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“Soylent Green” is a 1973 movie from the director Richard Fleischer starring big names like Charlton Heston, Leigh Taylor-Young, Chuck Connors, Joseph Cotten, Brock Peters, Paula Kelly, and more. “Soylent Green” is set in a bleak and troubling future. While it may not be a full-fledged dystopia, it certainly borders on one. Due to overexploitation, global warming, and unchecked human greed, Earth’s natural food resources have been severely depleted. Power is scarce, clean water is rare, and the comforts and luxuries people once took for granted are now relics of the past.

The story takes place in New York City, which astonishingly holds a population of 40 million. With such overwhelming numbers, society is divided into two starkly contrasting classes: the wealthy elite and the struggling poor. The rich live in a heavily guarded, walled-off enclave, protected by high fences and armed guards authorized to shoot trespassers. Inside this privileged society,...

This post contains spoilers for "Soylent Green" and its source material.

Richard Fleischer's 1973 dystopian sci-fi classic, "Soylent Green," ends with a shocking revelation. Set in a future consumed by ecocide — thanks to unchecked overpopulation and the depletion of resources that came with it — New York City stands on the brink of collapse. The increasing divide between the affluent and the poor has prompted riots over the artificial wafers made by the Soylent Corporation, and their latest product, the plankton-rich Soylent Green, remains coveted, while the rich indulge in organic delicacies. After NYPD detective Robert Thorn (Charlton Heston) gets embroiled in a conspiracy, he learns that the plankton claimed to produce Soylent Green has gone extinct, and that the key ingredients in the wafer instead come from human bodies. "Soylent Green is people!" he shouts in anguish to the crowd assembling around him in the end, devastated that the truth might never be uncovered.

Why settle for tacos when Tuesday can be Soylent Green Day? Far more nutritious than Soylent Red or Yellow, the green stuff is made with a secret ingredient that makes it a real delicacy. Of course the line “Soylent Green is people” is now an insta-spoiler meme and trope. But when Charlton Heston first uttered that anguished warning, it might as well have been a supermarket can-can sale promotion. Store shops in the 1973 science fiction classic Soylent Green were so mobbed on Tuesdays that riots started every week in this dystopian vision of 2022.

The historical montage which opens Soylent Green, based on real photographs from the 20th century, shows how industry and population colluded to form a dystopian future where too many people struggle for too little food, gag at the air, and wear masks on a daily basis. The face covering in the montage actually increases exponentially as the...