In the film it becomes a real conspiracy to cover up the true nature of soylent green, the world’s most abundant form of artificial food supposedly made from soya and lentil beans. Instead he signs himself into a suicide parlour and dies a pleasant death surrounded by cinemascope images of vanished earthly pleasures such as fields of flowers, bubbling brooks and clean beaches.īut the major change involves the non-existent conspiracy plot in the novel. For one thing, Shirl ( Leigh Taylor-Young) doesn’t have to experience the squalor of Thorn’s ( Charlton Heston) apartment – in the film she is classified as ‘furniture’ and therefore goes with the apartment – and consequentially remains in love with Thorn. Greenberg, the film preserved much of the grimness of the future New York, now set in the year 2022, but made the foreground action determinedly upbeat and action-filled. Despite the efforts of Thorn and others like him, the suggestion is that the end is near. His refusal to give in, no matter how bad things become is the only positive note in the book’s closing description of a city where the food and water rationing is reaching the point where it will barely support human life and the rioting is becoming more violent and widespread. The book ends with Thorn demoted to uniformed policeman again and completely alone, yet still determined to do what he can to preserve what remains of the law and order. Thorn is forced to shoot him dead, an act which gets him into trouble with his superiors who have already forgotten about their conspiracy theory. Thorn succeeds in finding the murderer which turns out to be a frightened teenager who had killed the racketeer in a moment of panic when discovered while robbing an apartment. His room is taken over by a large obnoxious family and the pressure of having to live with them forces Shirl to leave. He becomes involved with the late racketeer’s mistress Shirl, who moves into Thorn’s small two-room apartment which he already shares with his friend Sol, over seventy years old, who remembers a time when things were different and so much better.įor a time all three are as happy as anyone could be under the circumstances, but then Sol contracts pneumonia after being injured in an old people’s demonstration and passes away. Thorn struggles to track down the murderer while at the same time having to cope with all his other duties in the overcrowded New York of 1999 where the population has reached twenty-one million and the city’s facilities are collapsing under the strain. The basic plot of the novel concerns a New York detective named Thorn who is assigned to investigate to the murder of a racketeer, once his corrupt superiors decide it’s the work of an out-of-town conspiracy. As such it’s an exercise in futility and despair – the world Harrison describes is past saving and we can only watch as civilisation goes down the toilet. The novel itself is primarily a grim warning about what will happen if the problem of overpopulation is ignored and the rampant exploitation of Earth’s dwindling resources continues unabated. Soylent Green was based on the novel Make Room! Make Room! by one of science fiction’s most successful authors, Harry Harrison. Following genre efforts were not so classic: Amityville 3-D (1983), Conan The Destroyer (1984) and Red Sonja (1985). One of the best films ever to deal with overpopulation is Soylent Green (1973) directed by Richard Fleischer, whose previous genre efforts include the classics 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea (1954), Fantastic Voyage (1966) and Doctor Dolittle (1967). What, Thorn wonders would make such a rich man unhappy.” (courtesy IMDB) Thorn learns that Simonson was a member of the Board of the Soylent Corporation but had recently become sad and morose. He was killed with a blow to the head and it was all made to look like an interrupted break-in but Thorn is convinced early on that it was an assassination. In this environment Detective Robert Thorn is assigned to investigate the death of William Simonson who was ultra-rich and didn’t suffer any of life’s hardships. Rather, most of the population live on soylent green, made from ocean vegetation and formed into tasteless green wafers. Water is rationed and fresh food is virtually non-existent. The city’s infrastructure has broken down. The population of New York City is 40 million and the constant heat is unbearable. “In the year 2022, overpopulation and the greenhouse effect have made life extremely difficult for the majority of people.
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