Before The Great, Nicholas Hoult And Elle Fanning Made A Critically Maligned Sci-Fi Western
In the mid to late 20th Century, sci-fi superseded the Western as the most reliably popular movie genre. But that didn't mean these two styles were so diametrically opposed that Hollywood couldn't mash them together. In fact, throughout film and TV history there have been many standout examples of the two genres blending quite nicely, from the sci-fi Western that paved the way for "Westworld and "Firefly" to one of the best sci-fi Westerns ever made "Mad Max: Fury Road." Then, there are films like "Young Ones." No I'm not talking about the great British sitcom — though this long forgotten dystopian Oater did feature an English star.
Starting in 2020, Nicholas Hoult and Elle Fanning starred together in Hulu series "The Great," an "anti-historical," satirical retelling of the rise of Russia's Catherine the Great which played fast and loose with the historical facts. Fanning portrayed the titular empress while Hoult played her husband, Emperor Peter III. After having earned Oscar nominations for co-writing 2018's "The Favourite" and penning 2023's "Poor Things," Tony McNamara used "The Great" to add a dash of romance to his signature sharp satire. It was met with critical praise across all three of its seasons before being canceled in 2023. "Young Ones" also featured Hoult and Fanning but didn't earn anything close to the kind of praise they eventually enjoyed with their Hulu series.
The two stars were joined by Michael Shannon for this dystopian sci-fi Western, which came from writer/director Jake Paltrow, younger brother of Gwyneth. Unfortunately, "Young Ones" failed to do anything original with its post-apocalyptic setting.
Young Ones had some interesting ideas but didn't do much with them
"Young Ones" is set in a United States ravaged by severe drought where the remaining inhabitants scavenge and kill for water. Amid this barren nightmarescape lives Michael Shannon's Ernest Holm, who resides on an otherwise deserted plot of land with his son, Jerome (Kodi Smit-McPhee), and daughter, Mary (Elle Fanning). Unbeknownst to her father, Mary has been seeing Nicholas Hoult's Flem Lever, the son of a local auctioneer.
It's from this auctioneer that Ernest buys a new robotic mule, which he can use to fetch water from the sinister "water men," a gang of undesirables who nevertheless have the government's approval to distribute water from deep wells. Unfortunately for Ernest, the water men soon turn on him after they suspect him of pillaging their supplies. Ernest eventually manages to track down the stolen supplies, which were actually taken by Flem. After Ernest takes his daughter's love hostage, however, things only go from bad to worse.
Unlike Robert Pattinson's similarly underseen dystopian Western "The Rover," "Young Ones" didn't quite win over critics with its story of desperation amid a dystopian, dust-strewn wasteland. After a 2014 debut at the Sundance Film Festival, Jake Paltrow's film was given a thorough dressing down by reviewers, and left in the dust to shrivel. But while it wasn't exactly a critical triumph, "Young Ones" also wasn't a complete disaster.
Critics were harsh on Young Ones but not as harsh as they could have been
A 47 Metascore on Metacritic and a 47% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes certainly isn't the worst possible outcome for Jake Paltrow's dystopian Western, but it ain't great — especially when you consider Glenn Kenny of RogerEbert.com described the film as "too bland to qualify as a really notable disaster." That wasn't the worst of it, either. Detroit News' Tom Long wrote, "No matter how grim the future may be, it deserves a better movie in the here and now" — though the critic also seemed to have been generally irked by what he called "the seemingly endless line of films about earth's grim future."
There was plenty of self-indulgent wordplay on show among reviewers, with lines like "the most barren thing in this Western-sci-fi flick is the character development" and "the characterizations are as sparse as the desert foliage." But there were also several positive reviews, with Henry Barnes of The Guardian giving the "Young Ones" four stars and writing, "There hasn't been as convincing a sci-fi dustbowl story since the original 'Mad Max.'" Similarly, Clayton Dillard of Slant Magazine found that film managed to "avoid the typical trappings of the genre pastiche by utilizing its clear indebtedness to numerous other films as merely a starting point, rather than an end."
In all, then, "Young Ones" could have done a lot worse with critics, even if it has been largely forgotten since its debut. That said, both Nicholas Hoult and Elle Fanning have since gone on to appear in much better projects, with the latter fronting Dan Trachtenberg's radical "Predator: Badlands" and the former playing Lex Luthor in James Gunn's charming crowd-pleaser "Superman."