Actually, it's a peninsula
Last night I watched the fizzled big-budget blockbuster "The Island"
on the movie network. My wife had already seen it with a friend when it
came out in the theaters last summer, but I wasn't that interested in
it. I enjoyed the movie, and didn't really see anything wrong with it
as entertainment, except a few silly plot holes that can be written off
as storytelling necessities. And at least it's worth a blog post for a
few reasons. I'm not saying that this movie is bad, but I can certainly
see why it failed, since for all the pseudo-intellectualism, this movie
is "as thought-provoking as Dumb and Dumberer", as one IMDB commenter
put it.
The premise of this science fiction popcorn action flick is that some evil corporation (oh I know, redundant) raises clones of rich people to be killed and harvested for spare parts. These clones are hidden in an artificial underground world and kept docile by feeding them bullshit about the whole world being contaminated. This futuristic world is clean and runs like a Swiss watch, but for some mysterious reason, it features quite a few corporate logos of our time, such as Microsoft XBox. When the need to harvest some parts finally comes, the lucky clone is told that he or she has won a special lottery and gets to move to a paradise island. That is certainly one classic way to thin the ranks of the marching morons, a great nod to the science fiction classics that have worked as the foundation for this film. Similar little nods to many scifi classics and other Michael Bay movies can be found in quite a few places throughout the movie, so keep your eyes open, moviehounds!
As is typical in these movies, clones are conveniently born as full-grown adults. More amazingly, these clones seem to be the exact same age as the originals, and they even look exactly the same with respect to things like weight and muscular tone. I guess this puts the end to the age-old nature/nurture debate, when genetics determine absolutely everything up to fingerprints and the pattern of the blood veins in your eyes! The clones are designed not to have a sex drive and they are mentally like children and teenagers, which makes this underground life convenient and straightforward.
However, all is not well in this utopia. One of the clones, our hero played by Ewan McGregor, finds out what is really going on and escapes with his female friend, who for some reason needs no persuasion to follow her friend to flee from the cops. Now, if in the real world cops were chasing some friend of mine who kept telling me that everything is a lie and that I have to give up the lottery jackpot that I just won, I probably would not take this suggestion without at least slight skepticism. When this pair evades the guards and eventually reaches the outside world, no guards bother to follow them, even though the facility is in the middle of a desert miles away from everything. Ollie ollie oxen free. Instead, the evil doctor who runs the facility flies in a top team consisting of special forces soldiers to silently track (hah, as if that could happen in a Michael Bay movie) and dispose of the two fugitives before they get to tell the world that the clones are alive instead of being kept in a persistent vegetative state. The real world has some kind of "eugenics laws", but no government agency seems to much bother to enforce them.
When I saw Sean Bean named in the opening titles, I immediately assumed that he plays the world-weary supersoldier tracking the fugitives, but in this movie he actually plays the evil doctor, and Djimon Hounsou plays the leader of the supercommando team. Now, my dear readers, regardless whether you have seen this movie or not, why do you think that when the African supercommando character had been introduced, I immediately knew that he will near the end of the movie turn against his employer and help the fugitives? I even instantly foresaw his dramatic little speech about butchery in Africa. I must be some kind of a precog. Later I similarly humoured my wife by predicting other turns and dramatic events and outcomes in this movie. Hey hon, is it really enough for the comic sidekick technician to pay for his sins by helping the fugitives escape, or will he need to sacrifice his life... ka-boom! I guess that answered that question.
The movie picked up its pace nicely when the fugitives entered the urban landscape waiting for us a decade or two in the future. Of course, at this point I was mostly admiring all those cool new skyscrapers in the future Los Angeles, and didn't really care about all that shooting and running that was happening in the foreground. The goofy clones on the lam don't understand how the world works, which is humorously established in one scene set in a bar. To compensate for this so that they get to keep ahead of their merciless trackers, the team of special forces commandos that is hunting them is by far the most incompetent, least professional and most just plain idiotic such team of people seen in any movie ever, hands down. Mere words can't even begin to describe how immensely stupid these people are in this movie, especially considering the massive resources they have in their disposal. The vast gulf between the task of their mission and how these people choose to try to reach it simply has to be seen to be believed. But of course things have to be this way, since otherwise this movie would have ended after ten minutes of chase. After one particular scene that might best be summed up here with the words "No, shoot Flexo!" I was certainly ready to say good night and good luck.
