I have 70s disease. It compels me to seek out anything with wood paneling.
This is the natural endpoint of a childhood spent watching Schoolhouse Rock videotapes, repeat-borrowing The Yellow Submarine and Monty Python from the library, and residing in an all-wood family room.* It also means that my pretty arbitrary idea of “the iconic golden age of science fiction” is the 70s. I’ll tolerate the 60s. I’ll stomach the 80s. But I can only go back further for historical purposes. “Surely the 1970s are where the real kings are!”
So I’ve read and watched all the classics! If by “all” you mean a number between one and five, where three of those are Star Wars.
Today I’m filling in one of my 70s Gaps and watching Logan’s Run. All I knew about this one going in is that it was big, it was popular, it had some sleek set design, and it’s about this guy running so he can flee a dystopian society where everyone is killed when they turn thirty.
When I turned it on, my assumptions were immediately challenged. By today’s standards, there are one, maybe two sleek sets tops. I can’t count the shopping mall.
*I know one of the properties listed above is really late-60s, but…The Yellow Submarine can be Honorary 70s. It’s grungy and scungy enough to count.
Impressive Intro Wherein Our Hero Aggrieves Babies
The opening credits are dying to be seen on a movie screen. Under a stormy blue sky, the camera sweeps across a vast bubble-city with panes like the lenses on a fly’s eyeball. Then we see the city underneath in the light: pods in tubes race above sparse trees into iridescent buildings. As intro text has told us, we are in a future after calamity. Machines serve humanity’s every whim, but there’s a catch: they must be violently “renewed” in the flames of something called “carrousel.” (The credits do spell it with two rs.)
The illusion of out-of-this-world strangeness continues as we see two babies in a big mechanical incubator, and then these two jackasses walking over and tapping the glass. Then they hammer on the glass, setting off the intercom and warning lights. But they’re not just some random dudes. One of them is Logan 5, here to visit the baby Logan 6 and then make him cry for not really any reason at all. They are related, and yet not at all, thanks to their dystopian society dissolving all familial connections.
I found this a clever and surprising first look at their society. Too bad there’s nothing really like it again.
After this, the illusion of out-of-this-world strangeness is shattered as they travel to the Mall of America.
To be fair, though, everyone is dressed as the Jolly Green Giant. Except for the two jackasses and others like them, known as the Sandmen. They mostly wear black, save for their collars and a single strip of quilted grey across their chests.
…Quilted grey. I’m gonna have to write that fashion idea down and inflict it on my worst enemy.
This huge, shiny place does tell us at a glance a lot about their stratified, uncreative society. Things we won’t be able to glean from the plot itself, we can tell by sight alone. It’s very effective. It’s also tacky, to my eyes, and that’s what I crave.
Now it’s carrousel time, and this is also bizarre, alarming, sticks in the mind… Warpy-gooey music plays as skull-masked people go flying around like the Boobahs and audience members in the stands pump their fists and cheer, “Renewal!” The Boobahs drift up to the ceiling and explode into flames.
Later I had the thought that somebody with a bunch of overdue library books could, in their frustration, throw their books at a ceiling fan while shouting, “Renewal!” This is just one of the useless thoughts I have.
As Sandmen, Logan and Francis’s job is to hunt down runners—those who escape carrousel for the slim chance to live past thirty. After the show, they leave on a typical job, chasing a dude around the mall. Logan’s bad aim is truly embarrassing. You can’t convince me he was just taunting this dude when he shot his laser gun at the wall behind him, once above, once to either side. Then the guy just runs off. It is karma for making babies cry.
It’s okay, though, they get him after he lobs himself off a mall railing. Logan checks out the body and confirms that the gem on his palm is black, signaling that it was his time to die. Then he shoots the body, which sizzles into globs of red meat and disappears before our eyes.
The dialogue between Logan and Francis is fit to the task, lively and easy to follow. They’re two good friends who also kill people! They really don’t like you to call it “killing,” though. It’s “terminating”! And that will never have bad connotations in the realm of science fiction.
Anyway, they mix shop talk with exposition about how great their world is. The system of carrousel ensures that the population is balanced: one man enters, one man leaves…wait, that’s a different famous film that I also never finished watching. Oh yeah, the phrase was “one for one.”
