Soylent Green (1973)
Tuesday is Soylent Green day.
THE SUMMARY: A police detective in an overpopulated New York City future investigates a murder and learns the horrible truth: the corporate sludge everyone eats is actually made of people. It’s a murder mystery wrapped in dystopian sci-fi - a movie that I love in concept, but hate in much of its presentation, making it a difficult grade. What it could be? Awesome. What it is? Meh.
FROM MOVIE-PICKER ELECTRIC NINJA: Back when sci-fi was dark and serious, this one is a classic. Charleton Heston really knew how to pick ‘em. This film is 50 years old, but if you haven't seen it yet… DO NOT LET ANYONE SPOIL THE ENDING.
JAMIE AND JEANNE’S AI FACESWAP ART:
I look like gay Han Solo in the bottom right.
Thank you for not making the next scene.
REVIEW NOTE: Normally I make my best attempt to link to the moments in the movie I’m referencing, but in this case, there are very few Soylent Green clips on YouTube and other common video hosting sites, hence my lack of links in this one.
THE BEST:
The big concepts are great: In its broad themes, this movie is excellent. Many of its warnings have come at least partially true in the fifty years after it was made.
‘Environmental sustainability’ is often anti-human: Wow, I am shocked to learn that the giant corporation that was supposedly harvesting sustainable sea resources was actually harvesting people as a method of population control! I don’t say that sarcastically to discredit the movie - I say that because it’s not as surprising as it should be anymore.
I don’t make this point to be ‘anti-environmentalist,’ either. I’m not saying chop the rainforest or pollute the rivers for fun. I’m saying that environmentalism is a value only to the extent it serves human life, which is the actual priority. If you believe in harming humans to serve the planet, you have to answer the question: of what value is the planet… without humans? This is why environmentalism for environmentalism’s sake gets twisted into evil, in exactly the way the movie forewarns.
Kill yourself to save the planet: Likewise, if human life is not the priority value, it will be sacrificed for things ranked higher, and it will be virtuous to kill yourself on behalf of those things. Whenever I see the sort of death industry depicted in this movie’s sendoff for Sol, or Futurama’s phone booth replacements, I think it’d be funnier if this wasn’t only about five years off. How ironic that what looks like the medical system’s biggest budget is actually death.
It may be wise to question corporate chemicals: Soylent Green predicted we’d learn this lesson in 2022 - it turns out it was just a year or two late. Not bad. The mega-corporation that is supposedly saving humanity… might actually be harming, even killing humanity. I’m sure Soylent Green was safe and effective too.
Like environmentalism, I don’t make this point to be ‘anti-corporate’ for its own sake, either. Corporations are just as capable of making things that improve our lives immensely as they are of lying or deceiving or committing evil. It’s just that no person or group of people deserves trust beyond any scrutiny. That’s for God, not humans.
They’ll scoop you in to a dump truck if you let them: In a strange way, the Soylent Green dump trucks are the mirror image of the killdozer. In the same way the killdozer represents a reasonable man who must do an unreasonable thing, the dump trucks represent what the state or powers that be will do without the threat of that unreasonability. One is a necessary check on the other, so we all must decide: do you want to drive the killdozer, or get scooped in the Soylent Green dump truck? The correct answer is know how to build and drive the dozer, with the moral restraint to deploy it only when absolutely necessary.
The twist is great: My point above implies I saw the ending coming. I didn’t, actually. And I didn’t have it spoiled for me. It’s not just a surprise, but it’s a good way of tying up the two arcs of the plot that previously seem unrelated, or at least unclearly related: the murder, and the Soylent Green shortage. I like a movie that has me wondering how different story elements are connected and then ties them up neatly. Soylent Green does.
Excellent whore punches: I don’t even understand why it happens, but Charles, the apartment building manager, just starts smacking the ‘furniture’ girls in the sort of ‘slap a ho’ beatdown they just don’t do anymore. There is no YouTube clip that I can find, but if you’d like to see it, it’s timestamp 45:23 in the full movie posted on Internet Archive.
Why did I enjoy this scene? Slapstick comic relief of a bygone era, really. Sean Connery would be proud.
Kill yourself to save the planet (Radiohead song is the only version I could find).
How is this the best clip of the riot scene on YouTube?
THE WORST:
The Shirl story is a big waste of time: For as much as I enjoy the movie’s big themes and plot twist, there’s so much time wasted on this pointless Shirl ‘romance.’ It’s forced, it goes nowhere, it means absolutely nothing to the main story, and it has no resolution in the end. She just continues being a whore for a different rich guy, and there’s no meaning or development for her character or the plot line at all.
What next?: With this much time wasted with Shirl, it could have been better used on something much more interesting: what happens next? Everyone learns that Soylent Green is made of people, so now what? Do they opt to starve? Do they continue to cannibalize because the situation demands it? What happens next is a much more interesting question that who’s on this piece of furniture today.
Why does Thorn wait so long to deliver the news?: Sol whispers the truth to Thorn on his deathbed, and instead of informing anybody else, Thorn then infiltrates the Soylent Green factory to confirm it. Instead of telling anyone even after confirmation, he runs until he reaches a phone, and calls Shirl. Then even on that phone call, he doesn’t reveal the biggest public interest scandal in the world - he just tells that dumb ho that he loves her because it’s hard to get a good lay or shower in the underworld. He then connects to the police chief and doesn’t tell him either. He just says ambiguously, ‘help me!’ After two wasted phone calls, he then runs around still more in a gunfight, and gets to the church. And even at the church, surrounded by hundreds of other people in a safe setting, he carefully walks over them so as not to wake them with the news, as though their rest is somehow more important. Eventually, he finally delivers the key line: oh yeah… ‘Soylent Green is people!’
Way to bury the lead. It’s a very bizarre way to finish the story. Thorn should have been running around screaming to anyone who would listen. Instead it’s like he forgot the whole point of the movie.
Why is everyone sleeping on stairs?: It’s a totally insignificant point, but I don’t understand why everyone sleeps on the stairs. There’s plenty of room on the ground and in the streets. Why would the stairs be preferable? I’ve never tried it, but I’ll bet stairs are the least comfortable sleeping surface possible. The stair sleeping is seen several times too, implying there’s some symbol or metaphor to it, but I just don’t get it.
Coulda told them quite a while ago, considering it’s pretty important.
How is flat ground not preferable?
THE RATING: 3/5 Wickies. I’m on a long three-Wicky streak now, four of the last six movies. But like many recent viewings, I can’t pretend to love or hate it. There’s a good movie in the concept, and a bad one in execution I’d like to see this movie get a modern remake. A few plot tweaks and some fancier production would maximize its potential.
YOUR RATING: Vote here ⬇ Note: if you get a notification saying you have already voted and you haven’t, this is because of an issue with iOS (Apple mobile devices). Try voting on a desktop or laptop computer.
NEXT WEEK: The Emperor’s New Groove (2000)
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