The best dystopian films released between Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049

From TV to books to movies, dystopian tales are in the air right now. All week long, Vulture is exploring how they've been imagined in popular culture.
It's an interesting time to be a science-fiction fan: Not only are we coming up on the actual time period when so many unforgettable dystopian nightmares take place (Akira and The Running Man largely take place in the year 2019,) but due to, ahem, recent global developments, people are turning more and more to science fiction, past and present, for both insight and catharsis.

Genre trends ebb and flow, but I'd say we're in a very prolific period for movies that stare down the barrel of our present reality and try to explore what future we might be creating for ourselves. The result tends to be pessimistic, yes, but a gripping story can be the sugar to help that bitter pill go down.

25th September 2017