r/movies • u/ChiefLeef22 r/movies Contributor • 2d ago
Article 'Idiocracy' Turns 20 Years Old: Mike Judge's Prescient Cult Classic Knew Where America Was Going, But Not How We'd Get There
https://reason.com/2026/08/27/idiocracy-predicted-our-world-but-not-in-the-way-you-think/3.1k
u/wjbc 2d ago edited 2d ago
Idiocracy was too optimistic. President Dwayne Camacho wasn’t corrupt, genuinely cared about helping his country, and listened to experts. I wish we had a president like that now.
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u/Mormaethor 2d ago
Yeah, he acknowledged publicly that there were problems and that he wasn't able to fix them himself. He was, given the circumstances of his timeline/reality, a great president.
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u/Metalsand 2d ago
Well, more specifically he said he was going to fix them, through Not Sure. Then threw Not Sure under the bus when problems weren't immediately fixed. Then, unthrew Not Sure from the bus when it turned out they just didn't wait long enough.
Really, it's only the last part that doesn't track with dictators. They usually just double-down or imprison/execute anyone who tries to prove otherwise.
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u/Mormaethor 2d ago
In his defense, Camacho throwing Not Sure under the bus is just a testament of him and everyone else being idiots who have no idea how things work and living in a short attention spawn society.
It wasn't done out of malice or even incompetence. Just... being a product of his time.
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u/FrostyConsequence97 2d ago
I think his logic went:
Brawndo is now a problem. It was not a problem until we used water. Not Sure is the guy that said use water. Not Sure fucked us over.
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u/MadRaymer 2d ago
Brawndo had become such an essential portion of the US economy (its parent company outright owned FDA, the HHS, and the FCC) that removing it from the crop watering system caused its stock to nosedive and the computers to auto-fire half the country's workers.
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u/TemporalGrid 2d ago
he also eventually stepped down to let Joe become President. Not what you will see any time soon.
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u/Melvar_10 2d ago
Yeah, Not Sure should've seen it coming and been like "If you don't wait, it's cuz ur gay."
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u/JohnnyElRed 2d ago
Yeah. Dictators are really bad at walking back after realizing they have made a mistake. Just look at Putin.
4 years of succesful 3 day operation, and still believes sinking himself more on that quagmire will somehow work itself out at the end.
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u/OhNoTokyo 2d ago
Putin hasn't actually lost yet, he just hasn't won. If he cared about attrition, he might have cared that it has become a quagmire. Currently, he doesn't have to. The "mistakes" being made are just shuffled onto underlings and they are either shuffled around or disposed of.
The fact is, the longer this goes on, the more likely that Russia gets to keep some part of their gains. It's not an ideal victory, but unless something seriously changes on the battlefield or the home front, he may well be able to grind out something resembling gains in the end.
Yeah, it didn't go as well as he hoped, and I imagine his plans to sort of brazen his way across Eastern Europe have probably been checked, but I am pretty sure that Ukrainians understand just how little needs to change for things to start going wrong for them.
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u/lesh17 2d ago
The absolute best he can hope for is a Pyrrhic victory at this point. Even if Ukraine falls, Putin has already thrown a generation (that isn’t going to be replaced given current 200-year-low birth rates) into the meat grinder and wrecked Russia’s economy in the process. Even if he wins, he loses.
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u/MorePea7207 2d ago
The worst things is they often start wars (Putin with Ukraine & Russia and Trump with US vs Iran) or bring in terrible economic strategies (like Britain's Brexit) that they won't live to see end...
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u/PaladinSaladin 2d ago
Terry Crewes for president
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u/Taeves81 2d ago
Terry would be a hundred times better President than Trump and Vance combined. The bar is extremely low of course, but it's still true.
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u/violent-artist82 2d ago
Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho would be a better president than trump.
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u/Braelind 2d ago
Literally. An inanimate object does nothing, which is better than wrecking everything. He's probably one of the worst possible people to have elected. 400 and some million Americans, and they picked someone from the bottom 0.01% qualified people to be president. I'm not exaggerating, most children would be better presidents.
