ABSTRACT
This chapter traces utopian and dystopian visions of urbanism in the cinematic constructions of fantastic and virtual cities, with an emphasis on the changing function of the city and futurity in science fiction, the genre that most directly addresses visions of the future. At the inception of the science fiction film, as for example in Fritz Lang’s modernist Metropolis (1927), the city represented the future and was thus a prime site for the negotiation of utopian and dystopian
visions. However, the late twentieth century saw two important shifts that changed this function of the city for the negotiation of utopia and dystopia. The city as a site of invention and innovation had defined labor as modern and industrialized in a capitalist system in contrast to rural, traditional, and premodern subsistence labor. In the late twentieth century, through the increase of computer technology, labor became independent of and detached from the city and turned into an invisible, deterritorialized, and solitary activity, while the medium of film began to incorporate advanced computer technology with computer-generated animation and computer game technology.
