People from many years ago have wondered what the future would look like. Well, it seems that “future” has finally arrived.
Soylent Green was released in 1973 but is set in a very industrialized New York City in the year 2022. It tells the tale of Detective Thorn and his partner Solomon “Sol” Roth’s investigation of a murder case of the board member of the Soylent Industries company which was the provider of food for the population.
[SPOILER ALERTTTTTTT]
Throughout their investigation, they have been disrupted by multiple parties, including the Governor, but Thorn pushes on and eventually discovers a dark secret that lies inside the Soylent Industries factory: the food they produce is made out of humans.
The movie, however, also depicts a lot of different scenarios that they thought would be seen in the future. Some of them were right and some were wrong, but today we look at what it got correctly, and it’s actually quite scary.
Global Warming
The film’s opening scene consists of a series of images depicting mass industrialization over time. It features polluted rivers, jammed highways, and intense pollution that has been killing plants and animals.
In present times, the issue of climate change is so bad that even cacti are dying from extreme heat. The arctic regions are seeing shorter winters, deadlier avalanches, and polar bears are left floating on little chunks of ice. Car emissions and factory smoke have caused record-breaking high temperatures and we absolutely feel that raging heat when summer comes around.
Rising Food Prices
In the movie, the food shortage is so extreme that a jar of strawberry jam costs $150 (around 8,400 pesos at the time of writing) and people praise the heavens upon seeing a whole slab of beef.
Meat prices have become so expensive nowadays that being able to eat pork belly or even ham has turned into a privilege for those who are able to buy it. Our favorite pastries also become more difficult to purchase because of sugar prices going up as well. The satisfaction of enjoying a perfectly good birthday cake just became much more special.
Poverty
New York City in the Soylent Green universe showed people living in the streets, sleeping in cars, getting wet in the rain, and making fires just to stay warm when sleeping.
It is no different from the huge amount of people living in poverty and experiencing the exact same things as the people in the movie are. More and more people are becoming homeless and have no food to eat and provide for their families. Everything is becoming more expensive to the point that basic necessities have also become a thing for the financially blessed.
So in conclusion: We’re living in a dystopian world already.
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