This particular dystopian nightmare - rampant overpopulation, total exhaustion of earth's natural resources, an atmosphere decimated by man made pollution - takes place in the year 2022.......
Yes, you heard that right........about 18 months from now.
So the filmmakers were only off by about a year and a half in predicting a world in which we're all screwed.
Then again, they couldn't possibly predict a world terribly afflicted by two simultaneous plagues......Covid-19 and Donald Trump.
Amazingly, much of this film, cheaply made by MGM as the very last movie shot on their back lot, has the look of what we see on the news every night.
Crowds of angry people wearing masks amid visibly toxic air? Check.
Mass quantities of homeless folk sleeping in shelters or huddled in massive bunches around the streets? Check.
Thousands of bodies piling up? Check.
Deadly divide between society's Haves and Have-Nots? Check.
Objectified woman, treated as sex toys and accessories? Check.
As far as we can tell, the only prediction from this movie that hasn't befallen us already is its central, horrific premise........the gruesome twist finally revealed in the film's last few scenes.
(If by any chance this movie and its story are still unknown to you, bow out now cause there's a GIGANTIC, BIG-ASS SPOILER ahead.......although we can't imagine you haven't heard the film's legendary dialogue declaration used as a pop culture punchline at one time or another......)
So we can all breathe a sigh of relief that at least the government hasn't resorted to grinding us up into green crackers......("Soylent Green is people!!!!!")
Not yet, anyway.
But given the year we're having.......there's still 5 months left to go.
On the bright side, ,unlike in 'Soylent Green', we haven't yet stooped to labeling women as 'furniture, offering them up as accessories to luxury apartments, like air conditioning and fireplaces.
That excludes Donald Trump, of course. The only women who aren't furniture to him are Jeffrey Epstein's official sex traffic procurer and his new screwball 'demon sperm' doctor. To those two, he wishes them well.......
47 years later, the movie still holds up as a slick, swift, action-packed cautionary tale.......and for extra poignancy, features the last film appearance of Edward G. Robinson, who died of cancer right after completing his role.
Even more ironic......Robinson's last scene is his soothing death in the dystopian government's spa-like assisted suicide facility, where people who opt to check out of 2022 can watch beautiful videos of a vanished, unspoiled, unpolluted Earth.
We wouldn't claim that we're inching closer and closer to that point right now........but if by some satanic intervention, Trump was re-elected, we might consider it.....
Come to think of it, processed into an edible green cracker might be preferable to 4 more years of Baby Orange.
Meanwhile, take a good look at 'Soylent Green'.....a 4 star (****) blast from the past whose similarities to today might make you cringe........
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