r/movies • u/ChiefLeef22 r/movies Contributor • 2h ago
Article 'Idiocracy' Turns 20 Years Old: Mike Judge's Prescient Cult Classic Knew Where America Was Going, But Not How We'd Get There
https://reason.com/2026/08/27/idiocracy-predicted-our-world-but-not-in-the-way-you-think/•
u/wjbc 2h ago edited 2h ago
Idiocracy was too optimistic. President Dwayne Camacho wasn’t corrupt, genuinely cared about helping his country, and listened to experts. I wish we had a president like that now.
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u/Mormaethor 2h ago
Yeah, he acknowledged publicly that there were problems and that he wasn't able to fix them himself. He was, given the circumstances of his timeline/reality, a great president.
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u/PaladinSaladin 2h ago
Terry Crewes for president
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u/Taeves81 2h ago
Terry would be a hundred times better President than Trump and Vance combined. The bar is extremely low of course, but it's still true.
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u/violent-artist82 1h ago
Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho would be a better president than trump.
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u/TotallyImportantAcct 49m ago
Liz Truss would be a better president than Trump and she couldn’t outlast a lettuce
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u/Scary-Maximum7707 23m ago
Bidens dead dog, taxidermied and put in the oval office would do a better job than Trump.
Literally.
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u/RedK_33 1m ago
That dog was trying to blow the whistle on the secret service agents that were taking bribes from those fake DHS agents and the other agents that would go on to help stage that attempt against Trump in ‘24. That dog is a gawd damn National hero (I have no idea what I’m talking about)
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u/unkyduck 1h ago
Has the US considered a non-celebrity as a candidate ?
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u/zxc123zxc123 40m ago edited 35m ago
Has the US considered a non-celebrity as a candidate ?
the US
Republicans? No
Democrats? Yes as long as they are old AF and/or have a vagina. Also whoever it is will be FORCED TO USE Hillary Clinton's election campaign team even though they've lost a perfect 2 of 2 times already, plus the Dems will let the GOP run circles around them while breaking the rules/law, do away with the DNC election to shoe in whatever establishment mofo the old boomer power players like be it Clinton (over Sanders), Biden (over Kamala), Biden (over Kamala) again, Kamal at the last minute (over Biden), and then wonder why they lost.
Independents? Undecided. But reached an unanimous consensus that they will all be telling interviewers they are still undecided (regardless of being decided or not).
A good segment of the US population? Can't be bothered to vote/care.
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u/InnocentTailor 20m ago
To be fair, presidents and politicians are effectively celebrities by the way they’re treated in pop culture. It’s the same in other nations like the UK - an insane mix of adoration and scorn as folks dress as them and prance around for our amusement.
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u/Metalsand 2h ago
Well, more specifically he said he was going to fix them, through Not Sure. Then threw Not Sure under the bus when problems weren't immediately fixed. Then, unthrew Not Sure from the bus when it turned out they just didn't wait long enough.
Really, it's only the last part that doesn't track with dictators. They usually just double-down or imprison/execute anyone who tries to prove otherwise.
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u/Mormaethor 2h ago
In his defense, Camacho throwing Not Sure under the bus is just a testament of him and everyone else being idiots who have no idea how things work and living in a short attention spawn society.
It wasn't done out of malice or even incompetence. Just... being a product of his time.
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u/JohnnyElRed 52m ago
Yeah. Dictators are really bad at walking back after realizing they have made a mistake. Just look at Putin.
4 years of succesful 3 day operation, and still believes sinking himself more on that quagmire will somehow work itself out at the end.
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u/BitesTheDust55 2h ago
He also sentenced the expert to death after his solution didn't work after a single day and destroyed the economy. Death by hilarious gameshow. He made tons of promises he couldn't keep in a big flashy speech while the expert looked on nervously.
Camacho isn't far off from what we have now.
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u/wjbc 2h ago
But then he admitted his mistake and pardoned the expert. He wasn’t great, but he’s better than Trump.
