Boy oh boy, aren't robots awesome? I've always liked sci-fi stories and movies about robots and how man and machine could be melded and interact in a fully automated society. Be it a bad end: Terminator or the Matrix, or a good end, like...um...er...ok, not a lot of robot movies HAVE good endings, which seems indicant of the lack of confidence we have in our ability to keep robots from killing us all, but hey, whatever. Let's review Surrogates.
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Surrogates is I-Robot meets Minority Report with Bruce Willis. Two and a half awesome things should make a movie that is at least twice (and a half) as awesome as usual, right? Well, no, that's stupid. Why would you think that? Surrogates is by the book, so-bland-its-mediocre whose strengths are few beyond its intriguing premise and interesting execution.
The story begins with a ripped-from-the-headlines montage of the build-up of Surrogate technology--that is, artificial bodies controlled by people's thoughts. Over fourteen years of research and development, we see the growth of Surrogate technology from its humble roots as just a nifty science experiment to its military applications to the full-on, widespread proliferation of Surrogates. Now, people stay at home all the time, living completely risk-free lives through their beautiful, custom-made artificial bodies. It's kind of like an internet chatroom, except its REAL.
The story kicks off after a pair of surrogates are destroyed in a back alley behind a tawdry nightclub. FBI guy Bruce Willis gets on the case and discovers, to everyone's shock and horror, that the death of these Surrogates has also resulted in the death of their real-world counterparts. Seeing as how Surrogate technology is supposed to, effectively, prevent someone from dying by any causes besides the natural ones, this is a big deal, and the first half of the film is spent in search of the mysterious weapon that caused the murders.
We get a typical bit of clue-hunting, source-interviewing, character intros and some minor development. Willis' character has a dead son, bad marital issues, yadda yadda, and over the course of the story, he grows increasingly freaked out and annoyed by how decadent people have become now that they can live their lives in beautiful plastic bodies. The streets are populated with thousands of GQ models, Willis' wife lives a hedonistic and care-free existence in her beautiful artificial body whilst her "real" self is tattered and decayed and addicted to a variety of pills.
I'll pause the summary for a minute to gush about how cool the premise is. They actually spend a good amount of time showing off just how many aspects of society have been changed by Surrogates--military conflicts are now, essentially, gigantic LAN matches fought by gangly soldiers in big booths with joysticks. Murder is out of the question, and the pursuit of pleasure and satisfaction in a custom-made body is the number one priority of society. All crime is practically annhilated, and thanks to a pseudo-big brother monitoring system located in the heart of FBI headquarters, anyone committing a crime in their surrogate can be remotely shut off with the touch of a button. It's as safe as you can be, with sex, drugs, and everything else you can imagine freely accessible, and even the wheelchair bound can enjoy a carefree romp through an urban jungle of joy and prosperity thanks to this new technology.
Of course, this being a movie with robots, somehow, the robots must be bad. In this case, there are a group of religious zealots led by The Prophet who have formed a surrogate-free reservation in the middle of the city. Basically their own sovreign nation, the Dread Reservation is the last bit of America where humans are actually, well, human. Willis, in pursuit of the murderer and his mysterious ray gun, stumbles into this robot-free zone and is promptly blown to bits by rednecks and hippies with guns and shovels.
Without a Surrogate, and amidst suspicion that these murders are connected to a far vaster conspiracy, Willis takes to the streets in his own body--which, coincidentally, looks exactly like his Surrogate one, except for more facial hair and about twenty years added on. Guided by the creepy Lionel Canter, the inventor of Surrogate technology (played by the scenery-hungry James Cromwell), who lives his life through a variety of beautiful, blond-haired, blue-eyed young boys and teenagers in three piece suits, Willis tracks his way through both the Surrogate-run city and the Dread Reservation in search of the truth.
The movie actually isn't that bad. It's not great, but the premise is solid, well-executed, and nothing seems particularly out of place. There's no particularly arresting dialogue, nor are there any super memorable action sequences (there's basically ONE chase scene the entire movie, and no firefights or big climactic battles.). The jokes are kind of funny, but besides that, the movie offers you nothing but a half-baked moral and a blandly uninteresting visual aesthetic.
