Wednesday 24 December 2008

4 Films: Warriors (1979), Soylent Green (1973), Brave New World (1980), Logan’s Run (1976)



Four Films for Xmas with a futuristic theme:




Warriors (1979)


New York City. Home to 7,000,000 people. They work, play, and have fun by day. But at night the city is run by ruthless street gangs such as: The Furies, The Boppers, The Hi-Hats, The Lizzies, The Turnbull AC’s, The Gramercy Riffs and The Warriors. One night at an all gangs meeting, the leader of the Riffs, Cyrus, makes a speech and creates a plan to unite all the gangs of the city - one gang strong enough to overpower the police. But suddenly he is shot and a gang called The Warriors are framed by Luther, leader of the Rogues. Now they have to return to Coney Island, escaping from 20,000 policemen and 100,000 sworn enemies. They have one way out. They have one chance. They’ve got one night.



Soylent Green (1973)


Set in the year 2022, Soylent Green depicts a dystopian future in which the population has grown to forty million in New York City alone. The water and soil have been poisoned, and pollution has produced a year-round heatwave due to a greenhouse effect. Most housing is dilapidated and overcrowded, and food as it is known today is a rare and expensive commodity. The only way they survive is with water rations and eating a mysterious food called Soylent. A detective investigates the murder of the president of the Soylent company. The truth he uncovers is more disturbing than the Earth in turmoil when he learns the secret ingredient of Soylent Green.



Brave New World (1980)


In a future society based on pleasure without moral worries, love is prohibited but casual sex, now called ‘engaging’, is strongly encouraged. Everyone is kept happy with a legal drug, soma. People are hatched and cloned on conveyor belts to meet the requirements of five different social classes, from ruling Alphas to robot-like Epsilons. Bernard Marx is a different Alpha male with an inclination to thinking. He and a girl called Lenina Disney go visit a reservation of ’savages’ where they meet a handsome young man John and bring him back to ‘civilization’. John turns out to be the son of the director of the cloning authority, which causes a scandal and makes John a celebrity freak. John falls in love with Lenina but his desire is ruined by his antiquated sexual morale derived from reading Shakespeare. John hates the over-social but anti-emotional civilization, asks to be sent to live in isolation, and gets a job as a lighthouse guard. But even there he can’t forget Lenina or escape his celebrity status.



Logan’s Run (1976)


In the year 2274, after the world has been decimated by a holocaust, a new society is built and resides in a domed city. However, it is forbidden for humans to live beyond 30 and you are given two choices, either to go through a ritual called Carousel with the promise of being “renewed”, or go on the run and risk being hunted down by an elite police force known as Sandmen. Logan, a sandman, is sent on a mission to find “sanctuary,” which is a code- word used by the master computer to describe what it believes is a place to which runners have been escaping. Logan begins to question the system he serves and after seeing for himself that there is life beyond the dome, he returns to destroy the computer.



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