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u/Efficient-Whereas255 32m ago
Trump is a literal rapist. Its hard to find anyone who is not better than trump.
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u/mightyneonfraa 8m ago
Trump is still trying to get the last expert who worked with him thrown in jail.
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u/CitizenHuman 1h ago
So when do we get the large purple dildo? This orange one is just a pain in the ass.
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u/--i--love--lamp-- 2h ago
And it took them 500 years for it to get that bad in the movie. That is way too optimistic of a timeline. We are speed running that shit.
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u/manachar 2h ago
People think change is always gradual, when in reality change is usually gradual until it's suddenly not.
Like the phase change of water to ice. Colder, colder, colder, then BAM, ice.
Collapse seems to work that way.
The accumulated injuries and systemic failures chip away at the system. Without constant effort of clearing those out, the system becomes rickety.
Then suddenly, it's a failed system.
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u/harrumphstan 1h ago
I know I’m being that guy, but I think it’s more like, “colder, colder, colder, same temp, same temp, same temp, then BAM ice.”
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u/onimush115 51m ago
This change feels very sudden, but it could be argued that much of it has been building since Reagan. The republicans aligning with white southern baptists to get single issue votes for things like anti abortion laws really started the momentum towards christian white nationalism. Now culture war issues are enough to motivate voters without them having any real interest in being informed on actual policy.
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u/thatweirdguyted 2h ago
Yep, the timeline is genuinely the least plausible part of the film. Even more so than the stasis tech.
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u/Dunbaratu 2h ago
I felt the least plausible part was that all that computer tech still worked just fine in a world where literally nobody knew a thing about it All that automation needs an army of IT people behind the scenes keeping it afloat. In a sense the very long stasis was kind of necessary because you first have to imagine technology advancing a lot further along before it got to where it could just keep working on its own without any people intervening, and the human downfall into stupidity would have to not happen until after that.
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u/mulletstation 2h ago
This comment is ol reliable
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u/littlebrwnrobot 2h ago
this entire thread is the most reddit thing ever
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u/hal-baleigh-6699 28m ago
Every post about this movie:
Circlejerking over lines from the movie
President Comacho actually listened to the smartest guy in the room
Uhh ackshully the movie is eugenics.
There. I summed up the entire thread, no reason to read further.
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u/ihavemademistakes 1h ago edited 1h ago
It's also baffling. Wasn't Comacho the same guy who got impatient when Joe's idea didn't work immediately and tried to have Joe killed with a dildo truck?
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u/PresJamesGarfield 2h ago
That's President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho. Let's get his name right.
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u/ComradeJohnS 1h ago
I feel like idocracy did not include what happens when someone corrupt starts influencing the stupid people. it was going off a bad assumption that politicians would be held accountable.
Comacho was arguably one of the better politicians because he listened to advisors to help people. and we got his “stupidity” because of what they explained for hundreds of years.
bad assumptions lead to bad results lol.
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u/ghostly_shark 2h ago
Ironically the current president who was made for TV is so unlikeable as to make for terrible TV. Even Joffrey was fun to watch because he got his comeuppance. The current guy would literally watch us all die before anything touched him.
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u/Beautiful-Sun8973 2h ago
Was going to say this. He actually listened to the smartest guy in the room.
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u/hal-baleigh-6699 33m ago
Wow you were going to repeat an extremely common opinion on Reddit? That's amazing.
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u/TheWhiteManticore 1h ago
People compare current situation with Idiocracy is as naive as the populations in that movie.
At least the “idiots” there aren’t actively malicious
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u/wjbc 1h ago
Exactly. And it’s worth remembering that Trump is a product of maliciousness, not just the cause of it. He couldn’t have been re-elected without tens of millions of people who saw his behavior as a feature, not a flaw.
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u/AutographedSnorkel 24m ago
LMAO, you could not be more wrong. His first term was very uneventful until COVID, then he used social media and Fox News to manipulate his voter base into believing that they were the victims of the pandemic, and blaming the entire pandemic on Fauci. Once the 2020 election happened, he ramped it up to 100. The extreme anti immigration agenda started because he was falsely claiming that millions of illegal immigrants voting. Every single piece of anti trans legislation can be traced back to Trump's heavy anti trans 2024 reelection campaign.
