Not a bad film, not a great one. Kind of memorable, kind of thought-provoking, but, once you are provoked to thought and actually think about it... it doesn't make any sense.
The problem is, that, in coming up with a vision of this future dystopia, little of any actual thought was put into considering the actual ramifications of the plight the world was supposed to be suffering. They just threw in anything that seemed 'bad'-- crowding, pollution, shortages, corruption... without considering how the factors would intertwine with each other. So, we end up with some pretty nonsensical contradictions:
1) We see that cars are no longer used for transportation, there's very little in terms of any kind of production of anything, you can't get parts for things... in short, Industrialization has pretty much ground to a halt. So where's all that *pollution* coming from?
2) The situation is *extremely* volatile (understandably), with riots aplenty, and the only thing that seems capable of maintaining order is a heavy-handed police force. And certainly, the Powers-That-Be *want* to maintain order (and thus, power). So logically, they should be hiring LOTS of police force. Especially since, with *vast armies* of broke, jobless people living in cars and stairways, the price of labor has to be *dirt cheap*. They should have no problem at all hiring all the cops they want. Especially given that they're already not too fastidious about the character of the cops, given the rampant corruption. So why is the police force repeatedly shown to be thin on manpower?
3) If the earth is so polluted and messed up that you can't even raise food anymore, if farms aren't functioning, and people are reduced to eating synthesized dead people or sea algae, then why on earth is everybody shoehorned into cities like that? Why don't they at least spread out into the unused unproductive former farmland?
4) Given how dire things are, why aren't more people simply starving to death? Or dying of disease? If things are really as bad as they are claimed to be, it seems impossible that society could be as stable as it is portrayed.
5) How is it that the same species that had all the brains to come up with all the scientific/technological/industrial magic that *led* to this situation, was unable to think of *any* kinds of solutions to any of the problems? I mean, really, "eating people" was the best that human-kind could come up with?
6) What is that nonsense idea at the end about how soon they'll be raising people for food? What are they going to feed those people? That's a highly inefficient way to make food, you'd do better just directly feeding the people with what you would have fed your people-crop.
The truth is, the whole threat of industrial overpopulation flies in the face of the observed fact that rising industrialization produces rising standard of living which produces *lowered* birth rates. So this was NEVER going to be a profound look at a possible future. But even so, they could've taken more trouble to introduce a little more logic and economics into the story.
I'm looking forward to watching this movie again in the year 2022 and having a good laugh at its myopic vision of a future that will never come close to being.
The problem is, that, in coming up with a vision of this future dystopia, little of any actual thought was put into considering the actual ramifications of the plight the world was supposed to be suffering. They just threw in anything that seemed 'bad'-- crowding, pollution, shortages, corruption... without considering how the factors would intertwine with each other. So, we end up with some pretty nonsensical contradictions:
1) We see that cars are no longer used for transportation, there's very little in terms of any kind of production of anything, you can't get parts for things... in short, Industrialization has pretty much ground to a halt. So where's all that *pollution* coming from?
2) The situation is *extremely* volatile (understandably), with riots aplenty, and the only thing that seems capable of maintaining order is a heavy-handed police force. And certainly, the Powers-That-Be *want* to maintain order (and thus, power). So logically, they should be hiring LOTS of police force. Especially since, with *vast armies* of broke, jobless people living in cars and stairways, the price of labor has to be *dirt cheap*. They should have no problem at all hiring all the cops they want. Especially given that they're already not too fastidious about the character of the cops, given the rampant corruption. So why is the police force repeatedly shown to be thin on manpower?
3) If the earth is so polluted and messed up that you can't even raise food anymore, if farms aren't functioning, and people are reduced to eating synthesized dead people or sea algae, then why on earth is everybody shoehorned into cities like that? Why don't they at least spread out into the unused unproductive former farmland?
4) Given how dire things are, why aren't more people simply starving to death? Or dying of disease? If things are really as bad as they are claimed to be, it seems impossible that society could be as stable as it is portrayed.
5) How is it that the same species that had all the brains to come up with all the scientific/technological/industrial magic that *led* to this situation, was unable to think of *any* kinds of solutions to any of the problems? I mean, really, "eating people" was the best that human-kind could come up with?
6) What is that nonsense idea at the end about how soon they'll be raising people for food? What are they going to feed those people? That's a highly inefficient way to make food, you'd do better just directly feeding the people with what you would have fed your people-crop.
The truth is, the whole threat of industrial overpopulation flies in the face of the observed fact that rising industrialization produces rising standard of living which produces *lowered* birth rates. So this was NEVER going to be a profound look at a possible future. But even so, they could've taken more trouble to introduce a little more logic and economics into the story.
I'm looking forward to watching this movie again in the year 2022 and having a good laugh at its myopic vision of a future that will never come close to being.