Rollerball

Rollerball is a 1975 science fiction film directed by Norman Jewison from the short story Roller Ball Murders by William Harrison.

In the film the world of 2018 is a global corporate state. In it, the Energy Corporation is a global energy monopoly based in Houston which dealt with nominally-peer corporations controlling access to all Transport, Luxury, Housing and Food on a global basis.

In the central theme of the film, Energy also sponsored a "Rollerball" team which was effectively a violent version of roller derby[?] in which major injuries and death were common. The game was a substitute for all current team sports[?], and for war. Its purpose was entertainment, but within the plot there was also the need for charismatic individuals to be defeated in the course of the game, for the team to be paramount. The film tells the story of Jonathan E, the veteran star of the Energy Corporation's team, played by James Caan[?].

The cabal strictly limited access to knowledge including all knowledge of history - there were no competing belief systems such as science or religion. It took very special care to ensure that there were no evidence of the Corporate Wars[?] by which they had come to power.

Control of potential troublemakers was enhanced by the fact that Transport could control their movements, Housing could monitor their behavior, Food provided them with drugs, and Luxury could assign and re-assign their female mates at will - placing spies at very close proximity. In one interesting scene from the film, several women at a party fire incendiary bullets at a tree. The first two hit it without difficulty even at fairly long range. The third fires into the ground, and the group trails off giggling, all apparently drunk. One interpretation of this scene is that the women are in fact all intelligence agents, all crack shots, and all expert at hiding those facts from men. Also, Luxury Corporation was the only monopoly led by a woman.

Some suggest that the film was rather prophetic and criticized globalization and capitalism itself - Energy Corporation being one proposed outcome of the oil imperialism that some see presently practiced.

In 2002 an updated version of the film was released, directed by John McTiernan[?] with a much greater concentration on action and more muted political overtones.