In a world where Film Twitter has so much sway, it’s important to look back and constantly remember that the true testament to the power of a film is how it stands the test of time. And there are plenty of examples of films that didn’t hit in the time of their theatrical release, or even in the immediate time after they hit home release. Sometimes it takes a steady word of mouth to get a film to spread; other times, it takes the world a longer time to catch up to what a film was trying to convey. This is definitely one of those cases – maybe the poster child case.
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Why Idiocracy Wasn’t Released Properly
When King of the Hill and Office Space creator Mike Judge released the movie Idiocracy on September 1, 2006, it was a massive flop before it ever had a chance. 20th Century Fox didn’t screen the film for critics, and limited the release to only seven cities and only 130 theaters, a massive downscaling from what a feature film release typically gets. Idiocracy only earned less than $500,000 total at the worldwide box office (on a budget of $2.4 million), yet in the nearly 20 years since its release, it’s also become a cultural mascot for millions of viewers. Not to mention, there are hordes of social media users who have preserved Idiocracy‘s legacy in the form of memes and gifs, which have become tragically accurate tools for expressing views on current times.
Make no mistake: 20th Century Fox did everything to limit how Idiocracy could perform in theaters, from the almost non-existent marketing campaign to the stifled release. When the film was released on DVD, it was through the strength of Judge’s satirical vision that it went on to earn more than double its box office haul in video rentals and started to build a cult following. Even as physical media evolved into the digital streaming era, Idiocracy’s cast of stars helped keep the film’s reputation alive, as their respective careers continued to take off. More importantly, the changes in society and the general sentiment of America’s social decline have become real-world concerns in the last decade or so, and as that downturn occurs, Idiocracy‘s status as a prophetic warning sign has only grown. Judge’s satirical bite has proven to be sharp, and this film is now cemented as one of the best and smartest of its time. Take that, Fox.
Idiocracy Predicted The Worst Parts of Our Time
The cast of Idiocracy is led by Luke Wilson (Old School, Legally Blonde), who plays Joe Bauers, a US Army librarian whose “average Joe” intelligence level gets him selected for an experiment in suspended animation. Well, the experiment works: Joe is left in hibernation for 500 years, alongside a female candidate, a prostitute named Rita (Maya Rudolph). In that span of time, the world goes through a cycle in which the least educated people in the world overbreed, while the most intelligent people become increasingly disillusioned with making families. The result is a world where the average intelligence level has dropped idiotically low, and trash TV, trash food, and caveman attitudes are the new staples of American culture.
Through a turn of fate, Joe and Rita are finally awakened; after figuring out what’s happened to the world, Joe finds himself in the spotlight, as his once-average intelligence now ranks him as the smartest man in the world. America’s alpha dog president, Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho (Terry Crews), tasks his new genius with solving the increasing societal problems America is experiencing, pressure that Joe can’t handle. But in the land of idiots, no one can understand that the average man is just that.
Watching Idiocracy now, it’s obvious why the film is a cult hit: it’s almost scary how much society has bent toward the film’s vision of the future – and it didn’t even take 500 years. In addition, the cast is top-notch, with Wilson, Rudolph, and Crews joined by the likes of Dax Shepard, Justin Long, Stephen Root, and Thomas Haden Church. You can stream Idiocracy on Hulu-Disney+.
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