I fucking love Soylent Green. I watched it recently for the first time in about 12 years. Certainly, it has its flaws, and it's campy as hell, but it'll always make me think of my dad.
It wasn't his favourite film, and we never watched it together, but I have an odd memory of him recounting the film's plot to me while at one of my brother’s little league games.
Looking back, I can’t imagine how we got on to the topic of the film; odds are, it was a bizarre tangent to something else my dad had been talking about. Whatever the reason, at the tender age of 12 I watched Soylent Green for the first time. It may have been my introduction to campy 70’s sci-fi, and I watched it marveling at the 70’s-ness of the whole thing, while trying to figure out just what the hell my dad was talking about.
Watching it again over the weekend, I realized that dad glossed over the whole overpopulation/greenhouse effect aspect of the film. I get that most sci-fi films take place in hideous, unlivable dystopias, but I didn't realize that they would choose something actually feasible. For all its flaws and its campy 70's-ness, it's a rather modern film. That said, if anyone ever tries to remake it, I will set myself on fire in protest.
If you haven't seen this film, for the love of god, rent it. If anything, it's worth watching purely for the final scene.
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