This perplexes me. They have that technology and still they use those little pod cars...Teleportation is just another way to be rejected by women, as Logan found out.
Logan's Run First Watch
- Thread starter Antonovus
- Start date
Maybe, like McCoy, they have a population that does not favor "transporter" usage.This perplexes me. They have that technology and still they use those little pod cars...
Okay, I just finished rewatching the movie on Netflix. The city miniature effects are better than I remembered, but as I thought, it is the water that keeps the miniature from being convincing. And the external dome shot that opens the film is pretty clearly a tabletop model too.
The first act is an impressive exercise in worldbuilding and well-written exposition, efficiently establishing the nature of the world through dialogue and action, in a way that largely avoids sounding stilted or contrived. The characters are talking about things they take for granted, but in a way that still clues us in to what their world is like. And it's an impressively realized world visually and conceptually too, with good design and location work, even if some of the effects fall short (there are visible wires on the Carousel levitators in some shots, and the matte shots are often misaligned).
I can't say the characters work as well, though. It never really becomes clear when Logan shifts from pretending to run to genuinely rebelling. I guess we know it's happened when he shoots that other Sandman in the raid on the runners, but how and why he reached that point is muddy, as is how and why Jessica fell in love with him. (And how and why the runners are convinced by Jessica blatantly leading the weak-willed Holly to affirm her version of the story.)
The low point of the film (coming right after the high point of Jessica's nude scene) is surely Box. A ridiculous design, an absurd character, a crisis that's introduced and resolved far too quickly, and a total waste of Roscoe Lee Browne (who's apparently the only performer of color in the entire film -- evidently the founders of the domed city were racist as well as ageist). And the Box revelation, as well as the later revelation about the lack of any Sanctuary, renders the whole film kind of nihilistic, because everyone in it is deluded, both the loyal citizens and the runners. Maybe that's the point, that they were both part of the same insular culture that knew nothing of the real world. But it still muddies the film's message, if any, still further.
As for the ending, looking at it again, I think it isn't just Logan's report that blows up the computer; it does overload implausibly (I think maybe the idea was that it was in some kind of mental battle with Logan and that Logan's resistance overwhelmed it, but that wasn't clear), but the whole room didn't start to blow up until a stray Sandman shot hit the computer banks in the wall, and then Logan helped it along with another shot. Still, it's implausible that damaging the central computer would blow up the entire city.
The "surrogation" hologram effects were cool, though. That was a very clever practical effect, using real holography, recording Michael York speaking in such a way that you'd see the image move as you rotated the holographic plate. It was really quite ingenious, even though it was unclear just what the hell it was supposed to be, and it felt more self-indulgent than story-motivated.
Also, we saw earlier that there was only one, very difficult and complicated way out of the city, and it came out in a cave in the woods -- so how the heck did all those people fleeing the exploding city manage to get out to the fountain area where the Old Man was? Why would it even occur to people who believe there's nothing outside the city to try to escape to the outside? That just doesn't make any sense. It feels like there's a scene missing of Logan and Jessica finding a way to lead the people outside to safety.
So my opinion of the film hasn't improved that much. It has its impressive aspects, but in a lot of ways it just doesn't hold together.
It occurred to me to wonder if the "Circuit" was some kind of holodeck-style telepresence rather than actual teleportation, but that seems unlikely, since Jessica entered Logan's apartment through the Circuit but left through the front door.
The first act is an impressive exercise in worldbuilding and well-written exposition, efficiently establishing the nature of the world through dialogue and action, in a way that largely avoids sounding stilted or contrived. The characters are talking about things they take for granted, but in a way that still clues us in to what their world is like. And it's an impressively realized world visually and conceptually too, with good design and location work, even if some of the effects fall short (there are visible wires on the Carousel levitators in some shots, and the matte shots are often misaligned).
I can't say the characters work as well, though. It never really becomes clear when Logan shifts from pretending to run to genuinely rebelling. I guess we know it's happened when he shoots that other Sandman in the raid on the runners, but how and why he reached that point is muddy, as is how and why Jessica fell in love with him. (And how and why the runners are convinced by Jessica blatantly leading the weak-willed Holly to affirm her version of the story.)
