Soylent Green. What's better than people?

Charlton Heston was one of my very favorite actors. Most of my friends today probably wouldn't even recognize the name.

Things change, I do understand that. However, I definitely love older movies and I hate to think that great movies get lost by the wayside just because they've got a few years on them.

When people think about Charlton Heston today they probably think about his most iconic role. That is George Taylor, the astronaut that landed on the Planet of the Apes.

It saddens me to think that people don't associate him with some of his other great roles though.

Charlton Heston has been in something like 58 movies.

Three of those movies are some of my favorite movies of all time. Yes, Planet of the Apes is among them.

Also Soylent Green and the Omega Man.

So without further ado.... let's take a look at Soylent Green.

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It's the year 2022...

People are still the same. They'll do anything to get what they need. And they need Soylent Green.

I already spoiled the plot of the movie in the title to this post. I think everyone already knows what the plot is, but you don't have to be surprised about the ending of the movie in order to enjoy it.

Soylent Green is about a future dystopia. That future takes place in the year 2022.... which is pretty funny because it's already 2018 and it's about to be 2019 in just over a month.

Of course this was a seventies movie that took place 45 years ago so everything was a bit different then.

The movie Soylent Green is more than just the idea that whatever Soylent Green is... it's also people.

So let's get a little bit further involved.

A dystopia is a future world that isn't a place you would want to live in.

I love reading about dystopias. Philip K Dick is my favorite author and he often writes fantastic books about all the different ways that the world could fall apart.

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One of the most important parts of any dystopian novel is the people.

The people are never doing well in a dystopian novel. They're starving, they are at their wit's end, and they absolutely have no idea how they could possibly move forward.

When I say the people now.... I'm talking about the masses.

On the other hand, there's always a subset of super rich people that are taking advantage of the situation.

In that way it is very similar to actual life. Of course dystopian novels are based on actual life. However, they are tweaked and twisted to create a situation in which the world appears much worse than it is.

It's possible that our world will become a dystopia, and some parts already resemble one to me, however..... it's not quite as bad as the movie Soylent Green yet.

In Soylent Green everyone is starving. There is not enough work for people to do, and not enough money for people to be paid. Therefore the government has to step in and give people food so that they don't all die.

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Of course the people are basically willing to eat anything. They just want food so that they can live.

The government's answer is to create a sustenance product that is essentially a very potent but small source of food, like a cracker, that has a bunch of different nutrients in it.

The government comes up with these small little crackers that are Soylent colors like Soylent blue and yellow. Eventually they come out with Soylent Green which is supposed to be made out of plankton.

As you might know by now it's actually made out of people.

Charlton Heston plays a cop in this supposedly futuristic seventies town that has a lot of interesting features.

Beautiful women are treated like furniture and they essentially prostitute themselves by coming with a nice house. That's right, when you buy a nice house it'll probably come with a beautiful woman that you can sleep with as long as you let her stay there.

That's a pretty chauvinistic idea, but hey this movie came out in the seventies.

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In the movie this thing was a video game system that you could play something like asteroids on. I think that they were trying to show how futuristic the society was supposed to be.

Woohoo asteroids.

Well this was the seventies.

So our main character, played by Charlton Heston, is a police officer. He is investigating a murder in which a beautiful woman who is considered a piece of furniture is left alone in an apartment without her master.

It's interesting to note that Charlton Heston is also poor in this movie. He lives with an older man who goes by the name of Sol.

Sol was played by Edward G. Robinson. He died the same year that the movie came out.

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The fact that Charlton Heston's character Thorn was poor meant that he was very interested in things like food. You see, rich people had real food while poor people had to eat the little Soylent chips that are made out of various things like Soy and Lentils most likely.

Soylent Green is supposed to made out of plankton but some people are thinking that it might not actually be merry out of plankton.

It seems the guy that got murdered at the beginning knew what it was made out of, because he worked for the company that actually made the Soylent chips.

This is a really interesting detective movie..

Considering that it came out of the seventies, the visuals are simply incredible.

Here is another cool thing that you should be aware of if you grew up in the same era that I did.

The main bad guy in this movie is played by Chuck Connors. That's right.

Chuck Connors who also played The Rifleman.

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Each week The Rifleman would come out and show us various different moral lessons about how to be a good person. It's really neat to see this character play an evil scumbag.

The fight in the homeless shelter between Charlton Heston and Chuck Connors is quite simply legendary.

Of course, as a huge fan of Science Fiction I have to mention another actor that is in this movie. It took me a long time to figure out who this guy actually was, but I knew I'd seen him before.

I'm talking about Brock Peters.

Brock Peters played Joseph Cisco on Star Trek Deep Space Nine. That's right, he was Captain Sisco's dad on all of the earth based episodes.

It's pretty cool to see him in his prime.

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You might not be surprised when you get to the end of Soylent Green. At this point it should be pretty obvious that Soylent Green is not made out of plankton at all. It's actually made out of people..

However, you should not let that deter you from watching this fantastic movie.

Soylent Green is right up there with Planet of the Apes and the Omega Man as one of Charlton Heston's best feature films.

It's an exciting adventure. It's got some great fighting scenes. It's got some really good older actors.... and it's simply a beautiful movie..

This movie easily holds up to any of today's science fiction movies. Right now you can watch it for free if you're an Amazon Prime member. It looks great on a 4K TV also.

I definitely suggest you check it out, and just for kicks if you've got an Amazon Alexa please please please ask her this question.....

What is Soylent Green made from?

Her answer may surprise you.

That's all folks.