Quote:
Originally Posted by ZodWallop
I haven't read the book yet, so I'll reserve judgement on him. But in the film at least, the twist is completely justified by the rest of the story. And it's such a punch because as you see in the background what's happening to the world, the twist is logical and maybe even the best of the bad options available.
|
In Harrison's worlds, governments typically made better decisions than individuals and were benevolent. In his stories, characters that choose individualism over the common good are foils to the heroes that act selflessly. Furthermore, Harrison's antagonists more often act badly out of provincialism and bigotry rather than malice. An evil government conspiracy enabled by a complacent citizenry is exactly the opposite of his vision of dystopia. In fact, I'd bet that a Harrison hero would have championed soylent green and detractors would have been portrayed as backward and unenlightened. I suspect that Harrison didn't like the movie specifically because the end
was fitting.
Bringing up
Blade Runner again, I don't know how Philip K. Dick would have felt about the movie, but there was the same sort of philosophical reversal from the book. In the book, androids couldn't empathize and thus could never be genuinely human. Even a mentally slow human was more human and more heroic than a genius android. In the movie, the situation was reversed. Replicants, despite having intentionally short lifespans and incomplete memories, cherished and valued first their own humanity and then, in the twist ending, the humanity of another as much as or more than a genuine human would.
"You gotta tell 'em! Soylent Green is made from nonrenewable resources!
Nonrenewable!"