Looking to reexamine a film I had already talked about some couple hundred blogs ago.
We're heading back into that Strange World of THX 1138. And oh boy!
I was reading my original review for this film; It's the worst. It's just me whining for a couple paragraphs because I was too stupid to realise this was a slightly altered version of the original film. So I spent more time bad-mouthing the redesigns of the movies than acknowledging the film itself*.
Why does the 77 Star Wars get so much credit for that iconic shot of Luke Looking Over the Horizon at the two setting Suns? It's just a recreation of Robert Duvall at the end of this movie looking over a large sun as he finally escapes the robots were pursuing him throughout the entire movie.
So let's just get it out of the way.
This movie is ridiculously influential when it comes to the Star Wars franchise that will come on some eight years later. From the weird dialogue, awkward droids, sound effects and even the general atmosphere everything that made the original Star Wars movie interesting is kind of in this movie as well.
Now is this movie better on a second viewing? Kind of.
There's a lot about this movie to like. The overall atmosphere is fantastic. The set design is really imaginative and the storyline (though disjointed) is really interesting to think about.
You can tell that a lot of this movie was made by very young film students. It has a lot of Art School Hallmarks to it. Some of its really on the nose like the Christ metaphor stuff.
Personally I'm not that bothered about any of it.
There's enough interesting secondary stuff going on to make up for any of the pretentious stuff that may otherwise bring a movie like this down. And really it's all just subjective at the end of the day.
If I was the bad mouth anything it's the lack of a solid coherent story. That is in a sense of characters. There's a whole bunch of secondary characters that get introduced. Along with pharmaceutical drugs, a harsh work environment, a weird prison system and robot police officers.
All of it has its own interesting individual story but doesn't make up the meat and potatoes of what the film actually is. Which when you get down to it is just Robert Duvall running away from everything.
He's kind of given a love romance at the beginning of the movie but somewhere around the middle of the film she disappears and we're told more or less that she's either dead or reprogrammed.
I think the best way to tackle this movie is to just view it as what it is. A bunch of awkward events happening around this strange Utopian / Dictatorial world.
It might be best to just leave all the secondary metaphors behind because I'm not entirely sure anybody knew what they were doing when they were making this film. None of the fans know what's up either.
You go on forums and here 15 different opinions on what this movie supposed to represent.
That's before you get down to the multiple versions of the movie that exist. Between its original Cuts, fan re-edits and anything else you can think of.
How come there's inflation is supposedly stagnant and absolutely controlled economy?
This movie ends with the same score as they hit film Casino. ''St. Matthew's passion''. Is this movie as good as Casino?
No, Not really.
At this point I think Thx-1138 is more famous for it's sound production technology than the film itself. That's to become something of a trend for George Lucas.
So this time I watched the fan edit Recreation of the film. A version of the movie that was supposed to remove any of the special effects and produce a project as close to the original film as humanly possible.
Does it really make a difference? Not really.
I was overly harsh on the special effects version of this movie because both versions are fairly similar. I do prefer the original version partly for it's simplistic vision and partly just out of principle**. But overall this movie isn't all that hampered by any added in special effects.
If you're into Old Science Fiction with a really slow pace and a thought-provoking story than this is the movie for you. Which is really weird to say given that Star Wars kind of killed the old experimental science fiction genre (Or at the very least pushed it out of the way for more easy and accessible science fiction entertainment.)
*I don't usually bad-mouth my ramblings. Because almost all of my film summaries turn into a ramble about one particular thing or another. But when it's just so negative and petty then it just becomes unexcusable. Especially given that I was trying to mock George Lucas for his physical appearance.
It's not even criticism at that point. It has no bearing on his actual film or any of the work that goes in behind it. It was stupid and juvenile me to make that kind of Jab. I am sorry I ever made such a statement
**This whole problem would easily be rectified if both cuts of the film were readily available for purchase. You can't tell me they can't be done. 'Apocalypse Now' and 'Blade Runner' have variance out there. It's pretty easy to see either one.
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