Logan's Run (1976 film)
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| 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 |
| Music by | Jerry Goldsmith |
| Cinematography | Ernest Laszlo, ASC |
| Distributed by | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (production) United Artists (distributor) |
| Release date(s) | June 23, 1976 (USA) |
| Running time | 120 min. |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $9 million[1] |
| Gross revenue | $25,000,000 (USA) |
| 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 avoiding the issue of overpopulation which was of growing concern at the time. The story follows the actions of Logan 5, 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) between June and September 1975. The film only uses the basic premise from the novel (everyone must die at a specific age, Logan runs with Jessica as his companion while being chased by Francis). The motivations of the characters are quite different in the film.
The film won an 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 for a Nebula Award for Best Script. Logan's Run was the first film made using Dolby Stereo [2].
Since 1994, a remake of the film has been in development hell.
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[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,
- freed 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 close-up of an infant's hand, which has a clear crystal rosette implanted in it. We soon learn that the crystal is the visual representation of the baby's "Lifeclock"; it changes colour as the person ages, turning yellow, then green, then red. 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.
In Carousel, there is the hope of Renewal -- whether this is some form of survival or of reincarnation is not explained in the script. Neither Logan nor his friend, fellow Sandman Francis 7, have ever known anyone to Renew, though Francis takes it as a matter of faith that Sandmen do in fact Renew.
Francis is somewhat more irreverent than Logan -- as he proves by getting the attention of Logan's child by banging on the window with his DS Gun (thereby setting off the alarms).
The two soon leave the nursery, entering a car which carries them through the transportation system to the Arcade, to witness a Carousel ceremony in which some Sandmen are trying for Renewal. 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, then the body is sprayed with a chemical which dissolves it completely.
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 an underground railroad assisting Runners who are trying to reach a place of safety, known as "Sanctuary." The ankh is an identification symbol affiliated with it. So that he can pass as a runner, the computer advances his Lifeclock to blinking. When Logan does not get a satisfactory answer upon asking 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 cyborg played by Roscoe Lee Browne). Box turns out to be a now insane cyborg whose former job of processing food for the domed city had ended when the food deliveries ended, and Box decided 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 attempt to reach Sanctuary, they soon leave the domed civilization, with Francis in pursuit. Once away from the city, they discover that their Lifeclocks have become clear.
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 old 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 the old Senate Chamber, seeing pictures of elderly and distinguished looking people (notably United States Presidents Franklin Pierce and Abraham Lincoln) in paintings. Francis eventually catches up and has Jessica at gunpoint, but is so shocked to find his Lifeclock having also become clear that he drops the Gun, which she then throws out of his reach. This begins hand-to-hand combat between Francis and Logan, who eventually wins. Francis, disoriented, sees Logan's clear Lifeclock and happily congratulates his friend: "Logan... you Renewed..!" Then he dies.
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 on their journey back. Once outside the domes, the old man waits as Logan and Jessica enter the city. Inside the city, they 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 “input contrary” (its own variation of "does not compute") and it explodes 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) flee, and the under-thirty citizens meet the first old man that any had ever seen.
[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:[3]
- 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 somewhat faithful to the novel in that the basic premise is the same: Nobody over a specific age is allowed to live. Logan runs in order to find Sanctuary with Jessica as his companion while being chased by Francis. However, the primary motivations for the characters in the film deviate significantly from the novel. 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".
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. Instead, there was a youth revolution ("Never trust anyone over 30") and all people over the age of 21 were dispatched. 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. Instead, people willingly go to the Sleep Centers when their Lastday arrives.
In the novel, Logan is not assigned the task of finding Sanctuary by the worldwide computer system (the "Thinker"). Instead, after discovering a key on a runner whose dying word is the legendary word "Sanctuary" he is shocked to notice at that same moment that his own palmflower (lifeclock) is blinking, signifying that he has 24 hours to live. In a bid to end his life covered in glory, he decides to become a Runner and find Sanctuary, if it exists, in order to destroy it. He meets Jessica at the first stage in the "sanctuary line", the New You Shop (also seen in the film) where she is recovering from appearance altering surgery. While the film declares that there is no Sanctuary, the novel shows that it does exist: on an abandoned space station in orbit near Mars. In fact, Francis is chasing Logan not because Francis is a Sandman bent on destroying a Runner but rather because he is the gatekeeper to Sanctuary and he cannot allow a Sandman to find it. With the escape to Sanctuary, the novel sets up the two sequels, Logan's World and Logan's Search.
Also, in the novel, Lastday 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.
| Crystal Colour | In Novel | In Film |
| White | N/A | Birth to 8 years. |
| Yellow | Birth to 7 years. | 9 to 15 years. |
| Blue: | 8 to 14 years. | N/A |
| Green | N/A | 16 to 23 years. |
| Red: | 15 years to Lastday (21 years). | 24 years to 10 days before Lastday (30 years). |
| Blinking Red/Black: | Lastday. | 10 days to Lastday. |
| Black: | End of Lastday (death) | End of Lastday (death) |
[edit] 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 during the last 10 days until 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.
- 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 more inquisitive 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-countdown although he is "only Red-6" (four years short of his allotted lifespan).
- The character of Box, a psychotic cyborg whom the pair encounters, is much different in the film than he is in the book.
