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Soylent Green was pretty dang lame for being such a storied classic. Granted, I went 50 years without watching this movie since I already knew the ending. SPOILER: it’s people!
The year is 2022, the city is New York City. The oceans are exhausted and the climate is one heatwave after heatwave. Everyone is sweating all the time, unless they live in one of those fancy high rise apartments. There is hardly any food left, and definitely no meat unless you’re rich. Then suddenly a bigwig from the Soylent corporation is murdered and detective Thorn is on the case, but only after he pilfered the apartment of food, booze, soap and some giant books for his old roommate Sol. Later he comes back to make sweet love to the ‘furniture’, the attractive, apartment-live-in, 21 year old concubine named Shirl. But it turns out the books he gave to Sol set in motion a chain of events: Sol turns the books in to the ‘Supreme Exchange’ and they determine the oceans can’t even produce the plankton used for Soylent Green anymore, and it’s … MADE OUT OF PEOPLE… so Sol decides to kill himself via assisted suicide (naturally). Thorn tries to stop him, but it’s too late. Sol tells Thorn on his deathbed the dirty secret and now Thorn must find the “proof”.
Thorn rides into the Soylent factory on the top of a human body dump truck, sees some bodies being dumped, gets chased, ends up on a conveyor belt full of Soylent Green wafers, escapes and then gets chased again before declaring “SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE!” after which, the credits roll. So beyond seeing bodys and the green wafers in the same factory, he doesn’t really have much proof to speak of.
My other big beef with the film (pun intended) is the point where Thorn tells Sol he’s never had beef stew. Except the film is set in 2022 and Thorn is roughly 49 years old at the time of filming, which would make him born in 1972 or something? So you’re telling me he never had beef stew even though he grew up in the 70s? Doubtful. Should have set the movie in 2062. Overall I will admit it’s a can't-live-without-it classic, so save your angry responses. But maybe it could use a more dynamic remake. 7 stalks of rare celery out of 10.
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