What's wrong with that? He was already an accomplished stage and screen actor by that point.
Logan's Run First Watch
- Thread starter Antonovus
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What's wrong with that? He was already an accomplished stage and screen actor by that point.
Yeah, he should only be used for exposition.
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I watched this movie for the first time a month or so ago, and I thought it had a good set-up, some neat designs, though very '70s. However as the story went on it just got weirder and it started to lose me. When they got to the robot and ice cave part I enjoyed it less, and then the scenes after that dragged on a bit. The ending was fine. I wouldn't mind seeing a contemporary remake though. With the idea of age-mandated death, and a cast of younger people, I could see The CW all over a Logan's Run remake.
For fans of the film, there's a fascinating YouTube channel with multiple deleted and extended scenes reconstructed via existing audio (apparently an audience member taped a rough cut screening back in the day) combined with fragments of surviving footage, stills, drawings, and whatever else. Here's the original opening with Francis hunting a runner, which transitions into the scene in Nursery that opens the existing cut:
And here's an extended version of the ice cavern sequence in which Box has Logan and Jessica pose for a nude sculpture. This was apparently cut to avoid an R rating -- unfortunate for reasons beyond the prurient, because it includes some fairly important dialogue about Logan's change of heart:
There are a number of other scenes available from the same YouTuber that you can check out if you're interested.
And here's an extended version of the ice cavern sequence in which Box has Logan and Jessica pose for a nude sculpture. This was apparently cut to avoid an R rating -- unfortunate for reasons beyond the prurient, because it includes some fairly important dialogue about Logan's change of heart:
There are a number of other scenes available from the same YouTuber that you can check out if you're interested.
Vehemently disagree with your casual dismissal. MGM made a big deal of framing Logan's Run as a "serious" attempt at sci-fi and I really respect that even though the film has its rough edges. ST:TMP was handled much the same way and it was rare at the time, with most associating sci-fi with B-movies. For Generation X it is a touchstone, although not nearly as resonant as Star Wars which overshadowed it (and Space: 1999).
The book has a very very different ending.
It's not "casual." It's based on watching the whole movie and considering it fairly. It's rude to dismiss an opinion as lacking in thought or legitimacy just because it differs from your own. It is entirely possible for two equally careful and well-considered opinions to be opposed to each other.
Yes, and many other such attempts at "serious" movies have still been bad. Just because they want a movie to be impressive doesn't mean we're required to agree. What matters is the execution, not the intention. The fact that Logan's Run was ambitious just makes its ineptitude stand out more.
This has nothing to do with generations or when a movie came out. I love ST:TMP, which came out when I was 11. I don't like Logan's Run, which came out when I was 8. Their temporal proximity has no bearing on their relative quality.
The Black Hole from 1979 also tried to be a serious, ambitious SF movie, but it also fell short of its ambitions; it was visually impressive but conceptually lacking. Logan's Run doesn't even succeed in the former, since its miniature effects were so cheesy compared to the state of the art of the day.
I have it on DVD and it still looks amazing to this day. One thing I really like about it is its representation of an apocalyptic city when they manage to get outside.
I like the 1977-1978 television series too because it takes the story on a different ongoing path then the film conclusive ending.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logan's_Run_(TV_series)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logan's_Run_(TV_series)
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The TV series is a delicious cheese sandwich.
I bought the series for nostalgia reason, but was expecting a complete disaster. For me, it turned out to be very watchable. But, I would not recommend it to the younger people, especially those allergic to cheese.
I bought the series for nostalgia reason, but was expecting a complete disaster. For me, it turned out to be very watchable. But, I would not recommend it to the younger people, especially those allergic to cheese.
I thought in the original books the cities were also discovered to be on Mars and not Earth?
That goes both ways, btw. Sometimes you come across as if you should be deemed final arbiter of a work's quality. That's called a monologue, not a dialogue, and that's what I would consider "rude", or at least arrogant or snobbish.
All you've said about the film so far in this thread is this:
"it's pretty weak, with an utterly nonsensical climax."
Why is it weak? Why do you think it has a nonsensical climax? What makes it nonsensical? That's what I call a casual (and lazy) dismissal. These adjectives should not be thrown around as if they're self-evident. They're not.
If you want to tear the movie to shreds, by all means, but it takes more than that to make an argument. I'm not saying the movie is oscar grade, but I think most hold it in higher regard than you do, especially for the nostalgia-factor. And I can tell it was made with a degree of sincerity and TLC despite the weak opening model shots. But then again I'm someone who fully enjoys old Godzilla movies with "obvious" models as well, if for no other reason than I appreciate the handicraft aspect of miniatures. It doesn't have to be super realistic and immersive for me. I can be aware it's a "movie" and still like it.
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I read the first 2 books many years ago (late 70s to early 80s), so they're a bit hazy, but I remember them being quite different from the movie. Although I got the feeling that, in the 2nd book, the author (the 1st novel was written by William F. Nolan & George Clayton Johnson; Nolan wrote the follow-ups solo) tried to bring elements closer to the movie, to resonate with the popularity of the film. Yes, the cutoff was 21 instead of 30, so the characters were all much younger in the books. As far as revealing the cities were actually on Mars, I doubt it. I remember a scene taking place within the gigantic unfinished Crazy Horse monument, carved into a mountain near Mount Rushmore in South Dakota.
My question is this: What exactly the hell is ‘renewal’ supposed to be? Reincarnation? If that’s so, then why is Carousel so popular? If any of those people actually do renew, then obviously the audience will never know...so what’s the point?
"Renewal" was supposed renew a person's life for another year (or possibly more). Not reincarnation, just a life extension. I assume their life crystal would stop blinking. We never know exactly what the populace was ever told (or what was rumored), since it never actually happened to anyone...
For one thing, the evil computer blows up for absolutely no reason. It's the biggest cliche of '60s and '70s screen sci-fi, evil master computers being manipulated or talked into blowing up, and this is one of the most arbitrary examples. It just happens because the script demands that it happens.
The computer pulled a Landru/Nomad.
I thought the Box scene was visually stunning and the perfect kind of eerie. It almost reminded me of a sci-fi version of something out of Conan the Barbarian.
If you don't like that, you must not like all the TOS episodes that did that. This IS a Trek BBS, btw.
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