Future World (2018) Movie Review – Lore-free worldbuilding?
“The old traveller said to follow the north star. See where it takes us.” Ah, hello, World Wide Web. I’m Decker Shado, the internet personality with the best hair. And getting back into the swing of things, I dug up a classic with Future World from 2018. Not to be confused with the actual classic Futureworld, one word, that was a sequel to the original Westworld in the seventies. This is Future World. Two words and is more inspired by classic films like Mad Max. Or perhaps it’s a bit closer to something like Conan the Barbarian. You’ve got your
post-apocalyptic world and all that, but at its heart, it’s an adventure flick across a vast, fantastical world, a future world. Directed by James Franco. Suddenly, I am very concerned. Oh, but who could mess a concept like this up in this world of the future A FUTURE WORLD a deadly disease threatens one person. So a hero goes on an adventure through the wasteland to find the cure and save them. Along the way, we’ve got raiders, robots and a star studded cast, including Snoop Dogg, Suki Waterhouse, Lucy Liu, and of course, James Franco. I’d get into more
detail, but there isn’t any. So let’s take a look at Future World and see exactly what I mean by that. We open up to the present world! Gotta explain how
Initiate hibernation mode.” They just go full on format C:\ on themselves. After all, if you’re going to wake up in a post-apocalyptic hellscape, it’s so much more fun if you have super amnesia on top of it. So our tale proper begins as we see raiders as well as a happy, peaceful settlement of folks just trying to survive the apocalypse with a big old bag of beans. But the elder can hear them coming. Well that’s a hell of a zoom he’s got on those things. Trying to get everyone to safety, the elder heads to the ground
level in hopes of saving all the children. But this only means he winds up face to face with the raider warlord himself! “A gun? I ain’t seen a gun working since the war!” James Franco, who plays the role of Warlord. Well, that keeps it simple, I guess. And yeah, guns don’t mean nothing without bullets. So they murder him and the kid he was trying to save just to establish right away that this is a very serious movie where very serious things happen. But why was Warlord raiding the peaceful people of Beanville anyway? “This is the
one we want… …where is she?” Because he caught wind that there was a handy dandy android here from someone. But it’s missing for some reason. Neither of these things will be elaborated on in the slightest. Doesn’t take him long to track down his robot anyway, a butt- ass naked Suki Waterhouse. She’s just standing out somewhere for some reason. “Wake up.” And now he controls her. His own personal, artificial intelligence! Man, If only she didn’t delete all of her memories in the opening scene. Didn’t do anything to prevent her from ending up in this very situation
She was trying to prevent. And I still have yet to figure out how it was supposed to. So, yeah, the intelligence part of this artificial intelligence leaves a lot to be desired. So let’s jump over to the Oasis. A happy, happy paradise Sanctuary promised Land of Utopia, where we meet the Prince. Prince played by Jeff Wahlberg, chatting it up with his friend Rico, played by Ben Youcef. Seems Prince’s mother is sick and dying, but he believes he may be able to save her. “Paradise Beach ain’t real.” as Prince has heard of a magical faraway land
called Paradise Beach. He has a postcard of there and the magical medicine they have. And no, they never explain how he heard of Paradise Beach or where he got that postcard from. He just did. Rico says it’s all hooey, and he shouldn’t put his faith in such things. His mother, the queen, named Queen, played by Lucy Liu, has the red fever, a disease that’s as well. It’s bad, always fatal. And let’s hope it’s not particularly contagious. He’s like, Hey, ma! I can hop on down to Paradise Beach and get medicine. And she’s like, Dude, I’m
dying. And the outside world really sucks, so just get over it. But he refuses to accept this and keeps asking every random NPC he comes across about Paradise Beach “You ever see this place before?” “Yeah, I been there. You don’t wanna go out there. It’s not a good place.” Beach is too windy, bar too expensive and they don’t put nearly enough salt on the margaritas. He says The temple of life is not what it seems. And Prince is like, Well, I’m going anyway. Later. First we need to jump over to see how Warlord is doing.
