The Young Ones (2014)
Starring Zod (Michael Shannon) and Nicholas Hoult from the Xmen.
This movie is not what I expected at all. For some reason I expected some sort of “post-apocalyptic” futuristic tale about how these young people deal with life or some sort of situations illustrating how difficult their lives are, or what strange conflicts they face in the future…or something like that. This movie did not really go into territory like that, but this is no “SyFy” movie of the week either.
I was reminded of “There Will Be Blood” or some peculiar Steinbeck novel or a play or some kind of “western” dealing with family life on the open range like “Shane” or something—only taking place in the future. It begins in what first comes to mind as some sort possible ‘post-apocalyptic’ scenario, with people from what could be “Mad Max” marauders trying to break into some guys “bunker-water well” shed. Like characters from “The Book of Eli” trying to steal some survivalist’s water. They get caught, there’s a shootout, and are introduced to our main characters who are not necessarily “Mad Max” survivalists or characters from “The Road” but more like characters from a western drama about an old farm and people trying to make it during the Dust Bowl era. The ‘future’ seems potentially “post-apocalyptic” but rather, vast areas have turned to desert, a corporation like that seen in “Sleep Dealer” is in control of the water. This is something still quite possible and imaginable.
The circumstances are introduced, and it is future America, and while there still seems to be some civilization left, it looks more like something of a western with technology just a little beyond ours, and yet it would seem, something of a collapse must have occurred. This could be only a decade from now, where corporations own the water, water is more expensive than anything, and people live like they did over a hundred years ago, only they have robots.
Like a scene from Star Wars A New Hope, the farm boy and his father travel to a major town to buy a robot ‘mule’ so they can continue to cart supplies up to the ‘company water station’ out in the middle of nowhere. It’s their only livelihood unless and until the father can get water to his farm. “Luke and Uncle Owen” have been depending on their water pumps which have run dry. This does not however turn into an action film at any time, it turns into something more like “There Will Be Blood” and the politics and life circumstances of something akin to frontier ranchers in the old west. It is interesting to say the least, as the drama unfolds, a future life of a family is met with all manner of misfortune due to the water corporation, and neighboring rural characters and their schemes. It becomes a Steinbeck novel or something and though there are all sorts of circumstances which involve futuristic technology, this could have been a story made to take place during the time of the first oil companies, or mining companies in America.
This is nowhere near as harrowing as “The Road” or as deeply conceptual as “Book of Eli” but it could perhaps take place in a world similar but a few years out from those time periods, or perhaps something which takes place in the same world as “Sleep Dealer.” It could be a few years after “The Postman” and if you were to compare it to where we are actually at today, this looks like it could be what our world will be possibly around 2025, likely after more environmental decay and perhaps an economic collapse or two. The ‘reality’ of the setting is not so much central as more of a backdrop to a tale which likely occurred a hundred years ago as well. The more things change, the more they stay the same, and we revisit the same degradation and misfortunes people did a hundred years ago.
The “Young Ones” are only a few characters responding to this situation, but it isn’t a horror story about cannibalism and post-apocalyptic anarchy, it is likely everything these people go through has happened in American history a long time ago, and I believe this film is essentially alluding to this through it’s ‘ranchers’ having a hard life and being screwed by both greedy companies and unscrupulous young men with no futures in desolate lands. This is not as epic in scope to “The Postman” nor as visceral as “The Road” but it could be a kind of “post modern” companion piece to stories like those. After the events of “The Postman” civilization starts to come back, and the fascist cult of the Holnists are wiped out, but no utopia is born, and old time western living returns complete with greedy mining companies or other capitalist ventures bent on stripping what’s left of resources. As sad to say as this may be, but this is likely a story which will be carried out not too long from now by those who survive whatever ecological or economic collapses we now face.
Now all someone needs to do is remake “Little House on the Prairie 2029,” and we’ll have a new genre of post-modern Americana where “Postman” and “Book of Eli” will fit in and won’t be considered “post-apocalyptic” any more as people who live through catastrophic collapses will endure and begin living through situations like this in real life. As the west coast becomes radioactive, the deserts of the southwest grow, the prairies die from genetic engineering interference, the bees die, and the weather and climates change, and fascist super-corporations take more and more, the life of people in America will appear more and more as it once did in the 1800s. Lawless lands, futuristic pioneers, anarchic gunslingers, corrupt resource-stripping small town governments, along with the rest of the expected futuristic scenarios will all actually take place. People will be living out these stories and it won’t be much different than it was in the 1840s, only there might be a few robots or drones out there, perhaps here and there some fascist corporation will be stealing human beings to experiment on or steal body parts or something, and maybe a cyborg or two, and the people who are left to rot in bigger cities will be still living in Blade Runner Land, but outside, in places like those in Automata or many other dystopian films, there will be altered but still wild landscapes where people destroy each other in a variety of ways to survive.
What we need to understand today is that this is the actual future we face, and not all our lives will be the same as Rick Dekkard’s or Mad Max, or Kevin Costner in “Postman.” People will be caught up in quite a variety of situations, and all dystopias will be taking place all at once, as they have already begun now. People watch films like “The Road” and they might fantasize about trying to be on top of the situation by loading up on guns and canned food or whatever they decide, but they might try responding to the apocalyptic or dystopian situation they are actually currently in the middle of rather than all attempt to react to the same fantastic one. The reality here is, you might end up choosing to be Burke (Paul Reiser) in ALIENS to ‘survive,’ or you might choose to be Mad Max, or worse, but right now is when you will be deciding on who you are going to have to be because in fact this is it—right now, this is where it all begins.
Currently I would suggest that most people in America are trying to get Carter Burke’s job as fast as they can so they can ‘survive’ no matter who they are or where they come from, but I would highly recommend that this delusional response is only going to make things worse. Some people are going to be forced into positions they never dreamed would happen to them, and people better wake up to the fact that there no longer is a ‘common morality’ that can be expected from society any more, whether you come from the right or the left. People will now do all kinds of weird things to ‘survive’ and come up against all sorts of peculiar circumstance in this emerging dystopia one simply cannot really be prepared for. You might end up as Harry Buttle, and get ‘Swatted’ just because of some bureaucratic error. Whatever the case may be, reality is science fiction now, and “The Young Ones” in a few short years will be nothing but an ordinary “modern drama.”
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