Rollerball

When the corporations truly take over

Going to the movies with my buddies was a favorite past time as a teenager. Most of these movies were forgettable, but one got permanently lodged in my mind: Rollerball!

For 1975, Rollerball was quite violent. While the violent images might have indeed been the catalyst to keep this movie in my cerebral folds, I often referred back to Rollerball as to help gain understanding of workings of the world. Its theme and tone described a society gone bad.

Rollerball is a futuristic professional sport. Similar to roller derby, two teams of skaters jostle each other around a track to score points and win the game. But there is a lot more violence in this sport than the roller derby of the 1970s: severe injury and death was common in the rollerball arena. And this sport is hugely popular in this future time — and perhaps even the focal point of many citizens’ lives. Rollerball stars are wealthy and popular and always get the girls.

How the society got to this point is an underlying theme of this movie. The “boring parts” are actually quite philosophical, probably not that interesting to the average teenager. It seems there was a bit of a civil war over much of the world. What stopped the fighting were corporate interests who somehow gained control over national governments. The corporations developed treaties amongst themselves for territory and economic rights. Nations and provinces were abandoned. The corporations believed that they were the real providers of…