The low point of the film (coming right after the high point of Jessica's nude scene) is surely Box. A ridiculous design, an absurd character, a crisis that's introduced and resolved far too quickly, and a total waste of Roscoe Lee Browne (who's apparently the only performer of color in the entire film -- evidently the founders of the domed city were racist as well as ageist). And the Box revelation, as well as the later revelation about the lack of any Sanctuary, renders the whole film kind of nihilistic, because everyone in it is deluded, both the loyal citizens and the runners. Maybe that's the point, that they were both part of the same insular culture that knew nothing of the real world. But it still muddies the film's message, if any, still further.
As for the ending, looking at it again, I think it isn't just Logan's report that blows up the computer; it does overload implausibly (I think maybe the idea was that it was in some kind of mental battle with Logan and that Logan's resistance overwhelmed it, but that wasn't clear), but the whole room didn't start to blow up until a stray Sandman shot hit the computer banks in the wall, and then Logan helped it along with another shot. Still, it's implausible that damaging the central computer would blow up the entire city.
The "surrogation" hologram effects were cool, though. That was a very clever practical effect, using real holography, recording Michael York speaking in such a way that you'd see the image move as you rotated the holographic plate. It was really quite ingenious, even though it was unclear just what the hell it was supposed to be, and it felt more self-indulgent than story-motivated.
Also, we saw earlier that there was only one, very difficult and complicated way out of the city, and it came out in a cave in the woods -- so how the heck did all those people fleeing the exploding city manage to get out to the fountain area where the Old Man was? Why would it even occur to people who believe there's nothing outside the city to try to escape to the outside? That just doesn't make any sense. It feels like there's a scene missing of Logan and Jessica finding a way to lead the people outside to safety.
So my opinion of the film hasn't improved that much. It has its impressive aspects, but in a lot of ways it just doesn't hold together.
It occurred to me to wonder if the "Circuit" was some kind of holodeck-style telepresence rather than actual teleportation, but that seems unlikely, since Jessica entered Logan's apartment through the Circuit but left through the front door.
^ Good analysis and observations as usual, but you're wrong about one thing: Box rocks. 
I'll agree. I like the aspect that Box was an adaptive A.I.^ Good analysis and observations as usual, but you're wrong about one thing: Box rocks.
IE - He was a food storage robot, and when faced with the fact the the food source he was using died out, he just adapted as soon as he saw another source (Humans) start to arrive.
(At leaqst he didn't blow up in a CPU logic-causality loop .)
It does make the film even more dystopian once you stop to realize that if these truly are the last surviving humans, that means that somewhere along the line, white supremacists got their way and exterminated every other ethnicity. And then they designed their robot slave to look and sound like a black man. Wow, suddenly I'm on Box's side in all this.
Only in this identity-politics-obsessed day and age could someone look back on a 40 year old film and filter it through this lens. I also never interpreted Box as "black" nor did it occur to me to even think of the robot or its voice in racial terms. I just knew he had a cool voice with unusual (meme-friendly) mannerisms and catch-phrases. I had to look up the IMDB page to know that it was a black guy who voiced him. I don't think it factors in anymore than James Earl Jones voicing Darth Vader. Maybe you should really be writing for Huff Post or something. Please let up on the race-baiting.
Last edited:
I don't know about the Box thing, but the absence of black people in LOGAN'S RUN didn't go unnoticed back in the day. I mean, we're talking about a movie made in 1975, not 1945. This was nearly a decade after STAR TREK routinely depicted the future as not just belonging to white people, so LOGAN'S RUN does not get a pass the way, say, FORBIDDEN PLANET does. As I recall, Richard Pryor famously called the movie out for its all-white future, joking that it proved that white folk expected black people to disappear at some point down the road.
It was a valid criticism then. It's a valid criticism now.
News flash: From a nonwhite perspective, everything for the past several centuries has been identity politics. Once you step outside the assumption of whiteness as the automatic default, you can't unsee how white identity has been aggressively centered and all other identities devalued and marginalized. What's different about this day and age is that more people are admitting and confronting the wrongness of seeing an all-white media landscape as normal or harmless. That's a reduction in identity politics, not an increase. At least it's a leveling of the playing field so that white identity is not the only one being served anymore.
And still a problem in Hollywood now. Too many recent movies still have overwhelmingly white casts, even when they're set in cities that are majority-nonwhite in real life -- like Washington, DC in Minority Report, New York City in Limitless, or San Francisco in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. TV today is much better at reflecting real American demographics; the short-lived TV-series sequel to Minority Report had a very diverse cast, with the only white regulars being the returning characters from the movie. It actually looked like a plausible future version of Washington, DC, unlike the movie.
