TCM showed Logan’s Run (1976) again recently as part of their Oscars celebration. (It won a special achievement award Oscar for visual effects. If only they had known what was coming the next year {Star Wars}, would they have granted such an award to Logan’s Run? Hard to know…) And upon seeing it again, it made me wonder about a couple of things.
First of all, this movie takes place in a completely homogenous society inside a series of domes that’s completely cut off from the outside world, and yet they’ve got two people who speak with British accents: Michael York and Jenny Agutter. How could this possibly happen in such a situation, with everyone else speaking in American accents, and with all children brought up in a rigorous system automated by computers that also speak with American accents? (Maybe the casting people said they had to have a leading man with a large nose bridge, and Michael York was the only one they could find, and accents be damned?)
Then, at the beginning of the film, we see the city’s domes, and then we see inside the domes, and the city is kind of like a large version of Disney World, with silly-looking buildings connected by tubes (in place of a monorail) carrying cars and such around. But a little bit later in the film, we see that for sexual encounters, all anyone has to do is put themselves into a queue, and they’re instantly transported to whoever wants them. So they have transporter technology, but they only use it for sex hookups, and everyone still has to drive to work, or anywhere else? Why would anyone do that? If you can transport for sex, then why not for work? (Maybe it’s to remind everyone that work is not supposed to be fun, and also so you can still get in trouble for being late? And, yes, I know they say it’s a hedonistic society where nobody works, but that’s not true, as the Sandmen work, the guys who clean up the runner’s dead bodies the Sandmen kill work, the maintenance guys who have to patch up all the laser blast holes in the walls the Sandmen shoot work, the computer people work, the plastic surgery people work, etc. A lot of people here have jobs, despite the claim that: “mankind lives only for pleasure,” and: “the servo-mechanisms provide everything.” Maybe people there love their jobs so much, they do it for pleasure alone and they don’t get paid? Is that what they mean? Because a lot of people have jobs in this domed city, as we can clearly see. And apparently, they still have to commute to work despite transporter technology that’s clearly available for sexual encounters.)
Here in Los Angeles, we have billboard signs advertising apartment buildings that sit by clogged thoroughfares, and they say: "If you lived here, you'd be home by now!" In the domed city, maybe they have signs that say: "If you were going to have sex instead of going to work, you'd be there by now!" You know, just to rub it in.
Here in Los Angeles, we have billboard signs advertising apartment buildings that sit by clogged thoroughfares, and they say: "If you lived here, you'd be home by now!" In the domed city, maybe they have signs that say: "If you were going to have sex instead of going to work, you'd be there by now!" You know, just to rub it in.