By the end of the movie, Willis has had some sort of epiphany and grows to loathe Surrogates. SPOILER WARNING SPOILER WARNING SPOILER WARNING
Ok, the movie's ending is what really bugs me, and since the rest of the movie is so blandly by the book and unsurprising (the one "good" plot twist came to me a third of the way in, ruining the reveal) that the ending is all I can talk about. Basically, Willis faces off against the Big Bad, who is threatening to unleash this super computer virus that will kill everyone using a Surrogate. Willis saves the day through an incredibly unintense sequence of, get this, TYPING NUMBERS and HITTING SHIFT-ENTER. That's right, the villain's entire plot is derailed by just putting in a code and hitting the right button. Woo.
But it gets worse. After saving the world, Willis basically has a choice: he can fully cancel the program and let everyone go on business as usual...OR he can let the virus take its course, destroying all the Surrogates whilst keeping their human users alive and well. Willis, of course, chooses the second option, causing the whole city to fall down as if dead. Willis walks dramatically through the empty city, rousing music plays and, somehow, humanity learns its lesson that it should live its own life rather than depend on machines.
This fails in two regards. First, there's no mention of all the MAJOR infrastructure damage that would be caused if everyone in the city suddenly, for all intents and purposes, died. You see a few buses crash and whatnot, but even if the city is populated by machines, there's got to be at least a few hundred planes in the air, or trains being driven, or some guy happens to be carrying a nuclear fission core to a reactor right when he gets shut off. Knocking out everyone in the city would be DEVASTATING on a logistical, economical, and just plain civil level. Not to mention the clean-up, the widespread panic that would result, and all that other jazz. I mean, the police are actively hunting Willis at this point in the movie anyway, yet the movie seems to think that because he's chosen some bizarro moral high ground, he's exempt from prosecution for completely HALTING society that day. The movie even hints that this could be the end of all Surrogate technology, meaning that Willis successfully pressed a HUGE reset button and launched everyone right back to where we started, thus wasting billions and billions of dollars and forcing an entire generation of people to completely restructure their lives. Which leads me to point two:
SURROGATES ARE BAD. That's the big moral lesson of this story, but frankly it doesn't hold up. The Surrogate technology we see in the film isn't being badly abused or used for much evil. Yes, there's incidences of super-powered robot people attacking a woman in her home, but the good guy government just had to press a button and the problem is solved. Wars are completely bloodless, since all the soldiers are safe in their pods, crime is completely gone, there's no fear of death or disease, and people are completely free to pursue everything they would pursue normally, just in better bodies. There isn't really a big downside, outside of a very petty spiritual/philisophical one. I mean, it's not like it is MANDATORY to use a Surrogate. Nobody is forcing anyone to use them, and yeah, there's evidences where people grow addicted to being in their Surrogates and live totally seperate lives from their regular counterparts, becoming less and less "human" as the days go by, but those are individual cases, and not nearly enough evidence is given to condemn the system on whole. Surrogate technology sounds AWESOME. Maybe you wouldn't want to do it, and perhaps it shouldn't be taken to the extremes it is in the movies, but it certainly doesn't justify Willis potentially destroying everybody's Surrogate just 'cause his wife is a disgusting, delusional junkie. Even in the context of the story, Willis' actions are radical and irrational.
END SPOILERS END SPOILERS AND END SPOILERS
The film is bland. If you're really hungry for a good sci-fi flick, this one should sate your hunger. It has a nifty premise, some whiz-bang science and is low-key enough that you can bring your non-nerdy friends along for the ride. But there's nothing really MEMORABLE about it. The message is obvious from the trailer, there's hardly ANY decent action sequences, and the acting is adequate, but not jaw-dropping. You see Willis BEING Willis, and he's always good at being Willis, it's nothing we haven't seen before, no is it something we won't see again and again. It's not worth your time, and if you are really curious about how it ends, read my spoiler block, though frankly, it's obvious because it's RIGHT THERE IN THE FUCKING TRAILER.
