Silent Running (1972) on Netflix
In a future where Earth's forests are extinct, botanist Freeman Lowell tends the last specimens in a dome aboard the Valley Forge beyond Saturn. Ordered to jettison the dome, he refuses.
- Netflix3.1/5
- IMDb6.6/1034,017 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes71%
Trailer
Plot summary
Careless exploitation has stripped Earth of every forest, and the surviving plant and animal specimens are kept in vast geodesic domes carried by a fleet of cargo freighters parked beyond the orbit of Saturn. Freeman Lowell, the botanist and ecologist aboard the Valley Forge, spends his days in the domes, tending crops and the animals that live among them, keeping the collections alive for a replanting back home. Then the ships receive orders to throw the domes into space and blow them up with nuclear charges so the freighters can return to commercial work. Most of the crew welcome the chance to go home, but Lowell does not. Four of the Valley Forge domes are already gone when he decides the last one will not follow.
Cast
- Mark Personsas the Drone
- Steven Brownas the Drone
- Cheryl Sparksas the Drone
- Larry Whisenhuntas the Drone
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Silent Running (1972)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The three service drones in Silent Running were played by four bilateral amputees, an idea inspired by Johnny Eck, an early-20th-century sideshow performer born without lower limbs.
- The film's interiors were shot aboard the decommissioned Korean War aircraft carrier USS Valley Forge, docked at the Long Beach Naval Shipyard, and the carrier was scrapped shortly after filming ended.
- Stanley Kubrick wanted the Stargate sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey to be about Saturn, but technical difficulties made him substitute Jupiter; Douglas Trumbull later recreated the sequence for Saturn in Silent Running.
- The 25-foot model of the Valley Forge took six months to build from custom castings plus the contents of roughly 800 prefabricated model-aircraft and tank kits.
- The forest environments were meant to be filmed in the Mitchell Park Domes in Milwaukee, but the budget forced the production to shoot them in a newly completed aircraft hangar in Van Nuys, California.
- Joel Hodgson credits Silent Running as a direct influence on Mystery Science Theater 3000, both featuring a single human aboard a spaceship accompanied only by robot companions.
- Footage from Silent Running was reused in Universal Pictures's 1978 series Battlestar Galactica and its sequel Galactica 1980, and Bruce Dern made a fleeting cameo in the episode "The Magnificent Warriors" through reused footage.
