As per the story line of Seventies flick Rollerball, the year is 2018 and Houston on its way to another championship with 10-year veteran Captain Jonathan E at the helm!
I still love this movie despite how super dated it is. Upon my most recent viewing through Hulu, I laughed so hard at the computer center in Geneva because it used punch cards! Hard to believe the producers thought that this tech would remain state-of-the-art 40 years later (Rollerball was released in 1975). At least Star Trek used pieces of wood to emulate would-be removable media; flash drives haven’t gone out of style.
The overall vibe was pretty different for its era too. While most dystopias tended to focus on the aftermath of nuclear (Damnation Alley, Zardoz), biological (The Omega Man) or ecological (Soylent Green, Logan’s Run, The Ultimate Warrior) disasters…Rollerball was a world in which war, hunger, poverty, etc. had been eradicated. The downside? The planet is governed by corporate executives. Somehow the people we know of today that are sociopathic assholes, solved the world’s problems and resisted their proclivity for greed and lining their pockets at the expense of the environment. Remember, this caste of Westerners ran the world economy into the crapper in 1929 and 2008. Then again, it is a movie and you do have to suspend your disbelief…heavily. The corporate executive element becomes a key plot point with the hero Jonathan E for a couple reasons. One, the government wants him to retire since they don’t like celebrities who aren’t executives; hence, the Rollerball League keeps changing the rules, hoping he’ll quit or get killed. Two, executives’ rights trump everyone else’s; years ago, his wife was forced to leave him due to an executive wanting her, a nod to Ray Kroc’s second marriage. I didn’t say the movie made sense all the time.
Even if the dramatic elements of the story borders on goofy, Rollerball‘s action sequences, Houston’s three matches, are impressive and its focus. It’s one of the first movies to give stuntmen the credit they deserved for their major contributions. Director Norman Jewison said the matches were shot in order (Madrid, Tokyo and finally New York) and the rules of rollerball solidified more each time.
It was remade within the last 20 years. Avoid it. This take sucks.