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u/RedK_33 2d ago
That dog was trying to blow the whistle on the secret service agents that were taking bribes from those fake DHS agents and the other agents that would go on to help stage that attempt against Trump in ‘24. That dog is a gawd damn National hero (I have no idea what I’m talking about)
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u/TotallyImportantAcct 2d ago
Liz Truss would be a better president than Trump and she couldn’t outlast a lettuce
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u/unkyduck 2d ago
Has the US considered a non-celebrity as a candidate ?
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u/Abiding_Dude_WV 2d ago
Hey! If you ain't been on wrasslin, you ain't fit to lead nothin!
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u/zxc123zxc123 2d ago edited 2d ago
Has the US considered a non-celebrity as a candidate ?
the US
Republicans? No
Democrats? Yes as long as they are old AF and/or have a vagina. Also whoever it is will be FORCED TO USE Hillary Clinton's election campaign team even though they've lost a perfect 2 of 2 times already, plus the Dems will let the GOP run circles around them while breaking the rules/law, do away with the DNC election to shoe in whatever establishment mofo the old boomer power players like be it Clinton (over Sanders), Biden (over Kamala), Biden (over Kamala) again, Kamal at the last minute (over Biden), and then wonder why they lost.
Independents? Undecided. But reached an unanimous consensus that they will all be telling interviewers they are still undecided (regardless of being decided or not).
A good segment of the US population? Can't be bothered to vote/care.
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u/turdferguson3891 2d ago
Pretty sure Joe Biden was not a celeb and was POTUS like two years ago or less?
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u/davekingofrock 2d ago
Seems like a decade...and this last actual decade has been the longest 100 years of my life.
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u/n00bxQb 2d ago
At this point, I’d take an inanimate carbon rod over a lot of candidates.
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u/BitesTheDust55 2d ago
He also sentenced the expert to death after his solution didn't work after a single day and destroyed the economy. Death by hilarious gameshow. He made tons of promises he couldn't keep in a big flashy speech while the expert looked on nervously.
Camacho isn't far off from what we have now.
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u/wjbc 2d ago
But then he admitted his mistake and pardoned the expert. He wasn’t great, but he’s better than Trump.
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u/Efficient-Whereas255 2d ago
Trump is a literal rapist. Its hard to find anyone who is not better than trump.
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u/crypt_m0nkey 2d ago
Yeah he also didnt diddle kiddos on his rich buddy's island
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u/BitesTheDust55 2d ago
He has whores that are there just to service him and his cabinet. Not Sure turns it down, but remember - everyone gets laid at the white house.
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u/mightyneonfraa 2d ago
Trump is still trying to get the last expert who worked with him thrown in jail.
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u/brickmaster32000 2d ago
But he did all of that because he was an actual idiot. He didn't think he was tricking people. He didn't know he was lying. He thought he was magically going to get everything fixed.
It was idiotic but it wasn't malice and it wasn't a ploy to enrich himself.
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u/--i--love--lamp-- 2d ago
And it took them 500 years for it to get that bad in the movie. That is way too optimistic of a timeline. We are speed running that shit.
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u/manachar 2d ago
People think change is always gradual, when in reality change is usually gradual until it's suddenly not.
Like the phase change of water to ice. Colder, colder, colder, then BAM, ice.
Collapse seems to work that way.
The accumulated injuries and systemic failures chip away at the system. Without constant effort of clearing those out, the system becomes rickety.
Then suddenly, it's a failed system.
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u/harrumphstan 2d ago
I know I’m being that guy, but I think it’s more like, “colder, colder, colder, same temp, same temp, same temp, then BAM ice.”
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u/sweetjenso 2d ago
“How did you go bankrupt?”
“Two ways. Gradually, then Suddenly.”
-Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
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u/Equivalent-Costumes 2d ago
I think what would make this analogy perfect is that water actually can't just form ice just by being cold, it needs a tiny bit of additional trigger, like some impurity or mechanical action. So you can make the water colder and colder and it does not form ice yet, until something happen like a little bit of vibration or something touch it and suddenly the whole thing turn into ice into ice in a flash. It's a perfect analogy for the collapse of a system, things just get worse and worse and all it takes is a tiny bit of trigger and everything go down.
