THX beat the odds. Lucas beat the odds. They won the game. But as for the rest of us…? Work hard, increase production, prevent accidents. And be happy!

| Apr 4, 2025

The obtuse script doesn't help, but it looks wonderful and Lucas conjures up a genuinely chilling air.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 1, 2025

…the glitz and glamour of the CGI Phantom Menace add-ons featured in the director's cut of THX-1138 goes completely against everything that the aethetic of the original film supposedly stands for; it’s an absolute desecration of the text…

| Original Score: 1/5 | Jan 5, 2025

Lucas borrows from George Orwell’s novel '1984' and Fritz Lang’s... 'Metropolis' but it’s the vivid low-budget texture that makes the film so memorable, both visual and aural. The sound design by Walter Murch is something to hear.

| Oct 28, 2023

The movie drags at times and the stark white interiors are wearying, but this is generally more involving than most entries in the genre.

| Original Score: B | Nov 29, 2022

...devoid of even the most basic exposition designed to draw the viewer into its oddball futuristic landscape...

| Original Score: 1/4 | Dec 7, 2019

THX 1138 isn't a perfect sci-film but it is solidly entertaining and very unique.

| Original Score: B | Mar 13, 2019

Despite his scenes of bland horror, Lucas offers the 25th century as a arch, campy place, a conception not satiric enough to be accepted as comedy and not quite insightful enough to be taken seriously.

| Feb 8, 2018

long and cumbersome

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 19, 2014

The empty space surrounding the vulnerable man emphasizes the exertion involved rather than the goal of escape: like the hologram who came to life because he wanted to, THX finally achieves his humanity by an assertion of will.

| Jan 18, 2013

Slow sci-fi drama for die hard Lucas fans only.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 1, 2011

Tedious pacing contributes to the confusing nature of the movie, but George Lucas' restored "THX-1138" is essential viewing to distinguish his artistic vision before he transformed Hollywood.

| Original Score: A- | May 7, 2009

Meditative and downbeat rather than crowd-pleasing, the film includes a few sequences that suggest the direction Lucas career later took.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 5, 2007

With political paternalism rampant at both extremes of the spectrum, Lucas is onto something. In any case, we'll know for sure in about a generation.

| Jun 5, 2007

Enhancing the film with special effects and a clearer presentation, Lucas has turned something that was relatively unwatchable into something that can endure as a sci-fi classic.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 2, 2006

Visually it is often extraordinary, with Lucas playing on perspectives and dislocations throughout, nowhere more brilliantly than in the 'prison' represented by a limbo of whiteness that seems to stretch as far as the eye can see.

| Jun 24, 2006

Masterpiece? I'd hazard to say so, for as much of what it says to what it leaves to the viewer.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Dec 6, 2005

For sheer visual risk-taking, THX is by far Lucas' most impressive work, and one well worth seeing on the big screen. At least once in your life you should see Robert Duvall with freckles as big as your head.

| Sep 16, 2005

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 4, 2005

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 15, 2005