William Harrison, the author of the original short story is actually my grandad and the whole misunderstanding/glorification of the game was a repeated topic at home. In the short story the ending is a lot clearer about the futility because you don’t even see Johnathan die, or emerge triumphantly, his death is simply a forgone conclusion as he readies up for the final game, and he really just sticks with the game for the sake of it. Not to prove some grander point. What else is there for him to do? I gave a presentation on the movie when I was younger and a teacher kinda took it as the whole triumphant sports kind of movie, rather than the unredeemable dystopia it was and he was MADD when I told him how that went. Last fun tidbit is, no one in our family has even seen the 2002 remake. We straight up weren’t allowed to watch it. No one has even bothered because it was apparently so garbage during the writing process that when they asked him for his thoughts, he just sold his rights to the story entirely and severed ties. He died in 2015 I believe, but I got to know him very well before that point and we all really enjoy the legacy he left behind. Fun bragging rights with a couple English teachers.
Rollerball Murder is one of my favorite collections of short stories. I would love to see it back in print. I was still in high school when I first read it (1970 something) and I'm re reading it now.
Props to your grandad for one of the greatest pieces of dystopian fiction ever. Anyone who likes the 1975 movie owes it to themselves to find "Rollerball Murder" online and read it a few times. The scene in the movie that best captures the hopeless dystopian vibe of the short story is when the party goers are destroying trees just for kicks and the whole Who Gives a Damn mindset of that future. The movie is a 70s classic, but please read the short story.
@@mhill-fm5cr he was a really important figure in my early life and picked me up from school a lot. Told a lot of stories to me in pre-k when we lived in the same state. And when he was getting worse around 5th grade I got flown out to spend time with him and my grandmother (technically they were both my great grandparents, but no one really makes that distinction). Before he died as well there was a giant thing with a lot of his writing students, because he founded the writing program at our local college and quite a few graduates from it went on to do some really cool shit, and a bunch of them made their way back to see him that last time, and I got to meet a lot of them. His wife, my great grandmother is still around healthy as ever and she tells me a lot about him. I didn’t get to know him as an adult but I had so much time with him as a kid.
My favorite line from the movie was when the hospital administrator told Johnathan E he had to sign the papers to pull the plug on his brain-dead friend because "There are rules!" and Johnathan replied, "No!... There aren't any rules at all!" That to me was the whole movie in one scene.
As someone who saw it when it came out, I got it. Who didn't get it were the creators of the remake. Caan rocked in this film, his delivery is understated but packed a lot of emotional depth for me at least.
I saw James Caan interviewed on a UK chat show about the film, the best he could do was "It's a film about sports and it lasts an hour and however many minutes" Which struck me as ironic, in that I think Jonathan E would have reponded in exactly the same way: merely because he was the lead character in the film doesn't mean that he understood what it was about. He had no understanding at ALL of "the big picture" in which Rollerball was "an execise in social engineering" designed to demonstrate the futility of life outside of the team.Johnathan being charismatic switched the message and started to broadcast the WRONG signals to the masses. I don't think johnathn understood, as he took his triumphant lap of honour as the only survivor of the final, and the crowds began chanting his name that he was hearing the collapse of a carefully engineered society. And I don't think Jmes Caan did either, making him an inspired casting choice.
the remake is dumb. I was laying around watching TV one day and caught about 5 minutes of it, thought I'd check it out because I liked the original so much. Dumb, dumb, dumb and dumber
One important aspect of ROLLERBALL is that it could be viewed also as a precursor of what would later become the Cyberpunk genre. It has a lot of the same themes found in cyberpunk stories such as corporations being in control, and worlds that on the surface appear to be paradise, but are actually technological horror stories.
That’s ugly & deep what you say… But damn bloody true… Correct about Corporations & Governments. A Veneer of compassion & respectability on the surface but dark evil & twisted inside & deep within… You put it well.
I've always liked this film, having first seen it in the mid 70s when I was 12 or 13. I group in with Planet of The Apes, Soylent Green, Omega Man and Silent Running. I would, to a point, add Death Race 2000 to that list, simply because Ib Melchior's "The Racer", on which it was based, wasn't playing for laughs. Anyway, these are hopeless cautionary tales. Johnathan E. is not a smart man, rather an instinctive one. He is the last rugged individualist serving as the final bastion of freedom. Analogous to the American Cowboy myth. He beats the corporations at a game of their own creation. The masses are too stupid to understand what the spectacle means, just as the corporate heads are too presumptuous to realize they are also transitive.
There's still time. You'll see a lot of better science fiction movies than this. Rollerball does have the visceral action kick but the characters are a bit cardboard. However, it's great to know that 22 year olds are watching movie half a century old. Good on ya!😀📽👍
Not really. It was a good film but ranked 4 or 5 in the pantheon of 70s dystopian film Planet of the Apes, Omega Man, Soylent Green, Silent Running..and I'm going to include Alien (1979) as part of that as well.
The nice thing about 70 SF is that it often focused on what society and other aspects like architecture, clothing and furnishings would be like in the future. When the 80s and home computers came along, it was all about technology and computers.
That is the reality of science fiction. It is not a prediction of the future but a look at how some part of today's technology will affect today's culture. Today projected into the next generation or two.
It's a little dated now, re / Rollerball movie 1975 .but I remember going to the theater in 1975. .it was an indoor multcinema ..and watching the story with absolutely inever seen anything like this before inever .iremember it well.
The 70s really were the most *experimental* time for hollywood, especially in terms of science fiction, where the fascination for computers grew and VFX became good enough to better realize these worlds that authors were trying to portray. These kinds of films are pioneers on the modern era in a way.
It's deeper than that. The use of bread and circuses to keep a population entertained and unquestioning of their society. The sickness of the human desire for bloodlust. The suppression of the individual spirit so as to control the population under the guise of a greater good. The narcissistic tendencies of those who want to dominate. Question authority. Resist oppression.
Not everyone missed it. I was 7 years old when I saw this at the drive in and it changed me forever. I knew there was something deeper being said even then. Still watch this gem every few years it always takes me back.
Government mostly did their job when they broke up monopolies. When the media stopped reporting heroic figures that's when we started to get corruptible lawyers to represent us in government. We were better off when we had war hero veterans who served in our government. The veterans understood what loss of life meant. The sacrifice people made. They couldn't be bought. We don't hear about war heroes any more or brave police. The media don't want to give them air time to become popular.
The names in Rollerball are actually a very neat and subtle indicator of their social status in the depicted society. The Executives are always "Mister" and a surname. The non-executives are always just a first name (or sometimes not even that; just a nickname, as with Moonpie and Blue). Jonathan E. seems to fill a sort of liminal role between the working and executive classes, because he has a surname and a last initial (but not a complete surname). I always thought that was one of the rewards Jonathan had been given by the Energy Corporation, as mentioned by Mr. Bartholomew.
Yeah, but the "first name" was prevalent in WORLD sports, like "Pele" and "Ronaldo" and "Ronaldino". So Jonathan E. was the popular athlete in that era, therefore easier for other cultures to remember by a first name. the Mr and Surname is usual .. it is not that deep of a movie at all.
i always view Rollerball's world as a kind of corporate feudalism/fall of the Roman empire,you have the corporate lords with all their power and privilege lording over the masses who are kept entertained by Gladiatorial games all while the metaphorical barbarians are just over the hill waiting to pounce
Finally, it's also important to note that in the original short story upon which the film was based, Jonathan does actually lead a revolution against the corporations. I've always interpreted the rule changes for the final game (Houston vs. New York) as being aimed at killing Jonathan, rather than satisfying some ever-rising bloodlust of the fans. He'd be killed by a mass of New York players (they do come out of the gate chanting "Jonathan's DEAD" so it's clear they got the message) and the revolution of individualism against corporatism would be halted.
Teen Jonathan also does lead a rebellion in the dopey ‘02 remake, which was one of the things that made the remake seem so shallow and clueless without the corporate/violence themes.
@@terrytalksmovies I actually think the character as portrayed in the film is better than in the story in that respect. You're right; he's no Spartacus, and if the Corporation would just leave him alone, he'd never want to be. It's all about what they *fear* he could do, or will do, which is not at all what he would do if they just let him play the game. But they act out of fear, and thus end up screwing themselves by having him be the sole survivor of the NY/Houston game. I think if Mr. Bartholomew just offered to let him finish out the season with the existing rules, and then retire and become a coach, he would be happy with that. But that's not how bureaucracies think, and that I think is one of the greatest lessons of the film; the danger of over-reacting to a threat that isn't really there.
The rules of the final game definitely were focused on killing Jonathon. The opposing team, as they skate onto the track, are chanting "Jonathan's Dead." His own team mates hold back, perhaps to just let it happen and maybe be spared themselves, until one of them (I think it's the motorcyclist named "Blue") rides after him, and the rest reluctantly follow.
Of course American promoters understood it was meant to condemn brutal contact sport. They just didn't care. James Caan's performance was great too. A man who plays a brutal sport but begins to question the expectations placed on him. I'm not even sure you can believe what Jonathan E is told about rollerball being about the futility of individual effort. None of the executives actually believe that. They just use violent spectacle like bread and circuses. They just begin to realise the threat his popularity poses to their power. But Jonathan has crossed from distraction to being larger than the game itself. From being a mere distraction to being larger than the corporation itself. Caan's coldness but warmth towards his team is perfect. You see him gradually realising that everything except the simple reality of his team is a lie. His mistress (don't threaten me you don't know how), his former wife. It's all meaningless. Except the guys he 'fights' alongside. The final game he crosses from teams divided by corporations to everyone yelling for Jonathan. That's the real horror for those corporations. Something larger than they are that people have allegiance to. It's a great film. I have never forgotten after seeing it in my teens.
Harsh violence and dirty play became more common in the sporting world of the 70's. One NBA player nearly killed another with a nasty punch. Boomer athletes and Boomer spectators reviled in the aggressive competitiveness that was becoming more common, not just in sports but life in general (neo-liberal mercenary ruthlessness started in the 70's). Canadian director Norman Jewison said he was inspired by and disturbed by efforts to market the NHL in America by focusing on rough play.
I saw this movie in the theater as a 9 year old kid. Many of the movies of that time were dystopian, as was much of the non-fiction literature of the time. My Dad and I spent a couple of days discussing what the movie was saying, about humanity, about societal strata and about conformity.
When this came out, I read the short story it was based on, Rollerball Murder. Can't remember if I read it before or after the movie, but it was a pretty dark vision of the future, and the movie didn't seem any tamer. Not a cheery movie at all. Funnily enough, I was reminded of it when I watched a recent tv series on Netflix, Continuum. It talks of a time when the Corporate Congress runs a large chunk of North America. Also pretty brutal. Running countries for profit, what could go wrong?
Terry, I thought we DID get the point of ROLLERBALL, although the ending might have initially played more optimistically. When the movie came out in 1975, America has just risen up and gotten rid of Richard Nixon, so I believe it's possible at the time the message audiences got was that somebody determined enough could crush seemingly unstoppable power. The movie didn't end with Jonathan being killed by some random fan at the Corporations' behest, it ended with the Crowd chanting "Jonathan! Jonathan! Jonathan!" as he skated around the ring. I remember this because a college friend of mine really disliked the movie, saying that it was justification for mob rule, and that the Corporations were right to try and get rid of Jonathan E. (This friend also had wealthy enough parents to buy him a sports car and pay his tuition for Loyola Marymount University of Los Angeles, whereas I could only go there for a year because the tuition doubled the next year...but my scholarship stayed the same.)
@@shadow13x - I don't think so, given the movie came out a year after Nixon's resignation. The original story was published in PLAYBOY in 1973, and while it's unlikely anybody at the time could have predicted Nixon's resigning, seeing him being called out by Congress was a huge deal. It looks like everything came together pretty quickly, and while the Nixon Administration was imploding in the background.
@@timeliebeYeah but it said governments collapsed and corporations now ruled. The unstoppable power is corporations not a political figure/party. If anything, at the time, it was a dystopian movie predicting the future of America after its government collapsed. Complete with mob rule and riots and hit jobs… yeah I’d say your friend was onto something.
iv (tried) to watch this movie through the years since i was 7 years old. never quite understood all its underbelly meaning as it couldnt hold my full attention, but now in my 40s iv just watched it again from start to finish recently and its a trip. it actually makes more sense today. very clever and predictive of the present day. how big corps run things and buy sports franchises, the use of major sports to control masses as entertainment. the super computer that records all of history is like the internet, and has all our info, and is our digital footprint like how we record our lives with Facebook and tic toc. even distorts reality/memories. the worlds authoritarian control is run by rich elites-tyrants and its set in 2018 which was not long ago at all.