Trump is the cause of everything that is wrong with America right now, not the effect
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u/myfatass 1h ago
Stupidity doesn’t automatically make you a nihilistic piece of shit. Trump just happens to be both.
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u/Zatoro25 36m ago
I think it'll still happen. We're at early stage idiocracy, the one shaped by evil. Eventually the population will be too dumb to be evil and the pendulum will swing
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u/AMediocrePersonality 25m ago
I love that this movie is about people's increasing inability to reason and the top comment is begging for a leader who outsources his thinking.
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u/Southern-March1522 24m ago
Idiocracy, corrected based on what we know now: after taking the IQ test, President Camacho summons him to the White House "so you think you're smarter than me, huh? Well I'm going to build you a prison, it'll be a small ugly prison, and I'll make you pay for it"
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u/thendisnigh111349 2h ago
Our reality is actually much worse than Idiocracy.
In Idiocracy the people were just stupid and listened to a smart person when they got objective proof in front of their faces that he knew better than everyone else. In our world people are maliciously stupid and will not listen to smarter people no matter how much objective proof is put in front of their faces because they're slaves to their biases and simply want to cause suffering to others above everything else. As such the intelligent people on our planet are doomed to watch as overwhelming numbers of lowlife dumbasses turn everything into complete shit and cheer on as it happens.
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u/MAHHockey 1h ago
In our world people are maliciously stupid and will not listen to smarter people no matter how much objective proof is put in front of their faces because they're slaves to their biases and simply want to cause suffering to others above everything else.
That attitude has been very carefully curated in a very 1984-ish manner ("Reject the evidence of your eyes and ears") by making your politics part of your identity. It's meant to keep us fighting amongst ourselves rather than focusing on making the lives of the average person better.
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u/JiroKatsutoshi 32m ago
Which is dumb as shit.
I don't want to care about politics, i just want to read policies and pick the better option. But caring doesn't change anything, because spreading awareness so other people don't need to care (because that's somehow a insurmountable wall to most) is met with shrugs and disinterest. Even good friends who I've known awhile, it's like a good friend could not also be aligned politically. So best to not talk about it at all, because stress! Which is insane, like... This impacts all of us.
We're in the "We will find you and we will kill you" America. So I have to care about every second of every person runnings lives to MAYBE get an option that doesn't want to kill, enslave, and imprison any and all minority groups. Despite the utter indifference of most other people to their own lives getting better.
It's crazy, even the better options are willing to negotiate with the lives of trans and gay people. If they don't budge on that, it's being pro-military industrial complex and "it's over THERE people! We gotta show that we are the most lethal military on the world!"
Or even still, agreeing there and somehow still wanting to keep ICE in a modified capacity. The whole thing is busted
Why does it seem like, genuinely, everyone who wants to lead in any capacity has to be a monster or at least have morals for sale?
Tweaked and rambled a bit, but I think it's readable.
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u/BillyBean11111 4m ago
The annoying part is it's not fixable in our lifetimes. This is something that will take generations
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u/sameljota 1h ago
People need to stop comparing Idiocracy with reality. It's just a silly movie where people were simply stupid. In reality, people in charge are genuinely evil.
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u/chumer_ranion 20m ago
Well the end result was that everyone was stupid—doesn't mean it didn't start with evil
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u/donkeyrocket 2h ago
Trump and his administration is more like Biff in the alternative timeline.
President Camacho sought out an expert, listened to him, and gave him resources to help his people. None of which Trump would ever consider doing. Frankly, we'd be lucky to be in the Idiocracy timeline (only thinking of the leadership comparison not the other aspects of the movie) right now since we're about to see something akin to this next to the White House.
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u/Gardakkan 2h ago edited 1h ago
From Wikipedia: "Writer Bob Gale said in 2015 that Trump had influenced the character"
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u/ReflexImprov 1h ago
He was also only a year off for the Cubs winning the World Series. Flying cars on the other hand...
