THX 1138

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(Redirected from THX-1138)

Template:Infobox Film THX 1138 was George Lucas' first feature-length movie. It was made in 1969 and was released to theaters in 1971. It was a feature length version of an earlier student film by Lucas (Electronic Labyrinth THX 1138:4EB, 1967). The movie is set in an underground dystopia, and shares themes with The Machine Stops, 1984, Brave New World and, to a lesser extent, Ayn Rand's novel Anthem. One of the inspirations for this movie is the short film 21-87.

Lucas revisited THX 1138 in 2004 and created a new Director's Cut. Using CGI techniques that were not available in 1970, he was able to show a world that is visually expanded from the original version. This Director's Cut was released to a limited number of screens on September 10 2004 and on DVD in Region 1 on September 14 2004 and subsequently in Regions 2 and 4.

A novelization by Ben Bova was published in 1971.

1 Story
2 Production
3 Trivia
4 External links

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Story

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The film consists of three acts. In the first, we are introduced to daily life in the underground dystopia through the central character, THX 1138 (Robert Duvall), a nuclear-production-line worker. All emotions are suppressed in THX's world through the compulsory use of (soma-like) drugs. However, THX's female roommate LUH 3417 (Maggie McOmie) has stopped taking her drugs, and secretly substitutes inactive pills for THX's medications. As the drug's effects wear off, THX finds himself experiencing emotions and sexual desire for the first time. He and LUH begin a loving relationship, and plan to escape to the "superstructure," where they hope to be able to live in freedom. Before they can attempt this escape they are arrested and charged with "sex crimes" and "drug violations."

The second act sees THX incarcerated for his crimes in a white limbo world along with a collection of other prisoners, including Donald Pleasence as SEN 5241 – a sinister technician who has been using his programming skills to try and replace LUH as THX's roommate and who is, himself a 'prisoner' of the limbo because THX reported him for said programming violations. Some of SEN's dialogue is taken from speeches by Richard Nixon Template:Fact. The outlook and content of this section of the film is somewhat reminiscent of the work of Samuel Beckett. Most of the prisoners seem uninterested in escape, but eventually THX and SEN decide to find an exit. They encounter SRT (Don Pedro Colley), a (tangible) hologram who has become disenchanted with his role in the society and is making an attempt to escape. Upon exiting the limbo, THX attempts to find LUH and learns that her identity has been reassigned to a fetus in a growth chamber. This indicates that she has been considered "incurable" and killed. Separated from the other two fugitives, SEN makes a tentative exploration of the limits of the city's underground network. Cowed by what he sees, he returns to the city and is captured by the authorities.

The third act is a Logan's Run-style escape (predating Logan's Run), featuring a futuristic and often-copied car-chase sequence through a tunnel network. THX and SRT steal two cars, but the latter immediately crashes. THX flees to the limits of the city's underground road network, all the while chased by robot police, and eventually locates an access tunnel that leads up to the surface. The robot policeman continue to follow THX up the ladder to the surface, but the expense of his capture exceeds its budget, and the robots are told to retreat, leaving THX to climb out and stand, for the first time, in the harsh surface sunlight. As THX stands before the setting sun, birds intermittently fly overhead, indicating that life is possible on the surface.

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Production

In order to emphasize the dehumanizing nature of the world of THX 1138, Lucas insisted that most of the actors and actresses in the film shave their heads, with some characters going completely bald, while others were allowed to maintain a buzz cut. As a publicity stunt, Lucas arranged for several actors to get their first haircuts/shaves at unusual venues, and have this filmed for later use in a tongue-in-cheek promotional featurette entitled Bald. Robert Duvall had his head shaved while watching a baseball game, while his co-star, Maggie McOmie, had hers done in a scenic park location. Another actor, who would later play an insane man in the film, was allowed to cut off his own hair and was filmed doing so in a bathtub. The Bald featurette was included in the 2004 DVD release. Many of the extras seen in the film were recruited from the addiction recovery program Synanon, most of whose members had shaved heads.

The chase scene featured Lola T70 Mk.IIIs with dummy turbine engines racing through two San Francisco Bay Area automotive tunnels: the Caldecott Tunnel between Oakland and Orinda, and the underwater Posey Tube between Oakland and Alameda. The final climb out to the daylight was actually filmed, with the camera rotated 90 degrees, in the incomplete (and decidedly horizontal) BART Transbay Tube before installation of the track supports, with the character using exposed reinforcing bars as a ladder.

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Trivia

The cinematic sound systems company THX Ltd. was founded by Lucasfilm and has been thought to be named after this film. THX officially stands for "Tomlinson Holman's eXperiment". Tomlinson Holman developed the THX sound system, having been commissioned to do so by Lucas in 1982. According to Lucas though, the "X" in the sound system name THX stands for "Crossover," a piece of audio processing equipment. In either case, it is not named for THX 1138 and Lucas says that the similar names are just a coincidence.

In the audio commentary track on the DVD release of the film, co-writer and editor Walter Murch explains it was his belief that the names of the two main characters "THX" (pronounced "thex") and "LUH" (pronounced "luh") refer to their being representations of "sex" and "love", respectively.

The number 1138 is a recurrent Easter egg in subsequent George Lucas films and products of the Lucas-founded LucasArts (computer games) and Industrial Light & Magic (special effects). For example, 1138 is the number of a cell block on the Death Star in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope; the number-plate of Paul Le Mat's deuce coupe in American Graffiti is THX 138; in Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, Rogue 11 is ordered to sector 38; in Raiders of the Lost Ark the Nazi harbor loudspeaker announces "eins, eins, drei, acht" (German for one, one, three, eight); and the number 1138 is printed on a battle droid's back in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. In Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, Clone Trooper Commander Bacara of the Galactic Marines has the numbers "1138" as his clone registration number.

Many industrial music and synthpop artists, among them Laibach, Chemlab, Moev and Clock DVA have utilized samples of sound effects and dialogue from the film. The beginning of the first track from Nine Inch Nails' 1994 album The Downward Spiral features an excerpt from the "beating channel" watched by the title character.

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