Ever seen a Storm Trooper play a game of cricket? Or how about Spock taking part in the Moto GP? Sports and Sci-Fi shouldn’t really mix, yet it is the ingenious and imaginative games played by some of these movies’ inhabitants that have largely attributed to their successes.
In these futuristic and dystopian worlds, sports usually revolve around vicious brawling and the fight for survival. Not really like your average game of croquet! So what is it about these innovative and incredible games that keep us so entertained?
Sports in movies don’t follow real-world health and safety limits and some don’t even follow the same rules of physics.
So we take a look at some of the best fictional Sci-Fi sports in film history
1. Quidditch - Harry Potter
It’s two teams of seven wizards flying on broomsticks with four balls (the quaffle, two bludgers and the elusize golden snitch) and six elevated hoops.
Played above a five hundred foot long pitch, Quidditch is the ‘Muggle’s’ equivalent to football with their very own Quidditch World Cup.
This physically demanding sport demands athletic ability and superior reflexes. Protagonist character Harry’s position as his team’s ‘Seeker’ is practically the player equivalent to a Premier League team’s centre forward, making him something akin to the Lionel Messi of Quidditch
2. Rollerball.
Imagine two teams on skates both fighting for possession of a magnetic ball, aiming to score points by throwing it through a huge metal hoop. Sounds simple?
Well, with three members of the team riding motorcycles it’s like a big, aggressive roller derby with a large dashing of over-the-top spectacle á la WWE.
Brutality and violence are the main components in Rollerball. However with a ‘secret conspiracy’ of planned gory accidents made by the sport’s promoters to keep popularity of the game at a high, it sounds like one game you don’t want to be playing.
3. Pod-Racing - Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace.
Tether a tiny cockpit to a massive jet engine by two thin cables and you have the basic structure of the unstable pile of junk that is a Pod-racer.
Race through rocky terrain filled with giant obstacles at speeds of around 900 km/h. Avoid the booby-trapped engines of other racers and don’t forget the space hillbillies shooting lasers at you. Now do this for three laps.
The prize fund for this dangerous sport is a very large sum of money. Not that the racers see any of it, only the slave-owning gnats that control them.
4. The Hunger Games.
In the dystopian nation of Panem, The Capitol, a highly affluent metropolis, exercises political control over 12 less fortunate, deprived provinces.
The Hunger Games are their annual event where one boy and one girl aged 12-18 from each district surrounding the Capitol are selected by lottery to compete in a televised battle to the death.
It’s ‘Lord of the Flies’ meets ‘Gladiators’ where the voyeuristic wealthy watch the young kids turn vicious killers fight for their survival. In The Hunger Games there can only be one winner.
5. The Game - The Blood of Heroes.
The world has been left a barren, desolate wasteland in this post-apocalyptic future. What little entertainment that does exist is the brutal sport known as The Game.
Played by bands of ruthless, roving teams know as Juggers, they challenge local teams and receive tributes if they successfully defeat them.
The Game involves two armed teams of five; fighting against each other, attempting to place a dog skull on the opposing team’s goal post.
One unarmed played known as the ‘The Quick’ must run with the skull, while being protected by their teammates from an attack by the opposing team. Armed with hockey sticks covered in barbed wire and big metal chains, it isn’t a game for the faint hearted.
6. Jumpball - The Starship Troopers.
In Starship Troopers, the high school sport of choice is a crazy concoction of rugby, American football and gymnastics. Jumpball takes players to dizzyingly new heights, where their heavily padded uniforms allow players to leap over opponents in moves that would be suited to the Olympic Games.
Teams score by touchdowns and most of the action seems to revolve around which team can attempt the best double flip. Jumpball is a sport only the toughest kids at school can play.
7. Light-cycle Racing- Tron/ Tron Legacy
Imagine being digitalised into an old school arcade game, transported from playing the original 2D video game and placed inside its 3D cyber world.
You would be then dressed in an ever so fashionable glow in the dark leotard and given a futuristic two wheeled vehicle that emits coloured walls of light as it moves. Want to play?
Players in this game try to avoid walls and other vehicles as they move in and around a cyber track. It’s like a fluorescent version of the Tour de France.
8. Death Race 2000
In a fascist, police-ruled state; the Transcontinental Road Race is the main source of entertainment for the population as a symbol of ‘modern values and way of life’.
Created by their leader, Mr. President, the race’s real motive it is to subdue the masses as a distraction from any potentially harmful revolutions that could affect security.
Racing cross country from New York to Los Angeles this hard core ‘Wacky Races’ involves hitting high speeds for points and knocking down the odd pedestrian along the way.
9. Robot Boxing - Real Steel
In the year 2020 human boxing has been replaced with 200 pound, 8 foot steel robots. With names like Ambush, Midas and Noisy Boy these humanoid style robots can still be wounded, and they can writhe around the ring bleeding highly theatrical, purple blood.
Robot boxing is even more violent than the original sport, however in this game people don’t actually get hurt - probably making Sci-Fi’s safest sport.
10. Hover-boarding - Back To The Future II/III
A hover-board is quintessentially a skateboard that flies, suspended in the air due to something called ‘magnetic energy’. There’s no need for wheels or pavement with this thing and while it’s not technically a competitive sport it does look a lot of fun.
With the movie being set in 2015 we should all expect the arrival of hover-boards in shops in less than two years. Or is that being slightly too optimistic?
Don’t miss Rollerball playing at 9pm, Thursday 29th August on Sony Movie Channel (Sky 323 and +1 Sky 324)
Tagged in Harry Potter The Hunger Games