MovieChat Forums > Soylent Green (1973) Discussion > Why isn't this more well known?

Why isn't this more well known?


I see that they are going to be remaking/re-adapting the book, so someone in Hollywood obviously thinks (rightly) that this story is valid in todays society. But I just watched it for the first time last night, and I can't believe that a film so wonderfully made is more or less forgotten. I can't imagine there are many people under the age of 50 that have even heard of it, or even its famous "Soylent Green is people" line. It has pretty much no presence in pop culture, and yet it is so good.

The story is fleshed out just enough, the cinematography and production design is fantastic, it is artfully made, and it is genuinely heartbreaking and bleak. I love all the little allusions to the state of the sun - the dimming bulb in their apartment, the death of Sol (sun in Latin), the sheer brutality of the 'scoops' etc. I wonder if people would actually be interested if they just re-released it in cinemas?

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Because people only tend to watch the newest stuff, or to only rewatch things that were new within their lifetime that they can remember watching on original release.

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Is this a thread a joke? This is one of the most famous sci-fi movies of all time, next to Planet of the Apes, A Clockwork Orange and 2001. I'm 46, and the last line was referenced and quoted to hell and back when I was growing up, so of course people under the age of 40 had heard of it and the famous line.

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Because it's the future. Now.

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I think it fell out of favor over time because some of its design elements, especially the luxury apartments, became seen as dated. A fair number of 1970s films depicting the near future really dived into the modernist design styles of the late 1960s and early 1970s. This probably worked at the time to sell audiences on the setting representing a future evolved from our present, but over the years these designs have become dated themselves, which renders the vision of the future as dated itself and it kind of damages the film's verisimilitude.

I think it was also something of the product of its time when there was a lot more public acceptance/credibility about things like overpopulation, resource scarcity and environmental poisoning. Ironically, that same public concern led to environmental changes that have resulted in significant declines in pollution and in combination with improvements in technology have led to a general belief that global population growth is mostly sustainable and not the crisis it once was.

Most people are against remakes, but I think this one could probably be remade in ways that would make it more believable. It might help to have more world-building done, too, as I think the original was awfully vague in terms of the nature of political leadership.

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