Forget it being a " good" movie... This was one of the most diverse movies ever and its before all our nonsense during the last 10 years. I loved the dancing scene and the tree shooting scene. So cool.
I was in my senior year of high school when this film came out. I was already a big fan off dystopia science fiction novels so of course i "got it", as did most of my friends at the time. But we were the "freaks" at school, not the jocks, so sports ball was not the all important thing in our lives. The party scene where they shoot down the trees is actually one of my favorite scenes, a sad commentary on how technological society views and destroys the natural world.
It seems like most people despise brutalist architecture these days, but it always reminds me of the two things I loved as a kid growing up in the seventies: great science fiction and public libraries.
One of my favorite movies. Threw it on one night half expecting a bad movie we could laugh at but the movie had all of us locked in until the very end. Helluva film
The water computer in Geneva seems ridiculous but it may have a basis in fact. I read an article about one of the British universities constructing an economic simulator that could demonstrate the effects that various inputs could have on the economy. sorry, don't remember which university. Money supply, labor costs, cost of raw materials, etc. were represented by the flow of water. Increasing or decreasing the various inputs resulted an estimate of GDP. The thing is, it was remarkably accurate.
@@terrytalksmoviesWoodrow Wilson talks about that hand. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it. Woodrow Wilson
I read The Rollerball Murders when it came out. I loved it. As always, the movie never seems as good as the book. I loved the game as the movie portrayed it. Rest in peace James Caan.
I think anyone who's read books like "Animal Farm" would've gotten the message of Rollerball; we're allowing the collapse of civilization and failing to notice.
In 1975 when Rollerball came out, I was in college at University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, where William Harrison lived and worked. He spoke about his experience with the film, and especially the fact/problem that Jame Caan had no understanding of his character.
That sounds consistent with the way the role of Jonathan presents itself to me. He tried a few different things but the character feels really untethered.
I think I saw the movie both ways. It was a sports movie but it also showed how corporations controlled everything. At the end Caan's character sort of broke free of the corporate environment and showed that you can be your own person. Although you don't see what happens to him afterwords.
Reactions… Europe: “What a dystopian testimonial to the brutality of contact sports and the public’s thirst for spilt blood.” America: “USA! USA! USA!”
@@Drforbin941 covid 19 is doing a pretty good job thinning the willfully ignorant here . I know that sounds harsh, but these people just refuse to listen to medical experts. They rather listen to conspiracy theorists on youtube and FB.
I was barely a teenager in the summer of 1975 when both Rollerball and Jaws were released. I wasn't prepared for either of them and they remain the two most upsetting films I have ever watched. Even then I clearly understood the point Norman Jewison was making and I'm aghast to think that some of my American neighbours considered the film to be celebratory.
This links to my theory that the more you learn about cinema, the more juice you get from the fruit. Being able to deeply watch almost any movie will give you rewards and often change how you perceive it, which for me, is never a bad thing.
Further to that? After the movie came out, the networked bugged Jewison and William Harrison (the writer of the original story and the screenplay) to sell the the "rights" to Rollerball! Neither of the men went for that, and Jewison himself was angry that they'd even try because he felt they'd missed the movie's point - though the actors playing Rollerballers started playing the game between takes just for themselves! Imagine creating a game to exaggerate the violence of contact sports - that starts a new contact sport.... 🤦♂
Whenever you're faced with a sci-fi movie, the immediate question to ask is: what sort of commentary is it making about society today? When the sci-fi movie contains corporate hegemony, ostentatious consumption, brutal competition and environmental vandalism, then it's obvious that the move is making a commentary on capitalism. Rollerball is not a "free will vs authority" movie, except on a superficial level. The players are free to quit the game, so technically there is no coercion. Instead, the players are chained to the game via their own materialism, the desire to live the playboy lifestyle with commodified women and have boundless wealth compared to the average joe in the sports audience. But however rich the players are, they are insignificant compared to how rich the executives are. The brutality of the game is a metaphor for the brutality of capitalist competition, where businessmen are happy to stab each other in the back for material benefit. And like in Rollerball, there is nothing forcing businessmen to behave in this way, except themselves. The market doesn't coerce people directly: its iron influence on people is indirect. Jonathan E (E for "Everyman") is representative of the individual in capitalist society. He's addicted to shallow material wealth, and is unable to leave that lifestyle. However, he is becoming too popular and threatens the system. Bartholomew explains that no player can be bigger than the game: he says the game shows that individual action is futile - the game must be allowed to do its work. The "game" is the market, which no-one should ever be allowed to interfere with (except executives!), and "teaches" that individual interference with it is futile. The language is identical to neoliberal narrative: nobody should ever be allowed to interfere with market forces (except when it suits the ultra wealthy!). And just like in real life, heroes are tolerated by the "executives" only until they become too popular and threaten the system. When that happens, the arsenal of the ultra wealthy is brought in, from media campaigns and character assassination, to the military and coup d'etats against popular leaders (as we have seen in many countries). Jonathan is not particularly educated (how could he be?), but is trying to learn. He doesn't realise that it's his materialism and willingness to brutalise others for pay that gives rise to the system, in particular giving rise to people like Bartholomew himself. Bartholomew is the creation of Jonathan E and all people like him. So he doesn't realise the contradiction in him wanting to play on to greater fame despite undermining the system. He is addicted to his lifestyle (what's stopping him from quitting?), but becomes dissatisfied with the shallowness of it when he realises his ex-wife only saw him as a means to an end. He feels there should be more to life than material goods and shallow human relationships. He tries to learn more, but the system has obliterated his history, much like modern society has obliterated labour history, and replaced it with neoliberal ideology. The penny drops for Jonathan E only right at the very end, when after almost everyone in the final game is dead, he chooses NOT to kill the last player out of mercy, going against the brutality of the game. He realises the only way out of his trap is to simultaneously refuse to comply with Bartholomew, to refuse to see other players as opponents to be eliminated but fellow human beings to empathise with, and to lead by example. The Pink Floyd album "Animals" (released only 2 years later) has a large overlap with this movie, with the "executives" playing the role of pigs, the "players" the role of dogs, and the sports audience the role of sheep (Have a listen if you're in the rare minority that's never heard it before!)
A really excellent analysis/commentary! Well done! To keep down confusion and misunderstanding, let me point out that the ‘neoliberals’ stopped calling themselves that around the time of the Reagan ascendency & ‘transformed’ themselves into neoconservatives…without actually changing anything else. In the wake of the USA 2020 election, the movie and your commentary gain new impact and relevance: having spent 50 years in the world of business, and 70 in the paleoconservative, neo-Confederate, and pre-literate religiousity of the US southland, I have seen the forces and dynamics you describe play out in ever-more-dubious and sinister efforts to cut off voters from real facts and real history, cut out, demonize and alienate some demographic groups while elevating others with real-time manipulation of events, reporting, and public response, to the extreme detriment to the nation. There is one thing I’ve yet to see highlighted or discussed: even beyond addiction to material comfort, is the addiction to DISTRACTION itself. The elite with their explosive toys, the players with their limited luxuries, and the fans with their game, are consuming a level of distraction that goes a long way toward deleting curiosity, good intentions, and awareness of the state of things *as they are* as opposed to the slanted, weaponized and largely fictional ‘rewrites’ of what “everybody knows”…which can be seen all over the net, on TV, on radio, and at church, every day. What was once a cautionary tale about the future is now a cautionary tale about THIS MOMENT.
@@charliemoody7168 i agree His commentary analysis was brilliant until he lost me with neo liberalism..... When we're talking about crony capitalism both political philosophies abuse it
When I saw this movie as a kid, I saw one of the "messages" as being that humans are inalterably violent, and if the only way to eliminate war is to give them some other outlet for their bloodlust. Now I'm not so sure that's a valid interpretation. But in any case it's interesting, and a sign of a good movie, that different people see lots of different messages and themes in it.
Great stuff Terry, I still remember when this movie came out, I was around 10 at the time. Due to the rating AA if memory serves me well, I was too young to watch it but for some reason the trailer, which was blasted all over British TV at the time, left such an impact on me. Did finally watch the film in my teens and around 3 years ago actually got to meet James Caan at Comic con, and guess what ? He signed my Blu Ray copy of Rollerball 😎
Hmmm.... also misunderstood: "Soylent Green". If you think it's a twist ending and a one-line denouement, you fell for a plot gimmick. The real nightmare is the world we see throughout the film: the rich and then everyone else fighting over scraps.
I was far too young when I saw this, but even then I somehow understood it was an indictment of how the powerful control the masses for their own purposes and that the game, in a world at an enforced totalitarian peace, was bread and circuses. It was very intelligent and, even by today's standards, the violence is extremely brutal. No one was a superman, not even Jonathan, and every blow looked like it hurt. That was, of course, the point. This film, and Soylent Green, were likely directly responsible for my love of Punk and probably prevented me from becoming a corporate automaton. Fantastic film.
I was born in the 90s, but I stumbled across Rollerball reading up about dystopian fiction. Brave New World, Logans Run, Soylent Green, The Running Man, Fahrenheit 451, 1984. All brilliant due to its gritty portrayal of dystopia. Rollerball is an underrated gem imo.
Kids of my generation always said that "Rollerball" was one of their favorite movies. I always enjoyed watching it on TV. "Rollerball" was part of a film course I took in high school. The Xaverian Brother who taught the course called it Spiritual Dynamics of Flim. His take of "Rollerball" was that the film was a bad example of symbolism. I always thought it was about the pointlessness of war.
@@terrytalksmovies I guess I don't follow your world building premise. I think they wanted to kill Jonathan because he was becoming a "hero". I didn't follow the point you made that Corporate created Rollerball to demonstrate that people wanted heroes. Maybe I need to see it again.
Along the same lines, I'd also recommend a similarly-themed post-apoc film from the late 80s called "The Blood of Heroes" (or "Salute of the Juggers") which is basically a half-and-half blend of Rollerball and Mad Max. It's a fun B-movie, plus it's got Rutger Hauer, Delroy Lindo, and Vincent D'onofrio. It should be in 'cult classic' territory, but few people have heard of it. I'm honestly not sure why it's so obscure. (Side note: It's a bit hard to find, but try not to watch the US edit if you can help it. They cut several minutes, including much of the ending, to make it seem more upbeat. Try to watch the European / Australian version, if possible.)
Well said. And it had Joan Chen! David People, the screenwriter of Blade Runner, was the director. The city where the elites lived was pretty futuristic, IIRC.
As a professional archivist riding out the transition from paper records to digital records, the line about losing the 13th Century is a realistic fear. We have digital records from the 1990 that are already becoming difficult to read as they were not prepared properly or the rapid range of advancement in computer technology (both hardware and software) was not anticipated. Then there is always the threat of hackers who really do believe that nothing important happened in the 13th Century.
That's one of the reasons why here in Australia we have Trove, which is backing up all the old newspapers from the 1800s onward for public access. Preserving ANY history is crucial to a civilization.
Great review! And I can see the plausibility of the whole 'bubble computer' thing happening in the not-too-distant future. With libraries being defunded in America and books being banned in goddamn Florida, soon there may BE no libraries anywhere-- except for a single crap-computer in a remote location run by a doddering old person and by then most people won't give a shit about reading at all.
There's a difference between banned and restricted. That said, you are correct in your concern over Western society not emphasizing the importance of reading.
Great movie... and a great actor portraying Jonathan E, who finally opposes the corrupt corporation that made and try to destroy him... RIL, Mr. James Caan.
Jonathan didn’t shut off the life-support on moon pie. You need to pay closer attention. The end is an implication of the word the future can be when one stands on individual achievement that one person can rise up and people can look at them and move towards something better. Or we can live in the future that we live in now.Rollerball was a brilliant depiction of what our life is now watch it again
Nah, I'm not watching it again. The ending is so low-rez that it can be interpreted several different ways. Also, in history, charismatic sporting heroes often have feet of clay. 😉
I have a soft spot for the future-sports aesthetic, and rollerball is absolutely a pioneer in this regard. It's one of the first brutal sports movies and it still holds up as something really cool to look at. You're right that there could have been a better way to tell the story of the controlling energy corporation as there's not much subtlety to that part of the film. I also understand why James Caan himself has mixed feelings about it too.; There wasn't a whole lot he could do with the character. The director wanted to portray how we are gradually drawn into worse and worse violence for entertainment, but he doesn't really make that argument in any kind of profound way. What saves this movie are the incredible stunts and their performers, and that's probably why people wanted the rights to the game as that was the part that was most compelling. Ironically, had they poured more resources into bettering the story and storytelling rather than the rules of rollerball, the director might have been more effective in getting his message across.
