Logan's Run (1976 film)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Logan's Run | |
|---|---|
 Poster for US theatrical release. |
|
| Directed by | Michael Anderson |
| Produced by | Saul David, Hugh Benson |
| Written by | William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson (novel) David Zelag Goodman (screenplay) |
| Starring | Michael York, Richard Jordan, Jenny Agutter, Peter Ustinov, Farrah Fawcett-Majors |
| Music by | Jerry Goldsmith |
| Cinematography | Ernest Laszlo |
| Distributed by | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer |
| Release date(s) | June 23, 1976 (USA) |
| Running time | 120 min. |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $9 million[1] |
| IMDb profile | |
Logan's Run is a 1976 science fiction film based on the novel of the same name by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson. It depicts a dystopian future society in which population and the consumption of resources is managed and maintained in equilibrium by the simple expediency of killing everyone who reaches the age of thirty, thus neatly (and inhumanely) avoiding the issue of overpopulation which was of growing concern at the time. The story follows the actions of Logan, a "Sandman", as he "runs" from society's lethal demand.
The 1976 film version, directed by Michael Anderson and starring Michael York, Richard Jordan, and Jenny Agutter, was shot primarily in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex (including locations such as the Fort Worth Water Gardens and the Dallas Market Center), and is largely faithful to the initial parts of the book, while deviating markedly in its latter half.
The film won a Academy Award for Special Achievement for its visual effects, and was nominated for two other Oscars. It received the Saturn Award for Best Science Fiction Film, and was nominated to receive a Nebula Award for Best Script.
Since 1994, a remake of the film has been in development hell.
Contents |
[edit] Plot summary
The film begins with an on-screen preamble which summarizes the premise of the film:
- Sometime in the 23rd century...
- the survivors of war, overpopulation and pollution
- are living in a great domed city, sealed away from the
- forgotten world outside. Here, in an ecologically balanced world,
- mankind lives only for pleasure,
- free by the servo-mechanisms which provide everything.
- There's just one catch:
- Life must end at thirty unless reborn in the fiery ritual of Carousel.
After the preamble, we see an overview of the domes of the city. As the opening credits roll, the camera zooms inside a dome, where various buildings are located, interconnected by clear tubes which appear to function as a transportation system.
The scene dissolves into a closeup of an infant's hand, which has a clear crystal rosette on it. We soon learn that the crystal is the visual representation of the baby's "lifeclock"; it changes color as the person ages, turning green, then yellow, then red, as the person ages. As someone approaches their "Lastday" it begins to blink, and it is black once they die.
The infant whose hand is in the first scene turns out to be in a nursery, and Logan 5 (played by York) is watching him. Logan is a Sandman, though unlike the Sandman of folklore, the "sleep" that Logan and other Sandmen provide is "termination" (death) for "runners", people who refuse to report to Carousel for the fate described in the preamble.
Logan is joined by fellow Sandman Francis 7 (played by Jordan) in the nursery. The two soon leave the nursery, entering a car which carries them through the transportation system to the Arcade. The two are there to witness a Carousel ceremony. During the ceremony, Logan receives a message assigning him a runner to track down. Francis sees Logan leave and joins him in the pursuit.
After the runner is killed, Logan gathers the runner's personal effects.
The next scene is of Logan at home. In search of sex, he activates the "circuit", a device which is depicted as a sort of teleportation device. Logan uses a remote control to summon someone from the circuit — this is how he meets Jessica 6 (played by Agutter). Although she leaves after deciding not to have sex with him after all, the fact that Jessica was wearing a decorative collar with an ankh pendant hanging from it turns out to be a clue that she and Logan will soon meet again.
Logan and Francis are next seen at Sandman headquarters. When Logan turns in the personal effects he had gathered from the runner — effects that included an ankh — he is summoned by the computer to another area where he is given a special assignment. He is ordered to infiltrate the Runner underground; he learns that this underground is called "Sanctuary" and that the ankh is a symbol affiliated with it. So he can pass as a runner, the computer advances his Lifeclock to blinking. When Logan does not get a satisfactory answer when he asks if his Lifeclock will be restored to its previous setting once his assignment is complete, he becomes a "Runner" himself in reality, and begins taking a closer look at the Lifeclock process, realizing that he has never known anyone whose Lifeclock has been extended, "Sandman" or otherwise.
