Science Fiction was never meant to be a warning. It was a revealing of the intended plans. Even as far back as with "the father of science fiction," H.G. Wells, he had direct connections to powerful people in the early eugenics and technocratic movement at the turn of the century. They made sure his writings reached as broad an audience as they could achieve at the time so that people's minds could be seeded with the key points they wanted to accomplish. And that was just his "fiction" writing; his nonfiction writing openly addressed eugenics and technocracy and he received awards and accolades for them.
I actually love this film, and it's made even more powerful to know that this was Edward G Robinson's last role, as he was dying of cancer during the filming. But, being the professional that he was, he didn't tell his co-workers. Edit: I'd also add that while it's fine to dislike this or any other film, I think people get caught up in the "message" rather than the drama. To me, it's just an interesting tragic "what if" with phenomenal acting from a great ensemble cast.
Hi kev, you do know they often say that about these celebrities regarding cancer and not telling or them dying and no one see it. Please know, these celebrities are sold out and they are not different one from the other. A more recent person that died was the actor that played marvel black panther. They said the same about him. He was so professional and took his roles seriously, he had cancer and no one knew it. Just trying to enlighten you buddy. These are the wool that is put over peoples eyes, believing what is fed to us which is ironic because that what this movie was about. To make it plain, I am a Christ follower. We should reference and believe in someone who died for our sins so we wont be in bondage anymore- His name is Jesus Christ that did that. Once we repent and accept him as our Lord and Savior, we no longer will have to be restrained by the shackles that society put on us nor held by mans authority. Our authority will come from above who no one is greater than. I'm recommending you Jesus Christ because he is the only way the truth and life. Peace and blessings.
I did hear from somewhere that Charlton Heston was genuinely emotional during the filming of the Edward G Robinson euthanasia scene because he knew he was dying in real life.
The ending is pretty consistent with 1970's films where they are not explicit with the ending, leaving it to your imagination. A shame that doesn't happen today.
It still happens every once in a while past the 1970s. Some worth mentioning examples are The Thing (1982), Blade Runner (1982), Christine (1983), Drive (2011), They Live (1988), Escape From New York (1981), Blow Out (1981), The Fog (1980), Cruising (1980), Silent Rage (1982), Extraction (2020), The Informer (2019), Brazil (1985), Total Recall (1990).
Yeah, real jaded and cynical endings that tried to be hard to ridicule. I guess too many "anti-this and anti-that" people of the 60's, trash talking movies with their friends, made filmmakers self-conscious about an ending with closure, and liked to turn to edgy nihilism instead! 😛
You know many nations are ok with suicide as the government cannot really stop you from killing yourself. The only difference between Canada and some other nations is it give you the option to go peaceful with your family rather than you family finding you brains alive the living room wall.
@@ramonandrajo6348 Yeah, so, that doesn't counter my point that many dystopian elements are coming true. Further, there are similarities between Canada and Soylent Green. So, YES!!!
Ah the story of a survivor of a manmade pandemic and the infected survivors don't trust science because of all the misinformation. Who would believe a story like that? It's to far fetched lol
I've always seen Soylent Green as a more personal journey of a man losing his faith in the social institutions that underpin society, even though he views them quite cynically to begin with, and, finally, being willing to sacrifice himself to expose the truth. Rather than fundamentally being about the environmental disaster, it focuses on the f'd up way people respond to it. It is a story of the individual against the System, a not uncommon element of Harrison's work. The Stainless Steel Rat series is phenomenal.
Four words in your comment stopped me in my tracks Andrew. Four words I haven't read nor thought about for literally decades. Until last night. I was lying in bed last night and as my thoughts wandered randomly, for no reason whatsoever a distant long forgotten obscure characyer/story that I haven't seen nor read since the eighties popped into my head and I made a mental note to revisit. The four word phrase I literally haven't thought about in well over 30 years and with amazing synchronicity they appear in the first comment I read this morning. The Stainless Steel Rat.
@@Humans_EhThat gave me goosebumps…how effing weird!! I’ve had this sort of thing happen to me also, and it is always a bit unnerving yet so cool at the same time. Hope you both have a fantastic day!
@@Silk.With.An.E 'Unnerving and cool at the same time ' Indeed, very well put. 😊👍 Life can throw little things like that at you out of the blue that grab your attention.
If we stopped raising animals and stopped having children the CO2 levels would rapidly decline and thus kill off plant life. There’s a natural balance which nature not politicians has absolute control.
That is clever. Actually if humans eat other humans they can get this spongy brain it's like mad cow disease so even if it seems like a you know a good alternative. In soylent green, I don't know how they would do that without the people all getting the spongy brain from eating soylent green people.
Edward G. Robinson told Heston that he was terminally ill and would soon die (in reality) right before Robinson's death scene was filmed. The emotion that you saw in Heston during that scene was real.
I would say that the dystopian sci-fi nightmare we currently live in, where rich psychopaths want to force us to eat bugs, is even darker than the fictional dystopian sci-fi nightmare depicted by soylent green
I don't see how he can claim that the movies depicts these living conditions as the necessary consequence. It's clearly doing the exact opposite. Also way back then we added lead (!!!) to gasoline which most likely caused a global drop in IQ points. A lot of environmental concerns were very valid. The problem is just with everything that there pendulum swung to far. He tries to paint this movie as woke when it clearly isn't. Not by a long shot.
@@EbonyPope He makes a point, though, that I've never actually considered: the corporation making Soylent Green is not actually doing it for greed's sake (which would be more realistic) - they are doing it because there is no other solution to the problem of hunger. I think Dave and most level-headed people believe that we need to take care of this world, but to say we're anywhere near to living in a world as depicted in Soylent Green is just not true. China had birth laws for years, only to realize that they were doing more harm than good, and that's about as populous a place as you can get. That should tell you all you need to know about the realities of overpopulation. Even though I do find this movie more rewatchable than Logan's Run, I don't think it's realistic, unless there was some other catastrophe, like radiation poisoning the lands, or something.
There are huge governmental subsidiaries to "insect farming" in Canada and Australia. Those plants already exist and produce. The most companies one can find is by looking up food fairs around the world, you will be shocked how many of them there are already. They even have their own overhead associations with magazines, all the bureaucracy etc. etc. It's a HUGE market and they are out to destroy their competition: Classic farming.
@@olafweyer859 While there are people who want to go in this direction this is a very one sided view. Insects can produce a lot of protein from things that aren't fit for human consumption. Other applications would be the ability to provide food for the poorest. Better eat that than die from hunger in Africa. It could solve at least some problems in times of famine. It's an area which should be investigated. Not everything is a plot to destroy western living standards you know?
@@cruddddddddddddddd Yes China has done some horrific stuff to their people. Seeing this movie as woke propaganda is just not accurate. Assuming that the problem of hunger becomes the most pressing it isn't that unrealistic that profit must take a back seat. You can't eat money after all hence the solution to that even if very horrifying would be cannibalism like during the famines under Mao. People even ate their own children. It's hard to believe but we have countless evidence that in times of extreme hunger people will absolutely resort to cannibalism.
I actually stayed up till 3 in the morning watching this after watching your Logan's Run video. I had seen this film years ago and enjoyed it way more the second time round after all these years. Great movie, great character and acting from Heston!
And from Futurama's episode about Slurm: Fry: "Oh my God! What if the secret ingredient...is PEOPLE?!" Leela: Nah, there's already a soft drink like that: Soylent Cola. Fry: Oh. How does it taste? Leela: It varies from person to person.
Dude he's completely wrong here. In the 70s they were putting lead in gasoline and wall paint. Also there general pollution was crazy. Lots of bigger cities had huge problems with smog because of all the pollution. Just because all these modern green party idiots went to far doesn't mean the movie doesn't have some valid points. It's also doesn't depict this future as something we should strive for nor is it preachy. He's completely wrong here sorry.
@@chrismaddock598 Yes because they are being fed the script/ideas most likely. The CIA is notorious for infiltrating Hollywood. Again, by the elites in control, that feel compelled to tell you what they're going to do before they do it.
@@EbonyPope I totally agree with the pollution part. But just because the movie has valid points doesn't mean it's not one of the earliest environmentalist brainwashing and fear mongering tools . Propaganda works both ways: What we should strive for and what doom awaits us.
@@olafweyer859 Oh my god. Don't you see that you are trying to reassign intentions that you are deriving based on today's poltics? The movie doesn't tell you what to think in either direction which is exactly the OPPOSITE of propaganda. You make of it what you will. And the living standards aren't depicted as something even remotely desirable. He's completely wrong about that. He's seeing wokeness in everything because it's unavoidable to have a bias with today's woke Hollywood movies. However these concerns were valid back then and have proven to be the ones we should adress and also have adressed. Without the catalysts for cars we would still have acid rain and a lot of what you now take for granted wouldn't even exist hadn't we taken the measures to combat it. No matter what you think of the movie you can't say that since it contains X and since X has gone to far it's a propaganda driven movie. Just like you can't say women's rights are bad because third wave feminism is going way to far. One does not exclude the other but he seems to be to biased and really wants to depict it as a woke movie which it clearly is not.
i was about 7 when i saw this, and being so young I didn't know the twist, which by now everyone knows, and it blew my mind and broke my heart. I often if word got out about Soylent Green, would people even care, or see it as a sacrifice because no matter what,, this world is screwed. really need to read the book
If recent years have taught us anything, it's that at the very least a sizeable percentage of the population with consider the Soylent corporation heroic.
