What was soylent green made of

What director Fleischer and his technicians have done is to assume a very basic and depressing probability: that by the year , New York will look essentially as it does now, only 49 years older and more run-down. In the midst of this barbarism, a few people survive intact.

Heston plays the dedicated cop who stubbornly refuses to quit investigating the murder. Edward G. But she still finds herself able to love, and she loves Heston. The movie looks good.

The most impressive scene is one of the last, when Robinson decides the time has come for him to die. His acting here is tremendously dignified, and all the more poignant when we realize this death scene was his last. Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from until his death in In , he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism. Leigh Taylor-Young as Shirl.

The Soylent Company has created a new food product, Soylent Green. In the overpopulated and polluted New York City, police detective Thorn is assigned to investigate the brutal murder of an corporate official of the Soylent company, William R.

Thorn's investigation into Simonson's murder leads him to uncover a conspiracy in the Soylant company and the Soylent Green food product itself, where Thorn uncovers the horrible truth about Soylent Green. In the year , overpopulation and the greenhouse effect have made life extremely difficult for the majority of people. The population of New York City is 40 million and the constant heat is unbearable. The city's infrastructure has broken down. Water is rationed and fresh food is virtually non-existent.

Rather, most of the population live on Soylent Green, made from ocean vegetation and formed into tasteless green wafers. 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. 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.

Thorn learns that Simonson was a member of the board of the Soylent Corporation but had recently become sad and morose. What, Thorn wonders would make such a rich man unhappy. Sign In. Edit Soylent Green Jump to: Summaries 7 Synopsis 1. In fact, there was no Soylent Green in the book upon which Soylent Green is based, and as a result no classic final line.

After all, who remembers the plot of the movie, apart from a few scattered scenes and of course the last line? Even Harry Harrison thought that was okay, as annoying as he found the radical changes to his novel though he stopped short of admitting that Soylent Green was an infinitely better title.

Because what we remember is not the story so much, but the atmosphere and the details—the humid green haze hanging over the city, the food riots, the unending squalor, the homeless sleeping on stoops and crowded into the church. Thanks to Fleischer and his production design team, we remember the images of a filthy, overpopulated, and starving world. It was an example of what Harrison called background becoming foreground, when what we take away from a film is not the plot, but an overall image of the world in which the plot plays itself out.

Unless of course we end up with a Smog Monster to contend with instead. His latest book, A Purposeful Grimace: In…. Skip to main content area. Actually, this is starting to sound an awful lot like the NYC of today. Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox!