The Blade Runner, The Hunger Games, and Fahrenheit 451 are all compositions of literature that have culminated to give viewers a modern take on the genre of dystopian societies. But, after watching Metropolis I have been given a new appreciation for the foundations of which the modern genre is based on. Metropolis was made in 1927 and was devoid of CGI effects and other modern filmmaking tricks that I had grown accustomed to. But, even with the limitations of the technology of the time, the production company that made this movie broke the boundaries of their time. Creating a beautiful visual picture that helped to tell the story in a truly amazing way.

This movies core belief of a dystopian society was built on the commentaries of how Germany was faring at the time and where Germany was going. At the time the disconnect between the wealthy ruling class and the working class was growing more vast as time went on due to the economic and political climate created by the Treaty of Paris. This caused tension within the populace and mainly the subjects were upset with those up above. This idea is portrayed in the film in how the ruling class literally those up above were living grand lives, yet those below were miserable, and so the lower class through the film worked to undermine the ruling classes power so as to eventually start a revolution and overthrow those above.

In this film we have a man named Freder who is the son on a man named Fredersen, who governs the city. Freder has lived a sheltered life and does not know of the horrors that befalls the workers in the lower part of the city. Though when a women from below comes up above surrounded by children, his whole world view is shattered. When he sees the emaciated children and how sad they look; he realizes that not everyone lives as blessed of a life as he does. He then decided to explore the lower part of the city secretly. We can see that the city is run in a socialist manner with the fruits of labor not benefiting the workers but instead benefiting the city. With evidence of this being that so many people below are working hard yet everything around them is sad and decrepit unlike those above who don’t work for the materials needed to make everything. This film is a commentary on the direction that many were afraid Germany was heading. It was a very complex image that challenged the beliefs of many as films and literature should.

Though as the film progresses we see people banding together to start a revolution incited by a robot made to trick them into attacking the ruling class, but instead of making it a commentary on how necessary a revolution is we see that a revolution almost destroys the city and almost ends everything. But, once the robot was stopped we saw how a new alliance was formed among the workers below and the ruling class to redefine the movie. From this we realize that a violent revolution was not necessary or needed to change problems in a society. And, that we need to do is work together to fix problems in our society.

From this we see a lot of social commentaries that teach us a lot about how we should work to fix our society in a peaceful manner. But, we need to actively work to better our society or it will worsen on its own. This film had set the bar for future films in the genre and has shown other writers what a dystopian society should look like. I can see the effects this film has to this day in all forms of literature and films. The movie was amazing and really made me think about the historical context of which it was made. It is a gem of the past, and I would give it a 10/10 as I would highly recommend other people to go and see the movie. Not for any action but or cool visual effects, but to open peoples eyes and really challenge peoples beliefs.