THX 1138 at 50: Rebel Genius - 50th Anniversary Video | Movie Birthdays 

So happy to see that this film is finally getting the recognition it deserves. It's been a favorite of mine for decades.

Even after his great success with his Star Wars legacy, THX 1138 still gives me the best respect for George Lucas’ talents as a science-fiction filmmaker. Happy 50th Anniversary. 🖖🏻

another excellent review. A terribly underrated film whose message is even more relevant in today's self-indulgent society.

I had no idea about the close relationship between Lucas and Coppola in the early days of their careers. They really are the icons of 70s cinema. Also the visual effects in this film look so good! Crazy to think that it came out in 71. You've got great videos too! I too make videos on Oscar winning actresses. :)

THX-1138, a gem in the annals of indie filmmaking with a deeply insightful take into the future of society and its norms...perhaps more relevant today than it was at its inception. A thought provoking review for todays audiences...the wake up call for today's citizen.

Family friend Ian Wolfe was in this. Im not sure if Spielberg was aware of Ian because of this, Lucas’ early film, but decades later, Steven Spielberg asked Ian to be in the episode “Grandpa’s Ghost” of his tv anthology. Ian at first declined, but Spielberg said he would do it with Ian or no one at all. Spielberg sent a limo to take him to the set each day, a star treatment that Ian as a lifelong character actor, had never received. It was Mr. Wolfe final role, and he’s amazing in it. (Though his voice is in LaLa Land, sadly uncredited)

When driving through the Bay area tunnels to Alameda for example, I liked the fact I was driving through the tunnels used in THX-1138. Just needed a Lola T70.

A classic masterpiece!

Saw both the original (internet archive) and the directors cur (max) and i respect both equally. The directord cut gave it the tweaks it needed.

really well done! THX has been one of my top 10 movies since i was about 12 years old, and its still there.

Excellent essay! Well done! 😉 O.O.K 👌🏼💙

A Exellent creative movie ...!

A very brave movie conveying a very actual and Orwellian message

Great review!! Straightforward

Incredible take! All along I was thinking, I hope you make a video one day that explains how Lucas want from THX1138 to Star Wars...and then you sum it all up in your final few words...escape, not just for the audience from reality but for Lucas from the system. Still, I'd love to see your take on Star Wars and how it came into being...

This was absolutely brilliant and a great history lesson on Lucas’s beginnings with Coppola. I can’t wait to go and watch this film. I’m really glad I found your channel. You document most of my favorite films and it’s exciting to watch those get broken down, it’s more exciting to find new films that I can look forward to watching and this is certainly one of them. This looks to be one of the greatest sci-do/futuristic movies I’ve seen which I can before even watching it. The backgrounds, the story line, the cinematography were either way behind their time or maybe a little too real for the way America was going at the time and may have struck some sort of fear in critics and audiences alike showing the opposite of consumerism which you eloquently described perfectly as the driving force of identity in 1950’s suburban America. Living here, I can say as child of the 80’s and 90’s, the older generation never let go of those theories from the 1950’s and early 60’s and always spoke about that way of life always as “ the right way “. I look forward to exploring the rest of your channel.

Perhaps your most layered/complex review thus far - one for your more discerning film buff/connoisseur/commentator to appreciate, engage and grapple with. However, your journey and objective I feel, is to constantly challenge (as well as to entertain and inform) and this you do here in spades...

amazing

Saw it last week. Blown away by how sterile the future looks and the shot of the bird signifying how free THX is.

This is one hell of a documentation. Great job!

a good & prophetic movie like "Soylent Green" & "Logan´s Run" (all from the 1970s)