I believe these two have one of the deeper and more interesting bonds in the film, and yet it’s not that deep or complex, which I find disappointing. We don’t know any of their quirky little habits or, really, anything about their lives aside from their job and their desire to fuck (which we will get into). Part of that is because this movie is much more focused on the adventure, on action, on impressive sets, on shock and awe.
But maybe another part of that is bad writing.
Yeah.
I went there.
Take that, popular movie from decades ago.
The Fucking 70s
One thing I do not have 70s disease for is fucking. Once in a while I can get behind raunchy humor, and even execute it—just without the viciousness it so often slides into. But sex with a straight face just isn’t interesting to me. I hate sex, it’s boring, and Logan is never going to turn me on with that Manos: The Hands of Fate cloak he’s got on.
If you’ll recall, fucking is actually one of Logan’s core personality traits. The other one is cop. He’s like a budget version of the main dude from Soylent Green with the theoretical looks of a combination Luke-Skywalker-Han-Solo and yet in my opinion not as attractive as either.
So after a long day’s easy work, Logan goes home to chill in his pad. He goes up to a mystery screen to, apparently, generate a human being. First he generates a dude, but then he shakes his head. Then he generates a hot BABE!!!!! WOWZA #hubbahubba #boyoyoyoyoyyyng
He tries to get her to fuck, but she says “no.” He tries again and it won’t work. At first, I found it kind of hilarious that this guy auto-generated his own digital gynoid made for his pleasure and even she isn’t into him. Then I realized that this wasn’t person creation, but rather the Circuit—essentially a dating app teleporter built into your wall.
Of course people would use teleportation primarily for lazy cruising. I assume we missed the part where he used it to order pizza.
It turns out that this woman wanted to fuck, so she went on the Circuit, but now she doesn’t wanna anymore because she’s too sad. Her friend just went on carrousel, and she mourns him, despite knowing full well the cultural myth that everyone who dies in that fire is “renewed.” And when her words get dangerously close to rebellion and a desire to run herself, Logan tries and fails to soothe her.
Then Logan’s friend stumbles in laughing heartily. Guess what interesting thing he’s doing? I’ll give you a hint: he is way cooler than Logan.
Yes, that’s right. Francis is actually hanging out with TWO women! What a stud!!! Such a magical man, this is proof that his personality is so vibrant and bustling. The woman from the Circuit—Jessica, who will be back later—storms out.
Cool Computin’
We’re about to get into Spoiler Territory, so click here if you would rather skip to the end for my final thoughts and recommendation (or lack thereof?).
It’s back to the old salt mines as Logan and Francis go to Sandman HQ the next day. There are more intoxicating sets, this time dark and lit up with the colorful vectors of surveillance maps and cool circle-squares on the wall which have no practical purpose, but kinda look like cameras. “Why do they run?” a Sandman asks as an arrow on the display is zapped, then disappeared.
Logan is ordered to go into another room, a very special room…for this is the eerie mission-delivery room. Later it will be an interrogation room, which, given the ambience, is already completely unsurprising.
You know, I haven’t seen a science-fiction interrogation chamber in a hot minute. I wonder if (in the United States , at least) this is a fear that stoked many nightmares for popular authors and artists around WWI and WWII, carried on for about three decades, and then began to fade. Or maybe it simply felt overplayed, too well-used in stories that were too iconic.
Or maybe I’m totally wrong about this. After all, I freely admit that I’ve only seen like five classic movies in the genre and I have no clue what an Interstellar even is. So 1984 and Brazil are on my mind…and that’s pretty much it. Oh well. I’m just musing.
A machine with a detached female voice asks Logan if he is familiar with the symbol of the ankh, and with the word “sanctuary.” He says he isn’t. We know that he saw the ankh last night around Jessica’s neck, but I think he’s hiding this knowledge for dramatic and romantic effect to try and save her. He’s about to dramatically flip-flop on this desire to save her, though. Also, I was eating noisy carrots intermittently throughout the film and I didn’t think to turn subtitles on. Just keep that in mind going forward.
The machine reveals that Sanctuary is a haven for runners, and the ankh is the secret symbol shared by those plotting to escape to Sanctuary. Logan is aghast: he is just now learning that not all runners are stopped by the Sandmen. No wonder people run! In fact, over one thousand have escaped and are considered “unaccounted for.” Logan is given a new and terrifying mission: He must infiltrate these rebels and terminate the runners, and to do that, he must pretend to be one of them. He will have to run.
