What 9 Real Places from Dystopian Movies Look Like

Locations from dystopian films often look unreal and non-existent: “Blade Runner”, “RoboCop” and “The Matrix” - it seems that there are simply no places in the world that would be suitable for such filming.

Buildings and locations in such films must emphasize the main narrative paradigm: alienation, isolation and loneliness. It is all the more surprising that hundreds of similar structures have been built around the world, which in normal times are used as shopping centers, city halls and hotels.

We present to your attention eight real places from famous dystopian films!

The classic film was set on the streets of a futuristic Los Angeles. The most famous real-life filming location is the Bradbury Building, where Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) fights a crowd of replicants and ends up fighting Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer). All this takes place in the courtyard of the Bradbury building, which is open to the public.

Opposite the Bradbury Building is the Pan American Loft Community, which served as the Yukon Hotel where Deckard captured replicants.

Charles Ennis' house served as the filming location for Deckard's house. It was built according to the design of Frank Lloyd White (we have already mentioned him in the context of the Buzludzha memorial house).

Paul Verhoeven originally wanted to shoot the film in Houston, but it was too expensive, so filming was moved to Mexico City. Several scenes were filmed at the Nikko Hotel (now Hyatt Regency).

Doug Quaid (Arnold Schwarzenegger) flies away on an escalator from people shooting at him and uses a random passerby as a human shield - this scene was filmed in the Chabacano subway, Mexico City. The creators loved the metro of the Mexican capital - another scene was filmed near the Insurgentes metro station.

Detroit RoboCop was actually filmed in Dallas. The ubiquitous OmniCorp building is three different buildings in Dallas.

Scenes inside the building were filmed at Dallas City Hall, where the Dallas government normally sits. Several scenes were filmed at the Plaza of the Americas, a shopping center that includes the Marriott Hotel. The Dallas school on North Pearl Street participated as the headquarters of the Detroit Police Department.

Scenes at the Ministry of Information, where Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce) worked, were filmed at Millennium Mills, a disused mill in East London.

Lauri's house was filmed in Paris at the Espaces d'Abraxas, a monumental building by Ricardo Bofill that is shaped like a Greek amphitheater.

The homeland of Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence), District 12, corresponds in its location to the Appalachian Mountains. Much of the first film was shot in the abandoned North Carolina village of Henry River Mill Village. It was built in 1908 for workers of a large textile factory. The factory closed in the 1980s and the village became deserted.

In the sequel The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, President Snow's (Donald Sutherland) party takes place at the Swan House, an estate near Atlanta, Georgia. It was built for one of the cotton magnates of this state.

The Espaces d'Abraxas building in the Noisy-Le-Grand area also lit up here: remember the epic scene in the fourth part! The entire courtyard is flooded with oil.

(Be careful, at the beginning of the video there is a monument that is strikingly similar to the Balkan World War II monument in the village of Kosmaj, Serbia).

Frank Lloyd Wright's building also appeared in the film Gattaca. Scenes involving DNA and the eugenics center were filmed at the Marin County Civic Center north of San Francisco. By the way, this same building was also featured in George Lucas’s directorial debut, the film Galaxy THX-1138.

One of the film's locations was the Philadelphia Eastern State Penitentiary. For example, Al Capone served his sentence there. And the real prisoner of this prison was the dog Pep, who tore the cat to pieces. The cat was not a simple one, but the governor’s wife, so the dog was exiled for life without the right to pardon. The dog, like everyone else, had a number - C-2559.

The locations of The Matrix seem as impersonal as possible. But it turns out that many scenes were filmed in Sydney, Australia. The MetaCortex building, where Neo (Keanu Reeves) whiled away his workday and began to suspect that something was wrong with the world, is the Metcentre shopping center in the center of Sydney. The bridge where Neo waited for Trinity (Carrie Anne Moss) to take him to Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) is the Adams Street Bridge near Sydney's Chinatown.

The film, in which all humanity loses the ability to reproduce and have children, was filmed in London. The most interesting point, perhaps, is the famous Battersea Power Station. Both Doctor Who and Richard III with Ian McKellen were filmed here. This same powerhouse graces Pink Floyd's tenth album, Animals.

Now Battersea has been turned into a huge entertainment center, and apartments are even sold on the upper floors.