Don't remember if this was mentioned in the movie; been a long time since I've seen it, but in the book we learn that Soylent = soy and lentils. Also, as others have already pointed out, the book does not contain the cannibalistic aspect.
@@347Jimmy yes it does because soylent green in the film was never said to be that it was said to be from algae. its how the old in the film figures out what soylent green is really made from when he studies a report showing the oceans have died
@@toomanyaccounts the news report near the very start of the film claims that Green is made from algae The oceanic reports detailing the lack of algae are relevant because of this You completely missed a major plot point This is *still* completely irrelevant to the name Soylent originally coming from a contraction of soy/lentils Soylent Red and Yellow weren't people, they were soy and lentils
Exactly. He's completely misinterpreting it. The very fact that it's open ended shows you that it isn't preachy or woke. Also way back then the pollution with all the smog and lead in gasoline was just crazy. There were a lot of valid concerns.
When ever I tell people that Charlton Heston was a great actor I get the huh what the gun guy. The guy had some amazing films and was an excellent lead.
I used to think it a disappointment that "Make Room, Make Room" was the only Harry Harrison novel made into a film. After reading through a library of his works. These days I am glad they have gone under the radar, and not ruined by current Hollywood.
@@impudentdomain I would _LOVE_ a straight from the book Stainless Steel Rat. Boy, would that movie infuriate a lot of woke people. I'm going to have to re-read it now.
Your sarcasm is appreciated. Good job. The point of the film is to not necessarily to answer questions but to pose a "What if?" and also "Follow the money!" theme. It's a film that wasn't meant to offer hope just like the end of another Charlton Heston film "Planet of the Apes" when he finds out his own Earth is where he lives and we did this to ourselves.
Another film I saw around the first time I watched this in my early 20s was the original Rollerball, which I think stands up a bit better, message-wise. I had kind of glossed over the environmentalist themes when I first watched it, but then you posed the excellent question: what are they really trying to say? Bit of a chilling thought, given Hollywood's overall trajectory over the past few decades.
Several years ago there was a "health food bar" called SoyJoy. Apparently, the packaging design group never saw this movie, as they chose the colors red, yellow, and green for the packaging of the three flavors they had.
"there are some who say that this has already happened." does anyone really know what's in a McDonalds patty? or any processed meat for that matter. it all minces together, doesn't it?
There was a rumor a while back that McDonald's was using worms for their hamburger meat. Then someone pointed out that worms would be far more expensive than beef.
This is a seriously weak take. It's perfectly legit to wonder what might happen to a world that's badly overpopulated and to explore dark themes. Soylent Green's crime is what, they didn't predict the year accurately? You seem to be essentially saying the film is bad because it doesn't support your politics.
I don't know if it's all about a political agenda, it's not like now. I think it was normal to think that resources were going to run out due to overpopulation, it was a fashion at that time to think of futures like this in movies, all very apocalyptic and with dictatorships. In addition, at that time the environment was not politicized as it is now, that is, now the leftists took over the environmental discourse, but it was not like that at that time. In other words, maybe it was a normal concern of people and this was reflected in the movies, but now it's about being left (those who supposedly love nature) or right (those who supposedly hate it). I am not from the left, but I am concerned about the environment, we cannot say that everything is a brainwashing either.
Agreed. I'm a center-left guy, concerned about but not involved in environmental issues, and I just don't get how someone can be upset at a movie from 50 years ago for exploring the themes that were relevant at the time. Worries about overpopulation, pollution, energy reserves and so on were growing all over the place: Nixon, a Republican, founded the EPA in 1970, then a few months after Soylent Green came out there was the oil crisis. Overfishing, leaded gasoline, asbestos and ozone depletion (observed a few years after this movie, I understand) were and to some extent still are serious problems.
The film's point was human over-population of the planet destroying nature & its consequential apocalyptic effects upon humanity, which was a zeitgeist issue in the 1960/70's. It was probably an off-shoot of the creation of commercial mass contraceptive medicines in the 60's.
It is a warning, nothing more. Good sci-fi presents possibilities to explore when we conjecture about our potential future. Far fetched and extreme, sure. Still a valid warning in my opinion. It suggests we as human beings just need to be more mindful about the environment and living standards.
Whilst environmentalist themes in Soylent Green might feel 'on the nose' now, bear in mind that they were pressing concerns at the time the film was made: London's smog problem had been cured by building taller factory chimneys and sending all the air pollution to Scandinavia, where acid rain was destroying forests, DDT was turning up in walrus blubber. Whilst the role in corporate greed is not directly addressed, it is implicit: This is what the world could have been like if there were not the political will to address the problems of pollution. Also the population of New York arises from the countryside being uninhabitable: it is a vision of the future that would influence Mega City 1 a few years later. The actual 2022 population of New York is due to a mass exodus Of people fleeing the kind of dystopia that Soylent Green warns about.
Yeah frightfully accurate (in a way ) Dave right down to the year. I watched it as a kid years ago and just meh, nice bit of sci fi..but watched it again last year and wow!
10:02 So glad you mentioned this. Fear-mongering is what modern eco-activism is all about, and it looks like the trend started as early as 1970s. Live in a pod, eat the bugs and pay your carbon tax, while the reach enjoy their private islands, personal jets and healthy meat diet.
50 years after this movie was made, we have the hindsight to see that the predictions of environmental alarmism of the 70s have not come to pass, and likely never will, but in 1973 when leaded gas had just been banned and smog was far worse than it is today, the concerns of this film were understandable.
remember they thought an ice age was coming and that oil and coal would be depleted in ten years. also this 35 million in new york takes place in a future oof 7.8 billion. we have eight billion and lots of empty space. overcrowding is a personal choice
We still have the environmental alarmism, it just mutates into a new variant annually when the grift is becoming obvious. They just swap to something new and claim that the previous thing was averted by listening to their preachy bullshit. Endlessly offering them a way out
@@toomanyaccountsSome cities today barely reach the 40 million mark now and it isn’t as desperate as this movie. Tokyo certainly doesn’t look like this. Not even cities like Delhi or Dhaka faces situation this dire.
@@theorangeoof926 you're forgetting that New York has the unique dilemma of being an island, so while there are many cities that have larger populations they also have the ability to expand their limits so all those people arent so highly concentrated. but even still, i think arguing about the exact population number is akin to debating semantics, whether it is 40 million or 40 billion the exact number is clearly not the point, and if this movie were made today then perhaps they would have picked a number which to us now seems astronomical but which may seem laughable to people 50 years from now and so on. i dont think its too much of an ask for the audience to suspend our disbelief at whatever the specific number they went with.
You missed it this time. The idea that there was no choice is the whole point. That's the horror of it. This movie came out a few years after THE POPULATION BOMB book came out. Also... The big revelation, "Soylent Green is people," was about halfway through the book, if I remember correctly. There's more to the story not included in the film, but that's the nature of movies.
Also another film I watched last year for the first time lmao. I went into it only knowing that soylent green is people but I found myself fascinated with the other dystopian on goings. Like the fancy rich apartment complex having live in prostitutes who were refered to as "furniture." The euthanasia scene was interesting as well- especially considering Canada's MAID program. I thought the use of soy as an ingredient was a bit of foreshadowing for today. As almost everything has soy in it. Although of the two: Logan's run and Soylent green. Soylent green surpassed my expectations for a classic movie while Logan's run kind of sank under my expectation. I'd rewatch soylent green eagerly and Logan's run begrudgingly.
3:11 to be fair in this specific situation it makes sense if your option is eat the bugs or you'll starve due to a lack of other food options you're going to eat the bugs
That's why people are hunting, fishing, and farming more now. I don't think anyone is going to try to stop them/us...we tend to carry and work in groups. Oh, and a ton of us are experienced combat vets.
@@ronwatford7331 it's not a matter of stopping you it's matter of the forest's and game your relying on no long existing in This scenario a situation where the food supply is being stretched to its limit's where there is no game to hunt
@Spartan X92 there are already countless groups ensuring that doesn't happen, most of them state-funded. The problems you're talking about could be solved immediately if space exploration, exploitation, and colonization were to be taken seriously by governments and corporations instead of them trying to control everyone. Which is why the citizen will ensure it happens - among many other things - with or without the government's consent. And it's going to happen soon, because a HELL of a lot more people care than there are those molecularly-bonded to the fence.
The open ending of the film is the beauty of it. This is one of my favorite dystopian films. The film is a warning taken to the extreme. Your interpretation is bit off. But I disagree that the narrative is entirely fictitious. As a result of the conservation movements of the times changes were made. And I do feel like there is a limit to the number of people the planet can support although perhaps the way advanced societies seem to inevitably stop reproducing mitigates this concern. But at the time the film was made these seemed very real possibilities. Some of the reasons may be off, but we do have corporations and elites trying to get us to accept lesser living conditions and Canada even pushing suicide as socially friendly. No film is perfect, but this one is better than most.
