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{{work}}
[[File:MetropolisPoster.jpg|frame]]
{{quote| ''"Having conceived Babel, yet unable to build it themselves, they had thousands to build it for them. But those who toiled knew nothing of the dreams of those who planned. And the minds that planned the Tower of Babel cared nothing for the workers who built it. The hymns of praise of the few became the curses of the many."''}}
 
Silent [[German Expressionism|German]] Sci-Fi film from 1927, directed by [[Fritz Lang]]. Considered one of the [[Ur Example|forerunners]] of the genre and one of the most expensive films ever made.
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It tells the story of a society divided in two, the workers on the underground and the wealthy on the exterior, how Freder, the son of the supreme ruler of the city, falls in love with a worker named Maria and the class confrontation between them fueled by Rotwang, a [[Mad Scientist]] rival of Freder's father Fredersen.
 
Aside from its progressive storytelling, it is also known for being heavily [[Lost Episode|fragmented]], the results of both heavy Bowdlerization in its trip to foreign markets, and of poor preservation techniques back in the '30s (plus a little thing called World War II).
 
Up to 25% of the original footage was considered lost before turning up in a museum in Argentina in 2007, albeit in inferior picture quality. The rediscovered footage was cleaned up as well as possible and integrated into the existing restored footage. The rediscovered version also confirmed the exact running order of shots, which in previous versions could only be guessed at. This new version runs only about five minutes short of the original 1927 German cut, as opposed to nearly an entire hour shorter in some versions. Unfortunately, two scenes still remained too badly damaged to restore, and were replaced by title cards. It made its big US debut at the Turner Classic Movies festival in 2009 and on television on Turner Classic Movies in November 2010. This nearly complete version was released on DVD and [[Blu -Ray]] in late 2010.
 
This [[Troperiffic]] film is either the [[Trope Codifier]] or possible [[Ur Example]] for [[Ludicrous Precision|approximately 65.4%]] of [[Older Than They Think|science fiction tropes]]. Not to be confused with the [[Metropolis (anime)|anime film of the same name]], which is [[Suggested By]] but not adapted from it.
 
Also notable is the 1984 color-tinted restoration by composer Georgio Moroder, which is [[Keep Circulating the Tapes|only available on VHS and LaserDisc]] due to its [[Broken Base|controversial]] [[The Eighties|80's]] [[Notable Original Music|pop soundtrack]]. [https://web.archive.org/web/20130612141000/http://www.themortonreport.com/entertainment/video/kino-to-bring-giorgio-moroders-metropolis-to-blu-ray-and-dvd/ Until now, anyway.] Moroder's version is now available on Netflix instant streaming (alongside the full restored cut), and a DVD/BD release is soon to follow.<br />
In the UK, a 2-hour cut of ''Metropolis'' is available for streaming on [[Love Film]].com .
 
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=== {{examples|Works it has inspired: ===}}
* The anime film and manga, ''[[Metropolis (anime)|Osamu Tezuka's Metropolis]]''.
* ''[[Blade Runner]]'' in particular is considered a [[Spiritual Successor]] to this film.
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=== {{examples|[[Trope Codifier]], or [[Ur Example]] for the following sci-fi movie conventions: ===}}
[[File:metropolis2.jpg|frame|<small>[[Does This Remind You of Anything?]]</small> ]]
* [[AIA.I. Is a Crapshoot]]▼
 
 
▲* [[AI Is a Crapshoot]]
* [[Cathedral Climax]]
* [[City Noir]] (with [[Evil Tower of Ominousness|giant tower with heliports on top]] overshadowing everything)
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* [[Evil Hand]] (quite possibly [[Artificial Limbs|robotic hand]])
* [[Evil Knockoff]]
* [[Explosive Overclocking]]: The Heart Machine after it is left unattended.
* [[Flying Car]] (possibly, as far as its usual sci-fi portrayal goes; the planes dashing between buildings may not look like cars, but seem to fill the same role, and similar shots remain popular today)
* [[Gloved Fist of Doom]]
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* [[You Are Number Six]]
 
Consequently, many find that [[Seinfeld Is Unfunny|Metropolis Is Unoriginal]]: This movie's tropes, characters, visual style, and special effects have been mimicked to the point of exhaustion. Ironically, on its release people criticized the plot for borrowing heavily from Victorian melodramas and other sci-fi stories; [[H. G. Wells]] in particular [https://web.archive.org/web/20080322055130/http://erkelzaar.tsudao.com/reviews/H.G.Wells_on_Metropolis%201927.htm felt he'd been plagiarized]. So some of it may be ''even older'' than people think.
 
