THX-1138: The Director’s Cut

Ealasaid/ September 6, 2004/ Movie Reviews and Features

Originally written for The Milpitas Post
Directed by: George Lucas
Starring: Robert Duvall, Maggie McOmie, Donald Pleasance, Don Pedro Colley
Rated: R for some sexuality/nudity
Parental Notes: This dreamlike film is probably too odd for most preteens and it contains sexual material which while not terribly explicit may be considered inappropriate for youngsters.

George Lucas is at it again. In the late 90s, he applied modern special effects to the first “Star Wars” trilogy and now he’s done the same thing with “THX-1138.” “THX-1138” was heavily edited by the studio when he made it in 1971 and now Lucas is taking this opportunity to put it back the way he wanted. As long as he’s fiddling with it, he’s made a bunch of other changes, too.
“THX-1138” gives us a dystopian future where the government dispenses sedatives to its working drone population, people have prefixes and numbers rather than names, and their entire environment, from where they live to where they work and what they wear, is sterile and white. Drones who find their sedatives don’t make them sufficiently content can pray to OM, the God “by the masses, for the masses,” in telephone booth style confessionals.
THX himself (Robert Duvall) is a fairly content fellow, working in a factory to make robotic policemen and enjoying holographic entertainment at night. But his roommate, LUH (Maggie McOmie, in her only film role), has gone off her drugs and desires him. She surreptitiously changes his medication around and he falls in love with her. Unfortunately, drug evasion is a capital crime and sexual contact with another person is forbidden. When LUH’s supervisor, SEN (Donald Pleasance) decides he wants THX as a roommate and intervenes to separate the two, disaster is in the air. Soon THX is in prison, a huge white room with no walls. If he can only find a way to escape, he can figure out what happened to LUH.
The new “THX-1138” is not what one would normally think of as a director’s cut. Usually, a director’s cut is one which restores footage cut for the studio or for the MPAA to get a lower rating. The new “THX-1138” has been extensively restored but the new footage is largely generated by Lucas’s effects team’s computers and much of the existing footage has been altered.
When he made the film originally, Lucas had very little access to special effects, a tiny budget, and almost nowhere to shoot. Most of the film was shot on location in the San Francisco area, in half-built BART tunnels and public buildings. This contributed greatly to the sterile, harsh feeling of the film and increased the dream-like quality of the narrative.
In the new version, Lucas has added backgrounds, wider crowd shots, and even created some scenes out of whole cloth. Most of the CGI inserts are very well done and fit in surprisingly well with the stunningly remastered original footage. The special editions of the Star Wars films suffered from the CGI not matching at all well with the existing film, and Lucas seems to have learned from those mistakes. This new release is crisp, with beautiful contrast and color levels. Those who sigh over yellowish VHS transfers will likely enjoy the restoration work.
However, some of the additions are questionable. For example, if THX was meant to roll his eyes up into his head when he’s “mindlocked” while at work (in a bureaucratic error which almost causes a nuclear accident), why didn’t Lucas ask Robert Duvall to roll his eyes up back when he made the film? Although the alteration is small, it seems unnecessary, almost like change for change’s sake.
“THX-1138: The Director’s Cut” re-opens the debates that raged when Lucas reworked his “Star Wars” movies and announced that he would not be releasing DVD versions of the original editions, only the special editions (and in fact the DVDs are different even from those). Purists will rage, low-key fans will shrug, and the rest of the world will likely not care, with the possible exception of film philosophers, who will find it a source of endless discussion.
Doesn’t a director have the right to change his work if he wants? Should movies be static, like time capsules from an era, or should they be fluid, changing to reflect the times? Shouldn’t Lucas quit fiddling with his old movies and make some new ones? Is his constant reworking of previous films a sign that he’s losing his creative spark? (Actually, many would argue that Jar-Jar Binks is a sign he’s already lost it completely, but that’s another debate entirely.)
Whatever your take on the subject of reworking old movies, “THX-1138” is still a strange, powerful film and well worth watching. It is startlingly different from all of Lucas’ other work, and is intended to be thought provoking rather than entertaining. The new CGI enhancements haven’t changed the heart of the film, they’ve just given it a facelift, and while the facelift may be unnecessary, it’s not harmful.