Now, if you excuse me, I've got to go built a super hot robot body to go to work for me.
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Surrogates is I-Robot meets Minority Report with Bruce Willis. Two and a half awesome things should make a movie that is at least twice (and a half) as awesome as usual, right? Well, no, that's stupid. Why would you think that? Surrogates is by the book, so-bland-its-mediocre whose strengths are few beyond its intriguing premise and interesting execution.
The story begins with a ripped-from-the-headlines montage of the build-up of Surrogate technology--that is, artificial bodies controlled by people's thoughts. Over fourteen years of research and development, we see the growth of Surrogate technology from its humble roots as just a nifty science experiment to its military applications to the full-on, widespread proliferation of Surrogates. Now, people stay at home all the time, living completely risk-free lives through their beautiful, custom-made artificial bodies. It's kind of like an internet chatroom, except its REAL.
The story kicks off after a pair of surrogates are destroyed in a back alley behind a tawdry nightclub. FBI guy Bruce Willis gets on the case and discovers, to everyone's shock and horror, that the death of these Surrogates has also resulted in the death of their real-world counterparts. Seeing as how Surrogate technology is supposed to, effectively, prevent someone from dying by any causes besides the natural ones, this is a big deal, and the first half of the film is spent in search of the mysterious weapon that caused the murders.
We get a typical bit of clue-hunting, source-interviewing, character intros and some minor development. Willis' character has a dead son, bad marital issues, yadda yadda, and over the course of the story, he grows increasingly freaked out and annoyed by how decadent people have become now that they can live their lives in beautiful plastic bodies. The streets are populated with thousands of GQ models, Willis' wife lives a hedonistic and care-free existence in her beautiful artificial body whilst her "real" self is tattered and decayed and addicted to a variety of pills.
I'll pause the summary for a minute to gush about how cool the premise is. They actually spend a good amount of time showing off just how many aspects of society have been changed by Surrogates--military conflicts are now, essentially, gigantic LAN matches fought by gangly soldiers in big booths with joysticks. Murder is out of the question, and the pursuit of pleasure and satisfaction in a custom-made body is the number one priority of society. All crime is practically annhilated, and thanks to a pseudo-big brother monitoring system located in the heart of FBI headquarters, anyone committing a crime in their surrogate can be remotely shut off with the touch of a button. It's as safe as you can be, with sex, drugs, and everything else you can imagine freely accessible, and even the wheelchair bound can enjoy a carefree romp through an urban jungle of joy and prosperity thanks to this new technology.
Of course, this being a movie with robots, somehow, the robots must be bad. In this case, there are a group of religious zealots led by The Prophet who have formed a surrogate-free reservation in the middle of the city. Basically their own sovreign nation, the Dread Reservation is the last bit of America where humans are actually, well, human. Willis, in pursuit of the murderer and his mysterious ray gun, stumbles into this robot-free zone and is promptly blown to bits by rednecks and hippies with guns and shovels.
Without a Surrogate, and amidst suspicion that these murders are connected to a far vaster conspiracy, Willis takes to the streets in his own body--which, coincidentally, looks exactly like his Surrogate one, except for more facial hair and about twenty years added on. Guided by the creepy Lionel Canter, the inventor of Surrogate technology (played by the scenery-hungry James Cromwell), who lives his life through a variety of beautiful, blond-haired, blue-eyed young boys and teenagers in three piece suits, Willis tracks his way through both the Surrogate-run city and the Dread Reservation in search of the truth.
The movie actually isn't that bad. It's not great, but the premise is solid, well-executed, and nothing seems particularly out of place. There's no particularly arresting dialogue, nor are there any super memorable action sequences (there's basically ONE chase scene the entire movie, and no firefights or big climactic battles.). The jokes are kind of funny, but besides that, the movie offers you nothing but a half-baked moral and a blandly uninteresting visual aesthetic.
