History Film / SoylentGreen

* BookDumb: It's implied that ''almost everybody in the world is''. Simple information gathering in the reference books is considered to be something a specialist "Book" should do, the only people shown reading the books are the old information brokers, the education system is implied to be reduced to the basic skills only, and - if it's not just sarcasm - Thorn at one point actually asks Fielding if he ''can write''.

* DeliberateValuesDissonance: PlayedForDrama. The harsh values of the world of 2022 - from the tolerance of euthanasia, to police being allowed to steal food from murder victims, to women being kept to live as prostitutes - are a sign of how desperate and hopeless society has become.

* DownerEnding: [[spoiler: Thorn is badly injured and may well die, but manages to tell dozens of people the secret of Soylent Green. Whether the secret will actually take root as public knowledge, and more importantly, what the public and United Nations will actually ''do'' with that knowledge (if anything), is left ambiguous. But it's irrelevant, given the sad state of the environment. With the oceans dead, the bulk of the world's oxygen supply is gone. Almost all of the world's natural resources are used up, too, and humanity appears to be headed for its final collapse.]]

* GreenAesop: Sol is particularly angry that no one - including him - did anything to save the environment until it was too late.

* MissingStepsPlan: Thorn [[GoMadFromTheRevelation goes insane after discovering what Soylent Green really is]], pleading the public to fight back, but Earth's biosphere is still dead. His actions will only trigger yet more rioting/violence as the masses seek to avoid cannibalism, and acquire real food, a short and limited stockpile for the rich. It could sustain thousands yes, but not millions, and never billions. If Earth's environment has any remote chance of recovery after the impending mass die-off, then [[UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom Thorn has just killed that chance]]. The poor will drag the rich down with them to destruction. [[DownerEnding Mankind cannot survive]].

* SoundtrackDissonance: Beethoven's 6th (Pastoral) is played as [[spoiler:Sol commits suicide]].

* OverpopulationCrisis: In this movie, humans have exploded in population numbers to the point where excessive consumption of resources has led to the pollution of our most essential fluids in life such as water, air, plants and animals that we need to breathe, eat and drink. Earth is virtually a dead planet now and the movie shows the humans during the phase where they're going through a slow, painful extinction.

* NoNewFashionsInTheFuture: People still dress like it's the early 70s 50 years later.

* UsedFuture: Everything has a battered, lived-in, tumbling-down aesthetic. Creator/RogerEbert positively noted this aspect in his 1973 review: "''Soylent Green''[='s=] real achievement is to create a 21st Century world that's convincing as reality; we somehow don't feel we're in a s-f picture. What director Fleischer and his technicians have done is to assume a very basic (and depressing) probability: that by the year 2022, New York will look essentially as it does now, only 49 years older and more run-down."

* BuxomIsBetter: Implied. When asked if he has anything to report on Simonson's "furniture" (i.e. Shirl), Thorn's only response is to grin, gesture vaguely at his own torso and say "Like grapefruit!". Which is a little odd considering, as [[LampshadeHanging Hatcher notes]], Thorn has never ''seen'' a grapefruit.

* CoversAlwaysLie: Though more misleading in this case. Once the "Riot Control" front end loaders arrive, they lift groups of people so slowly that you wonder why everyone isn't jumping right off. Possibly intentional. The riot scoops are just to get the rioters out of the way. If they jump and run off, it's still done its job, but if they actually do end up arresting the people rioting for food, they'd have to feed them.

[[TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture The year is 2022]]. Overpopulation has brought [[GaiasLament environmental]] and [[FallenStatesOfAmerica economic collapse.]] In [[BigApplesauce New York City]], pop. ''40,000,000'' (its current population is about 8 million, not much higher than in 1970), police detective Frank Thorn (Heston) is investigating the burglary-turned-murder of wealthy businessman William Simonson (Creator/JosephCotten), a board member of the food rations manufacturer [[PeaceAndLoveIncorporated Soylent Corporation]]. Based on the fact that there was [[KleptomaniacHero valuable food and books left for him to steal]], and that his bodyguard Fielding (Creator/ChuckConnors) and [[HookerWithAHeartOfGold 'furniture']] Shirl (Creator/LeighTaylorYoung) were conveniently away at the time, Thorn believes it to be an assassination. He gives Simonson's oceanographic survey (which he himself stole) to his elderly roommate Sol Roth (Creator/EdwardGRobinson), a book collector who remembers happier times, and they have a memorable scene cooking up the food that Thorn also stole from the late Mr. Simonson.

* TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture: The film was made in 1973 and is set in 2022. Thorn looks to be in his forties and has no memories of when there was green vegetation or proper food. Apparently, the filmmakers expected their dystopia to materialize in less than ten years after the movie's release. This would be in keeping with other then-current predictions. For instance global overpopulation was going to cause starvation on a massive scale in the ''1970s'', oil and other vital resources run out in the 1980s and early 1990s, etc. The [[Literature/MakeRoomMakeRoom book]] is just as bad. The world population in the book? Seven billion. One would think that the 35,000,000 people living in New York City would spread out. Not to mention that the ''current'' world population is estimated at 7.8 billion, and the US still has such a food surplus that it's routinely thrown out to make room for fresher ingredients. Much of the "overpopulation" fears of both the book and movie were already being quelled at the time by the massive agricultural progress of the Green Revolution, which was vastly improving food production. However, the average person was not yet aware of these new technologies and processes, much less how immensely effective they would prove to be.

* MundaneLuxury: Even the most basic goods, from cigarettes to jam, are expensive luxuries reserved for the wealthy. This becomes PlayedForDrama, as Sol, a man who remembers a more prosperous time, is crestfallen seeing things such as beef being so rare. It becomes a symbol of how dire the environmental situation is.
** Notably, the situation has gotten so bad that ''this is the only kind of luxury available, even to the super-rich''. The beef that Thorn steals is nothing special to the audience (the stew that they make is probably the best thing that could have been done with it), but it's "beef like you've never seen before" according to the grocer, a rare treat even for someone like Simonson, who is otherwise shown nibbling on a wafer of soylent green like anyone else. Governor Santini and his family go on a family outing to a "park" with a single tree and some grass.
* NecessarilyEvil: Simonson saw his assassination as necessary.

* AwesomeMcCoolname: The protagonist goes from being named "Andy Rusch" to ''Frank Thorn'', much more befitting of a Charlton Heston character.

->''"SOYLENT GREEN IS [[spoiler:PEOPLE!]]"''

->''"SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE!"''

* MsFanservice: Shirl struts her stuff in quite a few low cut dresses and takes it all off at least once or twice. Most of the other furniture wear similarly revealing outfits, with Martha, in particular, wearing nothing but a short bathrobe when she meets Thorn for the first time.

* SadisticChoice: Humanity is ultimately left with the choice of cannibalism or mass starvation (and inevitably extinction).

%%* NoNewFashionsInTheFuture
* NostalgiaFilter: Sol reminisces on the "[[GoodOldWays good old days]]" often, [[DeadPanSnarker much to Thorn's annoyance]], who quips even people back then must have been "pure and good" too. Sol corrects him. People then [[HumansAreBastards were as rotten as they are today]]. But the Earth ''[[GaiasLament was beautiful]]''.

* PhotoMontage: The opening credits show a stream of photos depicting the industrialization of America.

[[TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture The year is 2022]]. Overpopulation has brought [[GaiasLament environmental]] and [[FallenStatesOfAmerica economic collapse.]] In [[BigApplesauce New York City]], pop. ''40,000,000'' (its current population is about 8 million, not much higher than in 1970), police detective Frank Thorn (Heston) is investigating the burglary-turned-murder of wealthy businessman William Simonson (Creator/JosephCotten), a board member of the food rations manufacturer [[PeaceAndLoveIncorporated Soylent Corporation]]. Based on the fact that there was [[KleptomaniacHero valuable food and books left for him to steal]], and that his bodyguard Fielding (Creator/ChuckConnors) and [[HookerWithAHeartOfGold 'furniture']] Shirl (Leigh Taylor-Young) were conveniently away at the time, Thorn believes it to be an assassination. He gives Simonson's oceanographic survey (which he himself stole) to his elderly roommate Sol Roth (Creator/EdwardGRobinson), a book collector who remembers happier times, and they have a memorable scene cooking up the food that Thorn also stole from the late Mr. Simonson.

* MundaneLuxury: Even the most basic goods, from cigarettes to jam, are expensive luxuries reserved for the wealthy. This becomes PlayedForDrama, as Sol, a man who remembers a more prosperous time, is crestfallen seeing things like beef being so rare. It becomes a symbol of how dire the environmental situation is.

* MundaneLuxury: Even the most basic goods, from cigarettes to jam, are expensive luxuries reserved for the wealthy. This becomes PlayedForDrama, as Thorn, a man who remembers a more prosperous time, is crestfallen seeing things like beef being so rare. It becomes a symbol of how dire the environmental situation is.

* AwfulTruth: See the page quote. Mind you, the true horror isn't that Soylent Green is people, but that ''people are the only food left''.

* FallenStatesOfAmerica: The United States has gone from being a global economic power with rich farmland to an over-populated, resource-depleted wasteland.

* FoodPorn: In this CrapsackWorld, some salad, beef stew, and bourbon is enough to classify the "Sol and Thorn dining" scene as this.

Roth, having uncovered a terrible secret in the oceanographic survey, has lost the will to live and decides to take government-sponsored euthanasia. Thorn finds him at the suicide clinic, just in time for Roth to tell him the secret with his [[LastWords dying words]]. He follows Roth's corpse along to a factory that [[ImAHumanitarian processes the dead into soylent green biscuits]]. He makes a call to [[DaChief his chief]], Hatcher (Creator/BrockPeters), and is unsuccessfully ambushed by Fielding who dies in the struggle. Severely wounded, he urges Hatcher to tell people the truth about Soylent Green, thus providing the famous quote.

