THX 1138

THX 1138
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	George Lucas
Produced by	Executive Producer Francis Ford Coppola Associate Producer Edward Folger Producer Lawrence Sturhahn
Written by	Screenplay George Lucas Walter Murch
Starring	Robert Duvall Donald Pleasence Don Pedro Colley Maggie McOmie Ian Wolfe Sid Haig
Music by	Lalo Schifrin
Cinematography	David Myers
Editing by	George Lucas
Studio	American Zoetrope
Distributed by	Warner Bros.
Release date(s)	March 11, 1971
Running time	86 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$777,777.77[1]
Gross revenue	$2.437 million (domestic)

THX 1138 is a 1971 science fiction film directed by George Lucas, from a screenplay by Lucas and Walter Murch. It depicts a dystopian future in which a high level of control is exerted upon the populace through omnipresent, faceless, android police officers and mandatory, regulated use of special drugs to suppress emotion, including sexual desire.

It was the first feature-length film directed by Lucas, developed from his student film Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB, which he made in 1967 while attending the University of Southern California, which itself was based on a one and a quarter page treatment of an idea by Matthew Robbins. The film was produced in a joint venture between Warner Brothers and Francis Ford Coppola's then-new production company, American Zoetrope. A novelization by Ben Bova was published in 1971.

Plot

The film is set in an unnamed underground city of the future, where sexual intercourse is outlawed and use of mind-altering drugs is mandatory. Narcotics are critical both in maintaining compliance among the city's residents and also for ensuring their ability to conduct dangerous and demanding tasks for long periods of time. The inhabitants worship a godlike being known as "OMM 0910", whom they commune with in telephone booth-like areas known as "Unichapels". We see SEN 5241 (Donald Pleasence) and LUH 3417 (Maggie McOmie) at their jobs, which involve keeping surveillance on the city's many residents and fielding questions from them (most questions deal with drug intake).

THX 1138 (Robert Duvall) works in a factory producing androids that function as police officers. The work is hazardous as it requires handling explosive and radioactive material.

LUH, THX's female roommate, becomes disillusioned and makes a conscious decision to break the law and stop taking her drugs, and subsequently secretly substitutes inactive pills for THX's medications. As the drug's effects wear off, THX finds himself experiencing authentic emotions and sexual desire for the first time. At first conflicted and nauseated, he eventually connects with LUH. Knowing that their relationship is illegal, THX must decide whether to return to using the prescribed drugs, or escape with LUH. He knows that he will not be able to function without his drugs while at his demanding job, but he does not want to lose what he has created with LUH. They consider an escape to the "superstructure", where they hope to be able to live in freedom.

Before they can attempt this escape THX is confronted by SEN. Using his position as LUH's superior, he changes her shift. Confronted by THX, SEN admits that he wants THX as his new roommate. Returning to work, but still not taking drugs, THX files a complaint against SEN for the illegal shift change. Without drugs in his system, THX falters during critical and hazardous phases of his job. The city's authorities discover THX's and LUH's crimes of sexual intercourse and drug evasion. (Because of a bureaucratic snafu, THX is briefly "mind-locked" while at a critical juncture of android construction - this almost leads to disaster.) THX and LUH are arrested for their crimes.

THX is imprisoned in a white limbo world. At first he is alone, but he enjoys a brief reunuion with LUH - one disrupted by the enforcer robots. The two are separated and THX is consigned to another region of limbo, this one populated by a collection of other prisoners, including SEN. Knowing that THX filed the complaint against him, SEN nevertheless still rallies him to join his undescribed cause. (Some of SEN's dialogue is taken from speeches by Richard Nixon.^[2])

Most of the prisoners seem uninterested in escape, but eventually THX and SEN decide to find an exit. They encounter SRT (Don Pedro Colley), who starred in the holograms broadcast citywide. SRT has become disenchanted with his role in the society and is making an attempt to escape.