- In the movie, Box is an insane robot who originally oversaw food-processing for the original builders of the city. His lair is part of the passage that the Runners used as an 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, "Fish, plankton, 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 arriving 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. He is shown in the book to be a man who has various horrifying cybernetic implants attached to his body in order to keep him alive, and his description in the book is very similar to a Borg drone from Star Trek. His encounter with Logan and Jessica culminates in a scene completely unfilmable in 1976. Box traps Logan in a cage and then forces Logan to watch him sexually torture Jessica. Logan escapes and proceeds to kill Box.
- In the movie, the Sandmen used a pistol which fired an incendiary charge that killed the Runners. In the novel, Sandmen were assigned a revolver-style gun, limited to six shots but far more versatile than that in the film. Each gun would only work for a specific Sandman's hand print, 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 — which did the following:
Homer - fires a charge which seeks out and burns out every nerve in the human body, since it seeks out a body temperature of 98.6 degrees. Since the homer cannot tell one body from another, the sandman must be exact with his shot, as someone else stepping in front of the homer could divert it.
Vapor - produces a large gas cloud which irritates the lungs of any one exposed to the vapors (this appears to be a short acting gas).
Ripper - fires a charge which is designed to rip into the material being fired at (human body, door, etc), which when used on a runner is quite fatal.
Needler - fires a large number of needles which stick into the object being fired at (human, animal, etc).
Nitro - fires a large explosive charge which destroys anything it comes into contact with.
Tangler - produces a large sticky net or web of material which works its way into the surface of anything it comes into contact with; it can be dissolved by regular police with special gear.
The gun can be reloaded with new cartridges which allow for extended use.
[edit] Sequel
Writing work had started on what happens to Logan and Jessica after the escape from the Domed city, but this was stopped when the TV series rights were bought.[citation needed]
[edit] Remake
[edit] Trivia
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Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines. The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones. |
- 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.[4]
- 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.
- The film is reportedly the first major motion picture to feature actual holograms. Previous films simulated this, but images of Logan's head seen during his interrogation were true holograms.
- Both Michael York and Richard Jordan were older than 30 years during production of the film.
- 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.
- 1056 runners were unaccounted for and had escaped (presumably) from the domed city.
- The Portal (video game) has a few allusions to this movie.
- Primarily in a gray, sterile, futuristic looking area cut off from the rest of the world. - Female voiced computer running the show. - You accept your fate by the promise of something (carousel/cake). - Story where everyone who goes through the motions is killed by the "rules", and by breaking those rules you are on the run. - While on the run, it goes from the gray, clean interior to a series of pipes and such behind the walls and underground. - The computer in charge is made up of different colored orbs (these are on the wall in the main computer room in Logan's Run).
[edit] References in popular culture
- For years after the film, science fiction conventions featured "Runs" (either organized by the convention or done ad-hoc by fans of the film); these were a chase game similar to Tag, in which the Runners (most in costume) fled from a handful of Sandmen (also in costume). These decreased in popularity following several occasions in which police responded to frantic calls made by Mundane observers.
- 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!"
- In the 1998 Robert Meyer Burnett film Free Enterprise, featuring William Shatner and Eric McCormack, the main character Mark (Eric McCormack), who is struggling with the idea of turning 30, dreams that he is a runner and that his friend Robert, dressed as a sandman, is chasing him down to kill him on his thirtieth birthday. Before pointing his gun at Mark in the dream, Robert also says "There is no sanctuary". The dream sequence is a direct homage to Logan's Run as the two friends actually discuss the 1976 film in the movie itself, and make a casual reference to the "fiery ritual of carousel".
- The Simpsons makes a reference to the glowing crystals in the season 11 episode Kill the Alligator and Run where, during an MTV Spring Break special, a female VJ reveals that today is her birthday and she's turning 25, to which a crystal in her right hand blinks and she is carried off and replaced with a younger, hipper female VJ (all the while kicking and screaming "NNNOOOOOO! Not yet! I'm only 25!!!").
- 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!"[5]
- 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 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?
- The Madonna song "Sidewalk Talk" features a sample of the phrase "approach and identify", spoken by the female computer voice in the movie.
- In the made-for-Cartoon Network TV movie Billy & Mandy's Big Boogey Adventure Grim yells "We've got a runner!" as Skarr tries to escape his death, similar to the film.
- The film is referenced in punk band Hairball's song Old Cocksuckers' Disease, the lyrics in which allude to the band's promotion of euthenasia for the elderly, with "Elderlyenasia, a concept whose time has come. Carousel will send you to the great beyond...welcome to Logan's Run!"
- In the Wonder Woman episode "Spaced Out", Diana attends a science fiction convention where some attendants make "runs".
- Electronic junk punk band Babyland feature a song called Logan's Run on their debut album You Suck Crap. It uses a sample of the phrase "Enter the carousel." and adopts the topic of trying to escape from a vain and technology-trusting society.
- In Stargate Atlantis, there is a planet on which, in order to keep the population small and within a special energy-nullifying force field to protect them from the Wraith, no one is allowed to live past 25. They are expected to kill themselves on their 25th birthday, which is 'usually' done willingly.
- The Norwegian comic strip 'M', a comic strip that makes numerous references to obscure movies, tv-shows and books, did a strip that some has taken as a sign that the cartoonist himself turned 30.
- Futurama features many references to hand implanted chips, given at birth, which store identifying information including what career you will partake in.
- The music video for Armand Van Helden's "Koochy" is made up of vintage video clips that include Box as the robotic voice to the song.
[edit] References
[edit] External links
- Logan's Run at the Internet Movie Database
- The World of Logan's Run The World of Logan's Run
| Awards | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Rollerball |
Saturn Award for Best Science Fiction Film 1976 |
Succeeded by Star Wars |
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