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u/satanssweatycheeks 13m ago
Yes. That’s way more spot on.
Also Mike judge always uses study’s and data to make his shows and movies. Office space was praised by cretics for its insightful take on office life work dynamic.
Silicon Valley had the same thing happen as idiocracy where people acted shocked certain things played out that he was mocking. When Silicon Valley is a real place and lots of those jokes are rooted in real events or things people have/ want to push for.
Even stuff like beavis and butthead would use the teacher to discuss hard hitting topics.
Idiocracy was made by a smart dude who likes to use real life data to base his shows and movies.
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u/MAHHockey 2h ago
Yeah, little sick of the reverence for this movie as "it's like a documentary now!"
No... it is not at all prescient or "spot on".
It blamed the stupidity of the world basically on Eugenics: The world is becoming stupid because "the wrong people are breeding too much." And even then, the dumb asses in that world at least cared about working toward making it a better place.
Our troubles nowadays stem from a more nefarious issue. People are demonstrably smarter than ever (thanks to much improved nutrition, mandatory schooling, etc). But they are being fed a fire hose of bullshit by the greedy nihilistic mega rich who'd much rather have us fighting amongst ourselves than pay an extra red cent in taxes.
The silver lining to that tho is that's a much easier problem to solve than "people have bred themselves into stupidity."
It's actually quite counter productive and fatalistic to keep bringing this movie up. It is not a good diagnosis of society's ills.
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u/WiseguyD 41m ago
Exactly lmao. There's zero evidence of a genetic trend pushing people's intelligence down over generations.
I'll grant that the comparisons make SOME sense regarding the mixture of politics and spectacle, as well as the absorption of culture into brands and advertising. But that's about as far as it goes.
... Also, I never particularly liked that the movie kind of glosses over the fact that they're feeding babies energy drinks. Like yeah no shit, everyone in that society probably has brain damage from malnutrition due to the Brawndo they're being fed as infants.
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u/mrbaggins 1m ago
Plenty of evidence of middle SES people having less kids than lower SES though.
Sweden: Women absolutely follow the trend, but bachelor / childless men don't
Women negatively correlate, it's husband income that determines children
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u/TheWholeOfTheAss 54m ago
Yup! I remember when the opening singled out pro wrestling and thought ‘that’s a shitty elitist viewpoint.’ If you look as the movie as gospel, most of us would fall into the ‘should not breed’ pile. Hey, I love King of the Hill and Beavis & Butthead but a lot of Mike Judge’s views… are not great. The guy thinks video games are for dumbasses. Really gonna agree with that? The movie is funny and entertaining, sure, but remember the stupid people in that movie aren’t like our stupid rulers. Our stupid rulers are also evil.
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u/_kasten_ 26m ago
I remember when the opening singled out pro wrestling
Unless you're fixated on pro wresting -- which I'm guessing you are -- I'm not seeing how you can say it singles out pro wrestling. The opening bit is a contrast between a nerdy and neurotic yuppie couple always agreeing that now is not the ideal time to be making a baby, and some redneck with multiple baby momma issues who gets his junk impaled in a jet-ski accident and still manages to keep getting women pregnant. Sure there's a whole lot more than that, but you might as well be angry about the film because it takes a dig at crocs. It does do that, but it's not as if that's the main message.
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u/Oknight 1h ago
But they are being fed a fire hose of bullshit by the greedy nihilistic mega rich
People are choosing to share a fire hose of bullshit. The issue is that social media has removed all the gatekeepers that held mass communications ever since Guttenberg and gave everybody their own television network and publishing distribution business with zero effort involved.
Since social media, people actually discuss flat-earthers (!!!) as though their beliefs were worth any attention beyond laughter.
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u/MAHHockey 1h ago
Again, that's all by design. The Social Media folks have hit on an addictive social quirk (The echo chamber), and are feeding (or allowing others to feed) the worst nonsense into it, allowing it to further fester. All the while throwing their hands up saying "not our problem."
