A 1998 American Made-for-TV Movie sports/sci-fi Thriller directed by Ernest Dickerson that deals with game that is life or death in the year 2025.
The movie stars Dean Cain, Vanessa Williams, Wesley Snipes, Bill Smitrovich, Valerie Chow, and Emanuelle Chriqui.
It aired on October 1, 1998 on ABC.
Tropes for the film:
- Blood Sport: The titular game is the world's most popular sport after the NBA was destroyed by scandal (Take That!, soccer fans!), and was originally used as a replacement for gang wars. It is, needless to say, extremely violent and very Serious Business; the movie centers around a game that serves as a proxy war between global superpowers, with territorial rights to Hawaii hanging in the balance.
- Dick Dastardly Stops to Cheat: The Big Bad (a pro-consortium terrorist leader) is willing to commit murder and kidnapping to fix the game on his faction's benefit and a number of consortium players try to play the climactic game with "street rules" (read: beat up their opponents). It leads to the terrorist leader getting captured by the heroes and the hostile players getting their teeth knocked out (and their side losing regardless).
- Duels Decide Everything: Tre Ramzey (a pro-player of the sport) decides to solve a dispute between two global powers by staking the fate of some disputed territory on a game. Despite being a rather campy cyberpunk movie, it manages to deconstruct the trope, with characters agreeing it's an insane idea, but ultimately it works out because of the propaganda coup from winning (and the fact that the villain's sabotage attempts lead to their leader being captured.
- Hover Board: The title sport is played on hoverboards.
- International Showdown by Proxy: The film has two teams of a hover board Roller ball rip-off (one representing the US of A, one representing a consortium of Asiatic nations) battling over sovereignty of Hawaii. Of course, the consortium of players were not above kidnapping and assassination to get an edge...
- Make Games, Not War: The movie uses the titular sport as an alternative to gang warfare, with the hero (Tre) offering it as an alternative to a world war that is about to start for ownership of the Hawaiian Islands. Of course, some countries decide to cheat.
- Mock Buster: The movie takes many of its concepts directly from Rollerball.
- Unnecessary Roughness: Future Sport is a rough game. "Street rules" Future Sport is rougher (talking "splatter your opponent's teeth all over the place" rougher). Obike Fixx is okay with showing the consortium the difference.
- Victorious Loser: At the end, as the losing team's boss is berating them for losing and essentially getting caught cheating, their one member who played fair for the whole match comes forward and announces their own popularity went up from the match despite being on the losing team, so they consider this match a victory. And they're leaving the team.
