THX-1138

Portions of this originally appeared in INsite magazine, February, 2006.

            The time has come to reevaluate George Lucas, not as a public persona, but as a filmmaker.  Cynical Star Wars fans who gave up on Lucas after The Phantom Menace have something in common with film snobs in general: they refuse to admit he’s a good filmmaker.

In 1970, the original version of THX-1138 hinted at a filmmaker who was willing to take risks.  It was a mere hint, though, as Warner Brothers removed several minutes from that film, and never released a proper version on video.  For most fans, the result was a mess: a movie that made no sense, on a pan and scan print that looked like the Wampa had used it as dental floss.

When Lucas touched up the original Star Wars films, there was a collective gasp from his fans.  In their eyes, the holy trilogy was already perfect, and needed no tweaking.  The overall reaction to the new THX-1138, however, has been overwhelmingly positive.  Have we become used to Lucas’s tendency to cover up his old “mistakes?”  I don’t think so.  The honest truth is that, for the first time, Lucas has actually achieved what he set out to do with his special editions, and has improved one of his old films.

Luckily, this one is his most important.  While American Graffiti and the Star Wars movies are entertaining, THX-1138 holds the key to the real Lucas.  This is the Lucas who, along with Francis Coppola and others, started the American Zoetrope company as an alternative to stale, Hollywood fare.  Easy Rider had broken the mold of what defined a success in Hollywood, and the studios began to look more towards youth culture to make a buck.  American Zoetrope was to be the beginning of a movement, and THX-1138 was to be that movement’s first baby steps.  It was a rebuttal to Vietnam, Nixon, racism, and other things that never quite went away.

In the film, humanity has been reduced to an androgynous, underground mass of slaves.  They’re kept in line with psychoactive drugs and bland, holographic entertainment.  Love is outlawed; the system creates more workers through other means.  THX-1138 (Robert Duvall) works in a factory, building the very robots that oppress his people.  His mate, LUH-3417 (Maggie McOmie) changes his daily dose, and he finds himself attracted to her.  They are caught, though, and LUH is taken away.  With the droids on his tail, THX searches for LUH, and in the process learns he no longer wants to be a part of this world.

The movie is more Karl Marx than Buck Rogers (and, of course, all the Joseph Campbell stuff is there, too), but that’s precisely what makes it Lucas’s most interesting work.  It’s a portrait of a man who’s going against the grain and taking risks.  Lucas did the same thing with each of his movies.  We tend not to notice this, because his successes have been used as templates for hundreds of other movies.  THX-1138 is a success, too, but on a whole other level.  See it.