I thought I had Soylent Green figured out. Had knew the punchline long before I actually sat down and watched the movie. It was 70s level, so it was both good and bad as far as a movie itself, reminded me a lot of Colossus The Forbin Project in its feel. The forecasting of a environmentally desolate future also felt prophetic. Then a bit after seeing it I ran across someone reviewing it, and they pointed out that the biggest shock isn’t the end…the end is bad, but it is only a higher level of what has been the real horror throughout the whole movie. Complacency. And that is why we are in Soylent Green today, it’s all around us. And like all these other classics, we haven’t learned anything.
That’s an excellent point. With classic scifi, everybody remembers the twist, but hardly anyone remembers/knows the actual point of the film. Most films of the era have strong social messages that are lost when you reduce it to “lol they are eating people” or “kill the old guy”.