In the future, we will all wear neck scarves like Fred from Scooby Doo.

Soylent Green

Welcome to Tinfoil Hat Thursday.  Today, another historic film which everyone references, but may not have seen. This is a film that stopped getting shown on network and cable TV much like last week’s post of Network. Soylent Green seems to have been replaced with endless Planet of the Apes marathons whenever a channel wants to have a dystopian future day. Why would that be?  Is Soylent Green perhaps a little too close to the actual future?  Try to ignore the whole climate change angle and look at it this way:

There is a group of elites who built their own luxury fortified buildings, with their own police force. The rabble was left on the street to cope with the consequences of the elites’ bad governance.  Also keep in mind the elites today, like in this movie, use the shibboleth of climate change to force the populace into bad decisions. Sound familiar?

This is based on a Harry Harrison novel entitled  “Make Room! Make Room!”  Is the book better than the movie?  Of course it is.  Very few movies can every convey the complexity of ideas in a book. As a result quite a lot of reviews I read didn’t like Soylent Green. It’s a dog’s dinner of reasons, from “The book was better” to “Should have focused more on climate change.” Look. Movies will never contain the complexity of a book.  Movies have a short timeframe to be entertaining.  Soylent Green focused on overpopulation and useless, bumbling elites. And cannibalism.  Modern society solved the food crises, at least until the past few years when politicians have gone out of their way to undo that. So now what does our future hold?  Soylent Green or crickets?

One side note, a useful tool I have been using to determine where I can watch or buy a movie from is JustWatch.com. It tells you which streaming service carries the movie of your choice.  It also tells you the price if you are renting or buying. Really handy.

Since we are on the Internet Archive this film may not be repeatable.  Things come and go on there all the time.  So enjoy this while you can. Also, you’ll most likely be watching on your PC instead of a nice flat screen.  This is the price you pay sometimes. It will be worth it.

So Watch!  Or Don’t!  Everything is voluntary… Until the president says it isn’t.  Next week, we have a really, really big show!  It’s time to watch ZARDOZ as we wrap up Tinfoil Hat Thursdays.  That’s right! We are watching ZARDOZ!  Break out the mankinis and throw away the grooming tools!  That will also be our last visit to Internet archive for a while (collective sigh of relief).

IMPORTANT NOTE: Internet Archive is a little wonky.  It is unlikely the movie will play the first time ‘Play’ is clicked.  Be patient, you may have to try up to three times to get it to start playing the film. Chrome, Safari or FireFox are recommended.  Microsoft browsers get grouchy. This movie will play, it was tested by the crack GlibFlick team over Christmas break. This is the only way I can get some of these films, so I apologize for any inconvenience.