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u/cross_the_threshold 27m ago
Social media accelerated an issue that began when the Fairness Act was repealed, allowing for networks to be as biased as they wished. Further deregulation of news media basically eliminated the need to create a shared media reality that was at least nominally on par with general understandings, and everyone's favorite media institution News Corp was created as a consequence. There's a simultaneous through line of conservative elites tiring of trying to argue that conservative politics is empirically valid (I like to pithily sum this up as "Conservatives discovered reality was not conducive to Conservatism, so they abandoned reality).
Against this backdrop social media was introduced, and the West's enemies, Conservatives, and the ultra wealthy used this brand new even less moderated space to accelerate all of their plans.
Basically social media isn't the cause, it's the high octane fuel poured on the dumpster fire of abandoning reason and truth in media.
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u/Cupakov 1h ago
I hate this notion of “the masses” being all innocent and just manipulated by some higher authority. People actively choose to believe in bullshit because it fits their worldview better. It’s easier to think that all the bad things that happen to you are attributable to some out group rather than a result of a myriad little factors. In general, I think humans prefer to be reductionists, and this leads to a mismatch between objective reality and realities people choose to live in.
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u/MAHHockey 1h ago
I don't disagree in the broad strokes, but I will say some folks have made a loooooot of money exploiting that quirk of humanity, and are doing everything in their power to make sure they aren't responsible for cleaning up the mess they created.
They may not have started the fire, but they definitely threw on the gasoline and trying to wipe their hands of burning down the house.
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u/empathetic_asshole 57m ago
Pointing out shit parents tend to produce more shit kids than non-shit parents isn't eugenics.
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u/Milskidasith 36m ago
The movie defines "shit parents" as being genetically less intelligent and having genetically less intelligent kids, and explicitly links the fact they're stupid/lower IQ to the fact they breed more. That's a lot more eugenics-y than "shit parents produce more shit kids".
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u/lookyloolookingatyou 1h ago
In my imaginary sequel this concept is developed further. Joe discovers a hidden society composed of smart people who got tired of dealing with idiots and withdrew from society hoping the problem would "sort itself out."
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u/TomWithTime 41m ago
Not too different from how I imagined a sequel. Joe ventures to the edge of America and finds giant walls erected to isolated it from the rest of the world. Traveling past the wall, Joe finds the rest of the world doing fine and societies being more normal and the desolation and collapse being uniquely American.
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u/lookyloolookingatyou 20m ago
I didn't have time to flesh it out but in my version Joe rejects their eugenicist beliefs with a lofty speech ending with "They may be crude and dirty, but at least they aren't genocidal" and then emerges from the smart guy compound to discover that Upgrayedd has hijacked society in Joe's absence and launched a campaign to hunt down and kill anyone who supports the asshole who stole his ho.
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u/FriscoTreat 1h ago
Sounds a bit like the plot of H. G. Wells' The Time Machine
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u/_kasten_ 35m ago
He was a zealous eugenics fan up until his later years, so that checks out.
for most of his adult life Wells was a committed and vocal supporter of eugenics and compulsory sterilisation, which he regarded not as incidental to his utopianism but as integral to it, since rational scientific planning of human society logically encompassed, in his view, the managed improvement of the human stock itself by actively selecting out undesirable elements such as those with inheritable diseases or criminal dispositions.
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u/Toby_Forrester 32m ago edited 28m ago
Have you considered Wall-E as the sequel? The smart people took spaceships and left earth.
I mean, the future in Idiocracy has huge trash mountains and people are unable to deal with trash. Wall-E then deals with trash. Which one is Idiocracy and which one is Wall-E
In Idiocracy, Costco has expanded so that you can get law degrees from there. Companies sponsor the government. In Wall-E, the company Buy n' Large eventually expands so that it is synonymous with the government. Just compare these
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u/ZenMasterOfDisguise 40m ago
Here it is, I came to the comments looking for the inevitable comment misunderstanding the point of this movie and interjecting some shit about eugenics.
