Tonight SyFy is banking on audience obsession with all things dystopia to boost their latest show, Incorporated, to success. From executive producers Ben Affleck and Matt Damon — yes them — show mixes elements from the films Gattaca and Minority Report, with the tabletop game Shadowrun (though no sign of trolls or magic yet).
Set in the year 2074, it finds the Earth is in dire straits. Global warming has left most of the planet as designated Red Zones. These wasteland dustbowls house the the poor, aka the majority of the population. Meanwhile the Green Zone — lush and full of vegetation – is for the wealthy elites, because of course it is. The world of Incorporated is a caste system (similar to Gattaca) and the government has been replaced by corporations that lord over the populace (as seen in Shadowrun) like Big Brother on meth (taking a page from Minority Report).
Everything about this sounds like it’s up my alley. But yet the trailers have left me cold. At a time when happiness sells movie tickets, will Incorporated suffer due to terrible timing? America is in the throes of some divisive revelations. When the world is already awful, we don’t need our escapism to remind us. In the video below, I ask whether or not we need another show about how awful humanity is right now.
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