By the end of the movie, Willis has had some sort of epiphany and grows to loathe Surrogates. SPOILER WARNING SPOILER WARNING SPOILER WARNING
Ok, the movie's ending is what really bugs me, and since the rest of the movie is so blandly by the book and unsurprising (the one "good" plot twist came to me a third of the way in, ruining the reveal) that the ending is all I can talk about. Basically, Willis faces off against the Big Bad, who is threatening to unleash this super computer virus that will kill everyone using a Surrogate. Willis saves the day through an incredibly unintense sequence of, get this, TYPING NUMBERS and HITTING SHIFT-ENTER. That's right, the villain's entire plot is derailed by just putting in a code and hitting the right button. Woo.
But it gets worse. After saving the world, Willis basically has a choice: he can fully cancel the program and let everyone go on business as usual...OR he can let the virus take its course, destroying all the Surrogates whilst keeping their human users alive and well. Willis, of course, chooses the second option, causing the whole city to fall down as if dead. Willis walks dramatically through the empty city, rousing music plays and, somehow, humanity learns its lesson that it should live its own life rather than depend on machines.
This fails in two regards. First, there's no mention of all the MAJOR infrastructure damage that would be caused if everyone in the city suddenly, for all intents and purposes, died. You see a few buses crash and whatnot, but even if the city is populated by machines, there's got to be at least a few hundred planes in the air, or trains being driven, or some guy happens to be carrying a nuclear fission core to a reactor right when he gets shut off. Knocking out everyone in the city would be DEVASTATING on a logistical, economical, and just plain civil level. Not to mention the clean-up, the widespread panic that would result, and all that other jazz. I mean, the police are actively hunting Willis at this point in the movie anyway, yet the movie seems to think that because he's chosen some bizarro moral high ground, he's exempt from prosecution for completely HALTING society that day. The movie even hints that this could be the end of all Surrogate technology, meaning that Willis successfully pressed a HUGE reset button and launched everyone right back to where we started, thus wasting billions and billions of dollars and forcing an entire generation of people to completely restructure their lives. Which leads me to point two:
SURROGATES ARE BAD. That's the big moral lesson of this story, but frankly it doesn't hold up. The Surrogate technology we see in the film isn't being badly abused or used for much evil. Yes, there's incidences of super-powered robot people attacking a woman in her home, but the good guy government just had to press a button and the problem is solved. Wars are completely bloodless, since all the soldiers are safe in their pods, crime is completely gone, there's no fear of death or disease, and people are completely free to pursue everything they would pursue normally, just in better bodies. There isn't really a big downside, outside of a very petty spiritual/philisophical one. I mean, it's not like it is MANDATORY to use a Surrogate. Nobody is forcing anyone to use them, and yeah, there's evidences where people grow addicted to being in their Surrogates and live totally seperate lives from their regular counterparts, becoming less and less "human" as the days go by, but those are individual cases, and not nearly enough evidence is given to condemn the system on whole. Surrogate technology sounds AWESOME. Maybe you wouldn't want to do it, and perhaps it shouldn't be taken to the extremes it is in the movies, but it certainly doesn't justify Willis potentially destroying everybody's Surrogate just 'cause his wife is a disgusting, delusional junkie. Even in the context of the story, Willis' actions are radical and irrational.
END SPOILERS END SPOILERS AND END SPOILERS
The film is bland. If you're really hungry for a good sci-fi flick, this one should sate your hunger. It has a nifty premise, some whiz-bang science and is low-key enough that you can bring your non-nerdy friends along for the ride. But there's nothing really MEMORABLE about it. The message is obvious from the trailer, there's hardly ANY decent action sequences, and the acting is adequate, but not jaw-dropping. You see Willis BEING Willis, and he's always good at being Willis, it's nothing we haven't seen before, no is it something we won't see again and again. It's not worth your time, and if you are really curious about how it ends, read my spoiler block, though frankly, it's obvious because it's RIGHT THERE IN THE FUCKING TRAILER.
Now, if you excuse me, I've got to go built a super hot robot body to go to work for me.
