NEGATIVE. NEGATIVE. NEGATIVE.

Hi Matt,

We appreciate all opinions, and maybe this is a movie for people in the mode of deep thought. Don't get me wrong! I enjoyed every reiteration of Rambo. Especially when he carried the heavy artillery.

I saw this movie when it first opened. For its time it was startlingly provocative and original. Sure its dated now and may suffer in comparison to contemporary filmmaking, but that should not diminish its effectiveness.

This movie is a great example of 70s futuristic film making, like "Soylent Green" and "The Omega Man." (Another example: "Westworld" even though it doesn't take place in the future.)

Great film? No.
Great futuristic realism? No.
But put those two together, do a half decent job, and you get a film with followers.

It's always funny that in "the future" people are always wearing 1970s styles and the computers still use tape. And where, by god, is Windows? Where is a computer with a mouse? In the 70s, corporations still thought that no one would need a computer in their home.

Where are the flat panel, 16x9, HDTVs?

All these films are all social/political in their nature.
They're not meant to be timeless; they're meant to exist in the future.

Wow! You really missed all the important parts of the film. The game Rollerball is a fairly unimportant aspect of the film. The film is about corporate government and not Rollerball. I consider it one of the top 10 scifi films of all time. It was a dangerous visions view of what if we allowed corporations to take over the functions of world government. What's scary is we are halfway there and no one has noticed. I think Rollerball is every bit as important as "1984" it just never got the respect it deserved. The story is about one man standing up to the corporations. They fear him because they can't risk people believing that one person can change the world. The corporations depend on people accepting the world for what it is. They can't risk a heroic figure arising so they design Rollerball to be impossible for one man to stand out. For all their efforts one man actually became good at an impossible game. Simply killing him would cause people to question the world so they had to destroy him in an actual Rollerball game to show the futility of individual achievement. It backfires when they stack the deck against him and he still wins. Johnathan has a deep unspoken resentment of the corporation because they took his wife. They fear that resentment coming out as him denouncing the corporations. By the end the people love him and would believe anything he said making him more powerful than the corporations themselves.

One of the best lines in the movie is "Game! It wasn't meant to be a game". Absolutely brilliant! Rollerball WAS about the futility of individuality, period. It wasn't Bread and Circuses as you claim. Rollerball wasn't senseless violence it was a corporate view of senseless violence. They tried to structure senseless violence which by it's very nature opened a window to some one getting good at the "game". The game of Rollerball was meant to be the embodiment of chaos but structured chaos is no longer chaos. The better example of "Bread and Circuses" is Stephen King's Book "The Long Walk". It's pointless violence without purpose other than to torment people until only one was left standing.

FYI Norman Jewison was one of the best directors this country ever produced and Rollerball is a prime example of his brilliance. He's easily in the top ten of all time US directors and I'd put him in my top 4 list. Rollerball could have easily been fluff like the remake but instead it became a socially important film that we need to rediscover.

"this movie severely sucks in my opinion" Might want to read a book or two since you find Death Race superior which is an obvious parody. Soylent Green is an excellent film and it dealt with similar "dangerous visions" themes but most focus on the "soylent green" is people line instead of the superior theme of a world that can no longer support the population. The Soylent Green film is about depleted resources not about cannibalism. You've got to expand your view of the world and not focus on one theme per film. Truly great films have layered and complex themes and you are obviously missing the point of most truly important films.

Hi Matt,

He shuts the fvck.

You are obviously under the age of 30.....

Death Race 2000? That comments tells us all we need to know about why you didn't get this film.

Stick to Sesame Street or Romper Room.