I've always had a soft spot in my heart for this movie simply because the first time I saw it in the 90's I recognized it for what it was. The writers didn't believe any of these things would happen, but they wanted them to. Put in the popular vernacular of today: they were telling us what they wanted to do without actually telling us. It was the first time I caught that message so clearly that I've had a fondness for the movie ever since.
I think the point of the movie was to not so much scare us into a far-leftist, tree-hugging people, but to provide a parable of what happens if all we do is consume & breed to such a point where we end up eating ourselves & causing our own destruction. I believe the message is meant to be about moderation; not too much that we overpopulate to the point where humanity can't sustain itself anymore. That we don't want to take this world of ours for granted to the point where there's simply too many people & not enough food & resources to go around. Yes, there was an environmental message to it, but I think Earth's decay & poisonous destruction was the byproduct of overpopulation & not the main point. Otherwise, we'd see more of what happened to the world beyond the confines of the city in order to receive the message more clearly (as Mr. Cullen pointed out about there not being anything beyond NYC). I've always enjoyed it, bc it's the first major motion picture to fully address the problem of overpopulation, & that there isn't an infinite # of resources for us. In the 1970's, smoking, littering, & pollution were starting to become a real issue, affecting millions with health hazards, & recycling was in its infancy, so I think movie helped address some of the problems that the modern world was beginning to face @the time.
As far as humanity is concerned, the future of Soylent Green looks to be coming true, but it is being created deliberately, rather than by indifference, neglect and abuse.
Bit of a throwback to a time when people had noticably different prioties. In the 60’s on the 70's, public environmentalism was primarily and most reasonably concerned with pollution, that is synthetic or petrochemical waste products, heavy metal exposure, Love Canal, etc.; rather than the reductionist and erroneous fixation on atmospheric CO2, which is indispensable for life on this planet. It was more of an issue with urban congestion, rather than 'overpopulation' as we conceive of it today. In 1960, one-third of the world lived in cities, now those figures are reversed and close to one-third live in rural areas. Things have changed most measurably in the subtle ways
When I learned how Canada is offering to euthanize people for reasons such as poverty, disability, mental health issues and chronic (NOT TERMINAL) illness, it made me think of the scene where the man signs up to die so he can be treated to his own room, bed, some nice food and a video with beautiful music and nature scenery while they kill him.
In the scene in which Charlton Heston's character watches Edward G. Robinson's character die, Heston's tears were real. He was the only member of the cast or crew who knew that Robinson was actually dying in real life; Robinson passed away from cancer soon after the film wrapped.
Its good film. Back in the 1970s, there were no real environmental protection laws, especially in the States. The book it was based on - Make room, make room, was written in 1966, when concerns about our population growth and associated pollution were beginning to be raised. This is a very very poor review , as the film was just speculating on a possible future based on what was going on in the 60s and 70s Predicting the future accurately is always difficult, so the story the film told is just one possible future. Criticising it because it got it wrong, is just plain silly. It's like criticising Star Trek because World war 3 hasn't happened, or the initial development of the warp drive.
Here's the thing, if food and other crucial resources had become so scarce you couldn't support a population so BIG. People would sadly die off from starvation.
Dave a little heads up. This film was a result of the fuel crisis of what was going on in 1970s. Plus also the environmental movement going on back then as well. But here's the major kicker too, the Hive Cities of Warhammer 40k and the Corpse Starch of what people in hive cities eat in the 40k universe. While most took inspiration for 40k from Dune. The Corpse Starch took inspiration from Solyent Green movie. So honestly this movie actually deserves some praise for providing inspiration for other dystopian sci fi franchises to follow.
No I don't think so. I was around then. The SF movie writers and bleak Ellison chasing novelists were just switching their bugaboo that creates their horrible future. It was originally endless world wars or plagues (Wells, Nowlan, Matheson...) to the atom bomb and radiation (Bradbury, Serling, everything in the 40s, 50s, 60s) and that was getting tired by Planet of the Apes So they moved on to old repackaged Victorian angst of the underclasses continuing to have these mongrel babies they can't afford and they will eat our food and spoil our pretty parks. Rich guys got together in the late 60s early 70s and wrote up this social crisis, fabulously bad predictions to scare the intelligent petty bourgeoisie (always scary to the rich) into not having babies, so there would more scraps for the waves of replaceable uneducated labor their set had been using and disposing of since the early 1700s. Well 50 years and here's Bill Gates the IMF and the WEF to tell you to eat the bugs. Don't be that gullible again. Live your life. Enjoy your time. Be a true liberal in the original definition: aquire private property to your liking and build a social unit of a happy family to use it. Or you can listen to the guys on the walled estates, paid by foundations, flying around in private jets, with private armed security telling you to watch that thermostat, eat the fake food, get your allowance, your rations, public school your kids, or better yet don't have any......and don't forget to console yourself with the toys they sell.
@@STho205 While that might be true, and I am familiar with the works of Ray Bradbury and many others. The Fuel Crisis, The Cold War, The Atomic Age and many more did draw inspiration for such cinema, even it adapted from such novels. Even George Miller's Mad Max was a dystopian concept of the post apocalyptic future in Australia of what happens with fuel/petrol becoming a scarious commodity. Long before nuclear holocaust. Though yes later the nuclear holocaust was the end result of the Fuel Crisis. As for Planet of the Apes, much inspiration could be stem from the racial divide of the Jim Crow Laws, Racism, and also the Civil Rights Movement. Only in Planet of the Apes, the Apes were the superior supremacist targeting humans. When it comes to Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles, it was about the issue of colonization of Mars and the impact it would have over the native martians. So yes the events of then did create inspiration of the cinema we find in movies like Soylent Green, that later did influence franchises like Warhammer 40k, Fallout, and many others. 🖕😏✌️
@@timothyhenegar7484 since Planet of the Apes was written in French by the same French novelist that wrote Bridge on the River Kwai...probably not Jim Crow. He just wanted a reason to wipe earth and build his own simulation. His classism was an intellectual, administrative and warrior classism at odds and conflict in Ape Society disrupted by a resourceful individualist that embodied all three. Some projects get funded because they seem to fit trends and might make money by being cliche at the right time....or chasing a formerly popular movie, like all the star wars clones after 77. Remember that oil shortages of the 70s were not environmental but were politically contrived. People get angsty about their transportation and heating fuel so it is a great way to control people or to threaten other governments. I hear we and the Norwegians finally got those really lucrative German and Polish oil, brand new Norway export pipeline and LNG import contracts all sewn up before Christmas after 10 years of "negotiations" with our NATO friends that were buying Russian fuel. Who saw that coming?
I thought the 1970s era dystopia genre was more about the negative results of post WW2 life. The growth of corporate power and the environmental impacts of things like DDT led to these films. Logan Run, Soylent Green, and many others were not bad films and they were a reaction to what was going on politically in the late 60s and early 70s. They just were not supposed to be a training manual for Malthusian nut jobs today.
The quality depends on the hive as well. Some are made of people and other things caught in the grinders (Necromunda) Others are grown from fungus that may be seeded on cadavers. There tens of thousands of hive worlds so options do exist.
This fatalistic conception wasn't helped by the publication of "The Limits to Growth" by the Club of Rome, a completely black pilled Malthusian prediction of widespread resource scarcity, as depicted in Soylent Green. IMO, while they blame pollution for all the problems in Soylent Green, the underlying assumption is essentially Malthusian. Resources will be exhausted and no human innovation will ever occur.
In 2023 we are in the midst of the largest extinction event of all of Earth's history. This mass extinction of animals and plant species is caused by humans.
I'm afraid I don't really look at films in terms of what message may or may not have been intended. I see it simply as a horror movie where the big horrific reveal is that soylent green is people, and the even more horrific realisation that the world has no choice, will likely accept cannibalism rather than starve, and that the human race is screwed. I don't really see it as a prediction or warning, just a horror tale.
Yes, Dave, Soylent Green was a condemnation of human greed running rampant. And just like 1984, it was a warning that was never heeded. An excellent movie.
Exactly. It’s not that humans in general are bad for the environment, it’s that humanity’s reckless exploitation of the natural environment is a huge problem, backed up by evidence and research and observation. I also don’t agree that the movies messages suggest that we should all live in pods and eat bugs and strive for some common ideal. I don’t think it’s that simple. I think the movie, and its message, is simply to draw attention to the costs that the damage we do to the environment will have a direct effect on our lives.
It's a very nihilistic vision of the future, based on a lot of nihilistic beliefs from the time. Pretty much all of science fiction in the early 70s was bleak and extremely preachy, at least until Star Wars seems to have broken from the mold and showed that the genre could be fun again.
I took it upon myself to watch this film a couple years back. It is very well made for the time but I must say it is nothing short of terrifying. And frankly I am seeing the beginnings of the reality portrayed in the film starting to emerge.
Did it deal with the preponderance of neckerchiefs in 2022? I realize that it did not become to fruition in actual 2022, but it did seem to be predicting them.
