This thought is completely conditioned by the fact that it cannot and will not investigate its own material basis in the spectacular system. As with cinema, science fiction reflects what is uppermost in the contemporary consciousness. Its mood is drawn from the headlines of the moment past, the images that have flashed across the writer's vision and been juggled into a confetti of fantasies and conjectures before being cast out in the form of words and visuals. And if perfection is constantly elusive, since few people can agree on what is perfect and what isn't, science fiction most frequently signals directions by describing a society in transition and conflict - a society not dissimilar from any you may think of that exists in the World today. There is no crime and there are no more wars.
Corporations now control the globe.
Divided into several zones controlled by different companies working together in mutual co-operation. Dissent has been eliminated. Rollerball forms an elaborate thesis on social control and violence constructed around a clever symmetry of dystopian visions. The atmosphere is suffused with diverse strands of conspiracy theory. The thematic structure of the film describes how the social order imposed by the contemporary global economy maintains, perpetuates, and expands its influence through the manipulation of representations.