acceptance from society... The hypocrisy of it all is maddening. Just look at what a big to do it is now that Chris Pine went full frontal recently in the Rebel King film. I watched that film not even noticing that there was a reveal in there somewhere. I had to look it up on the internet to find where it was in the film then paused on the scene in question, and couldn't make heads or tails of the images. Pun intended. Seriously though,he was splashing up the water in front of himself so if it was there, it was a flash in the pan. The media all congratulates themselves on being so progressive when in reality they are still catering to hetero sexual men.Forget about the **** on Bikes stereotype. Altered Carbon has a male full frontal scene that doesn't flinch at all. I was like hello.. that wasn't expected. I allowed myself to go a little off topic here because I didn't see the need to reinvent the wheel when so many others have done a fine job destroying this terrible terrible indulgence of a film. Suffice it to say, the only good acting was by Milla Jovovich and Jeffery Wahlberg.
If you think about about watching this film, don't. See any Mad Max film instead. The whole movie is dull and the cliches are done to death. The acting is mostly passable (loved Snoop) except for Suki Waterhouse. She should stick to modeling because she couldn't even pretend to be a robot!