Now only Omega Man left and Rollerball. Thank you for reviewing it as its an important piece of SF. Your take of the film is very different than mine but I respect that. Wonder how will you view Rollerball and Omega Man. Have a good evening mate.
always figured it was a warning of what might happen , the whole ozone hole and CFC's was kicking off around this time maybe helped inspire, we were also having a lot of ocean over fishing , i know people like to think all this climate business is just new panic but we have been fucking it up for a while now ;)
Um, Dave? It's a good movie. It's part mystery, part sci-fi, part action. It's a good movie with a good story. We need more good movies with good stories like this. If we refrain from making good movies like this for fear of what "message" we could be interpreted as sending out, we won't get good movies. Dissecting good classic movies and ragging on it for what "the message" might be is kind of as much of a threat to good art being made as ham-fistedly shoving woke messages into a film. It's a well-written story made into a fantastic classic. A monument to the imagination of man. I have no qualms with it. But hey, that's just my opinion.
I don't think the film is suggesting at all that we have to literally resort to cannibalism, but rather that the overpopulation & destruction we are inflicting on the planet and the direction we are headed, is turning us into cannibals - in the metaphorical sense of the word. This is how I always understood the film.
Dude, chill. You are dissecting a 50 years old movie narrative from a today's perspective. That is wrong to begin with. Sadly, it is a proven fact that humans tend to become cannibals, when shit really hits the fan (Minoan collapse, American settlers in XV century Jamestown, the Donner party, that airplane crash in Uruguay in the 70's...), and taking into consideration how everything that can be industrialized will if it brings money, it is not really out of the question to picture cannibalism in some dystopian future. And regarding overpopulation, have you considered those living conditions in urban India or China. Those examples bring the world some new and exotic viruses every year, because of overpopulation and the lack of hygiene. Humans tend to be a harmful species. That's why you have microplastics in every drop of the ocean, and pollution on a level that will be traceable in archaeological findings a thousand years from now. So, if you put that in SF context, it is a prospect worth of a script. And that movie is certainly not the only example.
It is a good film to watch, and with Charlton Heston being the star of the flick too. I view Soylent Green the same way I view 1984. Both are very depressing experiences when push comes to shove, but still one can learn something from it. Even you admit that much of what happens in the film eerily predicts Left-Environmentalist concerns, they still sound true when you compare them to the real life antics of the Environmentalists of today.
I think you're overthinking this a bit mate. It's just a 1970s movie. Nearly every sci-fi film of the mid '60s to late '70s has a didtopian, 'it's all gonna go to shit ' narrative. I've always put it down to the end of the hippie era, very real threat of nuclear war, the loss of the Vietnam war, and other world shifting events like Water gate. This is a period of movie making shot through with anxiety and a fear of the future. Cheers mate. Ray
Another point about the nature of the movie compared to today. Even if that news, that it was people, got out, would it change anything? The two years with COVID restrictions shows that it wouldn't. People would accept the narrative regardless of evidence and move on.
When you do look into modern animal agriculture, it is not a sustainable model to feed the growing human population. Just the US consumes approximately 10 billion land animals per year. That does not even include sealife, that most of it comes from Southeast Asia. This fishing industries have systemic issues of slave labor. Back to US animal production, 80% of agricultural land is used to produce food for those 10 billion animals. Most soy and corn grown in the US is for animal feed. We grow Alfalfa in the desert where we are currently dealing with a massive drought. Billions of dollars of government subsidies are used to prop up this industry. We have China, Saudi Arabia and other nations buying US farm land to grow food for their own growing population that wants to eat more animals. I don't think we will resort to eating bugs or God forbid humans in the foreseeable future. However, using edible plants to make fake meat rather than grow plants to feed animals and growing lab grown meat are not bad ideas to help feed the world. It uses far less land, water and energy than current farming and ranching. It causes far less pollution than the billions of animals create in their waste. A lot of it negatively effects the local human population. I don't see that as a dystopia.
In the book crowd control was effected by "flying wire" (i.e. barbed wire dropped onto mostly peaceful protesters) instead of scoop equipped trash trucks.
Ah yes, the movie that had a decent message that was completely deflated and drowned out by the meme "Soylent Green is people!!!". And that's when it became a comedy.
The movie had a gawdawful message; nothing decent about it. It was nothing more than anti-human propaganda, like the Planet of the Monkeypeople series of movies.
I watched this movie as a kid and it sort of shocked me at the time. I watched it again last year and it has become even more relevant today, in regard of global totalitarism, explosion of poverty, assisted suicides, mainstream prostitution (OnlyFans, etc). We are heading towards that kind of future, and not by choice.
Another Great thought provoking 70's sci-fi. I think you've looked through the wrong lens on this one. Dystopias are bleak, hence the DYS in dystopian, otherwise it would be a utopian vision.
The reason all we remember from this movie is "Soylent Green is People" meme is precisely because the film itself was so bad. It was the most heavy handed and least fun of the Heston Sci-Fi Films. You laid out a lot of the problems with the messaging. There are a couple other big ones left unmentioned but in fairness revolve around topics that can't be discussed on YT. But another big problem s Soylent Green just isn't fun and groovy like The Omega Man so it ends up being this long slog you have to endure just to get to the "shock" punchline at the end.
As Dave says, we shouldn't let this movie off the hook because it's old. The first 'Earth Day' in 1970 came between when the book was released and the movie made, and shows the thinking of the time. Every prediction of the first 'Earth Day' was wrong. As was the heavy messaging in this.
![BLACK BAG - Official Trailer [HD] - Only in Theaters March 14](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Du0Xp8WX_7I/mqdefault.jpg)
There was a time when dystopian stories were meant as a warning. Today the political and economic system seems hell bent on making them come true.
Yeah, China seems to think Black Mirror is a series of instructional video...
Science Fiction was never meant to be a warning. It was a revealing of the intended plans.
Even as far back as with "the father of science fiction," H.G. Wells, he had direct connections to powerful people in the early eugenics and technocratic movement at the turn of the century. They made sure his writings reached as broad an audience as they could achieve at the time so that people's minds could be seeded with the key points they wanted to accomplish. And that was just his "fiction" writing; his nonfiction writing openly addressed eugenics and technocracy and he received awards and accolades for them.
@@aliciabell6688 And USA too?
@@ramonandrajo6348 I can't argue against your point😒🙄
@@ramonandrajo6348 No
I actually love this film, and it's made even more powerful to know that this was Edward G Robinson's last role, as he was dying of cancer during the filming. But, being the professional that he was, he didn't tell his co-workers.
Edit: I'd also add that while it's fine to dislike this or any other film, I think people get caught up in the "message" rather than the drama. To me, it's just an interesting tragic "what if" with phenomenal acting from a great ensemble cast.
He did tell Charlton before the "soylent green is people" line.
I can watch it over and over again, never gets old.
Agreed.
Hi kev, you do know they often say that about these celebrities regarding cancer and not telling or them dying and no one see it.
Please know, these celebrities are sold out and they are not different one from the other. A more recent person that died was the actor that played marvel black panther. They said the same about him. He was so professional and took his roles seriously, he had cancer and no one knew it.
Just trying to enlighten you buddy. These are the wool that is put over peoples eyes, believing what is fed to us which is ironic because that what this movie was about.
To make it plain, I am a Christ follower. We should reference and believe in someone who died for our sins so we wont be in bondage anymore- His name is Jesus Christ that did that. Once we repent and accept him as our Lord and Savior, we no longer will have to be restrained by the shackles that society put on us nor held by mans authority. Our authority will come from above who no one is greater than. I'm recommending you Jesus Christ because he is the only way the truth and life. Peace and blessings.
I did hear from somewhere that Charlton Heston was genuinely emotional during the filming of the Edward G Robinson euthanasia scene because he knew he was dying in real life.
As a child my dad would often say, "Soylent green isn't food...it's people!"
Your dad was funny. Nice
People have and at one point again will be, cannibals out of desperation.
And we'd say, "thanks for giving away the end of the movie, dad!"
@@atticstattic lol
I didn't have a clue of what he was saying until I was older and he explained the reference to me.
The ending is pretty consistent with 1970's films where they are not explicit with the ending, leaving it to your imagination. A shame that doesn't happen today.
Modern world wants answers from their movies but not from the government
And yet we still get YT videos explaining the ending of films with perfectly clear endings🤔
It still happens every once in a while past the 1970s. Some worth mentioning examples are The Thing (1982), Blade Runner (1982), Christine (1983), Drive (2011), They Live (1988), Escape From New York (1981), Blow Out (1981), The Fog (1980), Cruising (1980), Silent Rage (1982), Extraction (2020), The Informer (2019), Brazil (1985), Total Recall (1990).
Ah, yes. I do agree with this. The ambiguity is what makes it for me.
Yeah, real jaded and cynical endings that tried to be hard to ridicule.
I guess too many "anti-this and anti-that" people of the 60's, trash talking movies with their friends,
made filmmakers self-conscious about an ending with closure, and liked to turn to edgy nihilism instead! 😛
It was not meant to be a documentary, but with the crazy direction society is heading in, it's now a documentary.
WEF + "Eat the Rich" = Soylent Green
With the flesh trade becoming more mainstream, the definition of furniture might just be changing to match this one.
1984 too...
@@jessepacheco6020 ~ 1984 was always somewhat true as it was based on Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany. It was a documentary of those times.
@@jessepacheco6020 don't forget demolition man
Dave : "Assisted suicide is commonplace"
Me : "I thought you said this takes place in New York, not Canada?!?"
Just wait.