Introducing his real doll to the clan under the name Ash. He orders her to go show one of his men the time of his life and the end of his life for robotic women are super strong weapons of war. Sometimes depends on if the plot needs them weak in a particular scene. Speaking of weak women, the queen is dying. This is not news. But Prince runs back up to the old man and demands to know how to get to Paradise Beach. “I don’t care how dangerous it is, alright? You need to tell me where it
is.” “Alright. It’s on the shore of the dead ocean.” up, up, up, up, up, up. skip the deetz, old man. Just mark it on my map and I’ll run towards the waypoint that only I can see. He explains. Three days following the North Star, he will find the neon forest. The people there can tell him how to get to the temple of Light, “When you’ve reached the dead sea, you’ve reached the temple.” wait. Dead Sea or Dead Ocean? Oh, Dead sea. Dead ocean. Dead bay, Dead River, It’s water and it ain’t fucking alive! Finally, he
points out it’s dangerous to go alone. Take this and hands the prince a gun and some ammo. So he’s like, Ma! I’ma be right back. Going to the drugstore. But before he can leave, he runs into Rico. “I knew I found you here.” “Look, you’re not gonna stop me, alright?” “That was never the plan. You need help out there.” “Let’s go.” which means he’s got an entire group for his adventure! Himself, Rico and miscellaneous party member number three. So they head forth to adventure. There’s a bit of a voiceover here where Ash narrates the movie,
talking about stuff, but I’m only bringing it up because it’s there and not because it’s important. Unless you’re really interested that Rico calls the thousand Mile Ride to Paradise Beach The Road to Death or that the wasteland evidently smells like ass, like charred, burnt ass stank ass, radioactive ass and busted ass, nasty. That’s not even the worst problem. “Two guns, ten bullets. We’re gonna need every one.” for some reason in this future world where ammunition is rarer than hen’s teeth. Nobody thought to bring along maybe a melee weapon or two could have checked and bought
one at one of the gas stations they passed along the way. How the hell else are they going a thousand miles on their motorbikes? Eh, don’t worry about that. Following the North Star, they find the neon forest. Love Town. “Yessir, it’s your host with the most welcoming all y’all to Love Town.” A lovely, lovely post-apocalyptic brothel run by none other than Snoop Dogg, who plays the role of Love Lord. Well, I guess Humungous was taken. Also, apologies ahead of time, but there’s booba all over the place. And sadly, modern YouTube is kinda pissy about that.
So I’m gonna have to get creative with my editing. But this is where Warlord currently is, because he’s uh.. It’s where he is, and it’s where Prince and Friends have found themselves. “Let’s just get information and get out.” Oh yeah, you just rode through the desert for three days straight. I’m pretty sure information is all you need. Prince walking in there, deer in the booblights, gets the attention of the barmaid. Prince is still a fool, just drifting by everything. But Rico gets down to business. They need to know how to reach the temple of life
and are willing to pay handsomely for the information. “I ain’t never heard of it. But I can ask Big Daddy. He knows the wasteland like the back of his hand.” Who? They’re not in the credits. Oh, you mean Snoop Dogg? Now, come to think of it, Love Lord is a slightly less generic name than Big Daddy. Unfortunately for them, though, it seems Snoop Dogg would much rather send his goons to attack them in hopes of getting all their valuable loot. But wait, Rico has the ancient weapon of legend. The gun. “You ain’t got no fucking
bull-” But far more important, the ammo to go with it. For you see, the technology to create that has been lost in the sands of time, despite the fact that it’s a relatively simple recipe to make gunpowder that’s been around for over a thousand years at least. And Snoop Dogg keeps his bitches in line with those remote controlled electric collars that seem far more complicated and harder to maintain. But eh, you know, they say people in the future are selectively stupid. Seeing that the group isn’t going to just sit back and get robbed, Snoop Dogg
comes down like, Hey, chill, this is honestly, just one big misunderstanding. So you want to know how to get to the temple of life, do you? Well, it just so happens that I have someone who knows the way, but you’re going to have to meet them halfway if you want to get the information out of them, “My girl is shy. If y’all wanna go to Paradise Beach, he’s gonna have to talk to her all by hisself.” “Rico, it’s cool.” I see no reason to question them splitting us up. I’m sure we can all trust the
guys who just tried to rob us at knife point. Rico reaches a compromise. He’ll leave, but Prince will get a gun and Rico is still armed, so don’t get any ideas. Mr. Doggy Dogg. Thus, Prince is left all alone to meet Ash. He’s like, Hey, you look weird. Hot, weird, like, unique. But I really need to know how to get to that postmortem puddle. She’s like, Sure, sure, we’ll get to that. But first, you got to be in the right state of mind. Horny as all hell, which gets Prince to drop his guard and his
gun, leaving him at the mercy of a super strong fembot. And she kills his friends. Because when you’re standing guard in hostile territory, always keep your back turned on the group’s leader, who you are desperately trying to protect, especially when you have multiple people and can easily keep guard in multiple directions at once. But we still got like an hour of movie left so they don’t kill the prince. Instead, dragging him out of the love shack. “Rico! RICO!!” Rico! and.. other guy! Did miscellaneous party member number three even had a name? I know he didn’t
