Surrogates

[robinturner]

I finally got round to watching Surrogates to find that BBSpot's review of the trailer got it right: "Ending Prognostication: Willis finds a way to bring down the evil conspiracy behind the surrogate society. At the end, people will slowly emerge from their homes and shade their eyes from the sun." There again, that doesn't show great premonitory powers, since if you know it's a film about people living their lives through robot surrogates, it's pretty much inevitable that it will end like that. Maybe one of these days someone will make a film involving humans living alternate lives via robots or a virtual world and it won't automatically be a Bad Thing. Maybe they've already done it, but if so, I guess it was some low-budget cult film that certainly didn't star Bruce Willis.

Comments

[alsoname.livejournal.com]

I saw that film fairly recently, like sometime this year, and all I remember about it is that it annoyed me majorly!

[solri.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed it; I just wish they'd gone into the issues a bit more deeply. At least they could have raised the point that it's fine to talk about how our natural bodies are so much better than robots when you're young and healthy, but they don't feel so good if you have MS or are 90 years old and crippled with arthritis.

David Brin's Kil'n People tackles a similar subject in a much more interesting and philosophical way, though it's probably not good film material.

[cassielsander.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed it too in a no-expectations sort of way; thought it had some fun inversions on the Terminator-stuff when the anti-tech people are gradually beating down Willis' robot body.

There were a few slips of logic thought that were not only stupid but (far worse in this kind of film) unnecessary. For instance that everybody in the world that wanted one had apparently been given a robot body within a few months. Given that this is the near future I find it amazing that anyone would say that, even as an exaggeration. I'm not sure we could give everyone in the world a bag of rice.

Maybe our downfall was all an outgrowth of the $100 laptop for everyone idea, in which case this belongs in the Sahara category as far as vilifying worthy causes goes.

Still, worked okay on the level of boom boom ha ha.