The Home of the Creative Mind

Welcome to PooBahSpiel, the online voice and home of the creative mind of Mark Monlux, Illustrator Extraordinaire. Prepare yourself for an endless regaling of art directly from the hand of this stellar artist. And brace yourself against his mighty wind of pontification. Updates are kinda weekly and show daily sketches, current projects, and other really nifty stuff.

Monday, June 20, 2016

The Comic Critic Reviews "THX-1138"



George Lucas made a student film that caught the eye of Frances Ford Coppola. The two of them founded the studio American Zoetrope where they took the idea of that student film and expanded it into the full length movie feature THX-1138. It did not do well at the theater and critics of the day had differing opinions. But over the years, THX-1138 developed a cult following with both audiences and other film makers. You can find Easter eggs referring to THX-1138 in films by Lucas and other filmmakers. In fact you can find hidden references to the film in countless television shows, books and software. The setting of THX-1138 is a future in which mankind has been hollowed out into working drones whose purpose is to support the automated society governing it. The population is medicated and brainwashed. History is absent. The populaces are blank people living on a blank slate. Even the android policemen have blank chrome faces that show only a reflection. Consumption has no meaning as the content of the consumption has no meaning. THX-1138 shows what happens when the irregularities of the human condition rise from this imposed stupor. THX-1138 is an elegant science fiction movie that relies less on special effects and more of the underlying message of the conditions in which its characters are placed. If youre wondering why the title of the film sounds so familiar, you might have seen the letters more than once when the sound system THX is being introduced at the start of a film.