Terrible Movie...

[deleted]

What was your idea of a good movie, Twilight? Sad how ignorant some are these days. Soylent Green was staggering for it's time and still holds up today. They may have gotten the dates wrong by 50 years but we are likely facing that future. Soylent Green still is in my top ten list of all time scifi films and will likely always be. The very fact you don't "get it" cements the likelihood that it IS our future. Another poster said basically what's so bad about cannibalism? We are so very screwed!

i got this in the charlton heston collection movie box, i had no idea there would be loads of extra material. i think tcm used to air this along with "omega man" some time ago, i used to get them confused with each other (omega man is also featured in the box b.t.w), and back then i hadn't seen much of edward g. robinson, but after seeing him in key largo, that has become one of my favorite movie performances ever, and the wiseguy line in this made me right off think of that movie "what's worse, curley? a dumbell or a... wise guy?". the most memorable scene of this i thought was when robinson has picked orange as his favorite colour and heston breaks in and they both get to see how the world used be, i thought that was just someone looking like dick van patten, seems strange they would use someone that well known in such a part, but same thing happened in earthquake with walter matthau. notice in the end credits someone billed as "fat guard". still, i can't get enough of "the omega man" movie and i'm glad that's the one tcm still airs.



saw money and evil in your eye,
didnt feel right having you around,
when you melted down,
not a coin could be found,
as you reached your hand out,
and melted me down.

Hell no.

Of course, there aren't really any truly effective "this art is good or bad" police, general audiences vote with their dollars, energy & time. Perhaps it's not a mere coincidence that the band Kiss has truly outlived its critics - and the band launched in 1973, the same year this film came out. And they were from New York as well...

Who really cares if anyone loves or hates the film?

It has a few limitations, even for 1973 - and there are only six years (at the time that I'm writing this Post) until 2022. Unlikely that the acceleration of a major decline as depicted will occur.

I always find it amusing that Det. Thorn doesn't remember that the world was significantly better, there are ample remnants of the older, better world in plain sight in the film's world and scenes. Heston was no younger than 48, and likely 50 in 1973 when the film was released - meaning that his character would have been born in about 1972 when there were ample supplies of everything with the added ecological issues presented. His character would be more aware, perhaps less than his roommate Sol, but still he would know what Sol knows about the past.

Anyway, the poster art implied a more horrifying, advanced world & promised better than the film could visually deliver (probably couldn't have pulled it off in 1973):

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_W3bLkLDR-6o/S743UZ8g1JI/AAAAAAAAF4I/rbjLHG5Ea_c/s1600/Copia+de+Soylent_Green.jpg

Instead we got this, still a pretty awful dystopian future. SG Scoops in action, not as "futuristic" or technologically advanced as the artwork depicts, but no less effective in demonstrating the extent to which man's inhumanity to man can escalate to:

http://www.technovelgy.com/graphics/content07/soylent-green-scoops.jpg

But here's something to consider, that renders the film visionary in scope and it still stands as a terrible, if dated, warning:

If we don't choose to exercise a balance of free markets vs regulation, stewardship of natural resources vs unrealistic, infinite growth in a finite world of dwindling natural resources, then the premise of Soylent Green will come to pass at some point in human history.

The opening montage, though using real photos from recent history at the time, ultimately seeks to paint a picture of a non-existent society in which infinite free market growth goes unchecked and unregulated, with the government in bed with the corporations, and the result is an acceleration of population growth and consumption exceeding natural resources and production, and exacerbated by pollution and the greenhouse effect/global warming:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlVczvB4FQk

It is arguable that the world as they knew it in 1973 would indeed have degenerated into the horrible prediction for 2022 it depicts if not for technological advancement, public awareness, regulation, and good old fashioned faith of people.

Thus, the film has a realistic element to it, because the trajectory based on 1973 standards was a possibility, and if the awful future reality were to manifest, the less impressive scoop scenes (compared to the poster artwork) would be even more horrifying if a reality in our time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wa4U6TQlNI


Perhaps I've said too much above, but I wanted to at least share some of the justifications for the value of a "warning fable" movie.

I must disagree with the OP. The film, though horribly dated by today's standards, and campy even for 1973 standards, actually stands as a classic science fiction story, perhaps more relevant than Star Wars which came out just a few years later.


"If you love Jesus Christ and are 100% proud of it copy this and make it your signature!"

It's pretty good, imo.