An overall good film but could have a little more clarity The 1975 version of Rollerball is an overall reasonably good film, but it probably could have a little more clarity about the setting of the plot. In official summaries, advertisements and trailers of the film which I have seen it says that it is set in the year 2018, when as a result of the "Corporate Wars" there is a global corporate society which takes precedence over all governments as we know them rendering official government titles like presidents and prime ministers and the birthright of Kings useless. In this future corporate society a new sport called rollerball takes the place of other team sports like football, soccer and basketball as well as of war. The whole aim of rollerball seems to be to control the population in the hopes that the players will eventually die. However, Johnathon E. seems to be a bit too good at this game, lasting 10 years in professional rollerball, longer than any other player ever. Therefore, the corporate executives fear him as someone who could lead to the demise of their entire system of society, and they want him to retire and when he refuses they change the rules in the hopes that he will die. Once again one of those evil sci-fi cinemas about futuristic totalitarianism that always gives me a somewhat scary feeling.
The film is as I said basically a good movie, but it could have a little more clarity about the plot. At the beginning it says "And now, our corporate anthem." and that is probably the only clue you get that something is amiss in the film. All throughout the film you get the feeling that more should be revealed about the society which the people of this futuristic corporate state live in and how it came to be, but it seems to be just hard to follow for the lack of details. If the film had a few more details about the background of the setting it would probably be much better, but because it doesn't that brings the quality down considerably, so I have to give it a 6.