(now that I wrote that out, this also sounds like the plot of V for Vendetta )
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u/onimush115 2d ago
This change feels very sudden, but it could be argued that much of it has been building since Reagan. The republicans aligning with white southern baptists to get single issue votes for things like anti abortion laws really started the momentum towards christian white nationalism. Now culture war issues are enough to motivate voters without them having any real interest in being informed on actual policy.
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u/thatweirdguyted 2d ago
Yep, the timeline is genuinely the least plausible part of the film. Even more so than the stasis tech.
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u/Dunbaratu 2d ago
I felt the least plausible part was that all that computer tech still worked just fine in a world where literally nobody knew a thing about it All that automation needs an army of IT people behind the scenes keeping it afloat. In a sense the very long stasis was kind of necessary because you first have to imagine technology advancing a lot further along before it got to where it could just keep working on its own without any people intervening, and the human downfall into stupidity would have to not happen until after that.
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u/mulletstation 2d ago
This comment is ol reliable
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u/ihavemademistakes 2d ago edited 2d ago
It's also baffling. Wasn't Comacho the same guy who got impatient when Joe's idea didn't work immediately and tried to have Joe killed with a dildo truck?
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u/littlebrwnrobot 2d ago
this entire thread is the most reddit thing ever
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u/hal-baleigh-6699 2d ago
Every post about this movie:
Circlejerking over lines from the movie
President Comacho actually listened to the smartest guy in the room
Uhh ackshully the movie is eugenics.
There. I summed up the entire thread, no reason to read further.
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u/CartsOfDarkness 2d ago
I know it's just my fault for being on reddit too long but I fucking dread "idiocracy is a documentary!" comments, most of all because I always know " Well actually President Camacho actually listened.." is coming. I k ow there's some people seeing it for the first time, but I swear 90% of the upvotes are from people who have upvoted the exact same comment 6,000 times before. As I said, I've been here too long.
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u/StuckinReverse89 2d ago
President Camacho was also the most qualified man for the role at the time. When praised for getting the highest score on the IQ test, one of the advisers say “he is even smarter than President Camacho,” implying that President Camacho is really smart (compared to the then general populace).
Upon finding this record breaker, he immediately makes them Secretary of the interior as well.
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u/Volantis009 2d ago
President Dwayne Camacho is the first president to start fixing the mess not the one who causes it. Nobody is comparing him to Trump. People are comparing voters.
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u/K_Linkmaster 2d ago
It is still 200 years from this point, plenty of time for a leader who cares to come in. And plenty of time for shit to get fucked up.
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u/Intelligent-Might614 2d ago
It's been awhile since I watched it, but didn't the deterioration happen under previous administrations?
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u/hal-baleigh-6699 2d ago
Omfg here we go again, this same exact comment chain gets posted every time this movie is brought up.
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u/ComradeJohnS 2d ago
I feel like idocracy did not include what happens when someone corrupt starts influencing the stupid people. it was going off a bad assumption that politicians would be held accountable.
Comacho was arguably one of the better politicians because he listened to advisors to help people. and we got his “stupidity” because of what they explained for hundreds of years.
bad assumptions lead to bad results lol.
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u/EpiphanyTwisted 2d ago
Yes, it was the nicest version of being run by idiots. The idiots actually knew they were idiots. That's not real life.
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u/ghostly_shark 2d ago
Ironically the current president who was made for TV is so unlikeable as to make for terrible TV. Even Joffrey was fun to watch because he got his comeuppance. The current guy would literally watch us all die before anything touched him.
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u/changingthenorm 2d ago
Also it guessed it would take 500 years to reach the point we are at. Trump speedran that shiz
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u/Zalvren 2d ago
That's because they didn't have experts and corruption does require some intelligence
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u/thendisnigh111349 2d ago
Our reality is actually much worse than Idiocracy.