have any lines. I feel like when Ash shot him, that was the only time anyone even acknowledged he was there. But Prince is kept alive for now. Warlord wants to know where he got those bullets from and threatens to kill Prince unless he talks. Now it should be kind of obvious that the Raiders intend to raid Oasis, killing everyone Prince knows and loves, and they’re only keeping him alive for now simply for said information. So telling them anything is just about the stupidest thing he could do. “The Oasis.” “The Oasis?” “Yeah.” “You got more bullets
there?” “Yes.” So he just tells them all about Oasis and promises a land full of resources and loot for them to ravage. Our hero, ladies and gentlemen. But for some reason, they keep him alive so he can give them directions, I guess. Go south for three days is too difficult for a raider to comprehend, And there ain’t no notepads left to write this shit down. So yeah, bad guys are doing fantastic killing, pillaging, all kinds of evil deeds across the wasteland. And there’s no logical way for this outcome to be avoided. So let’s throw logic
out the window and decide Hey, suddenly Ash decides, you know what? I don’t like raiding, so I’m going to rescue Prince from the clutches of evil. Also, Warlord’s, remote control for the Android suddenly doesn’t work. They don’t really explain why, but at least it’s not too outlandish to accept that maybe it’s just on the fritz. By the end of it all, Ash and Prince managed to escape from Warlord and his raiders, and with a chance at respite. They can recuperate, refresh and remember to like this video and subscribe If you haven’t. God I hate the
future. “Why did you save me?” “I don’t know.” Yeah, if she just didn’t want to be a raider, she could have just said fuck it and leave. Bringing along Captain Dumbfuck doesn’t really help in that regard. When he asks why she isn’t obeying her owner anymore, she’s like, dunno, guess I’m broken and they continue wandering through the wasteland, walking all day until day for night falls and they find a handy dandy church out in the middle of nowhere. That’s convenient. Now we can have that science fiction religious philosophy scene where the human imbecile talks to
the artificial intelligence about the concept of a soul. “Do you think I have a soul?” “Yeah. Yeah, I believe you do.” But we skip over the parts wondering if a robot can have one or not. Nope, no question, she does. In a rare show of intellect and articulate speech, Prince backs up his claim by explaining that one time a traveler at Oasis brought a guitar and played some banging ass riffs like going full on Tenacious D up in that bitch. “I asked him… so how do you play this music? He told me his purpose on
Earth was to reveal that the guitar had a soul.” So you see, Ash, you don’t have to be human to have a soul. Guitars can have souls. Toasters can have souls. My underwear has a soul incredibly tainted. And so it’s time to ask God for forgiveness for your sins. Just get on your knees and “Ash?” But in the fight to save Prince, they stabbed her and damaged her inner workings. And now she is dying. See, she would have been far better off had she just left his ass. She could have been halfway to New Vegas
by now. Now that she’s bluescreened, Prince cannot wake her back up, but he’s not about to give up on her. Yeah, she is just a robot and did try to kill him and did kill his friends or friend. But come on, it’s Suki Waterhouse. So he whips up a stretcher and carries her with him through the wastelands, through many scene transitions still without food or water. But that’s not what’s important right now. “It’s real.” He found the dead ocean. He just tripped across it, running in a random direction. Awful convenient, as he never found out
where it was. Ash didn’t tell him, and Ash didn’t even know anyway, she had her memory wiped, right? It was Snoop Dogg who actually knew where the thing was. And no surprise. But guess what happens next? A random group comes in from just out of frame and captures Prince knocking him out. And when he comes to “Ooh!” Oh, sweet Jesus! “Ohh… did I scare you?” You have been hiding under my bed, haven’t you? Prince is awakened by none other than Milla Jovovich. She’s like, Hey, what are you doing here? And he’s like, I have to
travel the wasteland, sacrificed my friends and acquaintances and survived like a week with no food or water in the desert looking for Paradise Beach. “But unfortunately for you, young man, this isn’t paradise. This… THIS… is Drug Town!” It seems after the apocalypse, the temple of life that cures all of your ailments with magical medicine. Well it was taken over by a bunch of pill popping dope fiends. So they’re doing drugs! All the drugs all the time. But Prince doesn’t need all the drugs. Just one to cure his mother. “She has the Red Fever™” “That’s a
terrible, terrible sickness. Wow. I feel for you.” Yeah, it does. It. It causes it. Well, it doesn’t turn her red, and she didn’t seem particularly feverish either. But it’s bad. Really need the cure. The cure that they can make right here in drug town with one of those handy dandy chem stations in the back with a little caveat, Milla Jovovich tells him, Oh, right. Who does she play again? Drug Lord. Okay fuck it, it’s Milla Jovovich. She tells him before he can get the drugs, he’s going to have to do the drugs. They can only
do business if they’re on friendly terms, so he’s got to be a pal and become one of them. So she shoots them up with something and sends him on that trip of a lifetime. “It’s so nice. So great, right?” Well, to be fair, it’s not like it’s going to cause him to make any worse decisions with his life than he’s been doing. While the prince is off tripping balls, where is Ash? Why, being repaired by drug town’s handy dandy mechanic Lei, played by Margarita Levieva. Just a little poking and prodding and boom, good as new.
