THX 1138 (2004, DVD)

What has always set George Lucas' films apart from other Sci-Fi has been the incredible way in which he is able to make fantasy worlds seem believable. It is what, in my opinion, truly sets the Star Wars series apart from the Star Trek series. In Luke Skywalkers Tatooine home, for example, the attention that the set designers spent on making his Aunt's kitchen look real and lived it is exactly the type of detail that made the film so good.

It was therefore something of a revelation to see THX-1138 for the first time and see a lot of that type of attention to detail that the later films reveal. It makes me realize more than ever that such a detailed vision comes out of Lucas more than probably anybody else.

The story of THX-1138 is by no means enthralling. I found the story of a man named THX-1138 (Robert Duvall) living in a future utopia gone bad to be very much derivative of other famous works like 1984 and Brave New World. Then again Star Wars was derivative of many other sources as well. In THX-1138, however, the film just doesn't transend its source material as well as Star Wars did.

THX-1138's roomate is a female LUH-3417 starts to experiment with dosage on the drugs they are forced to take by 'Big Brother.' This experimentation leads to the eventual sexual pairing of the two. Because of this illegal act they are arrested and eventually THX-1138 thinks about escaping the constraining world he lives in.

The dialogue is extremely minimal, and the actors play their parts with almost no emotion at all. Only Donald Pleasance, who plays SEN 5241 brings any life to the role. This is probably not the fault of the actors, however. I am sure that Lucas wanted the characters to reflect the cold constrained world they live in well.

Character development happens abruptly and I found that I had very little emotional involvement with what was happening to the characters.

Visually, however, the film is striking. The film is almost entirely set in the infrastructure of San Francisco's rapid transit system (BART) that was under construction at the time. These sets are used very effectively at creating a cold passionless world. One of the best visuals is the use of the real world BART control centers to be the central command HQ of the future world of the film.

The use of a real world control center lends an authenticity to the place that a set could never match. The result is that watching the group of controllers watching over and policing the world is downright creepy. The extensive use of white tiling in the BART system just increases the coldness. Perhaps the best thing I can say is that even though, as a Bay Area native, I am extremely familiar with the BART system, the film was able to make me think more of the future world than make me think of a morning commute.

Of particular note is how well the cinematography contrasts the warmth of the character's flesh tones with the whiteness of the background. The film does a lot visually, even if it fails on its handling of plot and character development. I find it very interesting that the last two Star Wars films suffer from almost exactly the same critique.

If this film ends up boring you, at the very least, any Star Wars fan needs to check out the chase sequence at the end. In the chase, the bad guy's vehicle sounds suspiciously like that of Darth Vader's tie fighter in Star Wars. The chase is definately the highlight of the film and is a very significant harbinger of the Tie Fighter vs. X-Wing chase that would take place in the trenches of the Death Star.

What really stays with me after watching this film, though, is how Lucas was able with a small budget to create a very believable futuristic world. Compared to the very similar, but cheesy special effects laden Logan's Run from 1975 it is clear that Lucas had a special gift for Sci-Fi that few of his peers even came close to having.

Puritan Meter: Despite its PG rating, there is a fair amount of incidental female nudity.