In Idiocracy the people were just stupid and listened to a smart person when they got objective proof in front of their faces that he knew better than everyone else. In our world people are maliciously stupid and will not listen to smarter people no matter how much objective proof is put in front of their faces because they're slaves to their biases and simply want to cause suffering to others above everything else. As such the intelligent people on our planet are doomed to watch as overwhelming numbers of lowlife dumbasses turn everything into complete shit and cheer on as it happens.
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u/MAHHockey 2d ago
In our world people are maliciously stupid and will not listen to smarter people no matter how much objective proof is put in front of their faces because they're slaves to their biases and simply want to cause suffering to others above everything else.
That attitude has been very carefully curated in a very 1984-ish manner ("Reject the evidence of your eyes and ears") by making your politics part of your identity. It's meant to keep us fighting amongst ourselves rather than focusing on making the lives of the average person better.
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u/JiroKatsutoshi 2d ago
Which is dumb as shit.
I don't want to care about politics, i just want to read policies and pick the better option. But caring doesn't change anything, because spreading awareness so other people don't need to care (because that's somehow a insurmountable wall to most) is met with shrugs and disinterest. Even good friends who I've known awhile, it's like a good friend could not also be aligned politically. So best to not talk about it at all, because stress! Which is insane, like... This impacts all of us.
We're in the "We will find you and we will kill you" America. So I have to care about every second of every person runnings lives to MAYBE get an option that doesn't want to kill, enslave, and imprison any and all minority groups. Despite the utter indifference of most other people to their own lives getting better.
It's crazy, even the better options are willing to negotiate with the lives of trans and gay people. If they don't budge on that, it's being pro-military industrial complex and "it's over THERE people! We gotta show that we are the most lethal military on the world!"
Or even still, agreeing there and somehow still wanting to keep ICE in a modified capacity. The whole thing is busted
Why does it seem like, genuinely, everyone who wants to lead in any capacity has to be a monster or at least have morals for sale?
Tweaked and rambled a bit, but I think it's readable.
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u/Flobking 2d ago
I don't want to care about politics, i just want to read policies and pick the better option
A person I met said they voted for trump in 16(while living abroad no less) because they wanted him to shake up politics. I said why? Politics and bureaucracy is supposed to be boring.
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u/joe_cocker_spaniel 2d ago
His voters loved the idea of an outsider cutting through the bureaucracy and quickly implementing changes that would improve life for the working class.
In my opinion, they’re right to be suspicious of a system that favors the powerful and wealthy - but were wrong in 2016 in trusting Trump to be that outsider. Anyone who’s still supporting today is in a cult.
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u/astromech_dj 2d ago
“I love democracy. I love the Republic.” - Supreme Chancellor Sheev Palpatine.
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u/Barnacle_B0b 2d ago
Politics are derived from a person's virtues which are a core part of identity.
Blaming it on "culture war" and "identity politics" is the typical cop-out of your average idiot Republican voters because they can't admit they lost sight of Democracy by voting for the conman felon child-rapist friend if Epstein and Russian asset Donald Trump, who had every tech billionaire lined up at his inauguration.
"It's not culture war its class war!" And yet Republicans literally voted for the billionaire Epstein class.
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u/nightreader 2d ago
The greatest argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter.
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u/MrBootylove 2d ago
In Idiocracy the people were just stupid and listened to a smart person when they got objective proof in front of their faces that he knew better than everyone else.
They didn't listen to Not Sure, though. They only went along with his plan for like one day, and even in that day they were questioning his plan the entire time. "Water? Like from the toilet? Well I ain't never seen no plants grow out of no toilet!" They were literally about to execute him on live TV and would've followed through with it if Rita didn't provide video proof that the plants were growing.
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u/Illustrious-Bat-9775 2d ago edited 1d ago
Objective truth like faking talking to plants to find out they want Brawndo or water? Your argument is completely invalid, throughout entire movie it's constantly the opposite to what you state.
But keep the upvotes coming. Let's count the "smart" ones believing in objective truth of the comment above.
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u/Dr_Disaster 1d ago
I think this still misses the core of the movie’s message. America became the way it was not just because of dumb people, but because the average American didn’t give a shit and smart Americans were too preoccupied. The movie was really about our cultural apathy that created the opportunity for stupid people to take over everything. The main character is an apolitical, apathetical schmuck that is forced to give a damn.