Happening in Canada
Fuck it at least let me do it myself. Imagine it being illegal. It’s illegal.
Futurama we see a suicide booth for cheap cost.
after Canada's okayness of suicide, it just reminds me of this movie.
You know many nations are ok with suicide as the government cannot really stop you from killing yourself.
The only difference between Canada and some other nations is it give you the option to go peaceful with your family rather than you family finding you brains alive the living room wall.
Yeah, lots of dystopian future elements coming true, today.
The situation in Canada today is not the same as what happens in the movie, so no.
@@Winterascent The situation in Canada today is not the same as what happens in the movie, so no.
@@ramonandrajo6348 Yeah, so, that doesn't counter my point that many dystopian elements are coming true. Further, there are similarities between Canada and Soylent Green. So, YES!!!
Dave, you have to do The Omega Man next.
Ah the story of a survivor of a manmade pandemic and the infected survivors don't trust science because of all the misinformation. Who would believe a story like that? It's to far fetched lol
I've always seen Soylent Green as a more personal journey of a man losing his faith in the social institutions that underpin society, even though he views them quite cynically to begin with, and, finally, being willing to sacrifice himself to expose the truth. Rather than fundamentally being about the environmental disaster, it focuses on the f'd up way people respond to it. It is a story of the individual against the System, a not uncommon element of Harrison's work. The Stainless Steel Rat series is phenomenal.
Four words in your comment stopped me in my tracks Andrew. Four words I haven't read nor thought about for literally decades. Until last night.
I was lying in bed last night and as my thoughts wandered randomly, for no reason whatsoever a distant long forgotten obscure characyer/story that I haven't seen nor read since the eighties popped into my head and I made a mental note to revisit.
The four word phrase I literally haven't thought about in well over 30 years and with amazing synchronicity they appear in the first comment I read this morning.
The Stainless Steel Rat.
@@Humans_Eh I hadn't thought about it in forever, either, but last night I purchased the audiobook (my eyes don't work so well anymore).
@@andrewbobb3170 Happy listening my friend 👍
@@Humans_EhThat gave me goosebumps…how effing weird!! I’ve had this sort of thing happen to me also, and it is always a bit unnerving yet so cool at the same time. Hope you both have a fantastic day!
@@Silk.With.An.E 'Unnerving and cool at the same time '
Indeed, very well put. 😊👍
Life can throw little things like that at you out of the blue that grab your attention.
When vegans get crazy preachy and demanding, I always tell them I've solved the issue of eating animals by switching to people.
And vegans taste better, too.
@@SyntheToonz Doubtful
If we stopped raising animals and stopped having children the CO2 levels would rapidly decline and thus kill off plant life. There’s a natural balance which nature not politicians has absolute control.
A good source of vitamins and minerals just like any herbivore. We don't eat carnivores.
That is clever. Actually if humans eat other humans they can get this spongy brain it's like mad cow disease so even if it seems like a you know a good alternative. In soylent green, I don't know how they would do that without the people all getting the spongy brain from eating soylent green people.
Edward G. Robinson told Heston that he was terminally ill and would soon die (in reality) right before Robinson's death scene was filmed. The emotion that you saw in Heston during that scene was real.
Damnit Dave stop reviewing the instruction manuals for NWO!! 😅
The NWO... 😂😂🤣😃
I would say that the dystopian sci-fi nightmare we currently live in, where rich psychopaths want to force us to eat bugs, is even darker than the fictional dystopian sci-fi nightmare depicted by soylent green
I don't see how he can claim that the movies depicts these living conditions as the necessary consequence. It's clearly doing the exact opposite. Also way back then we added lead (!!!) to gasoline which most likely caused a global drop in IQ points. A lot of environmental concerns were very valid. The problem is just with everything that there pendulum swung to far. He tries to paint this movie as woke when it clearly isn't. Not by a long shot.
@@EbonyPope
He makes a point, though, that I've never actually considered: the corporation making Soylent Green is not actually doing it for greed's sake (which would be more realistic) - they are doing it because there is no other solution to the problem of hunger.
I think Dave and most level-headed people believe that we need to take care of this world, but to say we're anywhere near to living in a world as depicted in Soylent Green is just not true. China had birth laws for years, only to realize that they were doing more harm than good, and that's about as populous a place as you can get. That should tell you all you need to know about the realities of overpopulation.
Even though I do find this movie more rewatchable than Logan's Run, I don't think it's realistic, unless there was some other catastrophe, like radiation poisoning the lands, or something.
There are huge governmental subsidiaries to "insect farming" in Canada and Australia. Those plants already exist and produce. The most companies one can find is by looking up food fairs around the world, you will be shocked how many of them there are already. They even have their own overhead associations with magazines, all the bureaucracy etc. etc. It's a HUGE market and they are out to destroy their competition: Classic farming.
@@olafweyer859 While there are people who want to go in this direction this is a very one sided view. Insects can produce a lot of protein from things that aren't fit for human consumption. Other applications would be the ability to provide food for the poorest. Better eat that than die from hunger in Africa. It could solve at least some problems in times of famine. It's an area which should be investigated. Not everything is a plot to destroy western living standards you know?
@@cruddddddddddddddd Yes China has done some horrific stuff to their people. Seeing this movie as woke propaganda is just not accurate.
Assuming that the problem of hunger becomes the most pressing it isn't that unrealistic that profit must take a back seat. You can't eat money after all hence the solution to that even if very horrifying would be cannibalism like during the famines under Mao. People even ate their own children. It's hard to believe but we have countless evidence that in times of extreme hunger people will absolutely resort to cannibalism.
I actually stayed up till 3 in the morning watching this after watching your Logan's Run video. I had seen this film years ago and enjoyed it way more the second time round after all these years. Great movie, great character and acting from Heston!
The Soylent Corporation's motto: "You are what you eat!"
And from Futurama's episode about Slurm:
Fry: "Oh my God! What if the secret ingredient...is PEOPLE?!"
Leela: Nah, there's already a soft drink like that: Soylent Cola.
Fry: Oh. How does it taste?
Leela: It varies from person to person.
They always tell us what they plan before they do it.
I think its more that sci-fi authors are often spot on about their speculations on the future.
Dude he's completely wrong here. In the 70s they were putting lead in gasoline and wall paint. Also there general pollution was crazy. Lots of bigger cities had huge problems with smog because of all the pollution. Just because all these modern green party idiots went to far doesn't mean the movie doesn't have some valid points. It's also doesn't depict this future as something we should strive for nor is it preachy. He's completely wrong here sorry.
@@chrismaddock598 Yes because they are being fed the script/ideas most likely. The CIA is notorious for infiltrating Hollywood. Again, by the elites in control, that feel compelled to tell you what they're going to do before they do it.
@@EbonyPope I totally agree with the pollution part. But just because the movie has valid points doesn't mean it's not one of the earliest environmentalist brainwashing and fear mongering tools . Propaganda works both ways: What we should strive for and what doom awaits us.
@@olafweyer859 Oh my god. Don't you see that you are trying to reassign intentions that you are deriving based on today's poltics? The movie doesn't tell you what to think in either direction which is exactly the OPPOSITE of propaganda. You make of it what you will. And the living standards aren't depicted as something even remotely desirable. He's completely wrong about that. He's seeing wokeness in everything because it's unavoidable to have a bias with today's woke Hollywood movies. However these concerns were valid back then and have proven to be the ones we should adress and also have adressed. Without the catalysts for cars we would still have acid rain and a lot of what you now take for granted wouldn't even exist hadn't we taken the measures to combat it. No matter what you think of the movie you can't say that since it contains X and since X has gone to far it's a propaganda driven movie. Just like you can't say women's rights are bad because third wave feminism is going way to far. One does not exclude the other but he seems to be to biased and really wants to depict it as a woke movie which it clearly is not.
i was about 7 when i saw this, and being so young I didn't know the twist, which by now everyone knows, and it blew my mind and broke my heart. I often if word got out about Soylent Green, would people even care, or see it as a sacrifice because no matter what,, this world is screwed. really need to read the book
If recent years have taught us anything, it's that at the very least a sizeable percentage of the population with consider the Soylent corporation heroic.
The book doesn't have anything about soylent green in it.
The secret of Soylent Green is the vocal password for Frank Black in the television series, Millenium.
@@Zoloft77 really i never watched Millennium, heard good things. but never got round to it
@@chrismaddock598 i have heard that, that's it's more a collection or stories, but still need to check it out.
Don't remember if this was mentioned in the movie; been a long time since I've seen it, but in the book we learn that Soylent = soy and lentils. Also, as others have already pointed out, the book does not contain the cannibalistic aspect.
I'm quite sure it is mentioned in the film, as I've never read the book and knew about soy/lentils
@@347Jimmy no in the book soylent green is not made from people period. soylent green in the movie the cover is that it is from algae
@@toomanyaccounts that has nothing to do with what I said
@@347Jimmy yes it does because soylent green in the film was never said to be that it was said to be from algae. its how the old in the film figures out what soylent green is really made from when he studies a report showing the oceans have died
@@toomanyaccounts the news report near the very start of the film claims that Green is made from algae
The oceanic reports detailing the lack of algae are relevant because of this
You completely missed a major plot point
This is *still* completely irrelevant to the name Soylent originally coming from a contraction of soy/lentils
Soylent Red and Yellow weren't people, they were soy and lentils
Dave, I watched this movie when I was a teenager. I always just thought of it as a warning. Very well done. And love me a Charlton Heston. Haha
Exactly. He's completely misinterpreting it. The very fact that it's open ended shows you that it isn't preachy or woke. Also way back then the pollution with all the smog and lead in gasoline was just crazy. There were a lot of valid concerns.