Remembering the ankh she was wearing, Logan meets Jessica again, seeking her help in reaching sanctuary.
Jessica is skeptical about his interest in running, but becomes convinced of his sincerity when Logan helps a runner instead of killing her. Francis, unaware of Logan's assignment but witnessing Logan's failure to kill a runner, kills the runner himself and begins to pursue Logan and Jessica.
Logan and Jessica soon encounter Box (a large silvery robot played by Roscoe Lee Browne). Box turns out to be a misguided cyborg whose former job processing food for the domed city has ended when the food deliveries ended, and Box decides that his new job is to freeze the sanctuary seekers who have started to appear. Logan is able to destroy Box, and the two continue their search for Sanctuary.
As Logan and Jessica's attempt to reach Sanctuary, they soon leave the domed civilization, with Francis in pursuit. They discover that outside there are forests, streams, and remnants of a prior civilization that features landmarks easily recognized as being part of the National Mall in Washington, D.C.. In the process of investigation, they discover that it is this world outside that is the Sanctuary that Logan was seeking. They meet an elderly man (played by Ustinov), who is completely bewildering to them, since they have never known anyone older than 30. They research the past civilization in an old library, seeing pictures of elderly and distinguished looking people in paintings on the walls. Francis eventually catches up with Logan, and is killed by him in their final confrontation.
Logan and Jessica decide to return to the domed city to tell the inhabitants what they've seen and learned, and invite the old man to join them. Logan and Jessica enter the city, are arrested, and are brought to the city computer for interrogation. Logan tells the computer about his findings — there is no Sanctuary, nothing but ruins and an old man outside the city, and all the Runners were frozen by Box. This information runs contrary to what the computer holds as established fact, leading it to say its own variations of "does not compute" and explode in a fit of cognitive dissonance. This causes a chain reaction of explosions and electrical discharges throughout the city, blasting the dome open to the outside world. Logan and Jessica (and eventually the entire city populace) escape, and the under-thirty citizens meet the old man who accompanied them.
[edit] Critical reaction
Roger Ebert gave the film a three star rating, calling the film a "vast, silly extravaganza", with a plot that's a "cross between Arthur C. Clarke's The City and the Stars and elements of Planet of the Apes, but "that delivers a certain amount of fun."[1]
The New York Times was less positive:[2]
- Just why and for what particular purpose Logan makes his run is anything but clear after you've sat through nearly two hours of this stuff. Logan's Run is less interested in logic than in gadgets and spectacle, but these are sometimes jazzily effective and even poetic. Had more attention been paid to the screenplay, the movie might have been a stunner.
Although the movie often gets overlooked among other sci-fi giants such as Star Wars (which came only a year later), the movie could easily be considered a cult film, having garnered a loyal audience and still being referenced even 30 years later in popular culture (see the pop culture section below).
[edit] Differences between the novel and film
The film is reasonably faithful to the novel in its first half, with some specific differences. The movie is set in a post-apocalyptic scenario in which the final remnants of humanity live in a domed city sealed off from the outside world. Thus, the population control policy is designed to prevent overpopulation of the dome. In the film, there is a death ceremony called "Carousel" in which people believe they may be "renewed". Also, in the novel, last day occurs on one's twenty-first birthday; according to the DVD commentary, this was raised to thirty for the film because it was difficult to find actors who looked young enough.
In the novel, there has been no worldwide apocalyptic war, but some cities from the past (e.g. Washington D.C.) have been ruined in the Little War. Most cities are massive and thriving, which makes the forced-execution premise much more cynical. Accordingly, in the novel, Logan and Jessica travel all over North America with a brief layover in a research station in the Challenger Deep. The novel does not contain Carousel, nor the concept of life renewal.