Now that I am at this general topic, I really have to wonder how the cinematic supervillains such as the evil doctor motivate their henchmen to such enormous loyalty. Forget villainy, these guys really should be giving high-priced seminars to Fortune 500 corporations about how to motivate your employees to go for the extra mile! Of course, it is already an action movie cliche that the whole world is full of highly competent helicopter pilots who don't mind that their passengers shoot at people on the ground, nor do they mind their helicopter being shot at. In this movie, even the former Navy SEALs are so focused on their mission that they have no problem doing things that will give them the chair. For example, starting a massive "Heat" style machine gun shootout with the LAPD. Back in the clone farm, the company employees such as the friendly lunch lady seem to get no pangs of conscience of running what is essentially a concentration camp. Not even one whistleblower contacts the outside media to tell them the truth, even though the employees clearly get to go home and leave the facility after the workday. Not even one construction worker, architect or supervisor says half a word to anybody about this vast underground multibillion dollar megapolis that they built in total secrecy. Talk about dedication to company and excellence.
Towards the end, this movie decides that clones are actually so identical to the original people that they gradually gain the memories of the originals as they age, which causes them to question their artificial reality and rebel against it. How this transfer of memories works, well, your guess is as good as mine. So there isn't much that the evil doctor can do than to eliminate the whole problematic batch and start over. When the hero clone finds out about this, he infiltrates the clone farm posing as the original rich guy. Apparently there is some giant hologram machine that hides the outside world from the clones, although I don't see why it would be needed since the whole facility clearly is completely underground, that he wants to turn off to show the clones the real world.
The girl clone also allows herself to be captured on purpose, certain of the fact that the hunters will capture her instead of just shooting her just like they have tried to do during the whole movie so far, and that the hunters won't frisk her and find the little gun that she has on her and will certainly become useful in creating mayhem later when she is held in a room with One Inept Guard. Lucky her! Before the gun comes out, we have to establish that this guard is a scumbag by having him cop a feel and comment on her sexuality. Because working for a concentration camp and watching over a vivisection doesn't already establish this, or perhaps the moviemakers assumed that this is too subtle for the average moviegoer.
After some crawling inside tunnels while the evil doctor is giving his "I am God" speech of justification, the alarms blare and the guards mostly run around, the expected epic battle between our heroic clone and the evil doctor to shut down the machine finally ensues. I am not entirely sure, but the operation of this hologram machine somehow depended on a giant turbine that was designed so that turning its power off only makes it go faster and eventually reach highly dangerous speeds, breaking everything. And they even say this in a sign placed next to the shutoff switch. Talk about the worst possible way of trying to repair a bad design! It certainly is no wonder why these people couldn't make their clones behave properly.
To my surprise and against my expectations, the evil doctor doesn't die by being sucked into the wildly spinning turbine. Instead the end battle falls kind of flat and merely leaves things hanging, but at least there was the obligatory "I am not a number, I am a free man!" speech. When the hologram machine is shut down and the clones see the real world outside for the first time, the hordes of clones overpower their guards and run out. Again, if I one day looked out the window and suddenly saw that the whole world had turned into a giant desert, I don't think that my first instinct would be to wildly run there. But all is forgiven when people clad in beautiful white cinematically flow against the backdrop of beautiful desert as our heroes kiss in slow motion. The African supercommando is absolved of his sins of, like, killing dozens of cops and other meaningless redshirts, and also gets to dramatically walk somewhere unspecified. Perhaps his home village in Africa, where is he greeted by his family and he will remove and burn his Western clothes and other reminders of the evil Western civilization and take his place as an authentic human being living in the moment.
