At its core, THX 1138 was about refusing to accept the status quo. “[It’s] about a hero who lives in an anthill and dares to go outside,” Lucas would say later. In a way, that was what he and Coppola were doing with Zoetrope. Like THX, they too had broken away from the system in pursuit of a freedom that could be had if one was simply willing to walk away from the status quo. As Lucas noted, “this issue of leaving a safe environment and going into the unknown” would be an underlying premise of his first three films, running in a thematic straight line from THX through American Graffiti and on
...more