@@terrytalksmovies Absolutely. I do not know hardly anything about film in general, but I've played enough videogames to know that you can get away with a pretty lousy story if your characters are complex and have charisma. This is the final piece that Rollerball was missing. I'd like to see someone take up the future-bloodsport sci fi idea again, as it's still rife with possibilities.
When I first saw this, I was struck by the dichotomy. Jonathan wants his wife, but she doesn't want him. The girl the company gave him wants him, but he doesn't want her. I got the idea that he wanted things for the wrong reasons.
While Jonathan may not have "won" on a individual level, the point is that he planted the seed of personal achievement in the minds of his fans. Yeah, I know the movie may not seem to do a very good job of conveying this point. However, many films in the 70s (especially) didn't hand-hold audiences they way so many do today. I suspect the creators expected the viewer to reach their own conclusions which is a quality that I sorely miss. Keep in mind that in the world of Rollerball there likely weren't any players like Jonathan before he rose to fame, so the critique that the filmmakers don't know sports very well is misplaced, in my opinion. In fact, I think they fully intended to tap into a viewer's instinctive love of competitive sport so that they, like the fans in the movie, grow to love and then root for Jonathan to win. The rollerball players are drawn from the same subjugated and placated people that live under the control of the corporations, so the thought that any of them could try and become something great likely never entered their minds. However, Jonathan is special in this regard. He absolutely _loves_ the game and seeks to excel at it and reach ever greater heights of fame. To him the game and the fame have supplanted any controlling drug as his primary high. It really makes you think about what motivates the people we look up to. Sure, Jonathan may have inspired people to throw off the yoke of the corporations, but him? Well, he just loved the cheering fans! 😉 As far as what happens to Jonathan after the end of the movie, well, who's to say what happens? Do the corporations dare to simply make him disappear and possibly risk angering the fans? People questioning things in such a society is dangerous in the minds of those who control it. What if more people try to find out about their history? Again, the film doesn't handhold. I like that we are meant to actually _think_ about these things rather than have it all served up to us on a silver platter.
I'm always suspicious of movies set 'in the near future' where all of human history is forgotten. No authoritarian government is that efficient. In a sports-mad world, undoubtedly, artifacts of previous times survive. Even Orwell got that right in 1984.
@CybershamanX - You are right... compare to the ratio of corporate CEO salaries to employee salaries. Compare the monopolistic corps being formed today -- where only one or two companies control whole industries. Compare to the way today that corporations will buy usa politicians to get whatever they want -- which allows them to control society. Sadly, Rollerball is just as prophetic as 1984.
My favorite of the 1970s dystopian science fiction movies, I find that it’s messages, that contact sports are awful and brutal, and that if people are offered either comfort or freedom, they will have inevitably choose comfort, resonate just as much today as in 1975. Maud Adams was an example. She clearly cared about Jonathan and didn’t want him killed, but she was just a messenger for the Energy Corporation. I can easily see that world, where the nations have all gone bankrupt and big corporations are in charge of everything coming to pass.
The idea that corporations and corporate overlords will be efficient is kinda cute. In reality, they never are. They're corrupt and their information leaks like a sieve.
I agree with most of your opinions. If I had to describe the movie in just one sentence, it would be, "The future as imagined through the lens of Corporate Feudalism." Even though "poverty has been eliminated" there are distinct classes who have limited rights. The most glaring of these was that Jonathan had his wife taken away because an executive wanted her. Rollerball and legalized drugs were just substitutes for war and racism in order to keep the populace "happy" and focused on building the dreams of the upper class while not creating strife.
I have always seen this movie as a warning of possible things to come. It harkens back to the old Roman concept of "Bread and circuses" - the powers that be are giving the masses the monumental distraction of spectacle so no one sees what has, and is happening to the world. The problem with Jonathan E is that being the top performer in this game runs counter to the order. Naturally he has to be convinced to either retire, or be dealt with.
If you've ever read Harrison's short story, you will understand a lot more. Harrison, in the way of a quality Science Fiction short stories, said more by leaving out long winded explanations and letting the reader figure it out. For instance, the division of the corporate world also involved categorising different spheres of influence, and what precisely would come under the title of " food", or "luxury". Drugs were at first classified as "luxury", but ended up becoming part of " food". So, the corporation is putting drugs into the food as a form of social control. The other major difference between the book and the film is that Johnathan, who is telling his own story, wanted to be an executive. But the " books" that were available for study were what we now refer to as " motivation manuals", and Johnny was talent scouted for Rollerball because of his immense size and strength. What is not spelt out, therefore, but is obvious, is that corporate executives are not the most educated people on the planet. They have simply played the matching " game" and come out on the other side as executives. Also, the final match with no time limit and no penalties leaves Johnathan, for the very first time in his career, unable to " rev himself up" as he always does when it's time to line up and sing the corporate anthem. It's not stated whether Johnathan is victorious or vanquished, we are left with Johnny for the first time doubting his own abilities, and therefore we must conclude that he doesn't survive the last game at all. Working that sad ending into a film where the hero doesn't make it was probably not seen to be good cinema. But, nevertheless, that's what the short story concluded with. If you haven't read it, maybe you should. It doesn't sound like you have, hence your review of a movie that concentrate s more on the game than it does on the future world that the short story revolves around. " The game. The game. Here we go again."
I've to disagree a bit with your comment about the corporate elite "having never seen sports", because I think it mirrors sports really well. Obviously, the degree of measures they take to get rid of Jonathen E. are exagerated, and I can't confirm nor deny if they decide when a player has to retire, but at least in my time watching team-based sports I have seen countless times how directives clashed with team's idols just because they saw them as obstacles to have a full grip on the club/franchise. The bit where I agree with you is that the suits that ran big sports team don't watch the sport.
@@terrytalksmovies That's probably a good choice. Being a sports fan is getting into your life a lot of anxiety you don't really need hahaha. Also less time to watch movies.
Love the movie for the 70ies futuristic style and it's social commentary but in my view, the last scene was not clear enough in its dystopian message and might have caused especially the US audience to misinterpret the comment: The movie was not simply a David vs. Goliath (Jonathan vs. the big corporation)-revenge statement. The movie had many layers but the last scene had an emotional take and culminated into a martyr-epos. I suppose idolizing sports - and war- heroes is a common phenomenon in many cultures but this non-critical view on life (bread and games-culture, entertainment and comfort) is EXACTLY what the movie tried to unveil. After Jonathan was the last man standing in the arena and the audience was tensed since all other players were lying on the battle field dead, there was a huge potential for the film. Jonathan should have dropped the ball, demonstrating, that this was not worth it, then leave the field. The movie didn't gain anything from the actual ending. In my view, unpurposefully it dialectically reversed it's original point.
You say that the elites not wanting individual popularity doesn't make a lot of sense at 4:38. I have to disagree. It makes perfect sense within the context of the world that the story has built, whereby corporate individualism, or personal autonomy, is frowned upon and corporate collectivism rules supreme.
I agree with the point of the movie that Jonathan can't save or change his society really. I was also under the impression that Jonathan was able to save himself by refusing to bend to the corporations by either retiring or dieing. Like the "happy" ending isn't external, but internal by preserving a semblance of humanity by playing the game on his own terms by refusing to kill, refusing to lose the game, and refusing to die. I also think that's what the crowd was resonating with when they cheered for him at the end. Like the corp heads were not happy in the end scene. If it was really for nothing, they would be stone faced after he scored that last point. I think they were shocked that someone broke their system, at least for that one night.
@terrytalksmovies lol, yeah. But think of it like this: the crowd used to be satisfied by mindless violence. That night, they were sturred up by an act of humanity prevailing and an iron spirit of tenacity. The corps will never easily reach that high again to satisfy that audience. Their game that was meant to satisfy their society's need for entertainment is kind of ruined in a way, now that they're going to have to keep chasing that moment. This is sort of working out in real life where a lot of major legue sports are bleeding fans despite higher skill ceilings and new ways to broadcast since they can't get the narratives of "the old days" and they try to force them with things like armies of publicists and ESPN. A recent example is people more interested in what Taylor Swift was doing during a football game than the sport itself
It's all about the protection of the individual within an establishment system that denies individuality. Just look at our present society with the powerful influence of the mass media industry trying to guide us this way or that way; and say that it is not relevant. Rollerball is prescient
One of my favourite movies. I think you underestimate Caan a little - I got more of an impression that his Jonathan E is just confused and doesn't really understand what is going on. One of his defining attributes is an inability to make decisions and complete situations anywhere except on the track - witness his inability to accept that his wife is gone, his failure to make the (rational) decision to turn off his friend's life support. When he finally does, it's all in the service of the net game - which, reasonably, he doesn't expect to come back from. He's finally able to relate his life to the game, and thus make the choices he needs to, rather then holding on for dear life to everything that's been taken from him - wife, friend, and now, thanks to the corporation, the game itself.
@@terrytalksmovies I believe it's possible you missed the point of his character - as a product of this society. He didn't have the option to be "more character" as those aspects of people's lives had been eliminated in this fictional world: defiance, stamina, mettle, toughness, savvy. No one, not even the executives, demonstrate anything other than "the futility of individual effort." To wish that he was a different character is to wish the film had been made other than it was.
@@jackcarl2772 even in the most repressive of societies, people have personalities, especially if they're prominent in the media. It's a bit simplistic to say repression erases personality.
@@terrytalksmovies As you like. I believe you've really missed out here. Clearly, there is an epic story told by the film - and told quite well. But certainly it isn't for everyone. Films such as this one are meant to provoke questions, make the viewer think and consider, arrive at their own conclusions - or perhaps realize the film is ultimately inconclusive. All the best.
I swear my manager used to say " you look like a real executive" anytime i got dressed up and finally she told me to watch this movie like in 2016. Its such a diverse movie its my favorite
I hated being told that when I worked in an office. My work quality didn't change but their brains were all about appearances rather than quality of contribution.
I have to disagree with your analysis re: Jonathan. He doesn't strike me as being out to bring down the system; he's just saying, "You don't control me." I mean, at one point he was even willing to quit, but Bartholomew wouldn't meet his demand of stopping the rule changes. As for Ella, I'm sure Jonathan believes she was taken from him, but he isn't willing to look at her view that she didn't want to watch him get gradually pummeled into nothing. As for the corporations, yes, individual effort is rewarded, as long as it doesn't outgrow the organization. That's the message they were preaching: team first, then the individual.
I can definitely respect that viewpoint but Jonathan's defiance strikes me as kinda childish. It achieves nothing. If anything it intensifies the fanbase of Rollerball. As for Ella, she's a more complex character and therefore more interesting.
As for the movie itself, it's one of my favorites. Well-shot and well-acted, I agree that it's more relevant now than when it was made. The Rollerball scenes strike me as being...realistic. They really made an effort to make it look like a real sport with rules and routines (unlike the awful remake). Oddly, though, while the game scenes are very brutal, I was more unnerved by the scene at the party with the guests gleefully shooting up those magnificent trees. Still, it's good that you did a segment on this movie. Oh, and whenever I hear the Tocotta in D Minor, this first thing I think of is, "Rollerball!".
Hi Terry. I remember seeing this in the theater during its original run. I think my reaction was half way between the two examples you gave. I did realize that the world of the film was awful and maybe on the brink of collapse, but I also cheered Jonathan and thought that after the end of the movie there might be a shake up of the power structure. But then again I was only 9 or 10 (don't remember the date we saw the film). I have come over to the total dystopian disaster you laid out. Cheers!
I always saw rollerball as a retelling of Brave new world Instead Of given the masses soma they gave them rollerball. The fact that the corporation wanted Jonathan to retire made absolutely no sense to me I would think the corporation would want someone like Jonathan who the masses could live vicariously through I always felt the whole point rollerball was to satiate the audience as long as the masses Have their bread and circuses They will be content and isn’t that the whole point
@@terrytalksmovies Brave new world has been ripped off so many times I’ve lost count the hunger games is basically brave New World meets 1984 meets the running man there’s absolutely nothing original in it
To me the movie presented what I shorthandedly refer to as "The Rollerball theory" of society/government. Various aspects of society are controlled/governed by corporations, who have a monopoly on that aspect. I liked the movie for it's dystopian aspects as I am not a big sports fan.