When ever I tell people that Charlton Heston was a great actor I get the huh what the gun guy. The guy had some amazing films and was an excellent lead.
I used to think it a disappointment that "Make Room, Make Room" was the only Harry Harrison novel made into a film. After reading through a library of his works. These days I am glad they have gone under the radar, and not ruined by current Hollywood.
No shit, a "woke" Stainless Steel Rat is something I don't need
@@impudentdomain I would _LOVE_ a straight from the book Stainless Steel Rat. Boy, would that movie infuriate a lot of woke people. I'm going to have to re-read it now.
A woke Slippery Jim deGriz or Jason din Alt would probably be the moment I say goodbye to entertainment forever.
Some author's work are impossible to adapt...
Your sarcasm is appreciated. Good job. The point of the film is to not necessarily to answer questions but to pose a "What if?" and also "Follow the money!" theme. It's a film that wasn't meant to offer hope just like the end of another Charlton Heston film "Planet of the Apes" when he finds out his own Earth is where he lives and we did this to ourselves.
Another film I saw around the first time I watched this in my early 20s was the original Rollerball, which I think stands up a bit better, message-wise. I had kind of glossed over the environmentalist themes when I first watched it, but then you posed the excellent question: what are they really trying to say? Bit of a chilling thought, given Hollywood's overall trajectory over the past few decades.
It's eugenics (because that's what the talk of too many humans ultimately means...) disguised as humanism.
As a kid I was intrigued by and scared of Rollerball, but as an adult I realize it is anti-capitalist.
Rollerball from 1975 is a brilliant film. It's main theme is: corporations have taken the role of governments.
My mother saw the movie when it came out. She said it wasn't realistic. No one would care that it's people, or poison. They'd just keep eating.
Ew that is disgusting 🤮
Several years ago there was a "health food bar" called SoyJoy. Apparently, the packaging design group never saw this movie, as they chose the colors red, yellow, and green for the packaging of the three flavors they had.
or maybe they did and just love the irony.
"there are some who say that this has already happened."
does anyone really know what's in a McDonalds patty?
or any processed meat for that matter.
it all minces together, doesn't it?
Its still beef, its just the worst kind and all the crap. I hope that is all.
I have heard that they can use a certain percentage of worms.
There was a rumor a while back that McDonald's was using worms for their hamburger meat. Then someone pointed out that worms would be far more expensive than beef.
I've always considered dystopian movies and books warnings more than predictions. Love the video and appreciate the thoughtful insight!
Yes, maybe 1984 is warning?
They're neither. They're entertainment for an angst ridden public, that encourage more angst to encourage more dwelling in it in dark auditoriums.
Well that’s what they are, they aren’t saying this is how the world will end up, they’re saying we have a choice, now, to avoid that future.
@@STho205 no you’re 100% wrong.
@@STho205cia
This is a seriously weak take. It's perfectly legit to wonder what might happen to a world that's badly overpopulated and to explore dark themes. Soylent Green's crime is what, they didn't predict the year accurately? You seem to be essentially saying the film is bad because it doesn't support your politics.
I don't know if it's all about a political agenda, it's not like now. I think it was normal to think that resources were going to run out due to overpopulation, it was a fashion at that time to think of futures like this in movies, all very apocalyptic and with dictatorships. In addition, at that time the environment was not politicized as it is now, that is, now the leftists took over the environmental discourse, but it was not like that at that time. In other words, maybe it was a normal concern of people and this was reflected in the movies, but now it's about being left (those who supposedly love nature) or right (those who supposedly hate it).
I am not from the left, but I am concerned about the environment, we cannot say that everything is a brainwashing either.
Agreed.
I'm a center-left guy, concerned about but not involved in environmental issues, and I just don't get how someone can be upset at a movie from 50 years ago for exploring the themes that were relevant at the time.
Worries about overpopulation, pollution, energy reserves and so on were growing all over the place: Nixon, a Republican, founded the EPA in 1970, then a few months after Soylent Green came out there was the oil crisis. Overfishing, leaded gasoline, asbestos and ozone depletion (observed a few years after this movie, I understand) were and to some extent still are serious problems.
Skynet never came true, does that make Terminator a bad movie?
Hahaha just wait
The film's point was human over-population of the planet destroying nature & its consequential apocalyptic effects upon humanity, which was a zeitgeist issue in the 1960/70's. It was probably an off-shoot of the creation of commercial mass contraceptive medicines in the 60's.
It is a warning, nothing more. Good sci-fi presents possibilities to explore when we conjecture about our potential future. Far fetched and extreme, sure. Still a valid warning in my opinion. It suggests we as human beings just need to be more mindful about the environment and living standards.
Whilst environmentalist themes in Soylent Green might feel 'on the nose' now, bear in mind that they were pressing concerns at the time the film was made: London's smog problem had been cured by building taller factory chimneys and sending all the air pollution to Scandinavia, where acid rain was destroying forests, DDT was turning up in walrus blubber.
Whilst the role in corporate greed is not directly addressed, it is implicit: This is what the world could have been like if there were not the political will to address the problems of pollution.
Also the population of New York arises from the countryside being uninhabitable: it is a vision of the future that would influence Mega City 1 a few years later. The actual 2022 population of New York is due to a mass exodus Of people fleeing the kind of dystopia that Soylent Green warns about.
Yeah frightfully accurate (in a way ) Dave right down to the year. I watched it as a kid years ago and just meh, nice bit of sci fi..but watched it again last year and wow!
If you haven’t already please do the movie
They live
Please also update your playlists
10:02 So glad you mentioned this. Fear-mongering is what modern eco-activism is all about, and it looks like the trend started as early as 1970s. Live in a pod, eat the bugs and pay your carbon tax, while the reach enjoy their private islands, personal jets and healthy meat diet.
50 years after this movie was made, we have the hindsight to see that the predictions of environmental alarmism of the 70s have not come to pass, and likely never will, but in 1973 when leaded gas had just been banned and smog was far worse than it is today, the concerns of this film were understandable.
remember they thought an ice age was coming and that oil and coal would be depleted in ten years. also this 35 million in new york takes place in a future oof 7.8 billion. we have eight billion and lots of empty space. overcrowding is a personal choice
We still have the environmental alarmism, it just mutates into a new variant annually when the grift is becoming obvious. They just swap to something new and claim that the previous thing was averted by listening to their preachy bullshit. Endlessly offering them a way out
@@toomanyaccountsSome cities today barely reach the 40 million mark now and it isn’t as desperate as this movie. Tokyo certainly doesn’t look like this. Not even cities like Delhi or Dhaka faces situation this dire.
@@theorangeoof926 you're forgetting that New York has the unique dilemma of being an island, so while there are many cities that have larger populations they also have the ability to expand their limits so all those people arent so highly concentrated. but even still, i think arguing about the exact population number is akin to debating semantics, whether it is 40 million or 40 billion the exact number is clearly not the point, and if this movie were made today then perhaps they would have picked a number which to us now seems astronomical but which may seem laughable to people 50 years from now and so on. i dont think its too much of an ask for the audience to suspend our disbelief at whatever the specific number they went with.
Grains per capita peaked worldwide in the 1980s.
You missed it this time. The idea that there was no choice is the whole point. That's the horror of it. This movie came out a few years after THE POPULATION BOMB book came out.
Also... The big revelation, "Soylent Green is people," was about halfway through the book, if I remember correctly. There's more to the story not included in the film, but that's the nature of movies.
Also another film I watched last year for the first time lmao. I went into it only knowing that soylent green is people but I found myself fascinated with the other dystopian on goings. Like the fancy rich apartment complex having live in prostitutes who were refered to as "furniture." The euthanasia scene was interesting as well- especially considering Canada's MAID program. I thought the use of soy as an ingredient was a bit of foreshadowing for today. As almost everything has soy in it.
Although of the two: Logan's run and Soylent green. Soylent green surpassed my expectations for a classic movie while Logan's run kind of sank under my expectation.
I'd rewatch soylent green eagerly and Logan's run begrudgingly.
Bill's bugs and Justin's MAID, how touching.
3:11 to be fair in this specific situation it makes sense if your option is eat the bugs or you'll starve due to a lack of other food options you're going to eat the bugs
That's why people are hunting, fishing, and farming more now. I don't think anyone is going to try to stop them/us...we tend to carry and work in groups. Oh, and a ton of us are experienced combat vets.
@@ronwatford7331 it's not a matter of stopping you it's matter of the forest's and game your relying on no long existing in This scenario a situation where the food supply is being stretched to its limit's where there is no game to hunt
@Spartan X92 there are already countless groups ensuring that doesn't happen, most of them state-funded. The problems you're talking about could be solved immediately if space exploration, exploitation, and colonization were to be taken seriously by governments and corporations instead of them trying to control everyone. Which is why the citizen will ensure it happens - among many other things - with or without the government's consent. And it's going to happen soon, because a HELL of a lot more people care than there are those molecularly-bonded to the fence.