This is a rather cool twist on a story I was expecting to go the most predictable route. …Okay, to be fair, it’s mostly just a common, low-level twist: “MC does not want to rebel against the dystopia, but (MC fucks up/something happens beyond MC’s control that fucks them up), forcing them to rebel.” But the part I latch onto is the fact that the powers that be themselves are ordering him to make himself a dangerous outcast and that, in theory, he can go back to his cozy job in a few months.
Okay, maybe he can’t go back to it. When Logan’s hand gem goes from red to black, he desperately asks if he will get back the four years he was expecting. But the machine doesn’t answer.
This is a dramatic moment that makes no sense from a business perspective. It takes The Man from “asking him to rebel temporarily” to “literally just asking him to rebel, like for real.” I mean, ideally they would tell him that after this, he will live like a king in their posh society for the four years he’s still allotted, but instead it’s afraid it can’t do that, Logan, and shuts down.
I also think it’s ludicrous that there is absolutely nothing stopping his pal Francis from not only tracking him down (as is his job as a Sandman), but also turning this into a dogged personal vendetta for betraying not only the Sandmen but also their friendship and, henceforth, using every opportunity he can to shout “LOGAAAN!” before he shoots. But of course, without that, the movie couldn’t happen, so.
Logan and Jessica vs. Bag of Fish Flakes: Which Has the Most Chemistry?
Obviously, there’s a will-they-or-won’t-they thing going on with Logan and Jessica. Now, I don’t even pay that much attention to acting normally, and I can tolerate or even like some awful stuff. I think that means that if I think it’s bad, it’s pretty dire. That or the surrounding movie is getting predictable.
In this case, it is a little of both, as well as the fact that it’s a romance—something hard, hard, hard to make me care about in fiction.
I already know going into this that Jessica will be conflicted about Logan and he in turn will be conflicted about her. He or she or both are going to say, “No! I’m never going to run with you! …Oh, I would always run with you! I would never leave your side!”
Incidentally, the first time they meet via the Circuit, there’s an exchange where Jessica is walking away from Logan while they talk. Logan says something surprising. Jessica stops and turns her head, replies, then keeps walking defiantly. Then Logan says something surprising. Jessica stops and turns her head, replies, then keeps walking defiantly. After that, it happens again. Logan says something surprising. Jessica stops and turns her head, replies, then keeps walking defiantly. It’s hilarious. They kill me with this.
Who was rooting for this? Why would I want this lady walking around with her mouth open to get together with this jackass walking around with his mouth open?
Ah, whatever. After some “yes! I’m going to run! I’ll trust you!” and some “no…I’m going to run…you can never be with me,” they end up getting into a pod and subway-racing over to a place called Cathedral. That’s where all the bad seeds hang out.
This plot element confused me too. Maybe it’s because I was eating raucously, but did I miss some reason why the Sandmen don’t just terminate all of the rebel-delinquents in Cathedral, or why the people inside it aren’t considered “runners unaccounted for”? I doubt that public opinion would be against that; they’d probably just start screaming “renewal” again. Also, why did Logan come here in the first place? Is it to escape the murderers that Jessica accidentally put on his tail (whoops, forgot that plot element)? If it’s to gain information for his upcoming visit to Sanctuary, he certainly doesn’t get any of that. Also, Logan talks about the place like he’s familiar with it, which makes me scratch my head.
And I think it’s implied that while people in Cathedral do get old, we don’t see old people among them because they eat people who turn, like, fifty? Who even wrote that piece of worldbuilding? And where’s the proof? I want to see femurs on the floor, damnit!
Well, I guess the idea is that the “wild” people in Cathedral aren’t exactly draining the empire’s resources. Despite the name, the place is actually a derelict, overgrown maze that may have been a posh complex centuries ago. It also gives Jessica’s character more to do than fucking/not fucking. Her earlier reflections about wanting to have known her mother are given new depth when she meets a scruffy kid beyond the carrousel system. The kid steals from her, yet when Jessica catches up to her, she takes it softly and tenderly back.