Wow, you totally missed the point that Jewison was trying to make, and even gloss over the impact. While yes it is a mirror of how sports was impacting people, through injury, death and ruination of life, but you missed the bigger point. The movie was all about the removal of individuality, establishing a class system & keeping said class system, and corporate entities becoming bigger than nations. The simple facts that the corporations kept changing the game because it suited them, when a simple mass produced "entertainment for the people" became bigger by the acts of an individual. It was the fighting of the system that personified it. The corporations made the decisions, from what to wear, what to do, who to be with and how to end it. Jonathon E's insistence of keeping alive & turning off Moonpie's life support was exemplary of that. The class system was, as Moses Gunn's was telling of the past, was to show the. Good initial idea of the change to global society, but as the longer that system goes without individual achievements and growth, it will start to buckle. And the tree incinerating scene, it was about how the upper class, do not care for anything unless it is a superficial, instant gratification, and without consequence. Finally, it was the showcase of how even corporations in the 70s were gaining too much power, and decision making, mostly in the name of profits. For the actions against the protagonist: telling when retire, taking of his wife, changing the rules of his game, trying to literally crush an individual; are all for profits. Their goal is to keep the masses contemplated. That individuals in the game are interchangeable, hence why there are no other names of opposing players. So long as the masses keep watching, they are not trying to improve one"s self, or even questioning their place. I love Rollerball. Many times i watched it with my father & it always struck me as impact full. So when your vid popped up, and showed that you totally miss the reasons behind it, that you are more focused on the ancillary aspects of the film. It stills holds it's secrets tightly, and that Jewison was one of the best directors. And when the remake was unleashed, the one aspect removed, was the anti-corporation plots from the original. Why? Because corporations that remade the movie didn't want to be put into a bad light, for they are literally becoming exactly as portraited in the original. The game was always secondary.
@@terrytalksmovies it was pertinent to many writers & film makers in the decade, yet that still does not take away the message from this film. You could replace the game with any sport but the message is still clear. In a sense the game was purely a device, to showcase the powers of said corporations on their power to those of the masses. That is still why the sucky remake failed. Witbout the overriding corporations as the antagonist, what is the movie? A "sports metaphor" that had a plot shoehorned into it? Any remake should try to improve on message, to fix what could not be done properly in the original. Not to remove the plot because it hurt the sensibilities of exactly who the plot criticised.
It made sense in the 1990s they made that remake which was a teenybopper movie. It was not a popcorn movie. Beautiful representation of modern society.
@@terrytalksmovies it is a pointed movie about government and corporate entries coming up with a plan for us to think and feel about the team. Drugs are legal and murder is cool as long as it fits with the narrative
@@terrytalksmovies *_Rollerball_* came out when I was in high school. I wrote a piece for my school's "literary" magazine which was a satirical review of the new sport, "Wheelchair Roller Derby", which was being played mainly by paralyzed and amputee Vietnam veterans. The sting in the tail of my essay was a reference to the possible introduction next year of "Wheelchair Rollerball".
As a young child I saw this movie in the '70s and really enjoyed it but obviously didn't understand the subtext of what was going on, revisiting the movie years later I'm stunned how realistic and important this movie or story is in regards to corporate power, look where we're going right now the CBDC
Thank you for sharing, I will check out your other videos, I bet you might have one for Logan's run, Soylent Green , and maybe even Andromeda strain, but then Star wars came out and ruined everything
I had to see this movie when it first came out. Went to the drive-in where I lived with my parents and hop over the fence way in the back of the drive-in. Went to the snack bar area where they had benches and speakers built above the ceiling outside where you can here the movie. I frozed my butt off sitting there until the movie came to an end. Worth every penny to do what I did even though I didn't pay any price to see it. The very next day I bought the soundtrack vinyl and loved it. Great classical music used in this movie and the great Andrew Previn composed the music in it. Also like to say it took me years to find it on Cd. Worth every dollar and I do mean every dollar. And have the movie on DvD (from 976-CREOLEMAN). Thank You.
I saw this at the age of 17. And yes, even though I liked the action aspect I got the underlying message. Kinda hard not to for anyone with half a brain.
The other major sub division in the future world of Rollerball was James Cann's big swinging d*ck energy. My god. He really was the set up prototype to Harrison Ford's Han Solo character cantina scene introduction in Star Wars.
Caan was definitely understated and mumbling when not in the game but I took that as deliberate. A sports guy forced understand the broader nature of his game and being unsure and confused. As for the goal at the end, that probably didn't lead to upheaval and revolution, although it is possible, but was more of finger to corporate. See, it is a game and I'm better than you, even if it is meaningless in the end.
I saw this in 1975. I liked it alot but didn't get it. I have seen it several times since and figured it out. Here in America boxing and football are extremely popular. The harm to the people involved is largely ignored. It's basically death by a thousand cuts.
A nice bread and circuses attempt by the corporation to keep their people happy. The NFL is as nice current equivalent for Rollerball. I love the idea that the the parts of the machine don't matter. How much influence does Tom Brady have once he stops playing? A very Fin de Seicle piece.
@@terrytalksmovies One thing that brought this idea home for me was Michael Vick getting arrested tried convicted and incarcerated for organizing "dog" fights. Being a professional football player and knowing what he and everyone else in the game had to go through I'm pretty sure he couldn't imagine a world where that was true but dog fighting was illegal. The United States has better laws in place to protect animals than professional athletes. They choose what they do but still it seems crazy.
Overlooked for it's excellent editing by Antony Gibbs, which has a much faster style than was normal for the 70's, that means that it's still very watchable today. I felt that it was also about the rise of celebrities (with no actual real world skills) to actual power. We are left with Jonathan E being so popular that he can have anything he wants, and the chief executive 'running' scared. I think this an early film with corporations running the world instead of states, it may be the first.
Absolutely. Antony Gibbs moved forward action editing in Hollywood films. Asian action cinema was already doing it but Gibbs adapted it to the anglophone cinema and therefore is underrated.
In a similar vein there is the 1989 Rutger Haur movie "The Blood of Heroes" or as it is known outside the US "Salute of the Jugger". Also futuristic violent sportsball of some sort to appease the masses and Rutger going against the higher ups in a futile struggle.
I watched this 10x in the mid 70's I got the deeper messages immediately The game itself was for me good but not the reason I watched this, the scene, when he deleted the video of his wife and saying "all I ever wanted was for you to be on my side" showed me he did love her and was taken from her this was a highlight. This movie has relevance today governments will go bankrupt and corporations will fill the vacuum A blend of both harsh government control and corporate power In the words of Mussolini Fascism
It's atrocious. A shame because John McTiernan is a great director. No idea what happend there. Yea scratch that. I just checked the film on Wikipedia. No wonder it's bad. Lol
I have a diferent view, by the end of the movie he did accomplish what he was meant to accomplish, and what the corporations fought so hard to try to avoid him to do. And that was to show that an individual matters and that the individual can accomplish things, besides just being a small part of bigger thing and just doing the things they are told or are expected to do... And after that you can see hope in peoples eyes and executives afraid and hiding...
I always saw this as a Roman bread and circuses story with a star gladiator that the corporations couldn't control and I don't know how anyone could find the sport appealing to watch especially after seeing Moonpie get his skull bashed in. That scene always gave me the chills when I was a kid and saw on TV. Roller derby was on TV in the 70s and was like WWE with players like "skinny Minnie Miller" and coach "Polar bear Rupert". Maybe this is what they wanted to replicate except for adults with ultra violence? At least in that way the film got the depiction of exploitative owners right.
William Harrison, the author of the original short story is actually my grandad and the whole misunderstanding/glorification of the game was a repeated topic at home.
In the short story the ending is a lot clearer about the futility because you don’t even see Johnathan die, or emerge triumphantly, his death is simply a forgone conclusion as he readies up for the final game, and he really just sticks with the game for the sake of it. Not to prove some grander point. What else is there for him to do?
I gave a presentation on the movie when I was younger and a teacher kinda took it as the whole triumphant sports kind of movie, rather than the unredeemable dystopia it was and he was MADD when I told him how that went.
Last fun tidbit is, no one in our family has even seen the 2002 remake. We straight up weren’t allowed to watch it. No one has even bothered because it was apparently so garbage during the writing process that when they asked him for his thoughts, he just sold his rights to the story entirely and severed ties.
He died in 2015 I believe, but I got to know him very well before that point and we all really enjoy the legacy he left behind. Fun bragging rights with a couple English teachers.
No it was 2013-2014* I was in 5th grade at the time.
Thanks for sharing the story. That ending sounds so much better than the movie's. The film didn't stick the landing.
Rollerball Murder is one of my favorite collections of short stories. I would love to see it back in print. I was still in high school when I first read it (1970 something) and I'm re reading it now.
Props to your grandad for one of the greatest pieces of dystopian fiction ever. Anyone who likes the 1975 movie owes it to themselves to find "Rollerball Murder" online and read it a few times. The scene in the movie that best captures the hopeless dystopian vibe of the short story is when the party goers are destroying trees just for kicks and the whole Who Gives a Damn mindset of that future. The movie is a 70s classic, but please read the short story.
@@mhill-fm5cr he was a really important figure in my early life and picked me up from school a lot. Told a lot of stories to me in pre-k when we lived in the same state. And when he was getting worse around 5th grade I got flown out to spend time with him and my grandmother (technically they were both my great grandparents, but no one really makes that distinction).
Before he died as well there was a giant thing with a lot of his writing students, because he founded the writing program at our local college and quite a few graduates from it went on to do some really cool shit, and a bunch of them made their way back to see him that last time, and I got to meet a lot of them.
His wife, my great grandmother is still around healthy as ever and she tells me a lot about him. I didn’t get to know him as an adult but I had so much time with him as a kid.
My favorite line from the movie was when the hospital administrator told Johnathan E he had to sign the papers to pull the plug on his brain-dead friend because "There are rules!" and Johnathan replied, "No!... There aren't any rules at all!"
That to me was the whole movie in one scene.
As someone who saw it when it came out, I got it. Who didn't get it were the creators of the remake. Caan rocked in this film, his delivery is understated but packed a lot of emotional depth for me at least.
He was always a less is more actor.
I saw James Caan interviewed on a UK chat show about the film, the best he could do was "It's a film about sports and it lasts an hour and however many minutes" Which struck me as ironic, in that I think Jonathan E would have reponded in exactly the same way: merely because he was the lead character in the film doesn't mean that he understood what it was about. He had no understanding at ALL of "the big picture" in which Rollerball was "an execise in social engineering" designed to demonstrate the futility of life outside of the team.Johnathan being charismatic switched the message and started to broadcast the WRONG signals to the masses. I don't think johnathn understood, as he took his triumphant lap of honour as the only survivor of the final, and the crowds began chanting his name that he was hearing the collapse of a carefully engineered society. And I don't think Jmes Caan did either, making him an inspired casting choice.
See Caan in Submarine X-1.@@terrytalksmovies
the remake is dumb. I was laying around watching TV one day and caught about 5 minutes of it, thought I'd check it out because I liked the original so much. Dumb, dumb, dumb and dumber
So true . The remake is unwatchable. Missed the whole premise and the real meaning . But you need a brain which modern filmmakers don't understand
One important aspect of ROLLERBALL is that it could be viewed also as a precursor of what would later become the Cyberpunk genre. It has a lot of the same themes found in cyberpunk stories such as corporations being in control, and worlds that on the surface appear to be paradise, but are actually technological horror stories.
True. Cyberpunk has many parents.
That’s ugly & deep what you say… But damn bloody true… Correct about Corporations & Governments. A Veneer of compassion & respectability on the surface but dark evil & twisted inside & deep within… You put it well.
@@terrytalksmovies Yep. Especially Soylent Green for instance
I've always liked this film, having first seen it in the mid 70s when I was 12 or 13. I group in with Planet of The Apes, Soylent Green, Omega Man and Silent Running. I would, to a point, add Death Race 2000 to that list, simply because Ib Melchior's "The Racer", on which it was based, wasn't playing for laughs. Anyway, these are hopeless cautionary tales. Johnathan E. is not a smart man, rather an instinctive one. He is the last rugged individualist serving as the final bastion of freedom. Analogous to the American Cowboy myth. He beats the corporations at a game of their own creation. The masses are too stupid to understand what the spectacle means, just as the corporate heads are too presumptuous to realize they are also transitive.
well put
Don't forget Logan's Run!