Exiting their prison, THX and SRT are separated from SEN. Controllers in the city learn of the escape and allot a strict budget (14,000 credits) for their recapture. Chased by the robots, THX and SRT find a computer center, from which THX learns that LUH's identification number has been reassigned to a fetus in a growth chamber. This suggests that she has been declared "incurable" and killed. Alone and hunted, SEN makes a tentative exploration of the limits of the city's underground network. Cowed by what he sees, he finds his way to an area reserved for the monks of OMM. Alone, SEN prays directly to OMM before being confronted by a lone monk who notices that SEN has no identification badge. SEN attacks the monk before the monk can report him. Returning to the city, and still overwhelmed by his experiences, SEN strikes up a conversation with several children before police androids arrive and apprehend him.

THX and SRT steal two cars, but SRT has difficulty operating the vehicle and crashes into a concrete pillar, disabling it. (It is uncertain whether SRT survives the impact, although the film's script indicates he does not.) With the cost of his capture having reached 10,000 credits, and pursued by two police androids on motorcycles, THX flees to the limits of the city's underground road network. THX manages to elude the robots, by which time the budget has reached its primary limit. Eventually THX locates a mode of escape that leads to the surface. The police pursue THX up an escape ladder, but are ordered by central command to cease pursuit at mere steps away from capturing him, as the expense of his capture exceeds their pre-determined budget. THX climbs out of the ground and stands before a large setting sun in a red sky, while birds intermittently fly overhead, indicating that life is possible on the surface.

Cast

Hans Memling's Christ Giving His Blessing (1478) is used as the visual representation of the state-sanctioned deity OMM 0910.^[3]

• Robert Duvall as THX 1138
• Donald Pleasence as SEN 5241
• Don Pedro Colley as SRT, Hologram
• Maggie McOmie as LUH 3417
• Ian Wolfe as PTO, Old prisoner
• Marshall Efron as TWA, Prisoner
• Sid Haig as NCH, Prisoner
• James Wheaton - OMM 0910 (voice)

Production

In order to emphasize the dehumanizing nature of the world of THX 1138, Lucas insisted that most of the actors and actresses in the film shave their heads, with some characters going completely bald, while others were allowed to maintain a buzz cut. As a publicity stunt, Lucas arranged for several actors to get their first haircuts/shaves at unusual venues, and have this filmed for later use in a tongue-in-cheek promotional featurette entitled Bald. Robert Duvall had his head shaved while watching a baseball game, while his co-star, Maggie McOmie, had hers done at the scenic Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. Another actor, Marshall Efron, who would later play an insane man in the film, was allowed to cut off his own hair and was filmed doing so in a bathtub. The Bald featurette was included in the 2004 DVD release. Many of the extras seen in the film were recruited from the controversial addiction recovery program Synanon, most of whose members had shaved heads.^[4]

Filming on THX began on September 22, 1969 with the car chase sequence in the then to-be-finished tunnels of the BART Subway System in San Francisco. Other locations in the San Francisco area included the Marin County Civic Center in San Rafael, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright; Lawrence Hall of Science, Berkeley; the San Francisco International Airport; and at a remote manipulator for a hot cell, among other various locations which Lucas and Coppola considered futuristic. Production wrapped in mid-November 1969 and the film was edited by Lucas. Walter Murch compiled and synched the sound montage, which includes all the "overhead" voices heard throughout the film (radio chatter, announcements, etc.). The bulk of the editing was finished by mid-1970.

The chase scene featured Lola T70 Mk.IIIs with dummy turbine engines racing against Yamaha TA125/250cc 2-stroke race replica motorcycles through two San Francisco Bay Area automotive tunnels: the Caldecott Tunnel between Oakland and Orinda, and the underwater Posey Tube between Oakland and Alameda. The final climb out to the daylight was actually filmed, with the camera rotated 90 degrees, in the incomplete (and decidedly horizontal) BART Transbay Tube before installation of the track supports, with the actors using exposed reinforcing bars as a ladder. In the end scene, writer Matthew Robbins plays THX as he climbs from the shaft and stands before the sunset.^[5]

Reception

Shortly after completion of production Lucas and Coppola brought the finished film to Warner Bros., along with several other scripts for other hopeful projects at American Zoetrope. However, upon viewing all material, studio executives strongly disliked all the scripts including THX. Warner demanded that Coppola repay the $300,000 they had loaned him for the Zoetrope studio, and insisted on cutting five minutes from the film. The debt nearly closed Zoetrope, and forced Coppola to (reluctantly) take on another project, The Godfather. THX 1138 was released to theaters on March 11, 1971 and was commercially unsuccessful. The film was re-released with the five minutes edited back in by Lucas after the success of Star Wars in 1977, but still did not gain popularity. The movie is now considered a cult classic.