----
{{tropelist}}
=== Shows examples of: ===
* [[Absurdly Cool City]]: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0AlrH_K7Ko And don't you forget it.]
* [[Alternative Calendar]]: The workers' day has 20 hours (and their work takes ten), the rich people's the usual 24.
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** Or it could be the fact that he seems to have the strangest affinity for hugging and caressing every human being he comes across, gender be damned.
* [[Apocalypse Maiden]]: Robot Maria.
* [[Artificial Limbs]]: Rotwang's right hand, because for some reason creating a robotic body requires a human hand as an ingredient.
* [[As the Good Book Says...]]: Maria reinterprets the story of the Tower of Babel as a failure of labor relations. A preacher quotes Revelation Chapter 16 in a missing scene, which is later reprisedreprized in flashback during Freder's fever dream.
* [[Background Halo]]: Maria gets this quite a bit, especially as she is preaching to the workers in the catacombs.
* [[Beneath the Earth]]: The workers' city. [[Incredibly Lame Pun|And deeply so]].
* [[Big Electric Switch]]: Rotwang's lab has several of them.
* [[The Big Guy]]: Grot aka the Thin Man, and the main enforcer of Fredersen's schemes.
* [[Big Word Shout]]: "MOLOCH!"
* [[Bizarrchitecture]]: Rotwang's house. With doors that open and close on their own, it's also a [[Mobile Maze]] - and noticeably [[Bigger on the Inside]], as several reviewers pointed out.
* [[Brain Fever]]
* [[Burn the Witch]]: "Burn the witch!" [[Recycled in Space|On a pyre]] made of I-beams and [[Made of Explodium|burning automobiles]]. Too bad {{spoiler|[[The Reveal|she's a robot]]}}.
* [[Character Tics]]: Robot-Maria's jerking her shoulders, whiplashing her neck and squinting her left eye a bit.
* [[Clock Tower]] ending ([[Cathedral Climax]])
* [[Clothing Damage]]: Textbook male example, nearly four decades before Kirk.
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* [[Disneyfication]]: Fritz Lang admitted after making the movie that saying "The mediator between the head and hands must be the heart!" is too simplistic of a way to deal with labor-management relations.
* [[Disney Villain Death]]: {{spoiler|Rotwang}}
* [[Distressed Damsel in Distress]]: Maria
* [[Ditzy Genius]]: Maria again. She is an amazing orator with the political will and ambition to push for equality among the upper and lower classes... and when sufficiently frightened she has a tendency to run with arms flailing away from safety, bouncing into walls along the way.
* [[Driven to Suicide]]: After he is fired, Josaphat puts a gun to his head, since he is likely to be sent down below with the workers and have all his money taken. Luckily, Freder stops him and offers him a job.
* [[Elves vs. Dwarves]]: Rich, hedonistic millionaires against poor, dirty underground workers. Basically.
* [[Eternal Engine]]: The entire underground is some sort of [[Steam and Flame Factory]].
* [[Evil Plan]]: {{spoiler|Initially shown to be Joh Fredersen}}, though it turns out that {{spoiler|Rotwang was the real [[Chessmaster]] behind the near-destruction of Metropolis}}.
** In the novel, it's strongly implied that {{spoiler|Fredersen}} was in control the whole time, including over {{spoiler|Rotwang}}'s plan, and was just waiting for {{spoiler|Rotwang}} to [[Monologuing|monologue about it]] so he'd have an excuse {{spoiler|to finally kill him, which is why he was waiting outside the window}}. ''This [[Fridge Brilliance|mirrors his plan]] for the workers.''
* [[Explosive Instrumentation]]: Apparently, if the machines(especially the heart machine) are left unwatched for just a few minutes, they blow themselves up with lots of sparks and arc lightning thrown out. The workers don't really have to do anything to successfully turn out all the power in the city.
* [[Eye Tropes]]: In Yoshiwara, during Maria's dance, there's a montage of eyes watching her.
* [[Fan Service]]: Sure, the scene of robotic Maria dancing provocatively while topless except for large pasties shows just how different she is from the real girl; but it is also definitely [[Fan Service]], and there is even a flashback to it later it the film for no real reason.
* [[Femme Fatale]]: The Machine Man.
* [[The Film of the Book]]
* [[German Expressionism]]
* [[Gonk]]: In a film where everyone looks uniform, Rotwang- the [[Mad Scientist]] with fuzzy hair, bulging eyes, and a hunchback figure- really stands out.
* [[Gratuitous Japanese]]: The apparently European city contains a nightclub inexplainably called the [[wikipedia:Yoshiwara|Yoshiwara]].
** *[[Getting Crap Past the Radar|cough]]*
* [[The Grim Reaper]]: He has a statue along with the 7 deadly sins in the cathedral. When Freder falls sick, he has a dream of it coming alive, and advancing on him with it's scythe.