A bit odd that half of those star Charlton Heston.
don't forget "Logan's Run" !!!!
@@kelleymcbride4633 you beat me to it by a year, I didn't even see your comment, lol !
As someone who's currently 22 years old, and only seeing the film 49 years later, this is one of the BEST sci-fi films I've ever seen.
There's still time. You'll see a lot of better science fiction movies than this. Rollerball does have the visceral action kick but the characters are a bit cardboard.
However, it's great to know that 22 year olds are watching movie half a century old. Good on ya!😀📽👍
@@terrytalksmoviesterrible take
THX 1138
The line in the movie " Game! This was never meant to be a game!"
It is a deep movie and you may have to watch it a few times to get it
It's also a commentary on the way sportsball chews up young people.
Not really. It was a good film but ranked 4 or 5 in the pantheon of 70s dystopian film Planet of the Apes, Omega Man, Soylent Green, Silent Running..and I'm going to include Alien (1979) as part of that as well.
The nice thing about 70 SF is that it often focused on what society and other aspects like architecture, clothing and furnishings would be like in the future. When the 80s and home computers came along, it was all about technology and computers.
That is the reality of science fiction. It is not a prediction of the future but a look at how some part of today's technology will affect today's culture. Today projected into the next generation or two.
It's a little dated now, re / Rollerball movie 1975 .but I remember going to the theater in 1975. .it was an indoor multcinema ..and watching the story with absolutely inever seen anything like this before inever .iremember it well.
You grow up fast
The 70s really were the most *experimental* time for hollywood, especially in terms of science fiction, where the fascination for computers grew and VFX became good enough to better realize these worlds that authors were trying to portray. These kinds of films are pioneers on the modern era in a way.
It's deeper than that. The use of bread and circuses to keep a population entertained and unquestioning of their society. The sickness of the human desire for bloodlust. The suppression of the individual spirit so as to control the population under the guise of a greater good. The narcissistic tendencies of those who want to dominate. Question authority. Resist oppression.
Not everyone missed it. I was 7 years old when I saw this at the drive in and it changed me forever. I knew there was something deeper being said even then. Still watch this gem every few years it always takes me back.
I think the movie would've been stronger if the subtext were more underlined.
@@terrytalksmovies I actually like that it's not spoon fed!
I was about 9, when I saw the movie, Sand Peddles, 1966, at the drive-in, starring Steve Mcqueen.
IT TOTAL THE TRUTH about the world.
Government mostly did their job when they broke up monopolies. When the media stopped reporting heroic figures that's when we started to get corruptible lawyers to represent us in government. We were better off when we had war hero veterans who served in our government. The veterans understood what loss of life meant. The sacrifice people made. They couldn't be bought. We don't hear about war heroes any more or brave police. The media don't want to give them air time to become popular.
The names in Rollerball are actually a very neat and subtle indicator of their social status in the depicted society. The Executives are always "Mister" and a surname. The non-executives are always just a first name (or sometimes not even that; just a nickname, as with Moonpie and Blue). Jonathan E. seems to fill a sort of liminal role between the working and executive classes, because he has a surname and a last initial (but not a complete surname). I always thought that was one of the rewards Jonathan had been given by the Energy Corporation, as mentioned by Mr. Bartholomew.
Bravo, bravo
A good analysis, though "E" may have simply stood for "Energy", implying that Jonathan was owned by the company.
@@nechesh Oooh I like that. Still fits with the "name as indicator of social status" but gives a new significance to the letter E. Well done!
Yeah, but the "first name" was prevalent in WORLD sports, like "Pele" and "Ronaldo" and "Ronaldino". So Jonathan E. was the popular athlete in that era, therefore easier for other cultures to remember by a first name. the Mr and Surname is usual .. it is not that deep of a movie at all.
Johnathan, Johnathan, Johnathan, JOHNATHAN, JOHNATHAN, JOHNATHAN!!!!! That last scene always get me.
Me too.. Absolutely epic when everyone in the Arena is Chanting his name…
i always view Rollerball's world as a kind of corporate feudalism/fall of the Roman empire,you have the corporate lords with all their power and privilege lording over the masses who are kept entertained by Gladiatorial games all while the metaphorical barbarians are just over the hill waiting to pounce
I'm not convinced about any worldwide regime. I don't think it works when there are a multiplicity of cultures involved.
Finally, it's also important to note that in the original short story upon which the film was based, Jonathan does actually lead a revolution against the corporations. I've always interpreted the rule changes for the final game (Houston vs. New York) as being aimed at killing Jonathan, rather than satisfying some ever-rising bloodlust of the fans. He'd be killed by a mass of New York players (they do come out of the gate chanting "Jonathan's DEAD" so it's clear they got the message) and the revolution of individualism against corporatism would be halted.
Teen Jonathan also does lead a rebellion in the dopey ‘02 remake, which was one of the things that made the remake seem so shallow and clueless without the corporate/violence themes.
The problem there is that Jonathan E. is no Spartacus.
@@terrytalksmovies I actually think the character as portrayed in the film is better than in the story in that respect.
You're right; he's no Spartacus, and if the Corporation would just leave him alone, he'd never want to be. It's all about what they *fear* he could do, or will do, which is not at all what he would do if they just let him play the game. But they act out of fear, and thus end up screwing themselves by having him be the sole survivor of the NY/Houston game.
I think if Mr. Bartholomew just offered to let him finish out the season with the existing rules, and then retire and become a coach, he would be happy with that. But that's not how bureaucracies think, and that I think is one of the greatest lessons of the film; the danger of over-reacting to a threat that isn't really there.
@@GreyhawkGrognard Bureaucracies rarely know what's good for them or for people.
The rules of the final game definitely were focused on killing Jonathon. The opposing team, as they skate onto the track, are chanting "Jonathan's Dead." His own team mates hold back, perhaps to just let it happen and maybe be spared themselves, until one of them (I think it's the motorcyclist named "Blue") rides after him, and the rest reluctantly follow.
Of course American promoters understood it was meant to condemn brutal contact sport. They just didn't care.
James Caan's performance was great too. A man who plays a brutal sport but begins to question the expectations placed on him. I'm not even sure you can believe what Jonathan E is told about rollerball being about the futility of individual effort.
None of the executives actually believe that. They just use violent spectacle like bread and circuses. They just begin to realise the threat his popularity poses to their power.
But Jonathan has crossed from distraction to being larger than the game itself. From being a mere distraction to being larger than the corporation itself.
Caan's coldness but warmth towards his team is perfect. You see him gradually realising that everything except the simple reality of his team is a lie. His mistress (don't threaten me you don't know how), his former wife. It's all meaningless. Except the guys he 'fights' alongside.
The final game he crosses from teams divided by corporations to everyone yelling for Jonathan. That's the real horror for those corporations.
Something larger than they are that people have allegiance to.
It's a great film. I have never forgotten after seeing it in my teens.
Great summary.
Bravo
Harsh violence and dirty play became more common in the sporting world of the 70's. One NBA player nearly killed another with a nasty punch. Boomer athletes and Boomer spectators reviled in the aggressive competitiveness that was becoming more common, not just in sports but life in general (neo-liberal mercenary ruthlessness started in the 70's). Canadian director Norman Jewison said he was inspired by and disturbed by efforts to market the NHL in America by focusing on rough play.
I saw this movie in the theater as a 9 year old kid.
Many of the movies of that time were dystopian, as was much of the non-fiction literature of the time.
My Dad and I spent a couple of days discussing what the movie was saying, about humanity, about societal strata and about conformity.
Too often, conformity is its own punishment.
When this came out, I read the short story it was based on, Rollerball Murder. Can't remember if I read it before or after the movie, but it was a pretty dark vision of the future, and the movie didn't seem any tamer. Not a cheery movie at all. Funnily enough, I was reminded of it when I watched a recent tv series on Netflix, Continuum. It talks of a time when the Corporate Congress runs a large chunk of North America. Also pretty brutal. Running countries for profit, what could go wrong?
Terry, I thought we DID get the point of ROLLERBALL, although the ending might have initially played more optimistically. When the movie came out in 1975, America has just risen up and gotten rid of Richard Nixon, so I believe it's possible at the time the message audiences got was that somebody determined enough could crush seemingly unstoppable power.
The movie didn't end with Jonathan being killed by some random fan at the Corporations' behest, it ended with the Crowd chanting "Jonathan! Jonathan! Jonathan!" as he skated around the ring. I remember this because a college friend of mine really disliked the movie, saying that it was justification for mob rule, and that the Corporations were right to try and get rid of Jonathan E. (This friend also had wealthy enough parents to buy him a sports car and pay his tuition for Loyola Marymount University of Los Angeles, whereas I could only go there for a year because the tuition doubled the next year...but my scholarship stayed the same.)
interesting perspective
Your Nixon analogy is kinda retcon.
@@shadow13x - I don't think so, given the movie came out a year after Nixon's resignation. The original story was published in PLAYBOY in 1973, and while it's unlikely anybody at the time could have predicted Nixon's resigning, seeing him being called out by Congress was a huge deal. It looks like everything came together pretty quickly, and while the Nixon Administration was imploding in the background.
@@timeliebeYeah but it said governments collapsed and corporations now ruled. The unstoppable power is corporations not a political figure/party. If anything, at the time, it was a dystopian movie predicting the future of America after its government collapsed. Complete with mob rule and riots and hit jobs… yeah I’d say your friend was onto something.
iv (tried) to watch this movie through the years since i was 7 years old. never quite understood all its underbelly meaning as it couldnt hold my full attention, but now in my 40s iv just watched it again from start to finish recently and its a trip. it actually makes more sense today. very clever and predictive of the present day. how big corps run things and buy sports franchises, the use of major sports to control masses as entertainment. the super computer that records all of history is like the internet, and has all our info, and is our digital footprint like how we record our lives with Facebook and tic toc. even distorts reality/memories. the worlds authoritarian control is run by rich elites-tyrants and its set in 2018 which was not long ago at all.
I have more faith in the rule of law. Corporations and oligarchs aren't going to win.
Forget it being a " good" movie... This was one of the most diverse movies ever and its before all our nonsense during the last 10 years. I loved the dancing scene and the tree shooting scene. So cool.
What nonsense?
I was in my senior year of high school when this film came out. I was already a big fan off dystopia science fiction novels so of course i "got it", as did most of my friends at the time. But we were the "freaks" at school, not the jocks, so sports ball was not the all important thing in our lives.
The party scene where they shoot down the trees is actually one of my favorite scenes, a sad commentary on how technological society views and destroys the natural world.
Strangely, one of my Facebook friends is in that scene with the trees...
It seems like most people despise brutalist architecture these days, but it always reminds me of the two things I loved as a kid growing up in the seventies: great science fiction and public libraries.
Yep but it's a fugly design aesthetic.
3:58 What is this? A water tower or a giant toilet bowl?
I always admired Brutalism, glass boxes let Nature in, but they implie zero permanence.
One of my favorite movies. Threw it on one night half expecting a bad movie we could laugh at but the movie had all of us locked in until the very end. Helluva film
It's visually interesting but I don't think there's a lot behind the facade.
The water computer in Geneva seems ridiculous but it may have a basis in fact. I read an article about one of the British universities constructing an economic simulator that could demonstrate the effects that various inputs could have on the economy. sorry, don't remember which university. Money supply, labor costs, cost of raw materials, etc. were represented by the flow of water. Increasing or decreasing the various inputs resulted an estimate of GDP. The thing is, it was remarkably accurate.
That kind of thing is dangerous. It makes economists believe in magical thinking like 'the invisible hand of the market'. 😀
@@terrytalksmoviesWoodrow Wilson talks about that hand.
Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.
Woodrow Wilson
IT WAS NEVER MEANT TO BE A GAME !!!! That one line explains it all.
Yep, Like modern sport, it was a business technique to keep the masses in check.
I read The Rollerball Murders when it came out. I loved it. As always, the movie never seems as good as the book. I loved the game as the movie portrayed it. Rest in peace James Caan.
Agreed. 😞
The web is like the computer Zero in Rollerball.
Rollerball is in my category of “almost great” films.
Yeah, I see what you mean. I think the undercooked ending subverts it.
I think anyone who's read books like "Animal Farm" would've gotten the message of Rollerball; we're allowing the collapse of civilization and failing to notice.
Most people reference Animal Farm without ever reading it, unfortunately.
