Crash course 101: sci-fi dystopia on film
It couldn't be a better time for a director's cut of "THX 1138," George Lucas's striking 1971 debut, to resurface in a combination theatrical revival/DVD release. The original film, an expanded version of a short made while Lucas was still at the University of Southern California, takes place in a dazzlingly abstract future society where sex has been abolished and the populace is kept doped up and docile. In this all-white hive of tomorrowland, a test-tube worker bee named THX 1138 (a young Robert Duvall) discovers forbidden love with another drone named LUH 3417 (Maggie McOmie).
"THX 1138" was not only one of the more experimental commercial releases of its day, it was also prescient, commenting on cloning and mood-enhancing drugs decades ahead of schedule. It holds a special place in film history, too: As one of the first sci-fi dystopias to hit the screen, it set a template that has since been adapted, altered, ignored, and rediscovered. Without knowing what he was about, Lucas made a linchpin film.
Some perspective: Futuristic classics such as Fritz Lang's 1927 "Metropolis" and the 1936 "Things to Come" -- made with the input of author H. G. Wells himself -- had always posited a busy, ultimately optimistic future for mankind. Then Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968) put man at the mercy of computers, aliens, and his own murderous nature, and did so with trippy high style. "THX 1138" is a film made in the shadow of "2001," but it was also the most successful "1984" knockoff to date, distilling the dour warnings of the George Orwell novel into imagistic visuals and cryptic dialogue.
The future-shock movies that followed shared and streamlined the look and repressed panic of "THX": "Soylent Green" (1973), "Logan's Run" (1976) -- even Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange" (1971) has a similar plastic surrealism. Ironically, what pulled the rug out from under the genre's seriousness was the success of "Star Wars" (1977), directed by Lucas himself.
Out went the grad-student forebodings, in came the camp comic-book heroics. The notable cinematic dystopias of the '80s had to play, sometimes brilliantly, at being action movies: "The Road Warrior" (1981), "Blade Runner" (1982), even Terry Gilliam's gonzo "Brazil" (1985), which came on like "1984" for glue-sniffers. (By contrast, a dank, straight-up 1984 version of "1984," starring John Hurt, came and went without a whimper.)
By the 1990s, cinematic futures were turning baroque, as the giddy fantasies of "Twelve Monkeys" (1995), "The Fifth Element" (1997), and Paul Verhoeven's hilarious and underrated "Starship Troopers" (1997) attest. The time was ripe for a return to basics, and if the Orwell-meets-Watson-and-Crick dramatics of "Gattaca" (1997) had made for a great film instead of merely a good one, perhaps it would have stuck. Instead, we got the rip-snortin' metaphysics of "The Matrix" (1999), the film that remade the action-SF genre in its own image.
Still, the "Matrix" sequels fizzled, and even Steven Spielberg hasn't been able to infuse the new dystopia with the power to last an entire movie: "A.I.: Artificial Intelligence" (2001) was a waltz with Kubrick's ghost that dissolved into nonsense, and "Minority Report" (2002) was proficient entertainment and little more. The latest "Star Wars" films are but decadent reminders of a glorious past -- proof that Lucas long ago became a better producer than director.
Beneath the lumbering feet of these mastodons, though, are smaller movies that hark back to the low-budget warning cries of the past. They owe much to "THX 1138." "Equilibrium" (2002) concerns an overmedicated future, for instance, while "Code 46" (2004) worries we'll have sex with a clone of mom. Neither film is entirely successful; dragged down by postapocalyptic gloom, they barely let the sun in. But neither does "THX 1138" until its very final shot, and it has aged with grace. Anxiety knows no decade, neither past nor future. In these films it is omni-present.
Ty Burr can be reached at tburr@globe.com.