Despite a phenomenally scary vision, despite the appearance of my two favourite supporting actors (Duvall and Pleasence) THX and George Lucas is a film and filmmaker I have never warmed to (I mean if you don’t like Star Wars then there is little to like from Lucas) Having rewatched the film today, the film has themes that resonate even more so than the 1960s/1970s, surveillance society, consumerism, trading freedom and free will for comfort and cash (or credit, since cash also offers some form of freedom) The setting would certainly go onto subconsciously inspire future films, and its vision of the future would also, even though to be fair other sci-fi films did it far better. And then there is the so called counter culture of the period, which IMO Lucas totally personifies. Protesting against a conservative and hypocritical establishment of the old, Lucas went against the establishment by creating a film that was so dialed down and so singular that it puts this conservative establishment on a slab. Controlling on what the masses indulge and stamping out creativity, or to put it in a socio context stamping out personal freedom and thought via censorship and the curbing of thought. But, like some political ideas, what starts out as a radical good idea soon turns sour and, in this context, Lucas’ vision and career IMO turned sour pretty quickly. Out of all the directors who came along in the 1970s, Lucas is the only one who achieved what all these artists supposedly truly wanted…freedom, and he did so by going back in time to his conservative childhood and giving a then modern audiences a slice of sugar coated nostalgia. Star Wars overnight became the then new form of commercial filmmaking, high concept was in and Lucas broke the gate, and he did so… by becoming trapped in the very thing he was against, because he may have opened the floodgates, but he didn’t rule the waves. Just take a look at the Indiana Jones trilogy, he produced them, but it was Spielberg who directed them and got the kudos for it. Compared to Scorsese, Coppola, Spielberg, De Palma, even Paul Schrader, Lucas truly is the odd man out in the fact that he never really achieved the artistic vision he originally envisioned for himself... and yet he was the one who got the big bucks. As I mentioned above Lucas personifies the then counter culture of the baby boomers, in the fact that they were very much in the right place at the right time, they were protesting against the old guard, and very soon they became the establishment, and now they are the old guard. I mean who would have thought a radical filmmaker like Lucas selling his legacy to Disney?!😉 Still no reason to begrudge the fellow... he did produce Akira Kurosawa’s Kagemusha and Misima for Paul Schrader

Movie Birthdays Do you wonder what would the surface look like I hope this movie gets a sequel will focus on THX’s survival on the surface and meets a group of people And join forces with him and needs to learn what happened to the surface and need to encourage everyone in the underground city to return to the surface

timeless classic but it is impssible to get the original theatre release.

Deth to collectivism! Deth to order! May chaos and freedom reign supreme forever! May the state be buried in a nameless grave! Ave vindicta!

The director's cut took more away from THX 1138 than it added. I am still willing to pay for a legit copy of the original film. Where is the remastered theatrical release George?

I'm sure I'm not the first or the last to notice the irony, that the same director who made this movie denouncing mindless consumerism, also made the movie that started one of the greatest merchandising powerhouses in history. ( ᐢ (oo) ᐢ )

Excellent video! You definitely deserve more subs. (And I'm now among them.) But speaking of 1138's politics, one element that rarely gets talked about is its treatment of black people. They *only* appear as holograms on TV, aside from the one THX meets. And he actually rejects his own personhood, referring to himself as 'only a hologram.' The implications of this are absolutely horrifying. Apparently, in THX's world, black people have been utterly dehumanized and turned into a permanent entertainment class, a chattel minstrel show for the otherwise lilly-white society. That's maybe the bleakest part of an already depressing movie.

You will own nothing and be happy.

Nice essay but far too kind. After the brilliant "THX 1138", Lucas gave up all experimentalism, was co-opted by consumerism, and produced films stuck in childish modes. ("American Graffiti" was at least adolescent.) Wexler's artistry and "Star Wars" are diametric opposites in terms of both film-making and politics. Lucas' space fantasies continue to replicate themselves across our media landscape, like the factory-produced objects they are. But his one unforgiveable act was returning to add those digital effects (as seen in the clips you used) to the minimalist "THX", which otherwise thrives on Murch's brilliant soundtrack. Unless you watch the version on VHS tape, you are not watching the original film. (Even that was an extension of his student project, "Electronic Labyrinth", which deserved mention here.)

I see none of those politics on the film.

Let's stop pretending THX 1138 is a good movie. It's only "great" because Star Wars made huge money. Every great movie makes money eventually. It could be a box office flop at first but when people eventually see how great the movie is it makes money on DVD, streaming etc. THX has never made money ever because it's trash. Yes the theme is great but the movie is trash. The director's cut even lost money. George Lucas is a terrible director. Everything he touches is trash except for Star Wars 4-5. He didn't direct Indiana Jones and nobody would be even talking about American Graffiti if it wasn't for Star Wars. Lucas is the Vanilla Ice of filmmaking. One hit wonder.