In 1975 when Rollerball came out, I was in college at University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, where William Harrison lived and worked. He spoke about his experience with the film, and especially the fact/problem that Jame Caan had no understanding of his character.
That sounds consistent with the way the role of Jonathan presents itself to me. He tried a few different things but the character feels really untethered.
@@terrytalksmovies I thought that worked rather well as Jonathan actually seemed kind of 'spiritually' lost when he wasn't playing the game.
It’s a parable of life in a pinball machine
I think I saw the movie both ways. It was a sports movie but it also showed how corporations controlled everything. At the end Caan's character sort of broke free of the corporate environment and showed that you can be your own person. Although you don't see what happens to him afterwords.
I guess I'm guilty of also enjoying the sport-aspect of the film: I did a computer game loosely based on "Rollerball" decades ago. LOL.
They probably kidnapped him and went full on #Diversity and #BLM on his butt
Reactions…
Europe: “What a dystopian testimonial to the brutality of contact sports and the public’s thirst for spilt blood.”
America: “USA! USA! USA!”
Yep...my sentiments exactly
Germany:
Rollerball is for pussies.
If you want real blood sports,
try women's soccer.
@@Drforbin941 The US needs Colossus to straighten them out. :)
@@richardkempton1894 The U.S. certainly needs something.
@@Drforbin941 covid 19 is doing a pretty good job thinning the willfully ignorant here . I know that sounds harsh, but these people just refuse to listen to medical experts. They rather listen to conspiracy theorists on youtube and FB.
I was barely a teenager in the summer of 1975 when both Rollerball and Jaws were released. I wasn't prepared for either of them and they remain the two most upsetting films I have ever watched.
Even then I clearly understood the point Norman Jewison was making and I'm aghast to think that some of my American neighbours considered the film to be celebratory.
This links to my theory that the more you learn about cinema, the more juice you get from the fruit. Being able to deeply watch almost any movie will give you rewards and often change how you perceive it, which for me, is never a bad thing.
Further to that? After the movie came out, the networked bugged Jewison and William Harrison (the writer of the original story and the screenplay) to sell the the "rights" to Rollerball! Neither of the men went for that, and Jewison himself was angry that they'd even try because he felt they'd missed the movie's point - though the actors playing Rollerballers started playing the game between takes just for themselves!
Imagine creating a game to exaggerate the violence of contact sports - that starts a new contact sport.... 🤦♂
Head canon : Rollerball is 18 years later in the same universe as Death Race 2000 :)
Whenever you're faced with a sci-fi movie, the immediate question to ask is: what sort of commentary is it making about society today? When the sci-fi movie contains corporate hegemony, ostentatious consumption, brutal competition and environmental vandalism, then it's obvious that the move is making a commentary on capitalism. Rollerball is not a "free will vs authority" movie, except on a superficial level. The players are free to quit the game, so technically there is no coercion. Instead, the players are chained to the game via their own materialism, the desire to live the playboy lifestyle with commodified women and have boundless wealth compared to the average joe in the sports audience. But however rich the players are, they are insignificant compared to how rich the executives are. The brutality of the game is a metaphor for the brutality of capitalist competition, where businessmen are happy to stab each other in the back for material benefit. And like in Rollerball, there is nothing forcing businessmen to behave in this way, except themselves. The market doesn't coerce people directly: its iron influence on people is indirect.
Jonathan E (E for "Everyman") is representative of the individual in capitalist society. He's addicted to shallow material wealth, and is unable to leave that lifestyle. However, he is becoming too popular and threatens the system. Bartholomew explains that no player can be bigger than the game: he says the game shows that individual action is futile - the game must be allowed to do its work. The "game" is the market, which no-one should ever be allowed to interfere with (except executives!), and "teaches" that individual interference with it is futile. The language is identical to neoliberal narrative: nobody should ever be allowed to interfere with market forces (except when it suits the ultra wealthy!). And just like in real life, heroes are tolerated by the "executives" only until they become too popular and threaten the system. When that happens, the arsenal of the ultra wealthy is brought in, from media campaigns and character assassination, to the military and coup d'etats against popular leaders (as we have seen in many countries).
Jonathan is not particularly educated (how could he be?), but is trying to learn. He doesn't realise that it's his materialism and willingness to brutalise others for pay that gives rise to the system, in particular giving rise to people like Bartholomew himself. Bartholomew is the creation of Jonathan E and all people like him. So he doesn't realise the contradiction in him wanting to play on to greater fame despite undermining the system. He is addicted to his lifestyle (what's stopping him from quitting?), but becomes dissatisfied with the shallowness of it when he realises his ex-wife only saw him as a means to an end. He feels there should be more to life than material goods and shallow human relationships. He tries to learn more, but the system has obliterated his history, much like modern society has obliterated labour history, and replaced it with neoliberal ideology.
The penny drops for Jonathan E only right at the very end, when after almost everyone in the final game is dead, he chooses NOT to kill the last player out of mercy, going against the brutality of the game. He realises the only way out of his trap is to simultaneously refuse to comply with Bartholomew, to refuse to see other players as opponents to be eliminated but fellow human beings to empathise with, and to lead by example.
The Pink Floyd album "Animals" (released only 2 years later) has a large overlap with this movie, with the "executives" playing the role of pigs, the "players" the role of dogs, and the sports audience the role of sheep (Have a listen if you're in the rare minority that's never heard it before!)
Thanks, I will.
Top comment , amazing, thank you !
A really excellent analysis/commentary! Well done!
To keep down confusion and misunderstanding, let me point out that the ‘neoliberals’ stopped calling themselves that around the time of the Reagan ascendency & ‘transformed’ themselves into neoconservatives…without actually changing anything else.
In the wake of the USA 2020 election, the movie and your commentary gain new impact and relevance: having spent 50 years in the world of business, and 70 in the paleoconservative, neo-Confederate, and pre-literate religiousity of the US southland, I have seen the forces and dynamics you describe play out in ever-more-dubious and sinister efforts to cut off voters from real facts and real history, cut out, demonize and alienate some demographic groups while elevating others with real-time manipulation of events, reporting, and public response, to the extreme detriment to the nation.
There is one thing I’ve yet to see highlighted or discussed: even beyond addiction to material comfort, is the addiction to DISTRACTION itself. The elite with their explosive toys, the players with their limited luxuries, and the fans with their game, are consuming a level of distraction that goes a long way toward deleting curiosity, good intentions, and awareness of the state of things *as they are* as opposed to the slanted, weaponized and largely fictional ‘rewrites’ of what “everybody knows”…which can be seen all over the net, on TV, on radio, and at church, every day.
What was once a cautionary tale about the future is now a cautionary tale about THIS MOMENT.
@@charliemoody7168 Well said,
@@charliemoody7168 i agree His commentary analysis was brilliant until he lost me with neo liberalism..... When we're talking about crony capitalism both political philosophies abuse it
I've always seen Rollerball as Mankind's ability to adapt overcome and eventually dominate all situations placed before him.
By killing one's co-workers?
When I saw this movie as a kid, I saw one of the "messages" as being that humans are inalterably violent, and if the only way to eliminate war is to give them some other outlet for their bloodlust. Now I'm not so sure that's a valid interpretation. But in any case it's interesting, and a sign of a good movie, that different people see lots of different messages and themes in it.
I agree. But the idea of creating it IRL is a scary one.
You're also describing the beautiful "Death Race 2000".
Great stuff Terry, I still remember when this movie came out, I was around 10 at the time. Due to the rating AA if memory serves me well, I was too young to watch it but for some reason the trailer, which was blasted all over British TV at the time, left such an impact on me. Did finally watch the film in my teens and around 3 years ago actually got to meet James Caan at Comic con, and guess what ? He signed my Blu Ray copy of Rollerball 😎
Cool! I think it's a movie worth watching, while I still have those qualms about Caan in it.
What was James Caan doing at Comic con 3 years ago? What was he promoting?
Uber cool man
Hmmm.... also misunderstood: "Soylent Green". If you think it's a twist ending and a one-line denouement, you fell for a plot gimmick. The real nightmare is the world we see throughout the film: the rich and then everyone else fighting over scraps.
Absolutely, comrade. 😀
Remember that Soylent Green started with the killing of one of the elites of society who were untouchable.
I was far too young when I saw this, but even then I somehow understood it was an indictment of how the powerful control the masses for their own purposes and that the game, in a world at an enforced totalitarian peace, was bread and circuses. It was very intelligent and, even by today's standards, the violence is extremely brutal. No one was a superman, not even Jonathan, and every blow looked like it hurt. That was, of course, the point. This film, and Soylent Green, were likely directly responsible for my love of Punk and probably prevented me from becoming a corporate automaton. Fantastic film.
Cool. I'm not a big fan of it but it clearly meant a lot to you.
I was born in the 90s, but I stumbled across Rollerball reading up about dystopian fiction. Brave New World, Logans Run, Soylent Green, The Running Man, Fahrenheit 451, 1984. All brilliant due to its gritty portrayal of dystopia. Rollerball is an underrated gem imo.
Fair enough. We can agree to politely disagree. 😀
If you dislike Rollerball why bring it up?
How dare you? Of course, I get it. It's about a ball that rolls.
It's also a very very obscure sexual position.
Kids of my generation always said that "Rollerball" was one of their favorite movies. I always enjoyed watching it on TV. "Rollerball" was part of a film course I took in high school. The Xaverian Brother who taught the course called it Spiritual Dynamics of Flim. His take of "Rollerball" was that the film was a bad example of symbolism. I always thought it was about the pointlessness of war.
It's not particularly good symbolism and the worldbuilding falls apart with even a cursory analysis.
@@terrytalksmovies I guess I don't follow your world building premise. I think they wanted to kill Jonathan because he was becoming a "hero". I didn't follow the point you made that Corporate created Rollerball to demonstrate that people wanted heroes. Maybe I need to see it again.
Along the same lines, I'd also recommend a similarly-themed post-apoc film from the late 80s called "The Blood of Heroes" (or "Salute of the Juggers") which is basically a half-and-half blend of Rollerball and Mad Max. It's a fun B-movie, plus it's got Rutger Hauer, Delroy Lindo, and Vincent D'onofrio. It should be in 'cult classic' territory, but few people have heard of it. I'm honestly not sure why it's so obscure.
(Side note: It's a bit hard to find, but try not to watch the US edit if you can help it. They cut several minutes, including much of the ending, to make it seem more upbeat. Try to watch the European / Australian version, if possible.)
Well said. And it had Joan Chen! David People, the screenwriter of Blade Runner, was the director. The city where the elites lived was pretty futuristic, IIRC.
@@SlackerBabel they were all eating bugs as a delicacy as well..very prophetic
As a professional archivist riding out the transition from paper records to digital records, the line about losing the 13th Century is a realistic fear. We have digital records from the 1990 that are already becoming difficult to read as they were not prepared properly or the rapid range of advancement in computer technology (both hardware and software) was not anticipated. Then there is always the threat of hackers who really do believe that nothing important happened in the 13th Century.
That's one of the reasons why here in Australia we have Trove, which is backing up all the old newspapers from the 1800s onward for public access. Preserving ANY history is crucial to a civilization.
Great review! And I can see the plausibility of the whole 'bubble computer' thing happening in the not-too-distant future. With libraries being defunded in America and books being banned in goddamn Florida, soon there may BE no libraries anywhere-- except for a single crap-computer in a remote location run by a doddering old person and by then most people won't give a shit about reading at all.
That's the problem with streaming media and digital media in general. People can alter it before delivery.
There's a difference between banned and restricted. That said, you are correct in your concern over Western society not emphasizing the importance of reading.
All thaats needed is the bible.... j/k
Great movie... and a great actor portraying Jonathan E, who finally opposes the corrupt corporation that made and try to destroy him... RIL, Mr. James Caan.
Yep. He was a subtle actor when the roles were right.
Jonathan didn’t shut off the life-support on moon pie. You need to pay closer attention. The end is an implication of the word the future can be when one stands on individual achievement that one person can rise up and people can look at them and move towards something better. Or we can live in the future that we live in now.Rollerball was a brilliant depiction of what our life is now watch it again
Nah, I'm not watching it again. The ending is so low-rez that it can be interpreted several different ways. Also, in history, charismatic sporting heroes often have feet of clay. 😉
*A masterpiece. And VERY ahead of its time with its message*
Okay...