* [[I Have You Now, My Pretty]]: Every scene between Rotwang and Maria. ''Especially'' the one before the transformation sequence.
* [[Industrialized Evil]]
* [[Leitmotif]]: Pretty much each character and event.
* [[Laser-Guided Karma]]
{{quote| '''Fredersen''': I must know! ''Where is my son?!''<br />
'''Thin Man''': {{spoiler|Tomorrow, thousands in this city will be asking the same question, in fury and desperation: "Joh Fredersen, where is ''my'' son?"}} }}
* [[Leitmotif]]: Gottfried Huppertz's original score, as reconstructed and recorded in 2003 (and again in 2009), features these significantly. Freder, his father, Rotwang, Maria, Robot Maria, the machines of Metropolis, the nightclub-goers in Yoshiwara, and the uprising workers all have their own recurring themes.
* [[Lost Forever]]: The rest of the film until it turned up in Argentina.
* [[Love Makes You Evil]]: {{spoiler|Rotwang wants to destroy the city because Freder's mother chose the city's ruler over him. And then died giving birth to said ruler's son.}}
** [[Love Makes You Crazy]]: The Club of the Sons members start killing themselves and each other over the Maria Machine.
* [[Mad Scientist]]: Rotwang. Again, one of the first, and the best.
* [[Mad Scientist Laboratory]]: Rotwang's house
* [[MacGuffin Girl]]: Maria
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* [[Meaningful Name]] / [[Only Known by Their Nickname]]: "Der Schmale", meaning "the thin one" ([[Slender Man Mythos]]?)
* [[Milking the Giant Cow]]: Rotwang only loves one thing more than Hel, and that is wild gesticulation. Robot-Maria shares his liking for it, too.
* [[Monologuing]]: Rotwang. ▼
* [[Missing Episode]]: Missing ''a third of the entire movie'' for many years.
* [[Mobile Maze]]: Rotwang's house. The doors can be completely sealed at a whim, which his uses against Freder and Maria at different points. ▼
** Even with the rediscovered version, there are still two missing scenes; one of which is heavily plot-relevant.
** To make matters even '''worse''', there have been rumors that there are even ''more'' missing scenes that were cut from the film before it's German premiere to help shorten the time of the film. It may be very likely that Lang didn't destroy these scenes and there may be even more unseen footage for this film.
▲* [[Monologuing]]: Rotwang.
▲* [[Mobile Maze]]: Rotwang's house. The doors can be completely sealed at a whim, which his uses against Freder and Maria at different points.
* [[Morality Chain]]: In the novel, Hel for both Joh Frederson and Rotwang. She not only kept both men from killing each other (though you could hardly blame them, what with their love triangle and all), she also made sure both men didn't let power go to their heads.
* [[Morally-Ambiguous Doctorate]]: Rotwang
* [[The Morlocks]]: [[H. G. Wells]] got one up on ''Metropolis'' with this plotline, but [[Fritz Lang]] is more sympathetic.
* [[Necromantic]]
{{quote| '''Joh''': Let the dead rest in peace, Rotwang. She's as dead for me as she is for you.<br />
'''Rotwang''': She isn't dead for me, Joh Fredersen! For me, she lives! [''gesticulates wildly''] }}
* [[Nightmarish Factory]]
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* [[Overclocking Attack]]: To destroy the Heart machine. The Foreman tries to stave off Robot-Maria with a big wrench.
* [[Psychotic Smirk]]: Robot-Maria.
* [[Reality Subtext]]: Maybe. Fritz Lang's wife, Thea von Harbou, was originally married to actor Rudolf Klein-Rogge, but she had an affair with Lang and ultimately divorced Rogge. In the movie and in the original book, the woman Hel was married to Rotwang (played by Rogge) but eventually had an affair and married Joh Fredersen. As Harbou wrote the original screenplay and story, it's possible she wrote it as a parallel to her own life situation, so [[Real Life Writes the Plot|a lot gets made of this coincidence]]. But on the other hand, Lang and Rogge remained good friends and worked together until Lang left Germany, while Rogge also continued to work with Harbou on several other movies. Needless to say, [[Your Mileage May Vary|there's been debate]].
* [[Red Right Hand]]: Rotwang. As he says: "Isn't it worth the loss of a hand to have created the workers of the future?"
* [[ReluctantEngineer MadExploited ScientistFor Evil]]: In some versions of the edit, Rotwang really just wants his lover back.
* [[Replacement Goldfish]]: Rotwang originally wanted the robot to replace Hel, before Joh ordered him to make it into a duplicate of Maria.
* [[The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized]]: Well, the workers don't really want to kill their masters, just blow up the machines. But they don't think it through very well...
* [[Ridiculously Human Robot]]: Futura/Robotrix/Fake Hel/Fake Maria/Machine Man/etc.
* [[Robot Girl]]: Futura/Robotrix/Fake Hel/Fake Maria/Machine Man/etc.
