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Reality has a way of catching up with Hollywood. Join us as we count down our picks for the conspiracy films that seemed paranoid or downright impossible — until they weren't! From government surveillance to corporate cover-ups and media manipulation, these movies imagined conspiracies with some disturbingly real parallels that would eventually prove too close for comfort.
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00:00So, you listen to me. Listen to me! Television is not the truth!
00:05Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're counting down our picks for the conspiracy movies that seemed paranoid, preposterous, or downright
00:11impossible.
00:12Then reality caught up with fiction. From government surveillance and corporate cover-ups to media manipulation,
00:17these films imagine conspiracies with some disturbingly real parallels.
00:21We're on our way to the palace right now, this is really happening.
00:25Number 10. The Parallax View
00:27The Parallax View took America's post-Kennedy assassination paranoia and asked a frightening question.
00:32What if the conspiracy theorists are right?
00:33Is it possible to kill somebody and make them look like they had a heart attack?
00:38Sure, they got a pill for it. It's called pep.
00:40Warren Beatty stars as intrepid reporter Joe Frady, a smart wisecracker who will stop at nothing to discover the truth.
00:47He learns that a corporation is secretly recruiting assassins for political killings.
00:51As you know, Parallax receives demands from all phases of industry.
00:56Demands for unusual personnel.
01:00If you qualify, and we think that you can, we're prepared to offer you the most lucrative and rewarding work
01:07of your life.
01:08But the movie's real insight is how the conspiracy protects itself.
01:11Potential killers are psychologically manipulated.
01:13Witnesses conveniently die.
01:15Passies take the blame.
01:16Official investigations assure everyone that lone gunmen acted alone, mullifying the public.
01:21We've already received an offer for your services.
01:2425,000 a year.
01:26Who from?
01:28Manufacturer's Intelligence Group.
01:30The specifics are fiction, but the mechanisms weren't pulled from thin air.
01:34Subsequent revelations about programs like COINTELPRO and MKULTRA confirmed that American agencies really have surveilled, infiltrated, and psychologically manipulated people
01:43while hiding their activities from the public.
01:45Those are our findings.
01:48The evidence will be available to you as soon as possible.
01:53Think you can separate conspiracy theory from conspiracy fact?
01:56Put yourself to the test with our 24-hour WatchMojo livestream.
01:59Scan the QR code on screen to join us.
02:01I wouldn't step outside that door.
02:03Number 9.
02:04The Constant Gardener.
02:05Africa became one giant laboratory in The Constant Gardener.
02:09We call it Dipraxa.
02:11You will call it life.
02:13Ray Fiennes plays diplomat Justin Quayle, whose investigation into his wife's murder uncovers something even more grim.
02:19A pharmaceutical company is testing an experimental tuberculosis drug on impoverished Kenyans while concealing dangerous side effects.
02:26You said to Tessa in your emails that the Kenyan government had approved the trials.
02:29Somebody bribed them.
02:31Who?
02:32Three bees, lob, we don't know.
02:34With $50,000 in the right hands and you can test battery acid as skin lotion.
02:38The exploitation is all too real.
02:40In 1996, Pfizer tested its antibiotic Trovin on children during a meningitis epidemic in Nigeria.
02:46Families alleged they hadn't given proper informed consent, while Pfizer denied wrongdoing.
02:51Years of litigation led to a settlement.
02:52More broadly, researchers have raised serious ethical concerns about Western-sponsored clinical trials in developing countries.
02:59Consent in vulnerable populations is not always clear.
03:02The real scandal suggests the film's central fear was justified.
03:05So who has committed murder?
03:08Not, of course, the highly respectable firm of KDH Pharmaceutical, which has enjoyed record profits this quarter.
03:16And has now licensed Zimbamed of Harare to continue testing Dipraxa in Africa.
03:25Number 8.
03:26Three Days of the Condor.
03:27To a 1975 audience, the conspiracy at the center of Three Days of the Condor sounded unhinged.
03:33Robert Redford's CIA analyst discovers a plan within the agency to seize Middle Eastern oil fields.
03:38What the hell is so important about...
03:46Oil fields.
03:48His co-workers are murdered because they inadvertently uncovered it.
03:51A CIA official later predicts that Americans wouldn't ask any questions as long as the gas continued flowing.
03:57It's simple economics.
03:59Today it's oil, right?
04:01In 10 or 15 years, food.
04:03Plutonium.
04:05And maybe even sooner.
04:06Now what do you think that people are going to want us to do then?
04:09Over the following decades, U.S. intelligence repeatedly intervened abroad.
04:13Access to Middle Eastern oil remained a major strategic concern.