I have a soft spot for the future-sports aesthetic, and rollerball is absolutely a pioneer in this regard. It's one of the first brutal sports movies and it still holds up as something really cool to look at. You're right that there could have been a better way to tell the story of the controlling energy corporation as there's not much subtlety to that part of the film. I also understand why James Caan himself has mixed feelings about it too.; There wasn't a whole lot he could do with the character. The director wanted to portray how we are gradually drawn into worse and worse violence for entertainment, but he doesn't really make that argument in any kind of profound way. What saves this movie are the incredible stunts and their performers, and that's probably why people wanted the rights to the game as that was the part that was most compelling. Ironically, had they poured more resources into bettering the story and storytelling rather than the rules of rollerball, the director might have been more effective in getting his message across.
I always felt the script could do with some polishing by someone who could create characters.
@@terrytalksmovies Absolutely. I do not know hardly anything about film in general, but I've played enough videogames to know that you can get away with a pretty lousy story if your characters are complex and have charisma. This is the final piece that Rollerball was missing. I'd like to see someone take up the future-bloodsport sci fi idea again, as it's still rife with possibilities.
Read Stephen King's The Running Man and watch the movie too.@@FreshTillDeath56
When I first saw this, I was struck by the dichotomy. Jonathan wants his wife, but she doesn't want him. The girl the company gave him wants him, but he doesn't want her. I got the idea that he wanted things for the wrong reasons.
I think he's a poorly written character.
While Jonathan may not have "won" on a individual level, the point is that he planted the seed of personal achievement in the minds of his fans. Yeah, I know the movie may not seem to do a very good job of conveying this point. However, many films in the 70s (especially) didn't hand-hold audiences they way so many do today. I suspect the creators expected the viewer to reach their own conclusions which is a quality that I sorely miss.
Keep in mind that in the world of Rollerball there likely weren't any players like Jonathan before he rose to fame, so the critique that the filmmakers don't know sports very well is misplaced, in my opinion. In fact, I think they fully intended to tap into a viewer's instinctive love of competitive sport so that they, like the fans in the movie, grow to love and then root for Jonathan to win. The rollerball players are drawn from the same subjugated and placated people that live under the control of the corporations, so the thought that any of them could try and become something great likely never entered their minds. However, Jonathan is special in this regard. He absolutely _loves_ the game and seeks to excel at it and reach ever greater heights of fame. To him the game and the fame have supplanted any controlling drug as his primary high. It really makes you think about what motivates the people we look up to. Sure, Jonathan may have inspired people to throw off the yoke of the corporations, but him? Well, he just loved the cheering fans! 😉
As far as what happens to Jonathan after the end of the movie, well, who's to say what happens? Do the corporations dare to simply make him disappear and possibly risk angering the fans? People questioning things in such a society is dangerous in the minds of those who control it. What if more people try to find out about their history? Again, the film doesn't handhold. I like that we are meant to actually _think_ about these things rather than have it all served up to us on a silver platter.
I'm always suspicious of movies set 'in the near future' where all of human history is forgotten. No authoritarian government is that efficient. In a sports-mad world, undoubtedly, artifacts of previous times survive. Even Orwell got that right in 1984.
@CybershamanX - You are right... compare to the ratio of corporate CEO salaries to employee salaries. Compare the monopolistic corps being formed today -- where only one or two companies control whole industries. Compare to the way today that corporations will buy usa politicians to get whatever they want -- which allows them to control society.
Sadly, Rollerball is just as prophetic as 1984.
My favorite of the 1970s dystopian science fiction movies, I find that it’s messages, that contact sports are awful and brutal, and that if people are offered either comfort or freedom, they will have inevitably choose comfort, resonate just as much today as in 1975. Maud Adams was an example. She clearly cared about Jonathan and didn’t want him killed, but she was just a messenger for the Energy Corporation. I can easily see that world, where the nations have all gone bankrupt and big corporations are in charge of everything coming to pass.
The idea that corporations and corporate overlords will be efficient is kinda cute. In reality, they never are. They're corrupt and their information leaks like a sieve.
I agree with most of your opinions. If I had to describe the movie in just one sentence, it would be, "The future as imagined through the lens of Corporate Feudalism." Even though "poverty has been eliminated" there are distinct classes who have limited rights. The most glaring of these was that Jonathan had his wife taken away because an executive wanted her. Rollerball and legalized drugs were just substitutes for war and racism in order to keep the populace "happy" and focused on building the dreams of the upper class while not creating strife.
The energy corporation runs houston?!?
Yep but in reality Texas seems to be run by people who hate women.
I have always seen this movie as a warning of possible things to come.
It harkens back to the old Roman concept of "Bread and circuses" - the powers that be are giving the masses the monumental distraction of spectacle so no one sees what has, and is happening to the world. The problem with Jonathan E is that being the top performer in this game runs counter to the order.
Naturally he has to be convinced to either retire, or be dealt with.
Jonathan is also a stiffly acted character. Caan has been much better in other things.
I didn't have an issue with the way he played the character. He was afterall, playing basically a dumb jock.@@terrytalksmovies
If you've ever read Harrison's short story, you will understand a lot more.
Harrison, in the way of a quality Science Fiction short stories, said more by leaving out long winded explanations and letting the reader figure it out.
For instance, the division of the corporate world also involved categorising different spheres of influence, and what precisely would come under the title of " food", or "luxury". Drugs were at first classified as "luxury", but ended up becoming part of " food". So, the corporation is putting drugs into the food as a form of social control.
The other major difference between the book and the film is that Johnathan, who is telling his own story, wanted to be an executive. But the " books" that were available for study were what we now refer to as " motivation manuals", and Johnny was talent scouted for Rollerball because of his immense size and strength. What is not spelt out, therefore, but is obvious, is that corporate executives are not the most educated people on the planet. They have simply played the matching " game" and come out on the other side as executives.
Also, the final match with no time limit and no penalties leaves Johnathan, for the very first time in his career, unable to " rev himself up" as he always does when it's time to line up and sing the corporate anthem. It's not stated whether Johnathan is victorious or vanquished, we are left with Johnny for the first time doubting his own abilities, and therefore we must conclude that he doesn't survive the last game at all.
Working that sad ending into a film where the hero doesn't make it was probably not seen to be good cinema.
But, nevertheless, that's what the short story concluded with.
If you haven't read it, maybe you should.
It doesn't sound like you have, hence your review of a movie that concentrate s more on the game than it does on the future world that the short story revolves around.
" The game. The game. Here we go again."
‘No one understands Rollerball’. ‘Each corporation has its own team’. . .1 million palms to the face. .
Lol
Before even watching the video, I already know. Its the conflict of humans in Denim vs humans in Suits.
Watch the video anyway. 😉
I've to disagree a bit with your comment about the corporate elite "having never seen sports", because I think it mirrors sports really well. Obviously, the degree of measures they take to get rid of Jonathen E. are exagerated, and I can't confirm nor deny if they decide when a player has to retire, but at least in my time watching team-based sports I have seen countless times how directives clashed with team's idols just because they saw them as obstacles to have a full grip on the club/franchise. The bit where I agree with you is that the suits that ran big sports team don't watch the sport.
Not a sportsball fan myself. The suits in Rollerball didn't seen to have smarts.
@@terrytalksmovies That's probably a good choice. Being a sports fan is getting into your life a lot of anxiety you don't really need hahaha. Also less time to watch movies.
@@RockoEstalon less time to watch movies? No thanks
Love the movie for the 70ies futuristic style and it's social commentary but in my view, the last scene was not clear enough in its dystopian message and might have caused especially the US audience to misinterpret the comment: The movie was not simply a David vs. Goliath (Jonathan vs. the big corporation)-revenge statement. The movie had many layers but the last scene had an emotional take and culminated into a martyr-epos. I suppose idolizing sports - and war- heroes is a common phenomenon in many cultures but this non-critical view on life (bread and games-culture, entertainment and comfort) is EXACTLY what the movie tried to unveil. After Jonathan was the last man standing in the arena and the audience was tensed since all other players were lying on the battle field dead, there was a huge potential for the film. Jonathan should have dropped the ball, demonstrating, that this was not worth it, then leave the field. The movie didn't gain anything from the actual ending. In my view, unpurposefully it dialectically reversed it's original point.
Yep, the ending is so crucial to the narrative but they flubbed it.
You say that the elites not wanting individual popularity doesn't make a lot of sense at 4:38. I have to disagree. It makes perfect sense within the context of the world that the story has built, whereby corporate individualism, or personal autonomy, is frowned upon and corporate collectivism rules supreme.
Corporate elites can easily monetize individual fame. The fact that they don't realise it in this movie is simplistic.
I agree with the point of the movie that Jonathan can't save or change his society really. I was also under the impression that Jonathan was able to save himself by refusing to bend to the corporations by either retiring or dieing. Like the "happy" ending isn't external, but internal by preserving a semblance of humanity by playing the game on his own terms by refusing to kill, refusing to lose the game, and refusing to die. I also think that's what the crowd was resonating with when they cheered for him at the end. Like the corp heads were not happy in the end scene. If it was really for nothing, they would be stone faced after he scored that last point. I think they were shocked that someone broke their system, at least for that one night.
Sportsball crowds are weird anyway. They'll cheer anything. 😉😀
@terrytalksmovies lol, yeah. But think of it like this: the crowd used to be satisfied by mindless violence. That night, they were sturred up by an act of humanity prevailing and an iron spirit of tenacity. The corps will never easily reach that high again to satisfy that audience. Their game that was meant to satisfy their society's need for entertainment is kind of ruined in a way, now that they're going to have to keep chasing that moment.
This is sort of working out in real life where a lot of major legue sports are bleeding fans despite higher skill ceilings and new ways to broadcast since they can't get the narratives of "the old days" and they try to force them with things like armies of publicists and ESPN. A recent example is people more interested in what Taylor Swift was doing during a football game than the sport itself
It's all about the protection of the individual within an establishment system that denies individuality. Just look at our present society with the powerful influence of the mass media industry trying to guide us this way or that way; and say that it is not relevant. Rollerball is prescient
I think you have mass media mixed up with sociopathic billionaires. 😉
@@terrytalksmovies you're right; and I choose to ignore both
MAD magazine wrote a superb spoof of Rollerball back in the day.
Mad Magazine was great at eviscerating weak movies. 😀
I saw it when I was 8 and understood it. I've always loved this movie.
Cool!
One of my favourite movies. I think you underestimate Caan a little - I got more of an impression that his Jonathan E is just confused and doesn't really understand what is going on. One of his defining attributes is an inability to make decisions and complete situations anywhere except on the track - witness his inability to accept that his wife is gone, his failure to make the (rational) decision to turn off his friend's life support. When he finally does, it's all in the service of the net game - which, reasonably, he doesn't expect to come back from. He's finally able to relate his life to the game, and thus make the choices he needs to, rather then holding on for dear life to everything that's been taken from him - wife, friend, and now, thanks to the corporation, the game itself.
Just a little more character in the character might've helped.
@@terrytalksmovies I believe it's possible you missed the point of his character - as a product of this society. He didn't have the option to be "more character" as those aspects of people's lives had been eliminated in this fictional world: defiance, stamina, mettle, toughness, savvy. No one, not even the executives, demonstrate anything other than "the futility of individual effort." To wish that he was a different character is to wish the film had been made other than it was.
@@jackcarl2772 even in the most repressive of societies, people have personalities, especially if they're prominent in the media. It's a bit simplistic to say repression erases personality.
@@terrytalksmovies As you like. I believe you've really missed out here. Clearly, there is an epic story told by the film - and told quite well. But certainly it isn't for everyone. Films such as this one are meant to provoke questions, make the viewer think and consider, arrive at their own conclusions - or perhaps realize the film is ultimately inconclusive. All the best.
An interesting cautionary tale. Sports teams certainly cowtow to corporations. And contact sports are the Bread and Circuses of this generation
@larry burbridge I totally agree.
I swear my manager used to say " you look like a real executive" anytime i got dressed up and finally she told me to watch this movie like in 2016. Its such a diverse movie its my favorite
I hated being told that when I worked in an office. My work quality didn't change but their brains were all about appearances rather than quality of contribution.
"Game? This wasn't meant to be a game. NEVER."
😉 It's all sportsball to me.
I have to disagree with your analysis re: Jonathan. He doesn't strike me as being out to bring down the system; he's just saying, "You don't control me." I mean, at one point he was even willing to quit, but Bartholomew wouldn't meet his demand of stopping the rule changes. As for Ella, I'm sure Jonathan believes she was taken from him, but he isn't willing to look at her view that she didn't want to watch him get gradually pummeled into nothing. As for the corporations, yes, individual effort is rewarded, as long as it doesn't outgrow the organization. That's the message they were preaching: team first, then the individual.
