Before reality TV was a pop culture staple, it was the stuff of sci-fi nightmares. Movies like The Running Man satirized and skewered the desire to make humanity’s brutal side into entertainment, and the genre only grew as reality TV became a staple of everyday life. And 50 years ago today, long before movies like The Hunger Games drew inspiration from it, one movie solidified the genre’s potential to take down classism and corporate tyranny while still being goofy as hell.
Rollerball comes from one of the most diverse directors in film history, Norman Jewison, who somehow managed to make Moonstruck, In the Heat of the Night, Jesus Christ Superstar, Fiddler on the Roof, and dozens of others. Despite a long career, Rollerball was Jewison’s only science-fiction movie, but he got his money’s worth out of it, combining elements of Logan’s Run and Soylent Green to run the gamut of 1970s sci-fi tropes.