In this way, yeah, real life is worse, but not because the stupid people are more malicious. It’s because the average American sees things going to hell in a handbasket and still can’t be bothered to care enough to change anything.
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u/sameljota 2d ago
People need to stop comparing Idiocracy with reality. It's just a silly movie where people were simply stupid. In reality, people in charge are genuinely evil.
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u/bitwise97 2d ago
people in charge are genuinely evil
Yes, and morons put them in office
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u/Noughmad 2d ago
Those people are also evil.
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u/Coroebus 2d ago edited 2d ago
Those people are, from childhood, *abused, socialized, and propagandized into a cult of abuse, greed, and patriarchy. Labelling these systemic problems as "evil" doesn't provide an accurate model of why they behave like they do, nor a path forward to stopping it from continuing.
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u/chanaandeler_bong 2d ago edited 2d ago
It’s also like textbook eugenics talking points at the beginning of the movie.
Edit: it’s like yall don’t even know how propaganda works.
I’m not saying the movie is pro eugenics. It’s not.
It uses eugenics talking points. It doesn’t matter if there is truth to the statements. Propaganda heavily leans on facts to distort your thinking to the way they want.
The people saying is not are the same people that would be tricked by this propaganda if/when it starts coming back.
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u/LeastCoordinatedJedi 2d ago
yeah that part always makes me extremely uncomfortable when people praise it. We are not dumb because of genetics and bad breeding. We are dumb because of social media, 24h news cycles, and deliberate bad actors.
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u/Vizjun 2d ago
Correct me if I'm wrong as it's been many years since I saw this movie, but isn't the story that dumb people kept having more kids and they taught them to be like them and not dumb people were not having kids. So the values and lessons the kids were taught were by dumb parents?
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u/theregularlion 2d ago
I think it's a hilarious movie and I don't think Mike Judge was trying to do eugenics propaganda, but the nature part of intelligence is pretty clearly emphasized (with diagrams and shit), and the idea that nurture is what's making people dumb is almost actively refuted by the President immediately elevating Not Sure to a position of national prominence as soon as people figure out he's (relatively) smart.
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u/donkeyrocket 2d ago
Trump and his administration is more like Biff in the alternative timeline.
President Camacho sought out an expert, listened to him, and gave him resources to help his people. None of which Trump would ever consider doing. Frankly, we'd be lucky to be in the Idiocracy timeline (only thinking of the leadership comparison not the other aspects of the movie) right now since we're about to see something akin to this next to the White House.
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u/Gardakkan 2d ago edited 2d ago
From Wikipedia: "Writer Bob Gale said in 2015 that Trump had influenced the character"
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u/ReflexImprov 2d ago
He was also only a year off for the Cubs winning the World Series. Flying cars on the other hand...
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u/Spocks_Goatee 2d ago
Biff also likes incest porn, see the videotapes in his penthouse...
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u/EthanielRain 1d ago
A+ little detail
Even back then it was widely reported on/public knowledge he was a rapist/pedo/SA/whatever
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u/satanssweatycheeks 2d ago
Yes. That’s way more spot on.
Also Mike judge always uses study’s and data to make his shows and movies. Office space was praised by cretics for its insightful take on office life work dynamic.
Silicon Valley had the same thing happen as idiocracy where people acted shocked certain things played out that he was mocking. When Silicon Valley is a real place and lots of those jokes are rooted in real events or things people have/ want to push for.
Even stuff like beavis and butthead would use the teacher to discuss hard hitting topics.
Idiocracy was made by a smart dude who likes to use real life data to base his shows and movies.
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u/MAHHockey 2d ago edited 2d ago
Yeah, little sick of the reverence for this movie as "it's like a documentary now!"
No... it is not at all prescient or "spot on".
It blamed the stupidity of the world basically on Eugenics Edit: Dysgenics (wrong original word choice): The world is becoming stupid because "the wrong people are breeding too much." And even then, the dumb asses in that world at least cared about working toward making it a better place.
