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{{work}}
[[File:MetropolisPoster.jpg|frame]]
{{quote|
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
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 (
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.
▲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]]. [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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* The anime film and manga, ''[[Metropolis (
* ''[[Blade Runner]]'' in particular is considered a [[Spiritual Successor]] to this film.
* An ''[[Elseworlds]]'' one-shot that combined this Metropolis with [[Superman]]'s.
* Singer [[Janelle Monae]]'s ''Metropolis'' series of [[Concept Album|Concept Albums]].
* A [
* [[
* A mad scientist named Rotwang appears in [[Tiger and Bunny]]- complete with [[Robot Girl]] creation.
* Mechanique, a DC comics robots villainess, IS supposed to be the (time traveling) creation of Rotwang (and is obviously based on Robot!Maria.)
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[[File:metropolis2.jpg|frame|
▲* [[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; [[
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{{tropelist}}
* [[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
* [[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
* [[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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* [[Crucified Hero Shot]]: {{spoiler|With the Paternoster Machine turned into a metaphorical clock that is going backwards, all the while threatening to overload and explode.}}
* [[Crystal Spires and Togas]]: The upper class' city.
* [[Death
* [[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}}
* [[
* [[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 [
** *[[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|
'''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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* [[Magic Versus Science]]: This is Rotwang's whole theme. Inside a giant future [[Mega City]] is a little [[The Constant|thatched cottage]] inside of which is a pentagrammed [[Mad Scientist Laboratory]] inside of which is a man dressed in robes with a robot hand. Robot Maria's transformation makes him practically a necromancer. In fact the whole film is both a pioneer of sci fi despite being very heavy on biblical imagery.
* [[Male Gaze]]: Dramatically demonstrated with the montage of eyes watching Robot Maria during her striptease.
* [[Meaningful Name]] / [[Only Known
* [[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.
* [[Mobile Maze]]: Rotwang's house. The doors can be completely sealed at a whim, which his uses against Freder and Maria at different points.
▲* [[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]]: [[
* [[Necromantic]]
{{quote|
'''Rotwang''': She isn't dead for me, Joh Fredersen! For me, she lives! [''gesticulates wildly''] }}
* [[Nightmarish Factory]]
* [[No Waterproofing in
* [[Notable Original Music]]: The original soundtrack, plus the entirely different [[The Eighties|Moroder]] version (see below).
* [[No OSHA Compliance]]: Something of a plot point: The "M-Machine" that Freder stumbles upon during his trek through the underground city overheats and explodes, killing everyone in its vicinity. The dead workers are casually hauled off and a new set comes in to take their place. Witnessing this scene is what makes Freder sympathetic to the workers' plight.
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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.
* [[Red Right Hand]]: Rotwang. As he says: "Isn't it worth the loss of a hand to have created the workers of the future?"
* [[
* [[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.
* [[Say My Name]]: A rare silent example occurs after {{spoiler|Maria's kidnapping}}, where Freder runs through the city "shouting" Maria's name via intertitle cards.
* [[Schizo
** Specifically, consultation of the ticker tape causes Fredersen to immediately contact the Foreman on a flatscreen video phone/surveillance monitor.
* [[Seven Deadly Sins]]: {{spoiler|Fake Maria}} is seen as the epitome of this. Statues of the seven deadly sins are shown and even animated during a dream sequence, while she sits on top of a statue of a seven-headed dragon.
* [[Shout
* [[A Sinister Clue]]: Rotwang's left hand.
* [[Soundtrack Dissonance]] / [[Crowning Music of Awesome]]: Giorgio Moroder's version is a [[Love It or Hate It|love it]] [[They Changed It, Now It Sucks|or hate it]], [[Cult Classic|cult adaptation]]. Featuring [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epuUqdkO47w Jon Anderson] (of [[Yes]]), [[Pat Benatar]], Adam Ant, [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNEjSi9SVAU#t=2m45s "Destruction"] by Loverboy, [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLUo2UQxSts Bonnie Tyler], [[Queen|Freddie Mercury]], [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7CLLBZpT_Q Cycle V and Moroder himself]. Yes. [[Keep Circulating the Tapes|Hard to find]].<ref> even on Youtube -- apparently FW Murnau Foundation is against it, [[Sarcasm Mode|though they aren't against any other version appearing on Youtube]]...</ref>
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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
* [[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
{{quote|
'''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...)
** Why? What's wrong with "Rotwang"? It doesn't sound too awkward for a German surname. But it does literally mean "Red-Cheek". Make of that what you will.
** 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 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...
** The Moroder lyrics add a bunch more, with [[George Orwell|Orwellian]] [[Shout
* [[What Happened to
** Much of the lost footage also pertains to the Thin Man, who follows Freder, Georgy, and Josaphat at Joh Fredersen's behest.
* [[While Rome Burns]]: {{spoiler|The happy crowd from the Yoshiwara club while the city is being blacked out by the workers' revolution.}}
* [[Witch Hunt]]: Literally.
* [[Yes
* [[You Are Number Six]]: Georgy 11811.
* [[You Can Leave Your Hat On]]: That's right. In 1927.
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{{reflist}}
{{Vatican Best Films List}}
[[Category:Roger Ebert Great Movies List]]▼
[[Category:
[[Category:
[[Category:Fritz Lang]]
[[Category:Films of the 1920s]]
[[Category:
[[Category:German
[[Category:German Expressionism]]
[[Category:Epic Movie]]
[[Category:Science Fiction Films]]
[[Category:School Study Media]]
[[Category:
[[Category:
▲[[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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