Meanwhile, she and Logan also walk onto what appears to be a broken-down soundstage combined with the under-the-bed set from Little Monsters and summon all the Lost Boys, all wearing tattered versions of the Jolly Green Giant ensemble. They crawl down from poles and scurry out from holes, wielding weapons. But in the end, it’s all bluster. Only one of them was really interested in messing Logan up, and in the end he’s a coward. Their exchange is both interesting and confusing, for reasons I mentioned earlier. Do they really eat people? Man, I already need to rewatch this.
Logan then tracks down a runner hiding in Cathedral…but instead of ending her life, he tells her that he’s on her side. He entrusts her with what appears to be a smoke bomb, saying that when a Sandman does come for her, she needs to use it and book it.
Jessica sees this and goes, “Wow! Maybe I should trust him after all.” Francis, who tailed him in, sees this and goes, “Wow! Maybe I should swear vengeance forever.”
Face…Off
Okay, now Logan can start his infiltration mission. Again, I didn’t catch why he couldn’t have started that earlier. Maybe he was just using that Cathedral stuff as a way to gain Jessica’s trust so that she could help him out. I just don’t know, and maybe writing this review was a bad idea.
…Much like going to the New You face-changing salon was for Logan!
It does seem like a smart idea to change his face for all this, but of course, this movie isn’t known for having two leading men playing the same character, so, y’know.
A Farrah Fawcett-ish lady* excitedly takes him to the back, where the premium prime super-primo face-changing machine and its master dwell. Step into this egg-shaped chamber and his fancy, spiderlike, not-ominous-at-all device will laser your face apart, but it’s okay, a second laser will heal that instantly.
In the last scene Jessica decided she trusts Logan, but in this one, she decides that actually she doesn’t trust Logan, so when Logan is in the chamber, she gives the face guy insider information that the gem on his palm is black.
Also, I have to assume this face guy had a pre-existing mental condition, because instead of calling the Sandmen to take care of this, he just makes his lasers go ham on Logan’s face, and entire body. This chaotic laser mess looks quite interesting, but it destroys HIS OWN BELOVED SALON EQUIPMENT, which distracts me throughout the whole scene. Farrah Fawcett cries.
Luckily, Logan wrestles the face guy onto the medical seat of his own making, killing him in the mess of whirling lasers. He rushes out, Jessica rushes out after him, and Francis rushes in, then out after the both of them, all while Farrah Fawcett cries.
Then they’re back in the Mall of America. Looks like Logan’s gonna have to run with his normal old face after all. But how is he gonna escape Francis? Which store is he gonna run through? I will give you three guesses.
Jessica shouts, “Quick! Let’s run through the Love Shop!”
They run into a smoky red room and through a tangle of naked bodies all belonging to interpretive dancers. For every dancer who grabs them, their Speed stat goes down by 5, threatening to plunge them into Slow Motion. Jessica must be familiar with this game mechanic, so she helps guide Logan through while Francis is stuck behind them in a man-and-woman-grove forest.
They escape onto a really, really long staircase that leads them down into another dark and mysterious room, only this one seems to be empty, and the marks on the walls evoke ancient temples. Could this be Sanctuary? Nah, but it does have some rebels hanging out in it. They come out and thrust their spears up to Logan and Jessica’s throats. Incidentally, the spears also squirt mist, which makes them cringe and go, “Ugh!” I shouldn’t laugh at it, but I do.
They’re about to kill Logan for being a Sandman, but Jessica insists they let him go, because he’s a runner. But viewers are left in suspense: if Logan is freed, will he double-cross them in the end? Well, not all viewers are left in suspense. I for one am certain that in the end he’ll say something like, “I’d run anywhere, as long as it’s with you!” But I mean, the effort is there.
Still, Logan is almost a lost cause…until Farrah Fawcett crawls out from a little cranny. She’s still crying. Jessica hatches a plan to prove Logan’s ambition to run by reminding Farrah that Francis was chasing him—and after much goading, she does get her to remember and to testify in his favor.
Yay! Now Logan can go on to whatever lies beyond their big shopping-mall home. But he really wants Jessica to stay behind, presumably so that when he double-crosses, he doesn’t also have to double-cross her. But she insists, no! She’s running too! And then…okay, she said the line, not him. Jessica cries, “I’ll go anywhere, as long as it’s with you!” And I groan!
