As you all are dedicated film lovers, don’t you remember those incredible dystopian book adaptations of the 2010s?—The Hunger Games film series, The Maze Runner, Divergent, The Giver from 2014,  and even more recently, The Darkest Minds in 2018. Remember in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 when Peeta violently attacked Katniss after returning from the Capitol, a shell of himself, I was at the cinema when about a hundred and fifty people all yelped! I think some girl in the corner was actually crying after seeing Peeta bang his head against the bed repeatedly in the film’s last scene. 

Let’s look at our 2010-era popular runners:

The Hunger Games (2012 – 2015)

From the amazing author, Suzanne Collins’s best-selling novel series and its subsequent film adaptations, The Hunger Games (2012), Catching Fire (2013), Mockingjay Part 1 (2014), and Mockingjay Part 2 (2015), laid the groundwork for that familiar feel of the 2010 dystopian film industry. Following the journey of the protagonist, Katniss Everdeen, played by none other than Jennifer Lawrence, a young girl from District 12 in Panem—a dystopian version of parts of North America, the Capitol under the authoritative leadership of the sadist, President Snow, requires each of the twelve districts to send one young boy and girl each year to fight to the death and declare a ‘victor,’ to ‘keep the peace between all districts.’ At the start of the first film, The Hunger Games, Katniss volunteers as a tribute in place of her sister who was picked to fight to save her life, and overtime, Katniss and the other young man from her district, Peeta, eventually fall in love and win the games together by threatening the all-powerful capitol to end both of their lives with poisonous berries rather than kill each other. This action angers the Capitol, and President Snow finds a sick way to disturb all other victors in each district who had previously won to fight in another ‘special’ run of the Hunger Games. Eventually, the young and somewhat silent Katniss becomes a revolutionary who spurs the entirety of Panem to overthrow the authoritarian Capitol.

Looking at the Box Office records, the first film delivered about $425 million, Catching Fire (2013) about $408 million, Mockingjay – Part 1 (2014) about $337 million, and Mockingjay – Part 2 (2015) about $282 million. For all people between the ages of 17 and 30, we all must admit that our entire cultural identity was formed by films like The Hunger Games and its philosophies. 

Divergent (2014 – 2016)

In dystopian Chicago, five factions keep the city running: Abnegation based on the virtues of charity and selflessness, Erudite based on the virtues of Intelligence and knowledge, Dauntless based on the virtues of bravery, Amity based on the virtue of nurturing and growth, and Candor based on the virtue of pure honesty. Groups of teenagers determine their factions via aptitude tests and their own final choice to find where they fit. A character like Tris Prior played by Shailene Woodley, understands that she is what is known as “Divergent,” someone who doesn’t fit into just one faction, rather all or some, and therefore threatens the faction system with their existence.

Looking at its Box Office numbers worldwide, Divergent (2014) currently has a gross of $276 million, its follow-up with a much higher worldwide box office turn-out, Insurgent (2015), $295 million, and Allegiant (2016), $172 million. A final film, Ascendant, was set to be released as a second part for Allegiant, however, it ended up being cancelled due to a lack of financial resources and interest from the general audience, ushering us into what we now know was the slow death of such young-led dystopia.

The Maze Runner (2014 – 2018)

This film series presents a much more sinister and action-packed reality of the YA dystopian world. The first film, The Maze Runner, begins with the protagonist, Thomas, played by Dylan O’Brien, waking up in a mysterious maze without his memory. There, a few young men have created a small society to escape the maze that is plagued with monsters called Grievers. The boys eventually realize that they are in a much larger power system conducted by WCKD, a shadow organization looking for the cure to a deadly disease. In The Scorch Trials (2015), and in the following The Death Cure (2018), the group successfully escapes the maze and meets a destroyed society beyond the maze. 

Looking at its Box Office numbers worldwide, the first film, The Maze Runner, made approximately $348 million, The Scorch Trials with a near $310 million, and The Death Cure with $266 million, which widely avoided the wide financial gap of other film series like Divergent. 

The Giver (2014)

A film based on Lois Lowry’s 1993 novel, The Giver, with a deep philosophical perspective on the importance of color. It is set in a neutral society, with the ability to erase and eliminate heightened emotions that can produce pain through morning medications. They never lie, they obey the curfew—a society where people don’t even have last names. Jonas, played by actor Brenton Thwaites, is chosen to be a Receiver of Memory, and under the guidance of the Giver, played by actor Jeff Bridges, he discovers the beauty of life and the cost of eliminating pain and its wonderful accompaniments that make life worth living. 

Although the film had struggled to accumulate approximately $66 million worldwide against a budget of $25 million. It is speculated that the film didn’t do so well due to its significant changes from the book itself by making Jonas older, using color, including a love-driven narrative, and rushing Jonas’ realization of the truth, leading to the flatness of some characters and pacing.

The Darkest Minds (2018)

Based on another popular novel, The Darkest Minds by Alexandra Bracken, children suddenly die due to a mysterious illness, and remaining survivors, who are erased from their parents’ memory,  controlled and or killed by the ruling power, gain supernatural powers that are marked by color, green for hyper intelligence, blue for telekinesis, yellow for the power for electrokinesis, red for pyrokinesis, and orange for mind control, the ability to manipulate and more that are not even fully defined due to their rarity. The film follows the perspective of Ruby, played by Amandla Stenberg, who joins other young teenagers to survive. 

With the same thoughts of a persecuting authority and its rebellious youth, by 2018, the general audience for such themes had died down, and it had already begun to reach its death point. Its box office numbers worldwide reached approximately $41 million with a budget of almost the same, $34 million. 

All of these narratives followed the same themes and had clear moral lines. They perceived rebellion and difference as a good thing, as a positive thing that can revolutionize society for the better with its massive visual spectacle and grandeur, to let their audience have a greater appreciation for life. Well, I guess we don’t want that anymore?

However, after the wonderful “chosen one” style of dystopian films of the 2010s, we don’t see much of that YA, hopefulness for the future anymore. Since 2020, the future, or the ‘Capitol’ (forms of authoritative leadership), and the ‘Districts’ seem more hopeless, and the ‘hero,’ or main character, is just as doomed as the rest of us. What makes them stand out is that they are what the average person would do, and face if they were in the same position. They are faced with failure, and are most certainly not chosen, if not for the better things. Some book adaptations like The Maze Runner film series leaned close to this image that we all hail and admire now, ushering us into this new era of dystopian fiction.

It seems as though the 2010s style of dystopia is irreplaceable. Looking at the same style and formula of rebellion and chosen-one YA narratives of recent years—Uglies (2024), and Fahrenheit 451 (2018), with no viable box office records, as they are both Netflix and HBO releases its hard to predict where the genre might go.  

Other new narratives such as Mickey 17 (2025), The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (2023), and The Handmaid’s Tale series (2017 – current), no longer dream of a society that can be saved, rather they are motivated more by a means of escaping the rot that cannot be fixed. There is no chosen one, and reality is quite bleak.

With all that is going on with our society today, it is not far fetched to judge that political corruption, war, numbness of emotion in the culture industry, threat of AI, surveillance, and our overall mental health as a youth group, have led to dystopia becoming something more mature rather than fantasy. This is most likely where the next set of dystopian realities will come from and look like. We watch the Capitol burn, and we burn with it. Survival won’t be enough.