History Film / THX1138

* ADateWithRosiePalms: The Director's Cut adds some sort of pumping mechanism that is aimed at THX's crotch while he watches pornographic holograms. Love and sex are outlawed in this society, so this is apparently how citizens expel their sexual urges.

This 1971 science fiction film was Creator/GeorgeLucas' feature directorial debut, and started his rapid ascent in Hollywood. You may be more familiar with this film from the sound system company Lucas named in its honor, or from the fact that the number 1138 shows up ''everywhere'' in ''Franchise/StarWars'' and [[Franchise/StarWarsLegends related]] [[Franchise/StarWarsExpandedUniverse products]] in reference to it. It is also a remake of his 1967 USC student film project, "Electronic Labyrinth THX 1138 4EB".

* PunchClockVillains: Everyone in society is drugged out and just doing their jobs. There's no malevolent leadership shown to be pulling the strings. When technicians are torturing THX with tests, we hear two voices going about it, and it sounds like banal on-the-job training.

* BureaucraticallyArrangedMarriage: Implied with the arrangement of "roommates" although the drug-enforced platonic nature of these arrangements calls into question whether "marriage" is quite the proper word for it.

* GeorgeLucasAlteredVersion: Released in the wake of the original ''StarWars'' trilogy being remastered with added CGI. Some of the alterations are understandable: making some rooms bigger, adding more people, or generally giving the story a larger sense of scale. Others scenes are augmented with far less defensible uses of CGI, such as the car chase which now looks like it came from an actual animated movie, or [[spoiler: most of the strange men on the outskirts of civilization being changed to primates.]] The addition of a seconds-brief changing room scene for the mechanical droid cops actually imbues them with humanity, instead of leaving them as sterile, hard authority figures.

* LoveTriangle: A very peculiar one. THX and LUH share a secret and forbidden love, but SEN wants to be "mates" with THX, so he hacks the system to get rid of her and assigned himself to THX. However, SEN's interest seems to be purely platonic and based in the values of the loveless society. His pitch to THX is that they will be very efficient and productive as roommates.

* AmbiguousSituation: CRT says that he's a "hologram," but it's never clear what that means. Is he an artificial intelligence manifesting as a projected image that can manipulate objects? Is he just a performer for holograms like the ones THX watches? Does he ''think'' that he's a hologram?

** CRT, the "hologram," shares his name with a kind of technology used to project images.

* ModernMinstrelsy: Subtly invoked by the fact that the only black people we see in the film are in holograms, and most of the holograms we see feature black people. Whether CRT, a black man, is a living hologram or just a hologram performer is ambiguous. The black people THX watches in holograms are either pornographic or performing a comedy act reminiscent of a minstrel show.

** OMM, the sage deity of the society, has a name pronounced like "om," the first word in the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Om_mani_padme_hum traditional chant]] of Buddhist meditation.

* BittersweetEnding: THX [[spoiler:makes it out of the confines, only to find a desert world and with no idea where to go next. Also, LUH 3417 was apparently terminated according to information presented on one of the terminals. The same terminal indicates that apparently she had a baby with THX, to which her name/number has now been transferred; which may or may not be a good thing, considering how children are raised in the city.]]

* FascistButInefficient: There are numerous signs that the totalitarian society is either breaking down or was never never efficient in the first place. Robot guards malfunction. Accidents are commonplace. There are lizards in the machinery. Enforcement is actually pretty lax.

* FascistButInefficient: Enforcement is actually pretty lax, and every operation that involves apprehending law-breakers comes with [[spoiler: a budget and has to be shut down if that budget is greatly exceeded.]]

* MeaningfulName

* AsceticAesthetic: Almost everyone wears a blank white outfit and shaves their heads. A few people in a crowd scene have monochrome outfits in a different color, which might indicate some sort of special job.

* WeHaveReserves: People aren't considered people, but economic commodities to create wealth.

* AsceticAesthetic: Extending even to the characters' scalps.

