Future World

• Directed by James Franco and Bruce Thierry Cheung
• May 25, 2018 (US)

A boy searches the wastelands of the future for a rumored cure to heal his dying mother.

Mad Max is a fictional universe that has spawned 1000 copies. Nearly as many as Star Wars has I would imagine. And Future World is one of those very Mad Max copies. Or attempts to be anyway. It lacks the cheesy charm of those knockoffs made in the 80s in the aftermath of the release of the originals nor the earnest efforts of many later projects. There is a touch of The Terminator, but truth be told she is better looking than Arnie.

Our story starts off with the imaginatively named Warlord (James Franco), who’s a villain in this (and I mean that), going to a facility at some distant point in the apocalyptic future to find an android (which they keep referring to as a robot) who is the last of her type left. Why was she untouched in the facility and quite naked? Because this movie is all about abject nudity. Seriously! I haven’t seen this many bare boobs in a single movie since the mid-80s.

And why was she standing in the middle of a large and empty area outside of what was presumably her holding area? Don’t know. And apparently this whole search by Warlord was just to have a have a sex robot that double as an enforcer. Really. Warlord keeps referring to Ash (Suki Waterhouse) as his ‘bride’ yet also dispenses her to do tasks that would be akin to something assigned to a general flunky.

But she’s so much more than that. Oh yes! Not only is she hot but she learns how different she is from the others of her kind when for some inexplicable reason she decides to save the imaginatively Prince (Jeffrey Wahlbergas) who is trying to find a place that has medicine that will keep his mother alive. Up until then she’s been an enforcer/sex robot for Warlord and desired by Big Daddy Love Lord (Snoop Dogg) who runs what else a strip club that doubles as a brothel in the middle of the post-apocalyptic wasteland.

We’ve got a cast that includes James Franco, Snoop Dogg, Method Man, Lucy Liu and Milla Jovovich who are all there more to give celebrity cred to this than actually do much of anything. Milla Jovovich and James Franco in particular are bad guys, but they are not main threats. They are just difficulties along the way. This is more about Ash’s awakening that it is Prince saving Queen.

Ash’s great awakening as an individual comes when she has hot sex with a woman that she meets in a place called Drug Town which, well, sells drugs. Seriously. There’s no real development of bonds or relationships or plot elements. She sleeps with a woman and that changes her perspective. If there is a message to be found it’s that sleeping with a woman changes everything. While that is true, there’s no explanation on how it does that for Ash who is governed by programming and a remote control until she is not.

Future World engages in narrative laziness by using sex to demonstrate love rather than build any type of a relationship. They slept together so they must be madly in love though it’s only one or two sentences exchanged between the characters beforehand. That’s porn level logic. It’s one step away from the thought process that begins your average sex scene in an X-rated feature. Two attractive women alone together can’t keep their hands each off each other and this is no different. In fact that’s pretty much what happens.

Despite not having a large budget, they do a fair job of creating an interesting looking post-apocalyptic environment. With some stock footage and finding abandoned places they do a good job of involving you in their world. Where they fail is that everybody and largely everything looks clean. They certainly put plenty spit and polish into their buildings that are little more than frames.

Rather than zipping around on a fleet of gas guzzling machines like most of these movies there are only a handful of small vehicles with many of the characters instead opting for dirt bikes. Makes a bit more sense. What does not work as well is that things do not seem all that different from today-just without a centralized government.

Future World wasn’t bad for what it was. I was seeking a Mad Max rip-off and that’s exactly what I got. It was certainly nothing I ever would have seen in a theater given what little I saw before I watched the whole thing. But it lacks the charm and pure so-bad-it’s-good feel of the mostly Italian knock offs I am most familiar with. But the story never gets goofy or campy or feels dangerous. The dialogue is rough and the main characters are, well, boring.

James Franco is by far the best part of this movie. He’s a great demented and trashy villain. Milla Jovovich as the other significant baddy comes off as a jerk who has had too much coffee. And maybe a little coked up too but her character does run Drug Town. Then there is Snoop who was playing a future pimp and Snoop-ing things up as only he can. All better than the ones we are supposed to care about.

If you ever have the option of watching Future World it’s not something you should throw a tantrum over having to watch. It’s good enough, but it’s not worth actually seeking out.