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Comment by mikestew | Hacker News Reader

Interesting that Silent Running is list as "underrated", yet I think it's way overrated. I mean, on the topic of sci-fi, the movie has been mentioned in lists and otherwise for years. The theme is good, and I like the idea of watching the movie. But then I turn it on, and man, it's sure can be cringey. My shoulders go up around my ears when Dern's character is lecturing his shipmates on "real food". IRL, they would have thrown him out an airlock after one too many sanctimonious speeches. And that part with Joan Baez screeching on the soundtrack, ugh.

And to digress into nit-picking, Invasion of the Body Snatchers? Saw that in the theaters because...it got good reviews.

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> My shoulders go up around my ears when Dern's character is lecturing his shipmates on "real food". IRL, they would have thrown him out an airlock after one too many sanctimonious speeches.

Virtually every HN discussion about nutrition is filled with those kinds of sanctimonious speeches (with everybody serving their own kind of "real food"). And it's hardly just HN or even the virtual world. I'd say the movie was ahead of its time in that regard, but I think it was always that way.

I watched this movie for an art history class and it’s considered an important movie politically due to environmentalist message. At the time environmentalism wasn’t basically movie short-hand for, “this is a black and white moral conflict obviously the environmentalists are the good guys” though obviously that’s how they are portrayed in the Silent Running. There’s was also a popular environmentalist book call Silent Spring, that was incorporated into the movie’s name.

Also shut up Joan Baez is the shit.

"Silent Spring" is also a key theme in The Three-Body Problem. There's a Netflix adaptation coming later this year, but if you search around, there's a recent Chinese version (subtitles are available) that follows the book very closely: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt20242042/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_...

As a Peter Schickele fan (soundtrack composer), I would say Silent Running is underrated.

https://www.schickele.com/wp/peter-schickele-bio/

On rewatch what threw me the most was American Airlines has a fleet of floating green houses in space to preserve the ecology of earth and one day decides nah, blow them up we don't need it anymore.

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