They go running and hit some kind of checkpoint, a closed steel door. Here they can progress no further unless they have the ankh. But Francis is after them, so naturally, they have to drop the ankh in some adjacent pool of water and fish around for it before they manage to get anywhere.
Eventually they emerge in a dirty-ass industrial area with fish in dirty-ass algae-clogged tanks. It looks very ominous and cool. What isn’t ominous nor cool is their dialogue, which really reminds me how…alien these people can sound. Alien in the boring way, because they have like two interests apiece. Mostly they become vectors for exposition.
“What is this place?” Jessica asks. Logan answers, “I believe it’s a breeding place…people used to breed fish, any animals they could get their hands on!” “It must have been a savage world,” Jessica replies. If Logan weren’t so distant from the camera, we would see him winking at the audience. A questionnaire would be provided to viewers asking whether they are thinking that A) they agree with her or B) they find her statement ironic.
Francis is also still following them. Soon Logan and Jessica emerge in an enclosed space. This is the perfect opportunity for Francis to scream his first “LOGAN!” and then fire such that the whole enclosed space floods.
But they get out of this, too. Also, in hindsight, not sure why Francis didn’t just silently shoot Logan, instead of loudly shoot somewhere else. Or maybe he could’ve compromised and screamed, then shot him right afterward. That way he could have his revenge-cake and eat it too.
After that, though, the adventure really begins. We were at baseline strangeness before, but things will get somewhat stranger yet.
Beyond the Veil
This is a great point in any story: not only do the characters get their own worldview whittled away (or obliterated), but the viewers hanging over their shoulders get a chance to see the imaginative powers of the creator/s in full flight. It’s an exciting, potentially chaotic threshold.
Logan and Jessica have fled the flooded room, but now they find that the world is getting…colder.
It’s a completely frozen cave. There are ice sculptures of penguins, seagulls, and a walrus. Or could they be frozen animals? And there are animal pelts fit for any caveman. Conveniently there are not one, not three, but two of them. Logan cries, “We better wear those so we don’t freeze to death!” Well, they are in dripping wet spandex, so that sounds decently sensible. Everyone strips. We see all four nipps, but we only see one ass. That doesn’t seem fair.
As they’re huddling in the cold, a voice greets them. And it promises food! Protein from the sea! Is this an imperious god? No! It’s some Chef Boyardee robot. He has the body of K-9, scaled up to human proportions. His arms are made of the tubes in my ceiling.
I am forever fascinated with tacky robots and how anyone thought certain designs were a good idea. Of course, the truth isn’t that they “always sucked” or “were clearly bad ideas.” It’s that many of our current ideas of what a robot design “should be” weren’t hard-coded into pop culture.
Much like dance moves, many styles of robot popular throughout time and space have been so outmoded that even speaking their names is embarrassing. Robbie the Robot was an icon, but I would not expect Interstellar to have a major robot character named, like, “Billy.” Unless he were a comedic robot butler or the whole story is tongue-in-cheek or something. It would be too corny. And it goes without saying that a robot can no longer have curvy bendy arms, unless he’s Bender.
These sorts of designs, bendy arms and all, were innovative because they allowed suit actors to portray robots that the smartphone-less neanderthal-peabrains of the day found decently believable. The Chef Boyardee robot in Logan’s Run also has a lot of personality, thanks in large part to those very same funny bendy arms. An expressive human head and the smooth movements of his chassis make him doubly fun to watch.
…Can’t we have more corny robots? They’ve got personality and charm. And I don’t just mean in Star Wars spinoffs. Besides, if C-3PO’s arms don’t squiggle, can we really call him charming? Can we?
Anywho, at first, Box seems like an excellent and wacky host. Maybe he really can be their ice butler. But then he shows them his “freezer.” In a frozen hallway, Logan and Jessica find nigh-infinite rows of not fish, not any other “protein from the sea,” but…humans! Box explains that the fish stopped coming, and this is all the meat he could find. He joyously adds, whipping out guns, that that’s his job!
To avoid becoming protein, Logan and Jessica run and search frantically for a way out. It turns out that way is relentless explosions. I’m sure that all these overlaid ice-fall and earthquakey effects looked cool in 1976, but today I can’t help but be reminded of computer-editing worst practices. Clearly no two layers of any given shot are in the same plane of existence: it’s a stream of ice overlaid on Jessica’s startled head overlaid on the shaking frozen seagulls. Very odd, very sad.