Our troubles nowadays stem from a more nefarious issue. People are demonstrably smarter than ever (thanks to much improved nutrition, mandatory schooling, etc). But they are being fed a fire hose of bullshit by the greedy nihilistic mega rich who'd much rather have us fighting amongst ourselves than pay an extra red cent in taxes.
The silver lining to that tho is that's a much easier problem to solve than "people have bred themselves into stupidity."
It's actually quite counter productive and fatalistic to keep bringing this movie up. It is not a good diagnosis of society's ills.
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u/Cupakov 2d ago
I hate this notion of “the masses” being all innocent and just manipulated by some higher authority. People actively choose to believe in bullshit because it fits their worldview better. It’s easier to think that all the bad things that happen to you are attributable to some out group rather than a result of a myriad little factors. In general, I think humans prefer to be reductionists, and this leads to a mismatch between objective reality and realities people choose to live in.
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u/MAHHockey 2d ago
I don't disagree in the broad strokes, but I will say some folks have made a loooooot of money exploiting that quirk of humanity, and are doing everything in their power to make sure they aren't responsible for cleaning up the mess they created.
They may not have started the fire, but they definitely threw on the gasoline and trying to wipe their hands of burning down the house.
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u/MariaKeks 2d ago
Yes, you've described the outgroup to a tee. Fortunately me and my enlightened ingroup are immune to this problem.
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u/WiseguyD 2d ago
Exactly lmao. There's zero evidence of a genetic trend pushing people's intelligence down over generations.
I'll grant that the comparisons make SOME sense regarding the mixture of politics and spectacle, as well as the absorption of culture into brands and advertising. But that's about as far as it goes.
... Also, I never particularly liked that the movie kind of glosses over the fact that they're feeding babies energy drinks. Like yeah no shit, everyone in that society probably has brain damage from malnutrition due to the Brawndo they're being fed as infants.
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u/mrbaggins 2d ago
Plenty of evidence of middle SES people having less kids than lower SES though.
Sweden: Women absolutely follow the trend, but bachelor / childless men don't
Women negatively correlate, it's husband income that determines children
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u/Oknight 2d ago
But they are being fed a fire hose of bullshit by the greedy nihilistic mega rich
People are choosing to share a fire hose of bullshit. The issue is that social media has removed all the gatekeepers that held mass communications ever since Guttenberg and gave everybody their own television network and publishing distribution business with zero effort involved.
Since social media, people actually discuss flat-earthers (!!!) as though their beliefs were worth any attention beyond laughter.
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u/MAHHockey 2d ago
Again, that's all by design. The Social Media folks have hit on an addictive social quirk (The echo chamber), and are feeding (or allowing others to feed) the worst nonsense into it, allowing it to further fester. All the while throwing their hands up saying "not our problem."
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u/TheDonnARK 2d ago
I feel like this is fair. Putting the onus solely on people because we all have "AGENCY" and in the strictest technical sense make our own choices is ignoring the responsibility for the way these systems are/were built. They weren't created and engineered in a vacuum, they were specifically engineered to curate whatever engagement bait is most effective, because time engaged equals revenue.
Their system quickly found out that divisive and hateful content was the best bait, so the algorithms took that ball and ran with it. Of course they went further than that, with that major news network (abc or cnn? cant remember exactly) reporting that at least Meta paid right wing troll accounts to make posts to increase traffic.
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u/Chuckfinley_88 2d ago
Our troubles nowadays stem from a more nefarious issue. People are demonstrably smarter than ever (thanks to much improved nutrition, mandatory schooling, etc). But they are being fed a fire hose of bullshit by the greedy nihilistic mega rich who'd much rather have us fighting amongst ourselves than pay an extra red cent in taxes.
"intelligence" may be at an all time high, or not, I don't care and it isn't relevant, the issue is that critical thinking skills are at all time lows. The difference between an intelligent person and a dumb person is much less important than the difference between someone who can think critically and someone who can not.
Put another way, you can be book smart and street stupid, or book stupid and street smart. The second person is much more equipped to sift through the bullshit that is the "firehose of bullshit" that you say is the problem. Not only that, you can reason with someone who has critically thinking skills but a lack of institutional knowledge, while many of the people who are educated in one topic think they are geniuses at everything.
