Review #12: THX 1138
If George Lucas made a movie other than Star Wars…
“Work hard. Increase production. Prevent accidents, and be happy…” -Scary Picture Guy
Synopsis
Local bald white guy, THX 1138, is a robot manufacturer in a dystopian future where humanity is doped with drugs by their leaders and everyone lives underground… which is for some reason much better lit than the surface. His female roommate *letter-number combination I can’t remember*, who is also bald and white, has somehow overcome the drugs and begins to replace THX’s drugs with fake drugs, causing him severe nausea and pain. THX eventually overcomes the drugs, realizes his entire world is a lie, and decides the best course of action is to bang his female roommate. Another bald white guy (his roommate’s boss or something), suspects something is wrong with THX, and puts in a request to become THX’s roommate instead. In response, THX to reports him to authorities for an illegal roommate change request. Back at his job, the bitter effects of sobriety cause THX to mess up while he’s building a robot, and he is sent to a rehabilitation room.
There, he finds SEN (that’s his roommate’s name. I googled it.) who tells THX that she’s prego. SEN is then abruptly taken away by robot authorities, and THX is put on trial, where he is sentenced to prison: a seemingly infinite white room that only God knows how they have that much space for this prison underground. THX discovers SEN’s boss there, along with a bunch of other prisoners… can you guess their skin colors and hairdos? THX and SEN’s boss decide they need to escape, so they start wandering about the vast whiteness until they come across a hologram who somehow became a real boy just because he believed he could… but at least he’s not white! Together they find an exit to the prison and are pursued by robot authorities through the facility. THX discovers that SEN has been mind-wiped, so the only thing left for him to do is escape. SEN’s boss gets arrested, the hologram crashes a car into a pillar, and THX partakes in a really cool 70’s sci-fi car chase that ends because the robot authorities exceed their capture budget and are called off. In the final scene, THX emerges from a crawl tube onto the surface to discover that he’s been underground the whole time. And then credits.
Mood/Setting
What a dreadful feeling movie. Everyone looks the same. Everyone’s name is a number. Everyone worships a weird scary picture that gives them life advice. All this, combined with the fact that the plot line is entirely devoid of humor, makes George Lucas’ first endeavor into filmography anything but comforting. Viewing this film makes you pray for the Ewoks of Star Wars to make an adorably annoying appearance, but the closest thing you get to them is some deformed cave people near the end of THX’s escape from the facility. Not a moment in the film’s 1 hour and 25 minute run-time is wasted in convincing the audience how bleak and desolate this future is. Star Wars: Return of the Jedi could have used some of this magic.
Plot Review
Ah yes, the 70’s: a decade so overrun by weird dystopian sci-fi movies that they had to invent an entire genre of music just to cope with the depression engendered by the film industry. Disco’s awful legacy aside, THX 1138 does stand as a pretty firm addition to the genre, despite serving about as many answers to its audience as Trump when politely asked, “How’s that wall coming along?” THX is able to overcome his drugs because SEN replaces his with placebos, but the movie never actually discloses how SEN overcame hers in the first place. All it would take is a short scene where she is zapped by electricity, or forced to watch Star Wars: The Phantom Menace to explain why she is suddenly immune to the effects of the government issued drugs, but no such explanation is given. If these drugs instead aren’t 100% effective, shouldn’t the unseen overlords have some sort of monitoring system in place to quickly capture and detain people who show signs of resistance?
When faced with the violent side effects from taking the fake drugs, THX presents his issues to OMM 0000, less commonly known as scary picture guy. Scary picture guy just tells THX that he’s a good kiddo, and that he should buy more drugs and be happy. Despite there not being any reason for there to be money in this future since everyone is doped and controlled by the government, this scene offers a really novel look at the future of rampant tyranny and obsessive religion. OMM is a very obvious parallel to a perpetually absent or non-existent deity, one which everyone is forced to worship under the penalty of mind-wipe or infinite white room prison. Though scary picture guy is a powerful fictitious symbol, it’s unbelievable to me that people would actually listen to a scary picture when it tells them to buy m… oh my God, I just bought one of those shirts…
The film boasts some intriguing themes, but the script feels like it was written by a cash register. There are multiple circumstances in the film where characters (the authorities, for example) call out events or other characters by saying long letter-number combinations, when it would be much, much faster to just say “Yo guys! They’re escaping!” The movie is less than an hour and a half long, and I’m sure 70% of that time is spent on characters saying disassociated letters and numbers that mean nothing to the audience. I suppose this isn’t entirely bad though. It does feed into the dystopian mood of the film, and focuses less time on Lucas’ notoriously shoddy dialogue. Also, lol, there is a scene with an iguana on some computer wires, and I have no idea why. Here’s a screenshot of it.
George Lucas really does a fantastic job creating a world that looks and feels dystopian. He does not, however, put a lot of thought into what actually makes sense. Why is underground so big? And why are they using 90% of the facility’s monthly electricity bill to light that prison? It would probably be more scary for the prisoners to be put into an infinitely dark room. Or, you know, in just a regular cell. Also, there seems to be an awful lot of robot authorities considering everyone is drugged and no one seems to ever act out of line. Come to think of it, it’s pretty surprising that THX doesn’t get caught considering the entire facility’s robot force must be after him, but I suppose it’d be a pretty boring movie otherwise.
I can definitely see the influence this movie had on Lucas’ later works, especially Star Wars. The inside of the facility looks really similar to the inside of a Star Destroyer or the Death Star, and the robot authorities do bear a behavioral resemblance to imperial storm troopers. Also like Star Wars, THX 1138 is filled with purposeless characters that probably have very intricate and detailed backgrounds. In Star Wars, this creates some really cool fan lore! In THX 1138, it’s just obnoxious. The hologram, for example, is a completely useless and confusing character. He does nothing to further the plot or aid the main characters, and he makes no sense. He literally became a real human because he believed he could... because he BeLiEvEd he could… George Lucas, the billionaire behind Star Wars, wrote this movie. Let that sink in for a moment.
The chase scene at the end is probably the coolest and most coherent part of the whole movie. For once, the audience actually understands what’s going on: car crashes and explosions. This is then squelched when THX simply emerges from the crawl tube onto the Earth’s surface revealing that he’s been underground the whole movie. The audience then turns to Lucas to ask a million more questions, and Lucas responds to them with some credits. There’s not even a Marvel after-credit sequence. How did the Earth get this way? Why are there cave people living near the exit crawl tube, but not outside? Why is Chris Pratt a real person? I guess we’ll never know the answers to these, and many more questions…
Conclusion
Though a gem for cult sci-fi lovers, THX 1138 raises too many questions it can’t answer to be amicable to the average movie goer. The film is still a fantastic addition to the dystopian 70’s sci-fi genre, featuring many stark and unique ways to make the viewer feel uncomfortable in a “good way”. However, unlike the film’s lighting, George Lucas’ premier into filmography isn’t his brightest creation.