But they keep running, and they make it! The two emerge from a cavern, only to be smacked in the eyes by the sun. They have some…I’m gonna call it “pretty basic” dialogue. In the context of stronger characters, it would have hit me differently. “What is it?” “I dunno……..but it’s warm!”
I’m just hoping they won’t later go, “What is this on the ground? It’s like a brick, but rougher, heavier, and irregularly shaped!”
Logan and Jessica continue on their journey, now through the forested wilderness. They have no direction and no landmarks, only the vast natural world. Luckily, there’s nothing like radiation or pond worms giving them immediate sickness. It’s kind of annoying that the street is filled with chunky grey rocks, though. I’m not sure if this is supposed to represent “naturalistic” rubble, rubble from a specific attack, or, alternatively, just a cool visual. I guess I’ll never know.
The world is not magical for long. Trees grow, but otherwise it is barren. Water is rare. A lizard bites Jessica on the ass. But as they settle in to sleep together in the crook of a tree, I find, to my surprise, that I would have found the romance and their growing relationship more believable if they’d just been quieter about it and had left the “I’ll run anywhere with you!” talk and a lot of the will-they-double-cross-or-won’t-they out of it. Or else it’s just my own sensibilities as a person talking. Seeing two people coexist in a hard situation seems more powerful to me than seeing them belt out like it’s Titanic.
It’s also heartwarming when they have a joyful and intimate embrace in the water days (or weeks) later. They find not only water, but something different about themselves: the gems on their hands are now clear. They take this as a sign that the city has no hold on them anymore.
Mall of America, Meet the National Mall…of America
What wonders await Logan and Jessica now? Lots and lots of trees, for one. But at long last, they find manmade structures in the distance. On the horizon, there’s an obelisk choked by vines. Could this be Argentina?
Jessica declares that this must be Sanctuary. What else could it be? But Logan has begun to doubt that Sanctuary even exists. Still, they’ve gotta investigate.
Thus they begin to wander around Washington D.C, which is totally overgrown, lifeless except for the grasses and ivy. They find a massive Romanesque building, wander inside. To their surprise, they see, seated and built on a massive scale, a statue of an ape-man. Just kidding. It’s just the regular Abraham Lincoln. Logan, squinting and marveling, says the one line out of their outdoor journey so far that I have found interesting: “That must be the look of being old.”
No other phrase is that subdued or that well-turned. The rest of it is all, “People used to live here. I wonder what they were like?” “Hmm, strange stones with names and numbers on them… I wonder what they mean?” Man, you could’ve just squinted at the damn gravestones and I would’ve asked those dead-simple questions myself.
Then they enter another strange and vine-smothered building, congressional and library-like in shape. Whatever could it be?
As they’re investigating, table-leg raised as an improv weapon, they crack open a door and a cat comes running out. Opening the door, they find more cats. They also find books scattered pell-mell around ancient desks, and some old dude cracking nuts.
The Old Man Theory of 70s Science Fiction (and Possibly Other Fiction)
I have this theory. I’ve honed it with the help of all the reams of classic film and television I’ve taken in. That’s how you know it must be true. Also please note that I’m being sarcastic.
The theory is that every 70s or 80s science fiction film is improved by the presence of an old man.
Astute minds will recognize this theory at work immediately in by far the biggest franchise of the day: Star Wars.
In A New Hope, we’ve got one old man: Obi-Wan. If you want to be generous, you can also count Luke’s “old man” uncle dude. Not that he does much of anything, but he does provide a little more old man energy. After that, The Empire Strikes Back gives us an old alien man named Yoda to shake things up. And you can’t forget the most iconically wrinkled one of them all: Palpatine from Return of the Jedi.
The prequel trilogy failed because there were not enough old men. In fact, it was about de-olding a former middle-aged man. They were actively de-olding the cast. And the movies were very specifically about him being young. That’s no good. Revenge of the Sith was markedly improved when and as soon as the perpetually elderly Palpatine showed back up.