The open ending of the film is the beauty of it. This is one of my favorite dystopian films. The film is a warning taken to the extreme. Your interpretation is bit off. But I disagree that the narrative is entirely fictitious. As a result of the conservation movements of the times changes were made. And I do feel like there is a limit to the number of people the planet can support although perhaps the way advanced societies seem to inevitably stop reproducing mitigates this concern. But at the time the film was made these seemed very real possibilities. Some of the reasons may be off, but we do have corporations and elites trying to get us to accept lesser living conditions and Canada even pushing suicide as socially friendly. No film is perfect, but this one is better than most.
100,000 years from now, earth wont even know that humans were here
I've always had a soft spot in my heart for this movie simply because the first time I saw it in the 90's I recognized it for what it was. The writers didn't believe any of these things would happen, but they wanted them to. Put in the popular vernacular of today: they were telling us what they wanted to do without actually telling us. It was the first time I caught that message so clearly that I've had a fondness for the movie ever since.
When someone tells you who they are...believe them.
@@aliciabell6688 I'm Jesus Christ
@@Tubeite They meant with evidence...
Dave, did you know that here in the U.S. human composting is now legal in 6 states? Kinda one step away from Soylent Green...
If you take it serious, burying someone in the ground is kind of composting too
@@Daemonarch2k6 🤦♂
Also now happening in Canada through MAID @@Self-Partnered_MGTOW_Monk
It’s better than embalming some e with hazardous chemicals. I like the idea of decomposing back to the earth.
I think the point of the movie was to not so much scare us into a far-leftist, tree-hugging people, but to provide a parable of what happens if all we do is consume & breed to such a point where we end up eating ourselves & causing our own destruction. I believe the message is meant to be about moderation; not too much that we overpopulate to the point where humanity can't sustain itself anymore. That we don't want to take this world of ours for granted to the point where there's simply too many people & not enough food & resources to go around. Yes, there was an environmental message to it, but I think Earth's decay & poisonous destruction was the byproduct of overpopulation & not the main point. Otherwise, we'd see more of what happened to the world beyond the confines of the city in order to receive the message more clearly (as Mr. Cullen pointed out about there not being anything beyond NYC). I've always enjoyed it, bc it's the first major motion picture to fully address the problem of overpopulation, & that there isn't an infinite # of resources for us. In the 1970's, smoking, littering, & pollution were starting to become a real issue, affecting millions with health hazards, & recycling was in its infancy, so I think movie helped address some of the problems that the modern world was beginning to face @the time.
As far as humanity is concerned, the future of Soylent Green looks to be coming true, but it is being created deliberately, rather than by indifference, neglect and abuse.
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The trouble with Soylent Green, is that the taste varies from person to person.
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BOOOOOOOOOOOOO..........
You should review Omega Man next. That too has many frightening parallels Dave.
That one may yet come to fruition the way things are going.
Bit of a throwback to a time when people had noticably different prioties. In the 60’s on the 70's, public environmentalism was primarily and most reasonably concerned with pollution, that is synthetic or petrochemical waste products, heavy metal exposure, Love Canal, etc.; rather than the reductionist and erroneous fixation on atmospheric CO2, which is indispensable for life on this planet. It was more of an issue with urban congestion, rather than 'overpopulation' as we conceive of it today. In 1960, one-third of the world lived in cities, now those figures are reversed and close to one-third live in rural areas. Things have changed most measurably in the subtle ways
When I learned how Canada is offering to euthanize people for reasons such as poverty, disability, mental health issues and chronic (NOT TERMINAL) illness, it made me think of the scene where the man signs up to die so he can be treated to his own room, bed, some nice food and a video with beautiful music and nature scenery while they kill him.
In the scene in which Charlton Heston's character watches Edward G. Robinson's character die, Heston's tears were real. He was the only member of the cast or crew who knew that Robinson was actually dying in real life; Robinson passed away from cancer soon after the film wrapped.
I think this movie is what formed Bill Gate's beliefs.
Bill Gates' father was the president of Planned Parenthood around this time, the same year Roe vs Wade voided abortion laws in all 50 states.
I thought it was the Omen sequels as he buys up arable land! A lot of what he pushes, he is also somehow invested in.
Its good film.
Back in the 1970s, there were no real environmental protection laws, especially in the States.
The book it was based on - Make room, make room, was written in 1966, when concerns about our population growth and associated pollution were beginning to be raised.
This is a very very poor review , as the film was just speculating on a possible future based on what was going on in the 60s and 70s
Predicting the future accurately is always difficult, so the story the film told is just one possible future.
Criticising it because it got it wrong, is just plain silly.
It's like criticising Star Trek because World war 3 hasn't happened, or the initial development of the warp drive.
Here's the thing, if food and other crucial resources had become so scarce you couldn't support a population so BIG. People would sadly die off from starvation.
This movie came out then next thing you know, Lenard Nimoy is telling us in his Documentsry the next ice age is around the corner.
Dave a little heads up.
This film was a result of the fuel crisis of what was going on in 1970s. Plus also the environmental movement going on back then as well.
But here's the major kicker too, the Hive Cities of Warhammer 40k and the Corpse Starch of what people in hive cities eat in the 40k universe. While most took inspiration for 40k from Dune. The Corpse Starch took inspiration from Solyent Green movie.
So honestly this movie actually deserves some praise for providing inspiration for other dystopian sci fi franchises to follow.
No I don't think so. I was around then. The SF movie writers and bleak Ellison chasing novelists were just switching their bugaboo that creates their horrible future. It was originally endless world wars or plagues (Wells, Nowlan, Matheson...) to the atom bomb and radiation (Bradbury, Serling, everything in the 40s, 50s, 60s) and that was getting tired by Planet of the Apes
So they moved on to old repackaged Victorian angst of the underclasses continuing to have these mongrel babies they can't afford and they will eat our food and spoil our pretty parks.
Rich guys got together in the late 60s early 70s and wrote up this social crisis, fabulously bad predictions to scare the intelligent petty bourgeoisie (always scary to the rich) into not having babies, so there would more scraps for the waves of replaceable uneducated labor their set had been using and disposing of since the early 1700s.
Well 50 years and here's Bill Gates the IMF and the WEF to tell you to eat the bugs.
Don't be that gullible again. Live your life. Enjoy your time. Be a true liberal in the original definition: aquire private property to your liking and build a social unit of a happy family to use it.
Or you can listen to the guys on the walled estates, paid by foundations, flying around in private jets, with private armed security telling you to watch that thermostat, eat the fake food, get your allowance, your rations, public school your kids, or better yet don't have any......and don't forget to console yourself with the toys they sell.
@@STho205
While that might be true, and I am familiar with the works of Ray Bradbury and many others. The Fuel Crisis, The Cold War, The Atomic Age and many more did draw inspiration for such cinema, even it adapted from such novels.
Even George Miller's Mad Max was a dystopian concept of the post apocalyptic future in Australia of what happens with fuel/petrol becoming a scarious commodity. Long before nuclear holocaust. Though yes later the nuclear holocaust was the end result of the Fuel Crisis.
As for Planet of the Apes, much inspiration could be stem from the racial divide of the Jim Crow Laws, Racism, and also the Civil Rights Movement. Only in Planet of the Apes, the Apes were the superior supremacist targeting humans. When it comes to Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles, it was about the issue of colonization of Mars and the impact it would have over the native martians. So yes the events of then did create inspiration of the cinema we find in movies like Soylent Green, that later did influence franchises like Warhammer 40k, Fallout, and many others.
🖕😏✌️
@@timothyhenegar7484 since Planet of the Apes was written in French by the same French novelist that wrote Bridge on the River Kwai...probably not Jim Crow. He just wanted a reason to wipe earth and build his own simulation. His classism was an intellectual, administrative and warrior classism at odds and conflict in Ape Society disrupted by a resourceful individualist that embodied all three.
Some projects get funded because they seem to fit trends and might make money by being cliche at the right time....or chasing a formerly popular movie, like all the star wars clones after 77.
Remember that oil shortages of the 70s were not environmental but were politically contrived. People get angsty about their transportation and heating fuel so it is a great way to control people or to threaten other governments.
I hear we and the Norwegians finally got those really lucrative German and Polish oil, brand new Norway export pipeline and LNG import contracts all sewn up before Christmas after 10 years of "negotiations" with our NATO friends that were buying Russian fuel.
Who saw that coming?
I thought the 1970s era dystopia genre was more about the negative results of post WW2 life. The growth of corporate power and the environmental impacts of things like DDT led to these films. Logan Run, Soylent Green, and many others were not bad films and they were a reaction to what was going on politically in the late 60s and early 70s. They just were not supposed to be a training manual for Malthusian nut jobs today.
The quality depends on the hive as well.
Some are made of people and other things caught in the grinders (Necromunda)
Others are grown from fungus that may be seeded on cadavers.
There tens of thousands of hive worlds so options do exist.
Do 1984 starring John hurt. Then do V for vendetta, also starring John Hurt. Just in an opposite role !
I bet that on some nether-plane, Jonathan Swift is shouting "Hey, I thought of that idea! You knicked my idea!"
