It’s been a while since I read “Make Room! Make Room!”, and I just found “Soylent Green” on YouTube, so my comparison may be off a bit.
I definitely liked the movie, starring Charlton Heston and Edward G. Robinson, better.
The book that inspired the movie was good, but I thought the movie surpassed it.
The book “Make Room!” takes place in 1999, the movie in 2022. Somewhat timely. Both involve a Cop investigating a murder. In the book, a young Chinese/American boy commits the murder, in the movie a common street thug. The cop in the book solves the crime, as well as the Cop in the movie.
There is also a similarity in characters. There is the “Furniture”, a beautiful girl that was the “Concubine” of a very rich man. But in the movie the man is killed because he knows the ocean is dead. The ocean is supposedly where Soylent Green comes from. Instead, it is made of dead bodies of people.That reveal is not included in the book. Also, in the book farmers are the enemy upstate, blowing up waterlines that take water to New York City. The book and movie are equally crowded, some 35 million people. They sleep in old cars, the floor of buildings, and old ships in the harbor. Lots of people.
In the book, Billy Chung, the killer, is accidentally shot and killed by Andy, the cop.
In the movie, Charlton Heston follows Edward G. Robinson to the revelation that “Soylent Green is people!” Very cool ending.
The book is good, but the movie “Soylent Green” is even better.
The movie can be found on YouTube, for now at least. Not so for “The Omega Man”, I am still looking for that.
I have a pet theory that Charlton Heston was actually a closet liberal. “The Planet Of The Apes” Movies were largely about race relations. The movie “Soylent Green” is largely about the destruction of the environment, and in “The Omega Man”, Heston has an on-air romance with a black woman. I’m sure readers can think of others.