The premise of this science fiction popcorn action flick is that some evil corporation (oh I know, redundant) raises clones of rich people to be killed and harvested for spare parts. These clones are hidden in an artificial underground world and kept docile by feeding them bullshit about the whole world being contaminated. This futuristic world is clean and runs like a Swiss watch, but for some mysterious reason, it features quite a few corporate logos of our time, such as Microsoft XBox. When the need to harvest some parts finally comes, the lucky clone is told that he or she has won a special lottery and gets to move to a paradise island. That is certainly one classic way to thin the ranks of the marching morons, a great nod to the science fiction classics that have worked as the foundation for this film. Similar little nods to many scifi classics and other Michael Bay movies can be found in quite a few places throughout the movie, so keep your eyes open, moviehounds!
As is typical in these movies, clones are conveniently born as full-grown adults. More amazingly, these clones seem to be the exact same age as the originals, and they even look exactly the same with respect to things like weight and muscular tone. I guess this puts the end to the age-old nature/nurture debate, when genetics determine absolutely everything up to fingerprints and the pattern of the blood veins in your eyes! The clones are designed not to have a sex drive and they are mentally like children and teenagers, which makes this underground life convenient and straightforward.
However, all is not well in this utopia. One of the clones, our hero played by Ewan McGregor, finds out what is really going on and escapes with his female friend, who for some reason needs no persuasion to follow her friend to flee from the cops. Now, if in the real world cops were chasing some friend of mine who kept telling me that everything is a lie and that I have to give up the lottery jackpot that I just won, I probably would not take this suggestion without at least slight skepticism. When this pair evades the guards and eventually reaches the outside world, no guards bother to follow them, even though the facility is in the middle of a desert miles away from everything. Ollie ollie oxen free. Instead, the evil doctor who runs the facility flies in a top team consisting of special forces soldiers to silently track (hah, as if that could happen in a Michael Bay movie) and dispose of the two fugitives before they get to tell the world that the clones are alive instead of being kept in a persistent vegetative state. The real world has some kind of "eugenics laws", but no government agency seems to much bother to enforce them.
When I saw Sean Bean named in the opening titles, I immediately assumed that he plays the world-weary supersoldier tracking the fugitives, but in this movie he actually plays the evil doctor, and Djimon Hounsou plays the leader of the supercommando team. Now, my dear readers, regardless whether you have seen this movie or not, why do you think that when the African supercommando character had been introduced, I immediately knew that he will near the end of the movie turn against his employer and help the fugitives? I even instantly foresaw his dramatic little speech about butchery in Africa. I must be some kind of a precog. Later I similarly humoured my wife by predicting other turns and dramatic events and outcomes in this movie. Hey hon, is it really enough for the comic sidekick technician to pay for his sins by helping the fugitives escape, or will he need to sacrifice his life... ka-boom! I guess that answered that question.
The movie picked up its pace nicely when the fugitives entered the urban landscape waiting for us a decade or two in the future. Of course, at this point I was mostly admiring all those cool new skyscrapers in the future Los Angeles, and didn't really care about all that shooting and running that was happening in the foreground. The goofy clones on the lam don't understand how the world works, which is humorously established in one scene set in a bar. To compensate for this so that they get to keep ahead of their merciless trackers, the team of special forces commandos that is hunting them is by far the most incompetent, least professional and most just plain idiotic such team of people seen in any movie ever, hands down. Mere words can't even begin to describe how immensely stupid these people are in this movie, especially considering the massive resources they have in their disposal. The vast gulf between the task of their mission and how these people choose to try to reach it simply has to be seen to be believed. But of course things have to be this way, since otherwise this movie would have ended after ten minutes of chase. After one particular scene that might best be summed up here with the words "No, shoot Flexo!" I was certainly ready to say good night and good luck.