Now it should make perfect sense to you why Disney handled the 2010s sequels the way they did. They knew they had to bring the old people back not because of nostalgia baiting, but because they had studied the Old Man Theory. I should have trademarked it when I had the chance.
We see more proof of this in Soylent Green. Speaking more seriously, Sol elevates that movie. He gives a great “reason” for the screenwriter/s to add a wiser, more reflective, and more kindhearted counterpoint to a grim and at times amoral thriller.
You know how it often seems like writers can’t find anything for young female characters to do other than make them “hot and sexy” (or perhaps “sweet and virginal”)? Well, apparently they can’t figure out anything for old male characters to do except make them the beating heart of the entire fucking movie. (Old women might short-circuit these writers.)
It happened with Almost Christmas and it’s happening with Logan’s Run. Our heroes have just stumbled into by far the greatest character in the movie—the dude with the greatest lines, the greatest performance, the most gravitas, the most veritas, the greatest outfit, the greatest everything. In the credits, he is simply called “Old Man.”
He’s so great that he actually enriches the shitty acting and lines that popped up in the rest of the movie. Logan and Jessica are asking him stilted, alien questions, but now I’m realizing, “Yes, of course they would be alien and boring. It’s because they live in the most boring society of all time.“
Old Man spends all his days with no company besides his cats and his books. He has the look of being old, and Jessica fondles his face, which endears him more to me because I at times fondle my own dad’s face, though he doesn’t like it. Old Man is baffled by their questions. They’re baffled by his existence. He recites cat poetry by heart. They don’t know what poetry is.
But…could this really be Sanctuary? No, it’s not anything like the rumors of what Sanctuary should be. Plus, no one has fled this far—apparently, they were all frozen in Box’s lair.
But we can’t stay in relative peace for long; Francis has been chasing them the whole time. He takes Jessica hostage and hollers, “LOGAN! Is this what you want? Is this good?” He’s gesturing to the ruined Library of Congress all around them. I think he’s gesturing to Old Man’s acting skills, so I stand up and applaud.
Logan lost his gun earlier and has nothing to fight with but an old nasty table leg. Luckily, Jessica smacks Francis’s gun away, which helps even the odds. Not completely, though, because Francis grabs a giant American flagpole with a pointy bit on the end. That’s so much of a better weapon that I begin to question Logan’s intelligence. But I swing back to questioning Francis’s as Logan actually gets the better of him, upends Francis’s pinning tactic, and eventually kills him.
The burial is solemn. And afterward, Old Man has Jessica promise that she’ll bury him too, when the time comes.
Only…Logan isn’t sure he wants to stay. He wants to go back to the city! But why? His gem is clear now, so it seems unlikely to viewers like me that he’s actually thinking of double-crossing Jessica at this point. No, he insists that he’s going to show everyone their clear gems—and Old Man. Both will be proof that they can all grow old.
“Wow, what a horrible idea,” I think instantly. They work themselves up into being cheerful about it, though. Mostly Old Man’s just excited about seeing thousands and thousands of young people.
The Journey Home (With Some Explosions)
“Man,” I said, feeling a little sick to my stomach, “I wish they weren’t obviously heading toward a bad ending so that they could have peaceful journeying conversations about what gravestones are forever. I guess that’s what fanfiction is for.”
Logan, Jessica, and Oldster make the long trek back to civilization. At last they find some incredible geometric cataracts, which help power the city. Old Man is forced to stay behind as Logan and Jessica dive in search of an entrance, but they promise to bring all the heaps and heaps of young people back to see him.
They find a way in…and then they dash into the Mall of America just as a new carrousel is about to start. Logan cries, “Wait! Don’t go in there! Look! You can live and grow old!” Nobody cares and they keep walking.
Jessica cries, “Wait! He’s not lying!” But still nobody cares and they keep walking.
This has gone about as well as I’d heavy-heartedly predicted. Then the Sandmen run over and start tackling them.
Logan is taken back to the mission-interrogation room. The results are in: this mission has been a devastating failure. The robotic voice asks if he found Sanctuary. The floating heads of Logan’s innermost, lie-proof mind answer, “There is no Sanctuary.” He is asked about the runners. He declares, “All frozen.” He even reveals that all there really is out there is an old man in a ruined city with some books.