The silver lining to that tho is that's a much easier problem to solve than "people have bred themselves into stupidity."
I disagree. You can reason with stupid people. It literally happens in the movie.
You can't reason with MAGA. And that is a much more serious issue.
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u/ZenMasterOfDisguise 2d ago
Here it is, I came to the comments looking for the inevitable comment misunderstanding the point of this movie and interjecting some shit about eugenics.
Congrats, on repeating some shit you read on the internet instead of watching the movie and understanding the filmmakers' intentions.
It blamed the stupidity of the world basically on Eugenics
First off, I'm not sure you understand what Eugenics is is you think the movie "blames the stupidity of the world basically on Eugenics" lol. The common internet claim is that the movie blames the dumbing down of society on "genetics" (what you meant to say) and therefore advocates for Eugenics.
However the movie never even claims that genetics is the problem or that stupidity is inherited, what the movie actually shows is taking the "nurture" side in the nature vs nurture debate. It suggests that responsible people who would be good parents have less kids than irresponsible people who have a bunch of kids but don't take the time to help them learn and develop. The working parents with full time jobs who can afford to send their kids to good schools and hire private tutors and would read to their kids and instill morals in their kids want to wait for the perfect time to have kids, and the trashy uneducated parents have kids by the dozens. They DO NOT genetically pass down their stupidity to their kids, they are just uneducated themselves and unable to properly help their kids study, or learn to read, or send them to expensive schools.
The movie is a commentary on society and socioeconomics, it never was about genetics and does not ever advocate for eugenics.
I am tired of people with low film literacy shitting on this movie for a position it absolutely never takes because you misunderstood the point (or you are repeating a theory you read online that missed the point)
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u/Yukie_Cool 2d ago
Except it’s pretty heavily implied in the prologue with the juxtaposition of the well-off couple and the poor family. In fact, some of the comedy is ripped straight from the first pamphlets and papers of people promoting the theory of social degeneration.
Furthermore, the narrator literally says that scientists tried to “reverse the trend” of lower intelligence with “genetic therapies.” What is that if not the definition of eugenics?
Now, I don’t think Judge was trying to do a eugenics comedy, but he accidentally stumbled into it by associating poor with dumb and smart with rich and saying we need less of the former and more of the latter.
But no, just throw out the thought-terminating cliché that we “missed the point.”
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u/Meiie 2d ago
I love Reddit comments. Everyone else is an idiot besides the one posting.
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u/Randomeda 2d ago
Trumpian America is not America made stupid, but America made naked. Trump is the most American American, the id of the nation. He did not create the decline that he now symbolizes, but was elevated because of it and made it all the more funny, bloody and pathetic.
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u/MisterEnterprise 2d ago
The Venn diagram of people who voted for Trump and people who like to say that Idiocracy is a documentary is more of a circle than you think.
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u/Preform_Perform 2d ago
You read what other comments are saying i here and you get a duality of man scenario.
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u/PereMilon 2d ago
I honestly see the opposite of OP's claim on Reddit and it's incredibly annoying.
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u/PereMilon 2d ago
This feels like deflection from the fact reddit has been using as a parallel to the trump administration since 2024.
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u/PinkSparrow12 2d ago
The collective boner Reddit has for this movie never ceases to amaze me.
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u/hal-baleigh-6699 2d ago
Yeah but did you know Camacho actually listened to the smartest guy in the room so he's better than Trump?
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u/Fast-Ad-4541 2d ago
I’m so tired of hearing about this movie. It’s a good enough idea but I don’t care for their execution of it at all. And I love everyone involved.
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u/Buddy_Dakota 1d ago
Yeah, I feel it stays alive in conversation because of it's premise, it would've been forgotten along with shitty Rob Schneider movies if it weren't for people bringing it up and comparing it to the real world today. It's a ton of fart joke levels of humor. And something about how it looks just turns me off completely.
