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THX 1138

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THX 1138 is a 1971 science fiction film directed by George Lucas, from a screenplay by Lucas and Walter Murch. It depicts an Orwellian future, featuring three residents of a dystopia in which a high level of control is exerted upon the populace through ever-present faceless, android police officers and mandatory, regulated use of special drugs to suppress emotion, including sexual desire.

It was the first feature-length film directed by Lucas, and a more developed, feature-length version of his student film Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB, which he made in 1967 while attending the University of Southern California, based on a one and a quarter page treatment of an idea by Matthew Robbins.

THX 1138 shares themes with The Machine Stops, Anthem, Brave New World, Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Giver, Ira Levin's This Perfect Day and Yevgeny Zamyatin's We, and was inspired in part by the short film 21-87. The film was produced in a joint venture between Warner Brothers and Francis Ford Coppola's then-new production company, American Zoetrope. A novelization by Ben Bova was published in 1971.

Plot

The film consists of three acts. In the first, we are introduced to daily life in the underground dystopia through the central character, THX 1138 (Robert Duvall), a nuclear-production-line worker. All emotions are suppressed in THX's world through the compulsory use of soma-like drugs. However, THX's female roommate LUH 3417 (Maggie McOmie) has stopped taking her drugs, and secretly substitutes inactive pills for THX's medications. As the drug's effects wear off, THX finds himself experiencing authentic emotions and sexual desire for the first time. He and LUH begin a loving relationship, and plan to escape to the "superstructure", where they hope to be able to live in freedom. Before they can attempt this escape they are arrested and charged with having unauthorised sex and not taking state-prescribed drugs.

The second act sees THX incarcerated for his crimes in a white limbo world along with a collection of other prisoners, including Donald Pleasence as SEN 5241 – a sinister technician who has been using his programming skills to try to replace LUH as THX's roommate and became a "prisoner" of the limbo because THX reported him for said programming violations. Some of SEN's dialogue is taken from speeches by Richard Nixon.

Most of the prisoners seem uninterested in escape, but eventually THX and SEN decide to find an exit. They encounter SRT (Don Pedro Colley), who starred in the holograms broadcast citywide. SRT has become disenchanted with his role in the society and is making an attempt to escape. Upon exiting the limbo, THX attempts to find LUH and learns that her identity has been reassigned to a fetus in a growth chamber. This indicates that she has been considered "incurable" and killed. Separated from the other two fugitives, SEN makes a tentative exploration of the limits of the city's underground network. Cowed by what he sees, he returns to the city and is captured by the authorities.

The third act is an extended escape sequence, featuring a futuristic and often-copied car-chase sequence through a tunnel network. THX and SRT steal two cars, but the latter immediately crashes. It is uncertain whether SRT survives the impact, although the film's script indicates he does not. THX flees to the limits of the city's underground road network while being chased by android police, and eventually locates an access shaft that leads up to the surface. The police pursue THX up the ladder, but the expense of his capture exceeds its budget, compelling the police to retreat, leaving THX to climb out and stand, for the first time, in the harsh surface sunlight. As THX stands before the setting sun, birds intermittently fly overhead, indicating that life is possible on the surface.

Cast

Production

In order to emphasize the dehumanizing nature of the world of THX 1138, Lucas insisted that most of the actors and actresses in the film shave their heads, with some characters going completely bald, while others were allowed to maintain a buzz cut. As a publicity stunt, Lucas arranged for several actors to get their first haircuts/shaves at unusual venues, and have this filmed for later use in a tongue-in-cheek promotional featurette entitled Bald. Robert Duvall had his head shaved while watching a baseball game, while his co-star, Maggie McOmie, had hers done at the scenic Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. Another actor, who would later play an insane man in the film, was allowed to cut off his own hair and was filmed doing so in a bathtub. The Bald featurette was included in the 2004 DVD release. Many of the extras seen in the film were recruited from the addiction recovery program Synanon, most of whose members had shaved heads.

The chase scene featured Lola T70 Mk.IIIs with dummy turbine engines racing through two San Francisco Bay Area automotive tunnels: the Caldecott Tunnel between Oakland and Orinda, and the underwater Posey Tube between Oakland and Alameda. The final climb out to the daylight was actually filmed, with the camera rotated 90 degrees, in the incomplete (and decidedly horizontal) BART Transbay Tube before installation of the track supports, with the actors using exposed reinforcing bars as a ladder. In the end scene, writer Matthew Robbins plays THX as he climbs from the shaft and stands before the sunset.

During production, Lucas wrote and directed a documentary on the making of the film entitled Bald: The Making of THX 1138.

Release

Home video

The original cut of the film had been available for several years on both Laserdisc (in letterbox format) and VHS but was not immediately available on DVD. Although this was in part the result of early skepticism of the DVD format on the part of Lucas, it was also because of his desire to slightly re-work parts of the film before it was released on DVD.

Lucas finally set about getting a DVD version of the film together in early 2004, putting the film through a meticulous audio/video restoration and making use of computer-generated imagery to modify certain scenes to his liking, mostly by expanding crowds and sets. In addition, Lucas shot new footage for the film, and even went as far as to re-shoot several scenes using computer systems to insert the actors and replace existing footage. This Director's Cut was released to a limited number of digital-projection theaters on September 10, 2004 and on DVD in Region 1 on September 14. Region 2 and 4 releases came later. Fan and critical reaction to this version was mixed, although any negative commentary was far more low key than the backlash Lucas faced with altering the Star Wars films.

The revised DVD version does alter the narrative of the story in subtle ways, connecting the three primary characters SEN, LUH and THX from the outset, and also shifting their perceived motivations. The best example of this is the addition of exchanged glances between SEN and LUH at their observation workstations. The editing in the same scene shows LUH (as opposed to SEN in the theatrical release) paying more attention to a report of "illegal sexual activity".

Reception

Legacy

The cinematic sound systems company THX Ltd. was founded by Lucasfilm and has been thought to be named after this film. THX officially stands for "Tomlinson Holman's eXperiment". Tomlinson Holman developed the THX sound system, having been commissioned to do so by Lucas in 1982. According to Lucas' thoughts, the "X" in the sound system name THX stands for "crossover", a piece of audio processing equipment.

The titles of this film began a tradition for Lucas films in that they are colored green and set against a pitch black background. The Lucasfilm LTD. logo seen in American Graffiti and the original versions of the Star Wars trilogy use the same colors and typeface.

The film's use of the number 1138 has become an in-joke in popular culture.

In 1981 The rock band Queen made a video for the Song Calling All Girls in a very similar way to THX 1138

Notes and references

External links



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Last updated on Thursday March 13, 2008 at 14:39:43 PDT (GMT -0700)
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