His confessions, spoken in a long drawl, are overlaid and looped—tortured and insistent without being fast, screaming, strained, or stuttering, which I think is neat. The machine keeps asking, but he can only repeat what the machine has already heard. The results simply do not compute.
Then everything blows up.
That part feels a little too quick and simple to me, but hey, we’re at the two-hour mark.
The computer that rules their entire domain sucks so bad that receiving a simple “X does not exist (in this one Sandman’s opinion)” is enough to explode everything. Good thing nobody ever told it to divide by zero up to this point.
Anyway, I know the important part is the social message about rediscovering human heritage, taking nothing for granted, and—most relevantly to this little slice of the story—not taking mere rumor as dogma. But I think most importantly it results in explosions. So now everyone everywhere is running around with their hair on fire and red lights are waking every baby in the country.
At this point Logan is trying to escape and shoot people, Jessica is trying to escape but mostly hide behind him, and Old Man is gazing up at the explosions with a rather confused look on his face.
This is when I sigh, saying, “I knew it. It’s a sad ending after all. If only Logan had followed Jessica’s advice and stayed in D.C.!”
It’s not even that she was right in saying that the city wouldn’t take kindly to Logan coming back because “things don’t change.” It’s that the city was remarkably soft on him, merely subjecting him to what in dystopian terms is, after all, a pretty gentle interrogation technique…and then he destroyed everything on complete accident.
Now everyone is screaming and dying because of him. His sheer existence in the system caused a computer bug that put everyone’s hair on fire.
That’s a huge burden to take on one’s conscience, but unfortunately (in my weird view) the film won’t extend long enough for us to see that. Instead, in what strikes me as another outrageously quick and simple turnabout, we get a scene that should really have “Hail the Sunshine” refraining in the background.
As Old Man keeps staring up, he sees…a magical procession of thousands and thousands of young people.
They all walk down the steps of the cataracts and surround him. They fondle his face. He giggles. More and more come down. They won’t stop coming.
Soon Logan and Jessica are in the crowd too. They meet Old Man’s eyes. They smile.
There’s a freeze frame of Logan and Jessica smiling. Over this, they overlay “The End” and an additional explosion, as if it were an action movie and they had just done a karate kick.
Final Thoughts: Is It Just Too Corny?
I guess now I know why tech bros have yet to call their tech-bro drinks “Logans.” Neither as playful as Star Wars nor as grounded as Soylent Green nor as stark as Alien nor as…okay that’s about all the sci-fi 70s movies I’ve seen—point is, it’s a charming and exciting film, but it doesn’t hit several of the high notes that I so wanted it to reach.
Most of its characters lack depth. They seem to have no lives beyond the plot. Perhaps in a slam-bang adventure flick, that would be okay, but this is a dystopia we’re talking about, one that won’t shut up about how it’s unjust and how we should think about that fact. Good conversation is expected. Yes, I may only be saying this because I’m speaking from 2024. And yet I also suspect that people who practically inhaled sci-fi books at the time Logan’s Run was released could well have said the same as I am now. But…yeah, a book can have countless cerebral or pseudo-cerebral discussions without becoming unmarketable. A movie, of this era aiming for an audience this close to general, maybe not. I understand that too.
Having said that, this movie is lush, energetic, creative, strange, and even—at times—goofin’. The third act has some serious highlights that elevate the rest of the film in a way that caught me delightfully off guard.
Sci-fi genre lovers who don’t mind the typical 70s trappings (like “edgy” sexiness) need to see this. Genre lovers in general should at least have it on their radar. Cheese lovers and watch-party people may want to skim my review to gauge whether this film is cheesy or twisty in a way you would like. Everyone else: eh, it couldn’t hurt.
8.5/10
This could easily have gone lower: I was worried there wouldn’t be enough wood paneling. But then they went to Cathedral. Not as much wood as the church in Soylent Green but damn that’s a lot of wood.
Thank you for reading, and Patrons, thank you for Patreonning.
For more nostalgic fun and intrigue, take a gander at these book and album covers (many of which are from the 70s, That Most Legendary Era) or waltz over to disturbing kids’ media that you couldn’t get away with now. Or, if you prefer to be baffled by the present (for yesterday’s science fiction is today’s science fact!!), what about LitRPGs? Yeah, that’s right, Grandpa, I know you haven’t read any of those #owned #owninggrandpas #mean