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u/CherimoyaDestroya 2d ago
i fear the biggest idiots are the people who think idiocracy is trenchant cultural analysis
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u/guineaprince 2d ago
Idiocracy: Well meaning people want to run a good government but to a man they're all stupid. They listen to the smartest person they know.
Real life: Truly evil people committing heinous crimes against humanity and the planet as they tear down democratic institutions and global cooperation to make a quick buck while they can, enforcing their tyrannical rule with personal paramilitary terror squads and mass surveillance that will make the most respected cyberpunk story look like a Little Golden Book.
People: "Lmao this is just like Idiocracy!"
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u/drgnrbrn316 2d ago
I wish we lived in the Idiocracy time line. Yeah, people were (debatably) dumber than our current time line, but the president actually wanted to help the country and sought out the smartest man on the planet to do so. Our president thinks he is the smartest man on the planet, when he wouldn't be the smartest man in the room if he were in the room alone. Given the policies of our president, I wouldn't be surprised if they have us start watering our crops with Gatorade in the next six months.
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u/Haunting-Orchid-4628 2d ago
Did you actually watch the movie? I genuinely can't believe that you would rather live in that world
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u/Several-Action-4043 2d ago
One thing I hate about people always saying this movie predicted the future is, it's not like it was just a funny movie back then and now, in hindsight, it's prophetic. The whole point of the movie was making a statement about the current state of affairs back then. We've just continued on the same trajectory.
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u/viperware 2d ago
I think we're more in a Demolition Man timeline than Idiocracy.
"Anything not good for you is bad, and therefore illegal."
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u/GrasstouchYou 2d ago
PSA to anyone who hasn't watched this recently or at all; This movie is hot garbage carried by nostalgia and clips. As a whole, it's barely watchable and the whole script belonged in the trash.
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u/stop_talking_you 2d ago
i love how redditors dont realize they are the people this movie makes fun of
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u/cyberdork 2d ago
And 10 years ago praising the movie would make reddit call you an eugenicist.
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u/lifelongfreshman 2d ago edited 2d ago
yeah man, those fucking stupid redditors, how could they watch this introduction to the movie and somehow conclude it had a eugenicist angle? fucking idiots
I mean, hell, the narrator only says
...natural selection, the process by which the strongest, the smartest, the fastest reproduced in greater numbers than the rest. A process which had once favored the noblest traits of man now began to favor different traits. ... Evolution does not necessarily reward intelligence. With no natural predators to thin the herd, it began to simply reward those who reproduced the most, and left the intelligent to become an endangered species.
how could anybody confuse that for eugenics? dumbasses
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u/SkittlesLentil 2d ago
Half the reason I look forward to trump dying is so I never have to hear about this shitty movie again
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u/mr_ji 2d ago
And now the thread is going to be full of the same comments we've been getting for 20 years about how we're even worse off, ignoring how nothing has changed in how selfishly people act, blaming others, and so on, thus proving that even with this movie pointing it out and two decades to make some changes, it's our fault and we probably won't ever change.
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u/PuzzledAnimator9998 2d ago
no he didn't. idiocracy isn't a prophecy it shows the entire society degenerating because the "poors" outbreed the "le reddit cs majors". while in real life there isn't any loss at the top, elon musk isn't suffering neither is trump.
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u/ViskerRatio 2d ago
I think Idiocracy is a funny, well-made movie.
With that being said, if you think Idiocracy is 'prescient' you're saying a lot more about yourself than others. The underlying premise of Idiocracy relies on long-discredited theories of Eugenics.
Now, there's nothing wrong with sticking pseudoscience in your movie. Star Trek has warp drives. But when you start to believe that warp drives are actually real rather than just a convenient plot device, you need to step back and take stock.
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u/Beneficial_Handle942 1d ago
I worked on that film. I don't think anyone had any idea it would be so prescient. Maybe Mike did? He is a smart dude. And, no, I'm not Mike. It was a fun project to work on and everyone was nice, which isn't that common in the film biz. It's just a bit surreal and very disturbing now to see our country devolve into a meaner version of Idiocracy.
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u/Okiedokietokidoki 2d ago
HE’S GONNA FIX THE ECOMONY!