Other differences include:
- In the movie, the crystal rosette in each person's palm starts white (or clear). According to a DVD Easter egg available by selecting the crystal from the main menu, a person's lifeclock is white from infancy to age 8, yellow from age 9 to 15, green from age 16 to 23, and red from age 24 to lastday. The film depicts lifeclocks blinking red as people approach their Lastday, but is not precise about when the blinking begins. In the novel, there is no white or green: lifeclocks start yellow, turn blue at 7, turn red at 14, then blink on the Lastday before turning black at death.
| Crystal colour in Logan's Run,
the novel in comparison to the film |
Age |
|---|---|
| Yellow | Birth to 7 years |
| Blue | 7 to 14 years |
| Red | 14 years to Lastday (21 years) |
| Blinking red/black |
21 (Lastday) |
| Black | End of Lastday (death) |
- In the movie, Logan is assigned by the city's computer to go undercover as a Runner to find Sanctuary and destroy it, and Logan's lifeclock (referred to as "palm flowers" in the novel) is artificially advanced to enable him to infiltrate the network of citizens sympathetic to Runners. In the book, Logan decides to undertake this quest himself on his own Lastday so that he will be remembered as a hero. For most of the book, therefore, Logan is a much darker character, an antihero, with his character developing a growing sympathy towards Runners until he eventually desires to achieve, not destroy, Sanctuary.
- In the movie, Logan finds an ankh pendant, which is a key to Sanctuary, on the body of a Runner he has killed. In the novel he finds a card that allows him to contact an underground network of Runners, through which he meets Jessica. Logan's character in the movie is similarly amoral, but also naïve when compared to other Sandmen. His character is more that of an innocent corrupted by the system — and victimized by it as well. When he is assigned the task of finding Sanctuary, his lifeclock is advanced to Lastday although he is "only Red-6" (four years short of the maximum lifespan).
- The character of Box, a psychotic robot whom the pair encounters, is much changed in the film. In the movie, Box is a malfunctioning food-processing cyborg located in a passage that lies along the Runners' escape route from the domed city. He appears to predate the collapse of outside civilization, and was once assigned to freeze food delivered to the city (as he proclaims, "Sea greens and protein from the sea. Fresh as harvest day!"), but he now freezes Runners because the original food deliveries stopped coming and they started coming instead.
In the novel, Logan and Jessica find themselves trapped in an Arctic prison colony and are told that Box, the colony's most violent and insane inmate, is their only key to escape.
Box, psychotic robot or food dispenser gone bad?
- In the movie, the Sandmen used standard-issue sci-fi blaster pistols. In the novel, Sandmen were assigned a revolver-style gun, limited to six shots. Each gun would only work for a specific Sandman's handprint, and would explode if anyone else tried to use the weapon (as with the "Lawgiver" handguns in Judge Dredd). Each of the six shots in the gun served a different purpose: homer, nitro, vapor, tangler, ripper, and needler.
[edit] Trivia
- According to the DVD commentary track, the role of Logan was originally offered to Jon Voight, that of Francis was offered to William Devane, and that of Jessica was to go to Lindsay Wagner. Voight and Devane bowed out, and Wagner lost the role to Agutter because of the chemistry between Agutter and York.
- After the film's premiere on May 7, 1976 in San Diego, California, the studio edited the film for length and to enable it to acquire a PG rating from the MPAA.[3]
- There is an urban legend that the last words Richard Jordan spoke before he died were "Logan...you renewed!" (In the film, a dying Francis says this line when he sees Logan's lifeclock which is now clear.) However there is no evidence that Jordan ever said this line on his actual deathbed.
- In the film, at some point Logan abandons his mission for the computer (as an undercover runner) and starts to become one for real. As Logan proceeds out of the city for the first time, he makes covert reports to Sandman control - usually by signaling his communicator - suggesting that for awhile at least, he is still loyal to the computer. At some point, Logan turns renegade and becomes a real runner, most likely during the shootout where Sandmen massacre the Runners' hideout (Logan is seen shooting several Sandmen at point-blank range).
