Rollerball is a 1975 sci-fi action film set in a corporate-controlled future, where an ultra-violent sport represents the world, and one of its powerful athletes is out to defy those who want him out of the game.
Movies have always been a playground for imagination, and for science fiction enthusiasts, a springboard for speculation and prediction. What will the world of tomorrow be like? For most screenwriters it’s usually one of two things: A) we’re desperately trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic horror of mutants and bloodthirsty savages or B) all of us are suppressed under a collective regime bound by conformity and stripped of individualism, and for a long time, life beyond the year 2000 was a favorite spot on the distant calendar to play these scenarios out, with a bevy of pre new millennium thrillers taking us into the weird and wild future of flying cars, silver jumpsuits, and lots of laser blasts (making careers for the guys at MSTK3K).
Sticking to the latter of those two options, the idea of a world no longer controlled by democratic governments but rather evil corporations has become sort of the default setting in the genre, and one of the more interesting titles in this corner of the lot is director Norman Jewison‘s dark future vision of Rollerball, where violent sports has replaced global warfare and the people of the world have traded peace and general prosperity in the name of corporate overlords who have eroded our freedoms to nearly nill (citizens must sign a contract of loyalty to a company that will support them … sort of like an iTunes user agreement). It’s like Big Brother with a logo.
Set in the year 2018, the film opens on a Rollerball contest between Houston and Madrid, top rivals in a global league. It’s important to know though that these city names are not home to places like the United States and Spain anymore, as all countries in the world are disbanded, fallen into bankruptcy and controlled by corporations. Houston is home to the Energy Corporation, a worldwide energy monopoly that has a stranglehold on myriad smaller companies, dealing with all kinds of manufacturing, housing, transportation, food, and more, keeping the population obedient by ending threats of war and famine, though at great personal cost. Naturally, the wealthy are the privileged and have access to all the best in life (including drugs), while the rest of us just get by.
To keep the masses entertained, corporations use spectacle sport as diversion, with Rollerball the most popular. The game features two teams on roller skates zipping about a large banked, round track chasing a steel softball-sized sphere. If a team gets control of the ball, they try to score points by getting it into a magnetic cone-shaped goal, though it’s a battle to do so as their opponents use physical force to try and stop the ball handler. Oh, and just to add a little more edge to the game, both teams also have limited numbers of players on motorcycles, so there’s that, too.
On the Houston team is Jonathan E. (James Caan), a rising star whose play-style and scoring prowess is wowing audiences, gaining him not just fame but a lot of attention, most especially from Mr. Bartholomew (John Houseman), chairman of the Energy Corporation, who one day tells Jonathan that it’s time for him to retire from the game, even though he’s clearly too young and still at the top of his abilities. Would anyone send Lebron James to the head office after only a few seasons? Of course not. Naturally, Jonathan passes on the pretty sweet retirement deal and decides to stay with the team, never given any logical reason for why he should hang up his skates.
Meanwhile, the game quickly devolves to become much more violent, with a match pitting Houston against Tokyo seeing players actually lose their lives in some Mad Max roller skating savagery. It’s bedlam on the roller rink and with the championship on the line, Bartholomew decides to go full gladiator on the sport, dropping all penalties, forbidding substitutes, and taking out the game clock. It’ll basically be a free-for-all and he hopes that if Jonathan agrees to play under the new rules, will lace up his skates, take to the rink … and end up dead. Game on.
Based on the book Roller Ball Murder by William Harrison, the film sticks pretty close to the source material, its message of a disintegrating oppressed society hooked on bloodsport pretty entertaining. While modern audiences will surely be underwhelmed by the movie’s lack of splash, the gritty, tight authenticity of the game played for real on camera is undeniably fun to watch. To its credit, this was the first major Hollywood film to give credit on-screen to its stunt crew, which is damned cool.
This is not an action film though, despite the extended skating sequences on the rink, the movie more of a mystery of sorts as Jonathan searches to understand why he’s being targeted for early retirement, ending up in Geneva and the world’s central supercomputer, known as Zero. That Zero is not all it’s cracked up to be is representative of much about what the story is hinged on. The film sees Jonathan exploring the roots of the game, why it was developed and reasons for its growth, the sport eventually revealed to be a training tool for its vast audience, conditioning the population about the futility of rebellion, glorification of death, and the concept of group mentality where corporate teams are celebrated, not individuals. This is deep stuff for a movie about men beating each other up in roller skates.
An interesting and disturbing arc in Rollerball deals with women, where wives of the players are a commodity, controlled by the corporation, so that they are provided to the players and traded up so that one could have many wives in succession. #Huh?. This happens to Jonathan, his first wife Ella (Maud Adams) taken from him when a more powerful corporate member desired her. Seems fair. He’s provided with many others however, and it ends up stripping these women of any sense of identity and for Jonathan, any commitment to endearment, often mistreating (abusing) them in the process. It’s hard to watch, but the movie handles this jarring desensitization of Jonathan well. “Love” is all but a banished word in this vanilla world, and yet he pines for Ella throughout, struggling to get her back. Again, this is thinking material you’d not expect to find in a movie packaged like this.
Of course, lots of movies have taken to this sort of corporate controlled theme, with the Hunger Games a kind of modern equivalent, though there are lots that check off the same ticks. The brutality of the game and the manipulation of the audience watching is core to the message, something Jewison hoped would be the takeaway, even though he found himself shocked by legit promoters who wanted rights to the game in order to form their own real-life leagues. Talk about missing the point. Apparently Roller Derby wasn’t enough of a substitute.
While hardly anything of Rollerball‘s vision of 2018 has come true, it’s nonetheless a genuinely intriguing film to explore for how it saw our modern times. The film sidesteps the usual outrageous technologically over-the-top clichés such as flying cars and tele-porters, attempting to build a convincing future world that is still recognizable. In truth, while it has its flairs, it’s hopelessly aged in it’s production design, but in a way, it sort of creates this alternate feel about it that gives it a 1970s vibe with a neo-space-age sheen. If that makes sense. Either way, this is great science fiction with a morality twist, well worth a watch. Also, we don’t mention its remake in 2002. That never happened.