I can definitely respect that viewpoint but Jonathan's defiance strikes me as kinda childish. It achieves nothing. If anything it intensifies the fanbase of Rollerball. As for Ella, she's a more complex character and therefore more interesting.
As for the movie itself, it's one of my favorites. Well-shot and well-acted, I agree that it's more relevant now than when it was made. The Rollerball scenes strike me as being...realistic. They really made an effort to make it look like a real sport with rules and routines (unlike the awful remake). Oddly, though, while the game scenes are very brutal, I was more unnerved by the scene at the party with the guests gleefully shooting up those magnificent trees. Still, it's good that you did a segment on this movie. Oh, and whenever I hear the Tocotta in D Minor, this first thing I think of is, "Rollerball!".
@@greenmonsterprod If you think shooting at trees is bad, as originally scripted they were shooting at a dog.
@@jb888888888 Yes, I've heard that. And thank goodness they changed it. That would've been unwatchable.
Hi Terry. I remember seeing this in the theater during its original run. I think my reaction was half way between the two examples you gave. I did realize that the world of the film was awful and maybe on the brink of collapse, but I also cheered Jonathan and thought that after the end of the movie there might be a shake up of the power structure. But then again I was only 9 or 10 (don't remember the date we saw the film). I have come over to the total dystopian disaster you laid out. Cheers!
You miss the point: in the sequel, jonathan leads the revolution.
I wouldn't let Jonathan run a pub crawl!
I always saw rollerball as a retelling of Brave new world Instead Of given the masses soma they gave them rollerball. The fact that the corporation wanted Jonathan to retire made absolutely no sense to me I would think the corporation would want someone like Jonathan who the masses could live vicariously through I always felt the whole point rollerball was to satiate the audience as long as the masses Have their bread and circuses They will be content and isn’t that the whole point
If it's a retelling of Brave New World, they should've paid for the rights.
@@terrytalksmovies Brave new world has been ripped off so many times I’ve lost count the hunger games is basically brave New World meets 1984 meets the running man there’s absolutely nothing original in it
I don’t know that really very many people misunderstood. Sorry this fellow didn’t appreciate the brilliance of James Caan’s performance.
Caan's performance was adequate but not any more than that. He was better in The Killer Elite.
Yes, I can see the misunderstanding by the American audience at that time.
I blame Nixon.
To me the movie presented what I shorthandedly refer to as "The Rollerball theory" of society/government. Various aspects of society are controlled/governed by corporations, who have a monopoly on that aspect. I liked the movie for it's dystopian aspects as I am not a big sports fan.
I agree @tamaraclaw
Wow, you totally missed the point that Jewison was trying to make, and even gloss over the impact. While yes it is a mirror of how sports was impacting people, through injury, death and ruination of life, but you missed the bigger point. The movie was all about the removal of individuality, establishing a class system & keeping said class system, and corporate entities becoming bigger than nations.
The simple facts that the corporations kept changing the game because it suited them, when a simple mass produced "entertainment for the people" became bigger by the acts of an individual. It was the fighting of the system that personified it. The corporations made the decisions, from what to wear, what to do, who to be with and how to end it. Jonathon E's insistence of keeping alive & turning off Moonpie's life support was exemplary of that.
The class system was, as Moses Gunn's was telling of the past, was to show the. Good initial idea of the change to global society, but as the longer that system goes without individual achievements and growth, it will start to buckle. And the tree incinerating scene, it was about how the upper class, do not care for anything unless it is a superficial, instant gratification, and without consequence.
Finally, it was the showcase of how even corporations in the 70s were gaining too much power, and decision making, mostly in the name of profits. For the actions against the protagonist: telling when retire, taking of his wife, changing the rules of his game, trying to literally crush an individual; are all for profits. Their goal is to keep the masses contemplated. That individuals in the game are interchangeable, hence why there are no other names of opposing players. So long as the masses keep watching, they are not trying to improve one"s self, or even questioning their place.
I love Rollerball. Many times i watched it with my father & it always struck me as impact full. So when your vid popped up, and showed that you totally miss the reasons behind it, that you are more focused on the ancillary aspects of the film. It stills holds it's secrets tightly, and that Jewison was one of the best directors. And when the remake was unleashed, the one aspect removed, was the anti-corporation plots from the original. Why? Because corporations that remade the movie didn't want to be put into a bad light, for they are literally becoming exactly as portraited in the original. The game was always secondary.
The 1970s is full of movies that knocked corporate bull. Movies like The Parallax View in particular.
@@terrytalksmovies it was pertinent to many writers & film makers in the decade, yet that still does not take away the message from this film. You could replace the game with any sport but the message is still clear. In a sense the game was purely a device, to showcase the powers of said corporations on their power to those of the masses. That is still why the sucky remake failed. Witbout the overriding corporations as the antagonist, what is the movie? A "sports metaphor" that had a plot shoehorned into it? Any remake should try to improve on message, to fix what could not be done properly in the original. Not to remove the plot because it hurt the sensibilities of exactly who the plot criticised.
It made sense in the 1990s they made that remake which was a teenybopper movie. It was not a popcorn movie. Beautiful representation of modern society.
It's still shockingly bad.
@@terrytalksmovies it is a pointed movie about government and corporate entries coming up with a plan for us to think and feel about the team. Drugs are legal and murder is cool as long as it fits with the narrative
really liked *_Rollerball._* I'd forgotten how many stars it had in it.
I'd forgotten, too. John Houseman is great in it.
@@terrytalksmovies *_Rollerball_* came out when I was in high school. I wrote a piece for my school's "literary" magazine which was a satirical review of the new sport, "Wheelchair Roller Derby", which was being played mainly by paralyzed and amputee Vietnam veterans.
The sting in the tail of my essay was a reference to the possible introduction next year of "Wheelchair Rollerball".
It's the "1984" of our time. Our world is already mostly run by corporations.
It's run by oligarchs, not corporations. 😀
As a young child I saw this movie in the '70s and really enjoyed it but obviously didn't understand the subtext of what was going on, revisiting the movie years later I'm stunned how realistic and important this movie or story is in regards to corporate power, look where we're going right now the CBDC
Corporates won't win. People are too contrary.
Thank you for sharing, I will check out your other videos, I bet you might have one for Logan's run, Soylent Green , and maybe even Andromeda strain, but then Star wars came out and ruined everything
I had to see this movie when it first came out. Went to the drive-in where I lived with my parents and hop over the fence way in the back of the drive-in. Went to the snack bar area where they had benches and speakers built above the ceiling outside where you can here the movie. I frozed my butt off sitting there until the movie came to an end. Worth every penny to do what I did even though I didn't pay any price to see it. The very next day I bought the soundtrack vinyl and loved it. Great classical music used in this movie and the great Andrew Previn composed the music in it. Also like to say it took me years to find it on Cd. Worth every dollar and I do mean every dollar. And have the movie on DvD (from 976-CREOLEMAN). Thank You.
Glad you got so much out of the movie. Soundtracks can lead us down rabbit holes of music sometimes, especially Italian ones.
William Harrison's collection of short stories are an awesome read.
Thanks for the tip. 😀
I saw this at the age of 17. And yes, even though I liked the action aspect I got the underlying message. Kinda hard not to for anyone with half a brain.
It is a little simplistic.
I enjoyed this video. Thank you. Confirmed what i suspected and learned more on top!
Always a pleasure, butcher. 😀
@@terrytalksmovies indeed it is 😎
The other major sub division in the future world of Rollerball was James Cann's big swinging d*ck energy. My god. He really was the set up prototype to Harrison Ford's Han Solo character cantina scene introduction in Star Wars.
Both of whom were doing second rate Mitchum impersonations.
#500! This was fun. I remember seeing Rollerball after reading the novelization.
Caan was definitely understated and mumbling when not in the game but I took that as deliberate. A sports guy forced understand the broader nature of his game and being unsure and confused. As for the goal at the end, that probably didn't lead to upheaval and revolution, although it is possible, but was more of finger to corporate. See, it is a game and I'm better than you, even if it is meaningless in the end.
All sports are essentially meaningless to people who aren't playing them.
I saw this in 1975. I liked it alot but didn't get it. I have seen it several times since and figured it out. Here in America boxing and football are extremely popular. The harm to the people involved is largely ignored. It's basically death by a thousand cuts.
I hate what contact sport does to young people.
A nice bread and circuses attempt by the corporation to keep their people happy.
The NFL is as nice current equivalent for Rollerball.
I love the idea that the the parts of the machine don't matter. How much influence does Tom Brady have once he stops playing?
A very Fin de Seicle piece.
Who's Tom Brady?
@@terrytalksmovies It's scary.
@@biffstrong1079 capitalism is like that.
@@terrytalksmovies One thing that brought this idea home for me was Michael Vick getting arrested tried convicted and incarcerated for organizing "dog" fights. Being a professional football player and knowing what he and everyone else in the game had to go through I'm pretty sure he couldn't imagine a world where that was true but dog fighting was illegal. The United States has better laws in place to protect animals than professional athletes.
They choose what they do but still it seems crazy.
@@biffstrong1079 I don't follow sportsball people of any kind. Too many of them are bad'uns.
Overlooked for it's excellent editing by Antony Gibbs, which has a much faster style than was normal for the 70's, that means that it's still very watchable today. I felt that it was also about the rise of celebrities (with no actual real world skills) to actual power. We are left with Jonathan E being so popular that he can have anything he wants, and the chief executive 'running' scared. I think this an early film with corporations running the world instead of states, it may be the first.
Absolutely. Antony Gibbs moved forward action editing in Hollywood films. Asian action cinema was already doing it but Gibbs adapted it to the anglophone cinema and therefore is underrated.
In a similar vein there is the 1989 Rutger Haur movie "The Blood of Heroes" or as it is known outside the US "Salute of the Jugger".
Also futuristic violent sportsball of some sort to appease the masses and Rutger going against the higher ups in a futile struggle.
True. Salute To The Jugger was filmed in South Australia, too.
I watched this 10x in the mid 70's I got the deeper messages immediately
The game itself was for me good but not the reason I watched this,
the scene, when he deleted the video of his wife and saying "all I ever wanted was for you to be on my side" showed me he did love her and was taken from her this
was a highlight.
This movie has relevance today
governments will go bankrupt and corporations will fill the vacuum
A blend of both harsh government control and corporate power
In the words of Mussolini
Fascism
Hopefully the current neoliberalism backlash will defeat that hideous possibility.
This is one of my favorites. It's one flick I can watch over and over. It's one deep story. The remake looks dreadful.
Let's just say the remake is ill-considered.
It's atrocious. A shame because John McTiernan is a great director. No idea what happend there. Yea scratch that. I just checked the film on Wikipedia. No wonder it's bad. Lol
Sci-fi was incredible before "Star Wars" came along and killed it. 😃
@@softdorothy I see why you think that. But I think it was 2001 that killed science fiction
@@MrEMann-io1ut Ouch!
I prefer it to th one where Charlton Heston screams 'WE SHOULD HAVE HAD MORE GUNS'
Which one?
Interestingly, I recently watched an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space 9 in which John Beck (Moonpie) was a guest star.
He was never a great actor, IMHO. Never stretched himself.
Wasn't that Caan's follow up to The Gambler?
Around the same time, yeah.
I have a diferent view, by the end of the movie he did accomplish what he was meant to accomplish, and what the corporations fought so hard to try to avoid him to do.
And that was to show that an individual matters and that the individual can accomplish things, besides just being a small part of bigger thing and just doing the things they are told or are expected to do...
And after that you can see hope in peoples eyes and executives afraid and hiding...
The ambiguity really didn't work for me, but that's okay.
I love this movie. Properly dystopian.
Absolutely,
I always saw this as a Roman bread and circuses story with a star gladiator that the corporations couldn't control and I don't know how anyone could find the sport appealing to watch especially after seeing Moonpie get his skull bashed in. That scene always gave me the chills when I was a kid and saw on TV.
Roller derby was on TV in the 70s and was like WWE with players like "skinny Minnie Miller" and coach "Polar bear Rupert". Maybe this is what they wanted to replicate except for adults with ultra violence? At least in that way the film got the depiction of exploitative owners right.
Yep. Also, those at the top just aren't as smart as they think they are.