04:16After 9-11, American military and intelligence operations across the region expanded.
04:21At this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free
04:29its people, and to defend the world from grave danger.
04:32The movie's invasion for oil plot seemed fictional.
04:35Then came Iraq.
04:36Today, the U.S. and Iran are fighting while oil fields, tankers, and the Strait of Hormuz sit at the
04:42center of everything.
04:43Number 7.
04:44Wag the Dog.
04:44Wag the Dog barely had time to remain fiction.
04:47Robert De Niro plays a political fixer who responds to a presidential sex scandal by having Hollywood manufacture a fake
04:53war.
04:53Why Albania?
04:55Why not?
04:56They gotta know at some point.
04:59Who?
05:00Who?
05:00The, uh, you know, the public.
05:05Staged footage and patriotic messaging sandbagged the whole country.
05:08The movie opened in December 1997.
05:10One month later, the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke.
05:13I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky.
05:19When Bill Quentin subsequently ordered military strikes abroad, including bombing Iraq during his impeachment proceedings, critics immediately accused him of
05:26wagging the dog.
05:27Similar accusations have followed precedents ever since, including Donald Trump.
05:31Just, you know, lie all the time.
05:34But the movie's bigger prediction was fake news, becoming the reality of millions.
05:38Today, misinformation, manipulated video, social media, and AI can manufacture convincing fiction before the truth has even gotten out of
05:46bed.
05:47You know you can't save the world.
05:49All you can do is try.
05:50I mean, that's the truth.
05:52Number six, Michael Clayton.
05:54Michael Clayton depicts an agricultural megacorporation willing to do anything to protect a profitable product.
05:59We are a very successful and highly diversified company, so you can imagine the volume and the variety of legal
06:05issues we have to deal with is overwhelming.
06:11It's just enormous.
06:12Unorth knows its weed killer is deadly.
06:15Its own attorney discovers the evidence, forcing the company to bury the research and anyone threatening to expose it.
06:20I just need to make my thoughts a little bit more precise.
06:24That's my goal.
06:27As good as this feels, you know where it goes.
06:30Murder is the Hollywood part.
06:32The rest proved to be disturbingly familiar.
06:34DuPont was penalized by the EPA for withholding information about the risks of PFOA.
06:39Internal Monsanto documents revealed strategies designed to limit liability for crop damage from Dacamba.
06:45Syngenta went further.
06:46Documents revealed an extensive campaign to discredit scientist Tyrone Hayes after his research raised concerns about the herbicide atrazine.
06:53The company tried to purchase the data.
06:56They tried to give me a new contract so that they would then control the data and the experiments.
07:01Nobody was assassinated, thankfully.
07:02But Michael Clayton understood something very real.
07:05When billions are at stake, inconvenient science can become an enemy.
07:08For such a smart person, you really are lost, aren't you?
07:11Number five, Syriana.
07:13Calling Syriana prophetic might actually undersell it.
07:16Much of its supposedly paranoid world was already real.
07:19Tell me, what are they thinking?
07:26What are they thinking?
07:28What are they thinking?
07:30They're thinking that it's running out.
07:33It's running out.
07:35And 90% of what's left is in the Middle East.
07:38The film follows an interconnected web of oil companies, intelligence agencies, gulf royalty, lobbyists, and financiers.
07:45All pursuing their own interests.
07:47When reform-minded Prince Nasir threatens those interests, the CIA marks him for assassination.
07:53Hey!
07:54The real-world parallels run deep.
07:56Oil companies have been caught bribing foreign officials.
07:59Gulf monarchies spend fortunes cultivating influence in Washington.
08:02The U.S. has repeatedly supported authoritarian allies when energy and security interests align.
08:07Intelligence agencies operate covertly to protect American interests abroad.
08:11Syriana didn't invent any of those ingredients.
08:13It simply put them together and showed us how ugly the result can be.
08:17Corruption is our protection.
08:19Corruption keeps us safe and warm.
08:21Corruption is why you and I are prancing around in here instead of fighting over scraps of meat out in
08:26the street.
08:28Corruption is why we win.
08:29Number 4.
08:31The conversation.
08:32Harry Call would absolutely hate the smartphone.
08:35Gene Hackman, surveillance expert, is hired to secretly record a couple walking through a crowded San Francisco square.
08:40What about me?
08:43We'll see.
08:45We'll see.
08:46We'll have to find you more.
08:48Pulling that off requires an elaborate operation involving multiple microphones, operatives, and painstaking audio reconstruction.
09:0050 years later, the technology looks almost quaint.
09:03Phones track our locations.
09:05Apps collect personal information.
09:06Data brokers buy and sell enormous amounts of it.