* BittersweetEnding:
** THX [[spoiler:makes it out of the confines, only to find a desert world and with no idea where to go next. Also, LUH 3417 was apparently terminated according to information presented on one of the terminals. The same terminal indicates that apparently she had a baby with THX, to which her name/number has now been transferred; which may or may not be a good thing, considering how children are raised in the city.]]
** In the 1967 short he makes it out, but the voiceover has a government message telling his mate, YYO 7117, that she will need to apply for a new mate.

* CueTheSun: [[spoiler:The ending.]]
* {{Dystopia}}: Let's see... we have an antiseptic future that seems to have combined the most self-destructive tendencies of both socialism and capitalism. Religion is illegal except for worship of the Almighty State, and the residents are all [[BigBrotherIsWatching constantly monitored]] and work [[BigBrotherIsEmployingYou for the government]], in one capacity or another, and are expected to inform on their neighbors for crimes such as computer hacking or refusing to take their medication; at the same time, though, they are encouraged to work long hours, make money, and buy as much material property as they can. (We see THX himself buying a red ''thing'' at a store that sells nothing but different-colored ''things''; he takes it home and promptly throws it down the garbage disposal, which is what you're apparently supposed to do with them.)

** The robot policeman ''look'' intimidating, but are seen to be malfunctioning, and are knocked over easily by THX when he makes his escape.

* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: For George Lucas movies; contrasted to his more well known ''Star Wars'' films, THX is a very bleak, down to earth, slow paced film. At the time he very much viewed himself as an avant garde director more interested in telling "tone poems" than stories.

* TheEvilsOfFreeWill: Permeating the film, and considering THX had better work performance without all those pesky emotions...

* ShoutOut: [[Franchise/StarWars Chewbacca's]] species name is first heard here. Doubles as HilariousInHindsight.

* TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture: It is set in the year [[ArcNumber 2187]].

[[YouAreNumberSix THX 1138]] (Robert Duvall) would be a happy worker drone, if the pills he takes would let him feel anything. He "lives" in a windowless industrial/commercial/dormitory along with other shaved-head people in a chemically induced haze until the day his roommate, LUH (Maggie [=McOmie=]), sabotages his daily dose of pills in order to make him feel. They both fall madly in love, but their bliss is short-lived since the pills gave THX a vaunted steady hand in his industrial job, and without it they may be discovered.

** When THX does break out, the State doesn't pursue him to the ends of the Earth. Rather, once his escape exceeds a certain budget limit, the police robts jsut give up and let him go.

[[YouAreNumberSix THX 1138]] (Robert Duvall) would be a happy worker drone, if the pills he takes let him feel anything. He "lives" in a windowless industrial/commercial/dormitory along with other shaved-head people in a chemically induced haze until the day his roommate, LUH (Maggie [=McOmie=]), sabotages his daily dose of pills in order to make him feel. They both fall madly in love, but their bliss is short lived since the pills gave THX a vaunted steady hand in his industrial job, and without it they may be discovered.

Which, sadly, they are. Once arrested THX is sent to a strange WhiteVoidRoom to receive "treatment" for his deviance. He recruits fellow inmates SRT (Don Pedro Colley) and SEN (Creator/DonaldPleasence) in an attempt to escape and rescue LUH. However, the escape won't be easy, and in their strange world, nothing is guaranteed.

This 1971 science fiction film was Creator/GeorgeLucas' feature directorial debut, and started his rapid ascent in Hollywood. You may be more familiar with this film from the sound system company Lucas named in its honor, or from the fact that the number 1138 shows up ''everywhere'' in ''Franchise/StarWars'' and [[StarWarsExpandedUniverse related products]] in reference to it. It is also a remake of his 1967 USC student film project, "Electronic Labyrinth THX 1138 4EB".

* WhiteVoidRoom: The place where "defectives" are taken for "treatment" of some unspecified kind.

* PublicDomainSoundtrack: The final scene and end credits are accompanied by "Kommt, ihr Töchter, helft mir klagen", the opening chorus from Creator/JohannSebastianBach's ''St Matthew Passion''.

* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: For George Lucas movies; contrasted to his more well known ''Star Wars'' films, THX is a very bleak, down to earth, slow paced film.