A type of science fiction film which portrays a future where society controls its subjects through technology and squashes the notion of individuality in an attempt to achieve social and political unity. This all is meant to be the opposite of utopia (a perfect society) hence the term dystopia. Taking their basis from the literature of George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, and Franz Kafka, these films are bleak looks at the homogenization of the 20th-century man, using the distancing effect of being set in an ambiguously labeled future to caution those in the present of its possible path to dystopia and fascism. Early progenitors of the genre such as Metropolis and Things To Come mixed the fantasticness of futuristic set designs with commentary on warfare and the Industrial Revolution's systems of class structures. Later films such as Fahrenheit 451, Soylent Green, and THX 1138 emphasized the notion of technology as a tool of oppression and used very simplistic visual schemes to represent the attempt to keep citizens pacified and tranquilized, with dire consequences doled out to anyone who might resist. In the Reagan-Thatcher era of the 1980s, the sub-genre produced 1984, Brazil, Blade Runner, Robocop, and Total Recall, all variants on the theme of a dystopian future which mixed retro stylings, futurism, and the grit of the modern urban experience to visualize a possible future both foreign and familiar. As the pre-millenial "present" begins to catch up to the "future" these movies portray, the genre becomes more and more prescient as time goes on.