Exactly. It's easy to be dismissive of "identity politics" when you're not the one being erased or under-represented. And often the lack of an agenda is an agenda if it means defaulting to the status quo. Having the luxury of ignoring such issues is one of the more insidious perks of white privilege.
Suppose they did a remake of LOGAN'S RUN in which, for no particular reason, they just happened to forget to cast any white people. People around here would be cool with that, right, and not complain about reverse racism or whatever?
Last edited:
Not to make light (pardon the pun) of the race issue, which I do think is interesting and important to think about, but can we make an argument that the existence of white or light colored people in this type of future is a biological issue and not a racial issue or result of a racist policy of the people who built the dome (or made the movie)? For all the crazy racist theories that bigoted people have about color, we know that dark and light skin is related to environment and the sun. Dark skin helps protect against the ultraviolet light in regions where the sun is strong, and light skin help the body make sufficient vitamin D in regions where the sun is weak. Basically, this becomes a survival of the fittest issue, particularly in primitive times where technology does not allow sunscreen products and vitimin D supplements. Hence, if people lived under a dome for thousands of years and did not plan on integrating vitamin D supplements into the food supply (or if the plan was in place and broke down over time) there might be a natural selection process because of vitamin D deficiency.
I'm skeptical that the creators of the movie would even think of this, but it might actually be a possible result in a future where people were forced to live under domes, assuming that the domes block a lot of ultraviolet light.
I'm skeptical that the creators of the movie would even think of this, but it might actually be a possible result in a future where people were forced to live under domes, assuming that the domes block a lot of ultraviolet light.
I'll have to rewatch it myself to unequivocally agree with you, but I do know the design for the domes is at least based on the domed structures at the Walden Ponds Wildlife Habitat just outside Boulder, Colorado. It had been my understanding they used shots of the domes at Walden Ponds, but they may have made mockups for greater control of how they shot them. They also may have done so because I think there are only two domes at Walden Ponds, and there may be more domes in the film. As I said, I'll have to rewatch it myself.
ETA because Steven posted while I was writing:
There is a note somewhere, perhaps a title card, that the film is set in the 23rd century, so it's only three hundred years in the future.
Honestly, that seems like an awful lot of work to justify something that isn't worth justifying. The filmmakers screwed up. It probably wasn't a deliberate choice; I doubt there was a meeting where somebody decreed that LOGAN'S RUN explicitly takes place in a future where only white people exist, or came up with a "scientific" reason to defend that premise. They just automatically defaulted to the idea that science fiction movies are only about white people at a point in movie (and social) history when they really should have known better. And that's a fault of the movie.
Doesn't mean the movie has to be condemned to movie perdition forever, or that it doesn't have virtues to counter its defects. You can enjoy and even love a movie or TV show without being blind to its weaknesses. But denying those weaknesses, or getting all defensive whenever they're pointed out, doesn't illuminate anything and often just amounts to burying one's head in the sand.
LOGAN'S RUN is a fun movie with many positive qualities. That it forgot to include people of color in the 23rd century is not one of them. And we're entitled to look askance at that--if only in hopes that science fiction can do better in the future.
Public transportation is free. Teleportation is behind a paywall.This perplexes me. They have that technology and still they use those little pod cars...
All of this is why I prefer the novel and the recent comic book adaptation of the novel (not the movie, although it uses elements from the movie, like the design of the Sandman uniforms) over the movie, which has dated considerably and has no point.
Interestingly enough, the city miniatures were used again in the movie Ice Pirates.
I've seen it claimed over the years that the idea of everyone looking the same was the film makers way of showing that the city has no internal social divisions (because everyone looks the same.) Though of course I don't buy into the argument itself, the intent may be real as the film is crammed with a lot of half-baked ideas like this.
If nothing else it seems hard to credit that it was simply a coincidence. I mean was the ethnic makeup of Dallas such in the 70's that a casting call of seemingly several hundred young extras would yield 100% white people? I mean for all I know it's possible, but it seems like a bit of a reach.
First off, wow, that is just incredibly not how ethnicity works. Nonwhite people aren't just white people with more pigment -- good grief. An ethnically African person with albinism is still quite recognizably nonwhite, e.g. Marvin "Krondon" Jones III of Black Lightning. Nobody would mistake him for Michael York. And what about Asian people? Their skin tone is about the same as white people's, since they're from the same latitudes, but there were still no Asian people in Logan's Run.
Second, the movie was quite explicitly set in 2274, just under 300 years after it was made, not thousands.
I don't know. I just say that I never saw them together...
Similar threads