Congrats, on repeating some shit you read on the internet instead of watching the movie and understanding the filmmakers' intentions.
It blamed the stupidity of the world basically on Eugenics
First off, I'm not sure you understand what Eugenics is is you think the movie "blames the stupidity of the world basically on Eugenics" lol. The common internet claim is that the movie blames the dumbing down of society on "genetics" (what you meant to say) and therefore advocates for Eugenics.
However the movie never even claims that genetics is the problem or that stupidity is inherited, what the movie actually shows is taking the "nurture" side in the nature vs nurture debate. It suggests that responsible people who would be good parents have less kids than irresponsible people who have a bunch of kids but don't take the time to help them learn and develop. The working parents with full time jobs who can afford to send their kids to good schools and hire private tutors and would read to their kids and instill morals in their kids want to wait for the perfect time to have kids, and the trashy uneducated parents have kids by the dozens. They DO NOT genetically pass down their stupidity to their kids, they are just uneducated themselves and unable to properly help their kids study, or learn to read, or send them to expensive schools.
The movie is a commentary on society and socioeconomics, it never was about genetics and does not ever advocate for eugenics.
I am tired of people with low film literacy shitting on this movie for a position it absolutely never takes because you misunderstood the point (or you are repeating a theory you read online that missed the point)
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u/MisterEnterprise 2h ago
The Venn diagram of people who voted for Trump and people who like to say that Idiocracy is a documentary is more of a circle than you think.
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u/PereMilon 1h ago
This feels like deflection from the fact reddit has been using as a parallel to the trump administration since 2024.
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u/Preform_Perform 2h ago
You read what other comments are saying i here and you get a duality of man scenario.
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u/PereMilon 1h ago
I honestly see the opposite of OP's claim on Reddit and it's incredibly annoying.
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u/_kasten_ 19m ago
It doesn't mean they're wrong. It may just mean they're projecting. When some MAGA rednecks scream about Muslim immigration and how society is too tolerant of people from backwards cultures trying to enforce their primitive ideologies on the rest of us, they're pretty much spot on about everything except the part about how it's the Muslims that are the ones we should be most worried about.
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u/AnewTest 2h ago
People who voted for Trump also think Homelander is the protagonist of the show. Trump voters are deeply stupid.
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u/TimidPanther 1h ago
Nobody thinks Homelander is the protagonist. Nobody thinks he’s the good guy.
People on Reddit love trying to push this narrative, but it’s not true. It wasn’t true in season 1, it wasn’t true when the show ended.
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u/drgnrbrn316 2h ago
I wish we lived in the Idiocracy time line. Yeah, people were (debatably) dumber than our current time line, but the president actually wanted to help the country and sought out the smartest man on the planet to do so. Our president thinks he is the smartest man on the planet, when he wouldn't be the smartest man in the room if he were in the room alone. Given the policies of our president, I wouldn't be surprised if they have us start watering our crops with Gatorade in the next six months.
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u/Darth_Nevets 2h ago
I mean as bluntly as possible you've hit the nail on the head. If people are less intelligent in the Idiocracy universe then they elected what appears to be the smartest man alive (Camacho) who literally did solve the biggest problems in society and who promoted and located an even smarter man who he appointed and helped get elected President.
Frankly that would be a miracle in this reality.
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u/Toby_Forrester 2h ago
I wouldn't be surprised if they have us start watering our crops with Gatorade in the next six months.
Maybe they'll treat measles epidemic with Gatorade instead of with vaccines.
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u/Meiie 2h ago
I love Reddit comments. Everyone else is an idiot besides the one posting.
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u/Randomeda 2h ago
Trumpian America is not America made stupid, but America made naked. Trump is the most American American, the id of the nation. He did not create the decline that he now symbolizes, but was elevated because of it and made it all the more funny, bloody and pathetic.
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u/Fast-Ad-4541 2h ago
I’m so tired of hearing about this movie. It’s a good enough idea but I don’t care for their execution of it at all. And I love everyone involved.
