10 Great Sci-Fi Movies With Terrible Concepts

Never seen Stanley Kubrick's critically adored, deeply controversial sci-fi dystopia A Clockwork Orange?

Here's what you need to know.

Like many other Kubrick characters, our protagonist is severely disturbed. However unlike, say, The Shining's Jack Torrance or Full Metal Jacket's Joker, this hero doesn't start off normal.

He doesn't even start off likeable, as right off the bat our audience insertion persona is a violent murderer and rapist who thinks nothing of beating a vagrant for fun. But don't worry, he's soon caught and his crime sprees are stopped.

Oops, sorry. Actually, it turns out that the state’s attempts to curb his sick behaviour amounts to little more than pointless torture. So our protagonist ends up a barely conscious sentient corpse by the film’s close.

Also, he doesn’t have the spiritual epiphany of his novel counterpart.

By this stage of the summary, it sounds sarcastic to claim that the film is a masterpiece and you’ve got to see it. But the bracing brutality of A Clockwork Orange and its unsparing worldview are what make it so vital, as the film refuses to offer any easy answers and instead forces the viewer to interrogate their own ideas of fairness, law, retribution, and rehabilitation.