Presenting the Best Sci-Fi Thriller I Saw in 2009:
The Surrogates, starring Bruce Willis and Radha Mitchell
I was surprised to learn that this movie was originally based on a comic book by the same name. I suppose, looking at the premise and story, the filmmakers (Director Jonathan Mostow and Producer David Hoberman) would have needed to cash in on the ‘comic book movie’ game. It adds that little extra bit of novelty needed to make the film stand out against its competition (
Valkyrie,
Taken, etc).
That’s not to say I didn’t like it, though.
The Surrogates is a sci-fi thriller starring Bruce Willis as FBI agent Tom Greer. The film borrows little bits from other movies –
The Matrix’ mind plug-ins,
Gattaca’s and
A Scanner Darkly’s identity themes and even a little bit from Watchmen’s villain’s overall plan.
Plot
Twenty years ago (look up), brilliant scientist Dr. Lionel Canter, played by James Cromwell invents the Surrogate, an android body that one can pilot through a mind link. This turns society inside-out, because people no longer have to leave their houses. Instead of physically interacting with the world, people pilot their Surrogates to work, to parties, to shopping centers, and soldiers drive stripped down versions in combat. A small percentage of humanity shuns the use of Surrogates and is restricted to small ghetto- or reservation-like sections of major cities. They remind me of the Prawn city in
District 9 – cluttered spaces where inhabitants have to reuse the cast-off materials from the rest of society to build lives for themselves.
The movie starts off with the first ever murder of a Surrogate where the destruction of the android body kills the user (the son of the original Surrogate inventor). Bruce Willis is the federal agent in charge of the case. He and his partner expose a conspiracy that wants to shatter the majority’s way of life.
Analysis
The Surrogates in the film appear to be a metaphor for the virtual worlds of the contemporary internet. The murdered son’s companion at the beginning is revealed to be an obese, hairy, quite disgusting man piloting an attractive female Surrogate. The creation of alternate personas is incredibly popular on the internet today. This anonymity is why our society has so many problems with identity theft and internet predators.
Strangely, the introduction of the film – a montage of news stories, similar to District 9 and others, states that crime has nearly been eliminated in the time since the introduction of Surrogates. There don’t seem to be any other scientific advances present in the film besides the androids; it’s possible that we’re not shown them, but I don’t think there were any. I also find it hard to believe that everyone on earth (barring the anti-Surrogate faction) owns and uses a Surrogate.
Maybe it’s just me, but I feel that it would take a lot more to get people to abandon physical interaction (particularly with family and friends, as shown in the film with Willis’ wife) and the satisfaction of tangibly interacting with the world. Particularly interesting is that the people don’t use their Surrogates to do anything interesting or adventurous – they go to work, they have meaningless casual sex with other androids; the most adventurous thing we see the Surrogate drivers doing is passing around a live wire, recreationally electrocuting themselves.
Like I said, I haven’t read the source comic book for this movie, but I wonder if it might have been more subversive than the movie let on. The movie’s message is obviously that we need to wrest our consciousnesses out of our virtual worlds and get back to the way we used to interact. I’d be interested to see what was cut or toned down from the comic to make it mainstream enough for the Common Denominator to enjoy.
Personally, I don’t see how the characters get anything meaningful out of their lives (You might say: ‘But James, Willis’ wife isn’t at all happy with her simulated life’ and I’d respond with: ‘She may not be happy, but it’s not because she’s dissatisfied with her Surrogate life, it’s because her unresolved grief from the death of her child. In fact, the only way she can keep along with her daily life without being shattered by grief is by assuming the calm, robotic Surrogate façade.), but then I’m not the kind of person who gets easily pulled into virtual worlds like Second Life or WoW (with apologies for the unintentional and implied insult to my friends who do play WoW).
P.S. I should mention that, if not for all the Shakey-Cam malarky that
Star Trek put us through, that movie would have been my favorite Sci-Fi film of 2009. Besides, I already wrote about that one:
Space, the Final Frontier...
