Lost in Space
Per the article's own definition, a dystopia does not need to be a future setting. (Future from the perspective of what, anyway?)
Rather, it is a setting in which a particular social, political, or economic aspect of society has taken over and transformed it into something unpleasant for a large number of people. For example, a "corporate dystopia" might be a society in which corporations own and run everything as if they were governments. A "libertarian dystopia" might be a society in which individual self-interest has run wild. A "socialist dystopia" might be one in which nobody owns anything because it's all the collective property of society. It can sometimes be considered a deconstruction of whatever concept it's portraying to the extreme.
In other words, nothing is ever just "a dystopia"; there is always a qualifier. For example, Bioshock Infinite portrays a 1910s dystopia based on American exceptionalism.
The question for Sin City is whether it is just a generalized Crapsack World or whether it is intended to explore the devolution of society because of a specific element taken Up To Eleven. I can't answer that myself because I've only seen the film.
Edited by Fighteer on Feb 22nd 2019 at 2:17:30 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
I noticed that Sin City is considered a Dystopia, despite not being a futuristic setting. This is because the titular city has rampant crime and corruption, which makes sense to me. However, a city or town with rampant crime and corruption is not a unique setting. Gotham City is usually portrayed this way, along with most cities that appear in noir settings. My question is, can these be counted as dystopias? Or is Sin City a dystopia because it amplifies these problems to an extreme degree?
Edited by Fighteer on Feb 22nd 2019 at 12:01:12 PM