* TheBeforetimes: When Thorn gets to see the (hidden) video Sol gets to see in the euthanasia clinic, he is shocked at what earth ''used'' to look like.

* CoversAlwaysLie: Though more of misleading in this case. Once the "Riot Control" front end loaders arrive they lift groups of people so slowly you wonder why everyone isn't jumping right off. Possibly intentional. The riot scoops are just to get the rioters out of the way. If they jump and run off it's still done its job, but if they actually do end up arresting the people rioting for food, they'd have to feed them.
* CrapsackWorld: You have people sleeping on every inch of the street, and even on the staircases of apartments, real food is prohibitively expensive, there is a year long heat wave going on, not to mention the secret of Soylent Green...
* DaChief: Hatcher is an unusually laid-back example, but he still has the general look, rank and requisite "stop chasing this case" scene.
* DeliberateValuesDissonance: PlayedForDrama. The harsh values of the world of 2022, from the tolerance of euthanasia, to police being allowed to steal food from murder victims, to women being kept to live as prostitutes, are a sign of how desperate and hopeless society has become.

* DirtyCop: Thorn is a downplayed version of this: he still more or less does his job and tries to solve the Simonson case, but he still has no problem stealing from a murder victim.

* DownerEnding: [[spoiler: Thorn is badly injured and may well die, but manages to tell dozens of people the secret of Soylent Green. Whether the secret will actually take root as public knowledge, and more importantly, what the public and United Nations will actually ''do'' with that knowledge (if anything) is left ambiguous. But it's irrelevant, given the sad state of the environment. With the oceans dead, the bulk of the world's oxygen supply is gone. Almost all of the world's natural resources are used up, too, and humanity appears to be headed for its final collapse.]]
* DrivenToSuicide: Sol hates what the world has become and mutters about how he should have "[[DeadlyEuphemism gone home]]" ages ago. He eventually decides the time has come when he finds out the entire ocean is devoid of life now and the human race is forced to eat its own dead to survive.
* DyingMomentOfAwesome: Sol's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOV8mBjHHYg euthanasia]] to the tune of Music/LudwigVanBeethoven's Symphony No. 6 ("Pastoral") is so quite beautiful and poetic that it manages to mask the sadness. It also doubles as a very fitting last scene for legendary actor Edward G. Robinson, who would die a few days later. Charlton Heston's tears in the scene [[EnforcedMethodActing were real]], since only he had been told Robinson was dying, and the poignancy moved him.
* {{Dystopia}}: By the year 2022, the cumulative effects of overpopulation, pollution, and some apparent climate catastrophe have caused severe worldwide shortages of food, water and housing.
* EnemyEatsYourLunch: As a logical extension of KleptomaniacHero, Thorn doesn't pass up the chance to help himself to the food he finds in the flats he visits. Considering the lack of food, if it hadn't been him it would have been somebody else.

* ExtyYearsFromPublication: 2022 is fifty years after 1972, the year of the film's production. Of course, the actual release would be in 1973. Still, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Z2txLk0ybo one original trailer]] does describe the setting as, "fifty years from today."

* FoodPorn: In this CrapsackWorld, some salad, beef stew and bourbon is enough to classify the "Sol and Thorn dining" scene as this.

* GreenAesop: Sol is particularly angry about the fact no one - including him - did anything to save the environment until it was too late.

** Thorn to a lesser extent, while he tells Hatcher the secret he is clearly in an emotional state.

* GuiltRiddenAccomplice: This is why Simonson was knocked off by an agent of the Soylent Corporation: he was so troubled by his job, he confessed to a priest. His incredible calm toward his own impending execution implies he was willing to accept death because while he didn't want to live with the secret anymore, he believed it needed to be kept for the good of society.

** The priest whom Simonson implicitly told the secret of Soylent Green to before he died is in a permanent state of wandering around, mechanically doing his job and zoning out every time anyone tries to speak to him.

* HumanResources: Say it with us now: "Soylent Green is made of people." Interestingly, the film takes into account the usual reasons this trope is unrealistic - cannibalism isn't a choice, but a last, desperate act by a species that's managed to kill off every more practical and energy-efficient food option.

* KleptomaniacHero: The first thing Thorn does after entering somebody's home is steal anything edible, as the police are starving too. Based off his conversation with Thatcher, this is what police are expected to do.

->''"[[spoiler: SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE!]]"''

* ExtyYearsFromNow: 2022 is fifty years after 1972, the year of the film's production. Of course, the actual release would be in 1973. Still, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Z2txLk0ybo one original trailer]] does describe the setting as, "fifty years from today."