- The film is one of the first major motion pictures to feature holograms. The first major film to feature holograms was Forbidden Planet in 1956.
- The special effect guns carried by the Sandmen were created by John Cramer. The flame was made by shooting acetylene gas against a model-airplane glow plug, which was located at the front end of the "flash distributor". The blade ("balance plate") under the muzzle cage provided some protection for the glow plug against impact, and added weight to counterbalance the brass tank at the other end of the pistol. This tank held a carbide-water mixture, which generated the acetylene. A lead-acid battery (in the pistol stock) provided power to the glow plug. The guns were failure-prone due to the small size of the tank and the battery, which only provided enough gas and current for a few brief shots before needing to be recharged. Also, due to handling, carbide semisolids occasionally plugged the tubing, or got into the trigger valve and permitted slow leaks, reducing the gas pressure. 16 guns were made, and most were modified for the television series by moving the glow-plug switch to the back of the frame, in the position of a grip safety such as that found on the M1911 pistol. This was for convenience and to prevent accidents such as one which reportedly burned Richard Jordan, which resulted from the glow-plug being hot when he was drawing the pistol from its belt clip.
[edit] Pop culture
- The mockup of the domed city appears in an early fourth-season episode of Mork and Mindy to represent the planet Ork. It also appears briefly in the 1984 film The Ice Pirates.
- Family Guy makes a reference to this movie in the episode "Brian in Love". In it, Brian tells Dr. Kaplan about a dream where he is running through Arcade to avoid several Sandmen. When they finally corner him, Brian tries to distract the Sandmen by pointing out Peanuts character Snoopy, hiding in plain sight, and says, "What about him? He's gotta be in his 50s!"
- The Simpsons makes a reference to the glowing crystals in episode BABF16 entitled "Kill the Alligator and Run", when the MTV-like "V-jay" turns 25 years old.
- South Park makes a reference to the Carousel ceremony in the episode "The Wacky Molestation Adventure", which is how Kenny dies in that episode.
- Robot Chicken makes a reference to the glowing crystals in the episode 1x20 "The Black Cherry".
- Friends makes a reference to Logan's Run in the episode "The One with Ross and Monica's Cousin" (episode # 7.19), when Ross calls it the sexiest movie ever.
- In Michael Bay's 2005 film The Island, the closing scenes of clones escaping the Merrick Institute (which bears similarities to the Domed City, including Black-clad Security personnel) and looking upon the outside world for the first time bear a striking similarity to the final scenes of Logan's Run in context and filming techniques.
- Spaced makes a reference to Lastday in episode 2.6.
-
- Tim: You'd be dead in four years' time, if this was Logan's Run.
- Daisy: That'd be terrible.
- Tim: I know. I'd look like a twat in a jumpsuit.
- Daisy: Don't say that, Tim. That is a word which hates women.
- Tim: What, twat?
- Daisy: No, jumpsuit.
- Gilmore Girls (6th season, episode 8) makes a reference to Logan's Run when the character Logan Huntzberger bolts away from his friends; one of them shouts, "We've got a Runner!" [4]
- There are at least two references to Logan's Run in episodes of NewsRadio; news director Dave Nelson says the movie is his favorite (although he lies to his then-girlfriend, Lisa Miller, claiming instead that her favorite film, Persona, is his favorite film as well), and Bill McNeil says "If this were Logan's Run, I'd be Soylent Green by now."
- In the movie Free Enterprise, a mid-life crisis is exposed when a character dreams he is on Lastday and his best friend is a Sandman. The central characters in this movie also appear to accept the term Lastday as a standard reference for ones 30th birthday.
- In Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, the radio announcer for Radio-X makes references to Logan's Run multiple times most notably when describing how much improved life would be should all people over 21 be killed.
- In Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant's faux training video for Microsoft (part II). The Office Values, Part II
- Is the central movie on a chapter on Alberto Fuguet's 2004 novel, Las películas de mi vida
- Some of Box's lines were used in the opening montage of MF Doom's album MM..Food
[edit] References
