Thursday, April 15, 2010

The Deliberate Trilogy: Logan’s Run, Soylent Green, and The Omega Man

A while back, I posted a guest column on Mightygodking.com about the thematic linkages between late-70s sci-fi movies The Omega Man, Logan's Run, and Soylent Green. Someone posted in the comments section that they were actually hoping to see "the contrived and hilarious explanation of how these three movies were actually a trilogy."

To be honest, I just thought that was too obvious to post at first. Clearly, the radical overpopulation of Soylent Green eventually turns humanity into the breeding ground for a new supervirus, a radical plague that wipes out most of the human race and turns many of the rest into mutant vampire-like creatures. Only Charlton Heston, who narrowly survived his injury, escapes the plague's deadly effects. (Clearly, the fact that he has a different name and profession speaks to a fascinating "film between the films" showing his failed revolution and subsequent adoption of a new identity.)

At the end of The Omega Man, of course, Heston sacrifices his life to find a cure for the younger generation. He succeeds only too well--without an older generation to provide stability and tradition, the young people decide that there's no need for a post-thirty humanity, and they turn to scavenging pre-plague technology to create a futuristic Utopia for themselves. Which works fine, unless you decide to run.

And of course, somewhere above all the chaos, Bruce Dern silently watches and guards Earth's precious natural resources...

5 comments:

E. Wilson said...

I can totally see that. It certainly gives more life to Soylent Green, which loses a lot of its punch when you know the ending. And everyone knows the ending.

Mory said...

I have a personal trilogy in my mind, which is quite a bit stranger than yours but still makes sense to me. Mine goes Network, A Clockwork Orange, WALL•E. Network shows a society which is about to fall apart, because the media has sapped all the values out of it. The capitalist system has overstepped its bounds, and is starting to replace all purpose in life with a single-minded dedication to getting money. A Clockwork Orange jumps a few hundred years forward to show what happens when such systems are allowed to replace actual meaning. Society has already fallen apart, but no one notices because the systems of government and religion and family and so on and so forth are still in effect. Society has become numb to anything but protocol. The media becomes a way to reassure, in the absence of all values: within this dead society there is no good or evil, so art is used to fill the void in their souls. In the absence of all values, society self-destructs: listening to great music, they see no need to care about anything, so most of humanity just dies out and the planet is left uninhabitable because no one cares enough to save it. Some survivors escape, but they still are too attached to their systems of life to notice the content of life, so they live meaningless lives in space until WALL•E understands the actual content of an ancient song, instead of just its format, and inspires everyone to start over.

I think it makes sense.

Amber said...

Just gone through your blog and found it interesting. It was nice going through your blog. Keep on posting.

Anonymous said...

Silent Running! I loved that movie as a kid. Here's a link to the three Drones Huey, Dewie, and Louie:

http://www.jeffbots.com/silentrunning.html

Chuck G.

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