Now that I am at this general topic, I really have to wonder how the cinematic supervillains such as the evil doctor motivate their henchmen to such enormous loyalty. Forget villainy, these guys really should be giving high-priced seminars to Fortune 500 corporations about how to motivate your employees to go for the extra mile! Of course, it is already an action movie cliche that the whole world is full of highly competent helicopter pilots who don't mind that their passengers shoot at people on the ground, nor do they mind their helicopter being shot at. In this movie, even the former Navy SEALs are so focused on their mission that they have no problem doing things that will give them the chair. For example, starting a massive "Heat" style machine gun shootout with the LAPD. Back in the clone farm, the company employees such as the friendly lunch lady seem to get no pangs of conscience of running what is essentially a concentration camp. Not even one whistleblower contacts the outside media to tell them the truth, even though the employees clearly get to go home and leave the facility after the workday. Not even one construction worker, architect or supervisor says half a word to anybody about this vast underground multibillion dollar megapolis that they built in total secrecy. Talk about dedication to company and excellence.
Towards the end, this movie decides that clones are actually so identical to the original people that they gradually gain the memories of the originals as they age, which causes them to question their artificial reality and rebel against it. How this transfer of memories works, well, your guess is as good as mine. So there isn't much that the evil doctor can do than to eliminate the whole problematic batch and start over. When the hero clone finds out about this, he infiltrates the clone farm posing as the original rich guy. Apparently there is some giant hologram machine that hides the outside world from the clones, although I don't see why it would be needed since the whole facility clearly is completely underground, that he wants to turn off to show the clones the real world.
The girl clone also allows herself to be captured on purpose, certain of the fact that the hunters will capture her instead of just shooting her just like they have tried to do during the whole movie so far, and that the hunters won't frisk her and find the little gun that she has on her and will certainly become useful in creating mayhem later when she is held in a room with One Inept Guard. Lucky her! Before the gun comes out, we have to establish that this guard is a scumbag by having him cop a feel and comment on her sexuality. Because working for a concentration camp and watching over a vivisection doesn't already establish this, or perhaps the moviemakers assumed that this is too subtle for the average moviegoer.
After some crawling inside tunnels while the evil doctor is giving his "I am God" speech of justification, the alarms blare and the guards mostly run around, the expected epic battle between our heroic clone and the evil doctor to shut down the machine finally ensues. I am not entirely sure, but the operation of this hologram machine somehow depended on a giant turbine that was designed so that turning its power off only makes it go faster and eventually reach highly dangerous speeds, breaking everything. And they even say this in a sign placed next to the shutoff switch. Talk about the worst possible way of trying to repair a bad design! It certainly is no wonder why these people couldn't make their clones behave properly.
To my surprise and against my expectations, the evil doctor doesn't die by being sucked into the wildly spinning turbine. Instead the end battle falls kind of flat and merely leaves things hanging, but at least there was the obligatory "I am not a number, I am a free man!" speech. When the hologram machine is shut down and the clones see the real world outside for the first time, the hordes of clones overpower their guards and run out. Again, if I one day looked out the window and suddenly saw that the whole world had turned into a giant desert, I don't think that my first instinct would be to wildly run there. But all is forgiven when people clad in beautiful white cinematically flow against the backdrop of beautiful desert as our heroes kiss in slow motion. The African supercommando is absolved of his sins of, like, killing dozens of cops and other meaningless redshirts, and also gets to dramatically walk somewhere unspecified. Perhaps his home village in Africa, where is he greeted by his family and he will remove and burn his Western clothes and other reminders of the evil Western civilization and take his place as an authentic human being living in the moment.
It sounds like the latest season of 24, where to be truly evil you have to be white (and maybe German or Russian or something else to boot).
However, the next season promises a return of those truly evil Chinese. I wonder how they are going to manage that?
Posted by loki on the run | 7:28 PM
Truly evil, or truly loyal? The employees of "evil" corporations is a constant amusement to me, I've probably never laughed so hard as in the tv series "Mike Hammer" when Hammer shoots a chef as he's escaping from a restaurant. The movie "Austin Powers" parodies this brilliantly, though many of these scenes were deleted from the original.
Posted by Anonymous | 2:37 AM