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u/hal-baleigh-6699 25m ago
The movie falls apart half way through when it realizes it needs a plot. The whole movie is propped up by its premise.
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u/_kasten_ 13m ago
I don’t care for their execution of it
That takedown of corporate greed -- from the Carl Jr's bit to the part about how Brawndo just buys up the FDA at some point -- is about as brave as any movie I've ever seen. I'm talking whistleblower shoot-yourself-in-the-foot levels of bravery. Yeah, most great CD's are mostly filler tracks, but if they have one or two hits that stand out, they're going to. stay in rotation.
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u/Override9636 2h ago
Have you tried watching incredibly stoned? It gets a lot better.
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u/Fast-Ad-4541 2h ago
Tbh I don’t think there’s a movie I’ve watched in the past few years where I wasn’t
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u/SkittlesLentil 2h ago
Half the reason I look forward to trump dying is so I never have to hear about this shitty movie again
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u/OliverClothesov87 1h ago
Chief Camacho is a better president than trump because he actually listened to his advisors.
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u/hal-baleigh-6699 21m ago
Wow he actually listened? I had no idea, you're the first person to make this comment.
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u/PinkSparrow12 56m ago
The collective boner Reddit has for this movie never ceases to amaze me.
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u/hal-baleigh-6699 21m ago
Yeah but did you know Camacho actually listened to the smartest guy in the room so he's better than Trump?
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u/MonkeyMagicEden 31m ago
Idiocracy failed to point to the really awful parts of American culture, instead characterizing the majority as well meaning but ultimately sensible idiots who will fall in line with whatever makes the most sense when push comes to shove. Reality speaks to the opposite and the idiots being violent, racist, religiously motivated bigots with guns and itchy trigger fingers.
It was comedic watching the film when it released, it's mostly tragic with hindsight because it gets pointed to like this, as if there's any real weight behind the weak "average people failing to step up is the root of the issue" statement that Judge's film makes. Judge only saw the best when the worst is what's on the table and has been for over a decade.
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u/mr_ji 1h ago
And now the thread is going to be full of the same comments we've been getting for 20 years about how we're even worse off, ignoring how nothing has changed in how selfishly people act, blaming others, and so on, thus proving that even with this movie pointing it out and two decades to make some changes, it's our fault and we probably won't ever change.
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u/Toby_Forrester 1h ago edited 1m ago
I suggested elsewhere too, but I consider Idiocracy a part of a trilogy of sorts, connected by same theme on three different periods.
Episode 1: Don't Look Up. It's about how stupidity is increasing today, in our contemporary setting and how smart people try prevent it from leading to a bleak future. It's the "how it began".
Episode 2: Idiocracy. The bleak collapsing society where stupidity dominates. Smart people try to navigate the stupid collapsing society. It's the "how it will be".
Episode 3: Wall-E. The Earth is a post-apocalyptic wasteland destroyed by our stupidity. Only some humans have escaped but in the end humans want to be smart and regain their world. It's the "how it ends".
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u/Matman161 2h ago
Eugenics, the argument of the movie is eugenics. So unless you want to start sterilizing people you think are stupid and forcing people you think are intelligent to breed, then stop calling back to this movie.
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u/Jorpho 1h ago edited 1h ago
I liked this bit of commentary that taught me about Lacanian psychoanalysis. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnXmmTbWICQ
He also did another bit of commentary: "It is easiest to imagine an orderly society when blame can be concentrated." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWT-b4QmIAs
It kind of makes me want to learn more about this Kenneth Burke fellow.
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u/Sweaty_Marzipan4274 1h ago
Few things to ponder:
We've normalized school shootings.
The Ai race has no guard rails, no brakes, is nearing self replication, tests show it quickly turns hostile to humans.
Our gov is in full service to Israel.
Social media that's rotted a generation is just now being questioned on its motives.
Tech leaders, Trump, Net, Putin are all in pursuit of Godhood.
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u/balthazar_edison 1h ago
President Camacho actually brought in experts and listened to them. Idiocracy is a better administration.