This sort of fatalism was common in the 70s, especially in the green movements.
This fatalistic conception wasn't helped by the publication of "The Limits to Growth" by the Club of Rome, a completely black pilled Malthusian prediction of widespread resource scarcity, as depicted in Soylent Green. IMO, while they blame pollution for all the problems in Soylent Green, the underlying assumption is essentially Malthusian. Resources will be exhausted and no human innovation will ever occur.
In 2023 we are in the midst of the largest extinction event of all of Earth's history. This mass extinction of animals and plant species is caused by humans.
And yet commentators in the alt-media want unconstrained high population growth. They just don't get it.
The thing about Soylent Green is the taste varies from person to person.
I'm afraid I don't really look at films in terms of what message may or may not have been intended. I see it simply as a horror movie where the big horrific reveal is that soylent green is people, and the even more horrific realisation that the world has no choice, will likely accept cannibalism rather than starve, and that the human race is screwed. I don't really see it as a prediction or warning, just a horror tale.
Yes, Dave, Soylent Green was a condemnation of human greed running rampant. And just like 1984, it was a warning that was never heeded. An excellent movie.
Exactly. It’s not that humans in general are bad for the environment, it’s that humanity’s reckless exploitation of the natural environment is a huge problem, backed up by evidence and research and observation. I also don’t agree that the movies messages suggest that we should all live in pods and eat bugs and strive for some common ideal. I don’t think it’s that simple. I think the movie, and its message, is simply to draw attention to the costs that the damage we do to the environment will have a direct effect on our lives.
And perhaps predictive programming
It's a very nihilistic vision of the future, based on a lot of nihilistic beliefs from the time.
Pretty much all of science fiction in the early 70s was bleak and extremely preachy, at least until Star Wars seems to have broken from the mold and showed that the genre could be fun again.
I took it upon myself to watch this film a couple years back. It is very well made for the time but I must say it is nothing short of terrifying. And frankly I am seeing the beginnings of the reality portrayed in the film starting to emerge.
what!? in what way, elaborate.
Hei Dave... Where did you find your intro music? Would love to hear the rest of it!
Great video as always! 👍🏻
This movie reminds me of the message brought by the world economy fourm you will own nothing and you will be happy about it.
"Soylent Green IS people...and why that's a GOOD thing!" -MSM, 2023
Sounds like South Africa today, only a little bit better.🇿🇦
Did it deal with the preponderance of neckerchiefs in 2022? I realize that it did not become to fruition in actual 2022, but it did seem to be predicting them.
ah yes Soylent green, 2022 predictions speak true.
Now only Omega Man left and Rollerball. Thank you for reviewing it as its an important piece of SF.
Your take of the film is very different than mine but I respect that.
Wonder how will you view Rollerball and Omega Man.
Have a good evening mate.
always figured it was a warning of what might happen , the whole ozone hole and CFC's was kicking off around this time maybe helped inspire, we were also having a lot of ocean over fishing , i know people like to think all this climate business is just new panic but we have been fucking it up for a while now ;)
Real food for the rich. Assisted suicide being legal and encouraged. People dependent on the state to survive. Yep...sounds like today.
You should have released this video on a Tuesday.
I get maybe the message was wrong as you pointed out in the end,but all the other smaller meanings actually predicted many stuff that happen nowdays
It's still a better movie than what's pumped out today.
I invite naysayers to visit Calcutta and ask if they would like that city to be the model of their own backyard.
Um, Dave?
It's a good movie. It's part mystery, part sci-fi, part action. It's a good movie with a good story. We need more good movies with good stories like this. If we refrain from making good movies like this for fear of what "message" we could be interpreted as sending out, we won't get good movies. Dissecting good classic movies and ragging on it for what "the message" might be is kind of as much of a threat to good art being made as ham-fistedly shoving woke messages into a film. It's a well-written story made into a fantastic classic. A monument to the imagination of man. I have no qualms with it.
But hey, that's just my opinion.
The assisted suicide program sounds an awful lot like Canada's MAID Program.
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I don't think the film is suggesting at all that we have to literally resort to cannibalism, but rather that the overpopulation & destruction we are inflicting on the planet and the direction we are headed, is turning us into cannibals - in the metaphorical sense of the word. This is how I always understood the film.
It is not a coincidence that it is so similar our present world. It has been the plan all along.
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Dude, chill. You are dissecting a 50 years old movie narrative from a today's perspective. That is wrong to begin with.
Sadly, it is a proven fact that humans tend to become cannibals, when shit really hits the fan (Minoan collapse, American settlers in XV century Jamestown, the Donner party, that airplane crash in Uruguay in the 70's...), and taking into consideration how everything that can be industrialized will if it brings money, it is not really out of the question to picture cannibalism in some dystopian future.
And regarding overpopulation, have you considered those living conditions in urban India or China. Those examples bring the world some new and exotic viruses every year, because of overpopulation and the lack of hygiene.
Humans tend to be a harmful species. That's why you have microplastics in every drop of the ocean, and pollution on a level that will be traceable in archaeological findings a thousand years from now.
So, if you put that in SF context, it is a prospect worth of a script. And that movie is certainly not the only example.
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This is a dystopia future were the workd is in turmoil and strife.
WEF: hey I like that idea how about we try to implement that
It is a good film to watch, and with Charlton Heston being the star of the flick too. I view Soylent Green the same way I view 1984. Both are very depressing experiences when push comes to shove, but still one can learn something from it. Even you admit that much of what happens in the film eerily predicts Left-Environmentalist concerns, they still sound true when you compare them to the real life antics of the Environmentalists of today.
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I think you're overthinking this a bit mate. It's just a 1970s movie. Nearly every sci-fi film of the mid '60s to late '70s has a didtopian, 'it's all gonna go to shit ' narrative. I've always put it down to the end of the hippie era, very real threat of nuclear war, the loss of the Vietnam war, and other world shifting events like Water gate.
This is a period of movie making shot through with anxiety and a fear of the future.
Cheers mate. Ray
Another point about the nature of the movie compared to today. Even if that news, that it was people, got out, would it change anything? The two years with COVID restrictions shows that it wouldn't. People would accept the narrative regardless of evidence and move on.
The story is an allegory of the Warsaw ghetto during the deportations to Treblinka.
Love this film, haven't seen it for years. Very 70's but its becoming appropriate for the 21st century
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When you do look into modern animal agriculture, it is not a sustainable model to feed the growing human population. Just the US consumes approximately 10 billion land animals per year. That does not even include sealife, that most of it comes from Southeast Asia. This fishing industries have systemic issues of slave labor. Back to US animal production, 80% of agricultural land is used to produce food for those 10 billion animals. Most soy and corn grown in the US is for animal feed. We grow Alfalfa in the desert where we are currently dealing with a massive drought. Billions of dollars of government subsidies are used to prop up this industry. We have China, Saudi Arabia and other nations buying US farm land to grow food for their own growing population that wants to eat more animals.
I don't think we will resort to eating bugs or God forbid humans in the foreseeable future. However, using edible plants to make fake meat rather than grow plants to feed animals and growing lab grown meat are not bad ideas to help feed the world. It uses far less land, water and energy than current farming and ranching. It causes far less pollution than the billions of animals create in their waste. A lot of it negatively effects the local human population. I don't see that as a dystopia.
Soylant Green is People!!!!!
In the book crowd control was effected by "flying wire" (i.e. barbed wire dropped onto mostly peaceful protesters) instead of scoop equipped trash trucks.
Soylent Green was awesome. Totally nihilistic.
You did a video on the Mouse Utopia. I think it's very relivent today. A link would be good. I can't find it.
Ah yes, the movie that had a decent message that was completely deflated and drowned out by the meme "Soylent Green is people!!!". And that's when it became a comedy.
The movie had a gawdawful message; nothing decent about it. It was nothing more than anti-human propaganda, like the Planet of the Monkeypeople series of movies.
I watched this movie as a kid and it sort of shocked me at the time. I watched it again last year and it has become even more relevant today, in regard of global totalitarism, explosion of poverty, assisted suicides, mainstream prostitution (OnlyFans, etc). We are heading towards that kind of future, and not by choice.
I am enjoying this dystopian future series of videos! I hope you get to do all of chuck heston's other movies like omega man and planet of the apes!
Another Great thought provoking 70's sci-fi. I think you've looked through the wrong lens on this one. Dystopias are bleak, hence the DYS in dystopian, otherwise it would be a utopian vision.
The reason all we remember from this movie is "Soylent Green is People" meme is precisely because the film itself was so bad. It was the most heavy handed and least fun of the Heston Sci-Fi Films. You laid out a lot of the problems with the messaging. There are a couple other big ones left unmentioned but in fairness revolve around topics that can't be discussed on YT. But another big problem s Soylent Green just isn't fun and groovy like The Omega Man so it ends up being this long slog you have to endure just to get to the "shock" punchline at the end.
As Dave says, we shouldn't let this movie off the hook because it's old. The first 'Earth Day' in 1970 came between when the book was released and the movie made, and shows the thinking of the time. Every prediction of the first 'Earth Day' was wrong. As was the heavy messaging in this.
It's best you waited till 2023 so as to not have to worry it might happen before the new year😎
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