I "experienced" the 1973 classic Soylent Green the other day. Having only known Charleton Heston from epics like The Ten Commandments and Ben Hur, I was intrigued to see how he would play a corrupt detective of the future. Not suprisingly - he was terrible; but the movie wasn't. It's a cautionary tale about the dangers of over-population and it does a pretty good job of projecting a distopian future - even with Heston making facial expressions that eclipse anything William Shatner could ever do.
The quote from the Movie, "Soylent Green is People!" is on one of those lists of great movie lines; but it's not in the original book 'Make Room! Make Room!' by Harry Harrison. Ironically - in the novel, all the Soylent products are made of Soybeans and Lentils (now we know where all the clouds of gas came from). Several changes to the story were made in the transfer to screen, including the unintentional cannibalism "shocker" that causes Heston to cry out in infamy. The setting of Harrison's novel - a grossly over populated New York - a scavenging detective and eccentric old roommate are all that remain.
Since watching the movie, I've wondered a few times about how we will be doing as a society in 2022. Will strawberries cost $150 a jar? Even if food isn't scarce, will they still be selling apartments with "furniture"?
4 comments:
I enjoyed the movie but got some pleasure out of the fact that the doomsayers who influenced the movie have been dead wrong so far. I don't think that pun was intended.
I had never heard of Soylent Green until SNL did a skit on it. Because I didn't understand what they were making fun of, I had to ask about it.
It is very sad that a lot of my education came from SNL. If I don't watch the news all week, I can just watch SNL to get caught up.
Thanks for the reminder, I've wanted to watch that one....and thanks for giving away the ending! Nah-I knew the premise.
Polynesian King "Roa-Touah" (rowatowa) was famous for eating 83 people. At that time it was referred to as the "long pig." Hopefully we'll head that direction - I'm not to keen on green stuff.
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