Origin of the Name

The significance of the name THX-1138 has been the subject of much speculation among fans. In an interview for the DVD compilation Reel Talent, which included Lucas's original 4EB short, Lucas stated that he chose the letters and numbers for their aesthetic qualities, especially their symmetry^[6].

Versions

There are 3 different versions of this film, they are:

Original cut: 86 minutes (this version was released in 1977)

Theatrical cut: 81 minutes

Director's cut: 88 minutes (Released on DVD in 2004)

Home video

The original cut of the film had been available for several years on both laserdisc (in letterbox format) and VHS but was not immediately available on DVD. Although this was in part the result of Lucas' early skepticism of the DVD format, it was also because of his desire to re-work parts of the film before it was released on DVD.

Lucas finally set about getting a DVD version of the film together in early 2004, putting the film through a meticulous audio/video restoration and making use of computer-generated imagery to modify certain scenes to his liking, mostly by expanding crowds and sets. In addition, Lucas shot new footage for the film, and even went as far as to re-shoot several scenes using computer systems to insert the actors and replace existing footage. This Director's Cut was released to a limited number of digital-projection theaters on September 10, 2004 and on DVD in Region 1 on September 14. Region 2 and 4 releases came later. Fan and critical reaction to this version was mixed, although any negative commentary was far more low key than the backlash Lucas faced with altering the Star Wars films.

As of March 2010, the original version of the film has yet to be released on DVD. While Lucas eventually released the original pre-Special Edition of the original Star Wars trilogy to DVD, it remains to be seen if the original THX 1138 will be released in that. The Blu-ray edition is set for release September 7, 2010 in a director's cut edition.^[7]

The revised DVD version does alter the narrative of the story in subtle ways, connecting the three primary characters SEN, LUH and THX from the outset, and also shifting their perceived motivations. The best example of this is the addition of exchanged glances between SEN and LUH at their observation workstations. The editing in the same scene shows LUH (as opposed to SEN in the theatrical release) paying more attention to a report of "illegal sexual activity".

Legacy

In 1979, the rock band Toto released the single "99", a song inspired by THX-1138's society where people were given numbers instead of names. The music video for the song features the band in an all-white room dressed in white, a set piece designed around Lucas' film.^[8]

The Atari home computer video game Star Raiders responds to unknown keyboard commands with the status message "WHAT'S WRONG?", which is a reference to THX 1138.^[9]

The Belgian comic book writer Merho was heavily inspired by this film for his comic De Kiekeboes n°12: "De trawanten van spih". He used elements such as the totally controlled society by android-cops, the use of numbers and letters instead of names, the empty prison (called "de witte container (the white container") and even the escape of the three kids shows similarities to the escape at the end of this film.

Sound engineer Tomlinson Holman named his THX certification system to intentionally reference both his own name (Tomlinson Holman's eXperiment) and Lucas's film^[10].

British musical band Unkle has used many samples from THX 1138, including I Need Something Stronger and Edit Music for a Film [New Hope].

See also

• Utopian and dystopian fiction
• Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB

References

Sources

• Lucas, George (Director). (2004). THX 1138 (The George Lucas Director's Cut Two-Disc Special Edition). [DVD]. USA: Warner Brothers. ISBN 0790765268. http://worldcat.org/oclc/56520465?tab=details. 
• Pollock, Dale (1999). Skywalking: The Life and Films of George Lucas. Da Capo. ISBN 0306809044. 

External links

• Official website (requires Flash Player to run site)
• THX 1138 at the Internet Movie Database
• THX 1138 at Allmovie
• DVD THX forum
• Interview with Don Pedro Colley about his experiences working on THX 1138 at a Lucas fan site
• Director's Cut changes, with screenshots