“Where am I?” “Don’t worry, you’re in a safe space.” Well you don’t gotta lie to her like that. So she saved her life. And we can get the introductions out of the way. It turns out Lei is a prisoner of drug town, but doesn’t mind it, considering the wasteland sucks. And, oh, yeah, she has all the drugs she could ever want. But drugs aren’t enough for some people. in his euphoric stupor, Prince tells Milla Jovovich about Oasis, how it’s beautiful and perfect and untouched by the wasteland. Which leads Milla to mill over how everything around
the Dead Sea, well, it’s fucking dead. “I mean it’s sad isn’t it isn’t it so fucking sad why do you have to make me so fucking sad?” It’s just the thing he does Milla, every second he’s on screen he does something to upset me. She decides to give him a hit of something and whatever it is, it knocks him out cold. This leads to one of those lovely, lovely drug fueled dreams. Well, it’s the prince’s drug fueled dream, so it’s honestly pretty straightforward. Hey, you got a mom, remember? On that quest for medicine. Should probably
get on that at some point. While he’s out, though, we find out exactly what Milla Jovovich has in mind for Ash. “And I’m gonna bring out the best in you. and and and and you’re gonna bring out the best in me too, right?” Now she owns her and can finally have a companion. Don’t know why that’s something she’s having such difficulty with, but hey, she’s finally got a use for that stack of AA batteries she’s been sitting on. Anyway, Prince has been high as a kite for a while now, so he’s officially earned the coveted
title of Tweaker and Milla Jovovich will provide him with the medicine in a manner of speaking. You see, he can have the cure for the Red Fever™ but he’s going to have to beat this guy in gladiatorial combat and tear it out of his stomach, (GROWL) Jesus, what fucking kind of drugs is he doing? “Yes, I’ve done steroids and yes, I’m on steroids.” The rules are simple kill or be killed. Also, because it’s obvious that this scrawny piece of nothing has absolutely no chance against Hulk Heroin over here after his ass is sufficiently kicked, the
wild card is thrown into play. A handy dandy machete allowing Prince to cheat his ass off and just slash his opponent to death before cutting him open and retrieving the cure for the red fever from his guts. So time to go. But wait. Milla Jovovich has no intention of letting Prince take the robot. He can go with his cure, but she has to stay. “I’m not leaving without her.” “Leave.” she’s just like, Oh my God, could you fuck off, please? We are not a thing we never were a thing and we’re never going to be
a thing. She’s like, Hey, need that medicine for your mom. Can’t get it to her if you’re dead or late and however long her illness takes. But it’s always fatal. We at least know that much. So again, Prince just kind of goes with the flow and leaves Ash to wallow in drug town, heading back to the desert, to walk to the oasis. Took the motorcycle three days just to get to the neon forest. And the voiceover said that was a thousand mile journey. So he’s got a hell of a hike ahead of him. Well, at
the very least, he, for some reason, never needs food or water. So while he moseys along the wastes, that night back at drug town Lei has had enough and has cut her chains. She refuses to leave Ash to her fate of being just another prisoner, some plaything of Milla Jovovich and Lei starts to cut her chains as well. “Stop. It is what it is.” So just live, laugh, love and keep on truckin. always the font of wisdom. Ash is like, Hey, Lei, don’t do drugs. So Lei goes for Ash instead, immediately embarrassed by her own
actions. But then Ash goes for Lei. I wonder how many vibration settings Ash has? “I never had this feeling before. It’s so different than the others.” And Ash has finally found her humanity, her love, her soul. And all it took was, you know, and that’s a bit of a problem because Milla Jovovich wanted the doll all to herself and now that the mechanic has put her greasy fingers all over her “What we’re gonna do is, you’re gonna wipe her hard drive. You’re gonna wipe it clean. Boom, done. Fresh fucking start, right?” Just format C:\ Ash
shouldn’t have a problem with it. That was her solution to just knowing that the world was a fucked up place. Oh shit, we only have like 10 minutes movie left. Oh looky here. Warlord finally got off his ass and figured out, Hey, the guy who stole my robot and said he was trying to find his way to the Temple of life was probably heading towards the Temple of Life and brings his raiding party to raid. So of course, Prince just turns around and heads back there towards certain death. But Milla Jovovich isn’t about to go