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* [[Standard Snippet]]: The "Dies Irae" theme figures heavily in the original soundtrack by Gottfried Huppertz, as does a tweaked version of the Marseillaise.
* [[Technicolor Science]]: In a black and white film no less. Rotwang's lab when he is transforming his mechanical girl has milky white liquids, transparent liquids, and dark colored liquids all boiling and bubbling away in strangely shaped glass containers.
* [[Thousand-Yard Stare]]: Josaphat's BSOD after being fired by Fredersen. He's so shocked and unable to focus that he ''can't find the doorknob'' on his way out.▼
* [[The Three Faces of Eve]]: Maria - Mother, maiden and sex machine. The Oedipal themes come free with the package.
▲* [[Thousand-Yard Stare]]: Josaphat's BSOD after being fired by Fredersen. He's so shocked and unable to focus that he ''can't find the doorknob'' on his way out.
* [[Thunderbolts and Lightning]]: The destruction of the machines.
* [[Title Drop]]: Rotwang talking to Joh Fredersen calls the city "your metropolis". [[No Name Given]]?
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* [[The Tower]]: "Gigantic, unimaginably huge, looms-over-everything" variety.
* [[Tower of Babel]]: referenced, with significant alterations. Maria's retelling alters the facts and changes the moral. The hubris is inverted ("And on the pedestal these words appear: 'Great is the world and its Maker, and great is Man!'") and retribution comes from paying too much attention to the idea and ignoring the workers. There is no confusion of tongues, but another clever inversion ("The praises of one became the curses of another. Although they spoke the same language, they could not understand one another's words"). The New Tower of Babel at the heart of the city is {{spoiler|absolutely untouched by the destruction and the divided classes are reunited.}}
* [[Two Guys and a Girl]]: The backstory of {{spoiler|Rotwang, Hel, and Joh.}} It didn't end well.
{{quote| '''Joh''': Surely a mind like yours must be able to forget...<br />
'''Rotwang''': ''([[Milking the Giant Cow|shaking a fist in Fredersen's face]])''I only ever forgot one thing in my life: that Hel was a woman and you a man! }}
* [[Unfortunate Name]]: Oh, poor [[In My Language, That Sounds Like...|Rotwang]]. A child with a name like that was doomed to become evil. (Needless to say it probably wasn't the case when the film was made, but today...)
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** Also having a character called Hel was too close to Hell for the liking of American censors, who removed all reference to her - along with several important plot-points.
*** This could arguably be considered [[Completely Missing the Point]] paired with [[Viewers are Morons]], as Hel in Norse myth is the goddess of the underworld.
* [[Urban Segregation]]: Again, almost a [[Trope Codifier]], with the rich living in gardens and clubs high above the city, and the workers living in a poorly built underground city.
* [[Villainous Breakdown]]: {{spoiler|Rotwang, after Joh Fredersen ambushes and beats the crap out of him.}}
* [[We Will Use Manual Labour in The Future]]
** In an audio commentary it is suggested that this is ''intentionally'' done by the city's leaders, so they have better control over the lower classes. In reality, machines are supposed to make life easier and be able to function without humans.
* [[What Could Have Been]]: Moroder made the rock opera version after outbidding [[David Bowie]], among others, for the rights. God knows what he... scratch that, probably even ''God'' doesn't know what Bowie would have done with ''Metropolis''.
* [[What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic]]: the whole film.
** [[Rule of Symbolism]], for the most part. You have crucifixion imagery, giant clock face, personified Whore of Babylon, retelling of the Tower of Babel story, animated gargoyles personifying Death and the Seven Deadly Sins, a hidden church in catacombs, an inverted pentagram, talk about "brothers and sisters", the machine as Moloch...
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{{reflist}}
{{Vatican Best Films List}}
[[Category:Roger Ebert Great Movies List]]▼
[[Category:Public Domain Feature Films{{PAGENAME}}]]
[[Category:The NinetiesFilm]]
[[Category:Fritz Lang]]
[[Category:Films of the 1920s]]
[[Category:EpicSilent Movie]]
[[Category:German MediaFilms]]
[[Category:German Expressionism]]
[[Category:Epic Movie]]
[[Category:Science Fiction Films]]
[[Category:School Study Media]]
[[Category:MetropolisFilms Based on Novels]]
[[Category:FilmFilms With Recuts]]
▲[[Category:Roger Ebert Great Movies List]]
[[Category:Public Domain Feature Films]]
[[Category:Pages with working Wikipedia tabs]]
[[Category:One-Word Title]]
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