09:09Cameras and microphones surround us, while sophisticated software can piece seemingly meaningless information together.
09:15Francis Ford Coppola understood where that road could lead.
09:17I can't stand it.
09:19I can't stand it anymore.
09:21Harry becomes consumed by the realization that privacy may already be an illusion.
09:26For Harry, the death of privacy was a nightmare.
09:28For us, it's everyday life.
09:30Number 3.
09:31The China Syndrome.
09:32The release of the China Syndrome is one of the greatest cases of timing ever.
09:36The film follows a television reporter who witnesses an accident at a nuclear power plant.
09:40Listen, what the hell's going on down there?
09:42It's just a routine turbine trip, Bill.
09:44Company executives are desperate to keep safety problems quiet.
09:47The movie opened on March 16th, 1979.
09:4912 days later, Three Mile Island suffered the worst commercial nuclear accident in US history.
09:55Officials say some 50,000 to 60,000 gallons of radioactive water escaped into the reactor building, and that the
10:02radioactivity penetrated the plant's walls.
10:05Equipment failures, design problems, and operator confusion contributed to a partial reactor meltdown.
10:10Eerily, operators in both the film and real life were misled by instrumentation as they struggled to understand what was
10:17happening inside the reactor.
10:18Mr. Goodell, you lied to me last night.
10:20We're not going to leave here until you tell us what happened at the plant.
10:23So some anti-nuclear nut tells you that we almost uncovered the core, but we didn't uncover it, did we?
10:28We stopped it in time for one simple reason.
10:30And I told you that!
10:31The film's fictional disaster was more dramatic, and Three Mile Island caused no immediate deaths.
10:36Still, it took less than two weeks for fiction to come true.
10:38Well, what makes you think I'm looking for a scapegoat?
10:44Tradition.
10:45Number two, Enemy of the State.
10:47In 1998, Enemy of the State was a taut thriller that seemed more like Hollywood paranoia than anything else.
10:52You know, in guerrilla warfare, you try to use your weaknesses as strengths.
10:56Such as?
10:58Well, if they're big and you're small, then you're mobile and they're slow.
11:05You're hidden and they're exposed.
11:07Five years later, it looked disturbingly prescient.
11:10Will Smith plays lawyer Robert Clayton Dean, who unknowingly receives evidence of a political murder.
11:15Soon, rogue NSA operatives are tracking his movements, intercepting communications, and using a surveillance apparatus to dismantle his life.
11:22What is that?
11:23It's a bug sweeper.
11:27Take off your left shoe.
11:29What does it mean when you take off your shoe? I don't have time to explain.
11:32More importantly, the conspiracy begins with legislation expanding government surveillance powers in the name of national security.
11:38After 9-11, the Patriot Act did just that.
11:41Later revelations exposed warrantless wiretapping and massive NSA collection programs.
11:46I don't want to be the person making decisions on what should be public and what shouldn't.
11:52The assassinations and technology are exaggerations, but the film tackled the bargain America would soon confront.
11:57How much privacy are we willing to surrender in the name of security?
12:00It's a brave new world out there. At least it better be.
12:05Before we continue, be sure to check out WatchMojo's 24-hour livestream.
12:09All of your favorite videos in one place, 24-7.
12:13Always on, always live.
12:15Are you not entertained?
12:17Number 1. Network.
12:19This Oscar-winning thriller may be one of the most frighteningly accurate predictions in movie history.
12:24Howard Beale's on-air breakdown makes him a rating sensation.
12:27I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take this anymore!
12:31His network turns the unstable anchorman into the mad prophet of the airwaves.
12:36The film arrived as network news divisions were increasingly expected to turn a profit.
12:40I know that historically news divisions are expected to lose money,
12:43but to our minds this philosophy is a wanton fiscal affront to be resolutely resisted.
12:49What was once a public service took a backseat to the almighty dollar.
12:53Ratings trumped ethics. News became entertainment.
12:55All I'm saying is, if you're gonna hustle, at least do it right.
13:00Nearly 50 years later, that distinction has almost disappeared.
13:03Corporate consolidation and the 24-hour news cycle transformed journalism into a fiercely competitive business.
13:08Infotainment and social media taught us that outrage sells.
13:12Network understood the fundamental problem decades ago.
13:14Once news becomes a product, the truth has to compete for attention.
13:17But why me?
13:20Because you're on television, dummy.
13:2460 million people watch you every night of the week, Monday through Friday.
13:30I have seen the face of God.
13:35You just might be right, Mr. Beale.
13:37Which conspiracy theory made you wonder if Hollywood knew a little too much?
13:41Let us know in the comments below.
13:42The
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