down without a fight, doing all the drugs and kicking all the asses until she is face to face with Warlord. Oh, come on, man. It’s Milla Jovovich Even without all the drugs, it’s going to take a lot more than a direct gunshot to center mass to take her down. Huh? To be honest with you, I’m kind of surprised that worked. “Hi. Stop.” Oh, and his remote suddenly works again, so we still have no idea why it stopped working earlier and no reason given for why it’s suddenly working now. But it does mean that he can
easily recapture Prince and Ash as his Waifu once more. And you’d think he’d recapture Prince to get him to guide the raiders to Oasis… But nah, 6 minutes of movie to go. Let’s just kill him. ironically, of course, using the remote to tell Ash to decapitate the motherfucker. But the remote suddenly isn’t working. Again! “Out of order?!” “Fuck. Even in the future, nothing works.” So they escape. And it’s heroes versus raiders. Now, considering it’s a large, well-armed, experienced, violent group of grown men against a mechanic, a scrawny piece of nothing and a MacGuffin with mammories,
of course, Ash has no problem kicking all the asses and taking all the names near single handedly defeating all the warlords men before killing the man himself. Okay, we got like 3 minutes of movie left we’ve got to wrap this chop chop. So Prince heads back to Oasis, and Ash is like well, nice knowing you, but seriously, we were never going to be a thing. I’m going to go adventuring with Lei, sounds way more fun, and Prince runs up like MA! I’m back! Got you that medicine. You may be wondering how she feels with the
fact that he betrayed her to run out into the wastes or that these actions led to the death of two people who lived at Oasis, or that he did such horrible things in order to get that medicine in the first place? Well, don’t. The movie doesn’t even bring that shit up at all. It’s just like. And she lived and everyone is happy. The end! And a mid-credits scene where Ash and Lei head back to Love Town to beat the shit out of Snoop Dogg, in case you’re wondering what happened there. But yeah, that’s was Future
World. I don’t know what’s worse, the movie or the fact that it almost actually had some potential not to be some kind of earth shattering piece of cinema beloved the world over. But the combination of known actors who can actually act along with a somewhat interesting setting, giving us a classic adventure tale, it could have been enough to be a surprisingly decent flick and maybe even hit cult status, but it’s betrayed by one big problem. It is oh so goddamn shallow in every conceivable way. Yeah, a story can be simple, but you need to be
able to explore the depths and ramifications of character dynamics and potentially philosophical dilemmas. Future World, though? There’s an oasis called Oasis, the queen is named Queen, and her son is named Prince. The warlord is named Warlord. The drug town is called Drug Town. It almost reads like it was a rough draft that somehow wound up as a production copy. This means that despite the fact that the actors are good at what they do and the cinematography can give us the best framing it can of very low budget location shots, it all falls apart whenever anyone
says anything. The worst one, unfortunately, being our protagonist, Prince, he starts his journey as an impulsive, naive simpleton, goes through his adventure as an impulsive, naive simpleton, and ends it as an impulsive, naive simpleton. None of the horrible things his actions have brought about are presented as problems for anyone but himself, and at every possible opportunity, he just kind of goes along with whatever the flavor of the day is. Not to say he’s the only problem. Ash gives herself amnesia and evidently has no past of any interest to make that plot point worth while. Party
member number three could have literally been an extra who insisted on getting a bigger part for all I know. And Warlord knew about Ash because he knew and wanted a robot because he wanted one. At the end of the day, Future World is a one out of five script wearing the face of a four out of five flick with acting in a three out of five range. The world is begging to be explored and given life. But all I can tell you is some people really like their beans coming in at two super rare guns
out of five. Still don’t know how that’s supposed to work, though. I mean, honestly, gasoline is harder to refine than gunpowder is to make. Thank you all for watching, I have been Decker Shado. And remember, robots have souls, too. Seriously, that’s like an entire circle of hell dedicated to Furbys. “Fuck you!” Well, thanks again for watching. If you would like another review of a movie that actually surprised me and kind of punches above its weight in a lot of ways, may I suggest Battle Star Wars? Yeah, that is an asylum flick. I know. Or perhaps
if you’re feeling up to it the algorithmically selected recommended video and I tried to see if there were any other kind of opinions floating around for future world. But I may be one of the only people who have actually seen this movie