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u/SomeGuyOverYonder 53m ago
I wonder what a sequel released today would predict 20 years from now? 🤔
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u/ArnoldTheSchwartz 52m ago
I fucking hate that the general consensus is that the movie would be a better future than what we have now because our stupid people are maliciously stupid!
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u/Several-Action-4043 49m ago
One thing I hate about people always saying this movie predicted the future is, it's not like it was just a funny movie back then and now, in hindsight, it's prophetic. The whole point of the movie was making a statement about the current state of affairs back then. We've just continued on the same trajectory.
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u/HikerBikerMotocycler 36m ago
Are you being serious? The irony. Watch it again, you're completely incorrect. He didn't mean to make the movie prophetic, but he did. Mike Judge recognized that we were losing critical thinking skills the more we relied on tech, the internet, etc that was only just emerging when the movie was made. He was correct. The latest generation of students (in America) is the first EVER to do worse than their parents on standardized testing.
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u/ComfortableCare8897 46m ago
I am surprised that the lead actor in the movie Luke Wilson didn't have his career go up after he hosted the interview film about the greatful dead. Hosting nice interview films help actor's career.
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u/disinaccurate 41m ago
I've been saying for years, the most unrealistic thing about Idiocracy was how the stupidity lacked racism.
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u/fudgepax87 38m ago
this movie is too libertarian nowadays, the people in the white house in this movie are nice and think they're doing well despite being dumb, it's post apocalypse and everybody is MAD MAX'in
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u/KiNGofKiNG89 37m ago
I’m over here just laughing reading all these comments. All these people not realizing they are the reason that we are here.
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u/ThePhantom71319 35m ago
I just watched this a few days ago, and when I did I ran some numbers. President Camacho would roughly be around the 140th president
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u/Intrepid_Walk_5150 33m ago
He will not let president Camacho being insulted like this. He actually seeked the advice of someone smarter than him and had no problem admitting it.
That's a whole level above whatever we have right now.
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u/JunglePygmy 29m ago
I knew exactly how, even as a kid. Republicans. My whole life the republicans were very clearly fucking everything up on purpose and stealing the rest.
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u/ImaginationToForm2 21m ago
Or how quickly. But President Camacho cared about the people. Our turd cares about stealing from us and staying out of jail.
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u/rekzkarz 18m ago
Idiocracy aimed too high!
Trump rapes children & women, and accuses socialist Democracy of 'being the biggest threat to Democracy' while stealing!
It'd have been impossible to guess that Pres would marry an immigrant while scapegoating immigrants, pardon & protect child molesters, shoot civilians, and dismantle White House to put in a bunker while he openly talks about a coup in 2026.
TRUMP IS LITERALLY 100X WORSE THAN IDIOCRACY! WTF!?!?
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u/Poodleape2 16m ago
Literally Democrats, democrats got us there. - ISIS was created because climate Change- AOC(Obama admin created them) “The solution to the economy is space aliens”- Paul Krugman
“We have to pass the bill to see what’s in it”- Nancy Pelosi
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u/TriiiKill 13m ago
Terry Crews not knowing any politics would have done a better job. I bet the character he played as would've still done a better job!
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u/WankerBott 12m ago
i recently had an outpatient surgery, the docs nurse called me the night to make sure i was going to bathe, to clean myself. I thought she was joking, she was not, apparently people show up expecting to be scrubbed before surgery.
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u/therealhairykrishna 10m ago
It annoys me that people talk about eugenics with Idiocracy. Eugenics is a deliberate attempt to modify a population for a desired characteristic through selective breeding. The plot of Idiocracy is that they ended up with a stupider population because stupid people bred more than smart people. That's evolution, not eugenics.
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u/Just_Run8347 6m ago
President Camacho actually cared to help fix things instead of making things worse though…
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u/flargenhargen 6m ago
I would absolutely prefer mountain dew camacho.
dumb and trying to help is a million times better than dumb, endlessly greedy, and trying to hurt.
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u/Okiedokietokidoki 2h ago
HE’S GONNA FIX THE ECOMONY!