Film Friday: Surrogates (2009)

Surrogates could have been a fascinating film about the consequences of losing ourselves to the virtual world. But it wasn’t. The writers never could look beyond their knee-jerk liberal worldview to create a believable future and they were terrified to explore any of the issues that arose. At the same time, the director couldn't decide if he wanted to make a science fiction film or a summer blockbuster. He ended up with neither: an action movie without any thrills and an intellectual movie without any brains.

** spoiler alert **

Surrogates takes place in the near-future when mankind has invented human-like drones that people literally use as substitutes for themselves. As the operator lies in a sensor chair, the drone lives their lives for them, obeying all of their commands. Theoretically, this premise makes the film ripe for a fascinating set of philosophical questions and social commentary. For example, you’ve got questions of privacy, questions of anonymity and knowing who or what you’re really dealing with, questions of people losing touch with the real world, questions of the loss of our physical health as people vegetate in front of computers, and questions of what defines us.

That’s a lot of fertile ground for a pretty compelling and interesting take on the modern world. Indeed, this is the kind of premise that could easily showcase both the best and the worst of our increasing reliance on the internet, and could result in a film that is simultaneously both inspiring and deeply disturbing. But it wasn’t. And there are two main reasons the film never came anywhere near its potential: (1) The knee-jerk liberal worldview adopted by the writers (it actually came from a comic book) and (2) the director’s desire to appeal to a mass audience.

Bad Writers

Right out of the gates, the audience is hit with a liberal worldview that matches nothing that thousands of years of human existence have shown us about human nature. Consider this: what would happen if people suddenly learned they would no longer bear any of the negative consequences of their actions? In other words, they could no longer get hurt no matter what they did, they could look however they wanted no matter how they maintained themselves, and they could move through the world anonymously. If you said, “crime and discrimination would disappear,” then you’re an idiot. . . or you’re one of the writers. No rational person would believe this. It makes no sense. Put humans in a consequence free environment and they take advantage of it, they don’t suddenly lose their worst instincts.

Yet, the film starts with this nonsensical premise -- which is based on the liberal fallacy that crime is supposedly the result of disadvantages and is not a conscious personal decision. And in so doing, the writers immediately create a huge disconnect with the audience, which makes it impossible for the audience to relate to the people in the movie.

Moreover, this premise falls apart immediately as the writers introduce all of the standard liberal boogeymen. You have the blood-thirsty military, the corrupt cops, the dirty businessmen, the religious fanatics who are actually hypocrites and really work for the corrupt businessman. Yep, the only thing missing was Dick Cheney. And each of those standard issue boogeymen was made all the worse because they found themselves in a consequence free environment. . . the exact opposite of the premise upon which the movie world is based. Thus, the writers undercut their very own liberal knee-jerk world when their other liberal knee jerked. Jerks.

Further, the writers were clearly too afraid to touch upon the issues that would make this film so much more interesting. Willis suffers from anxiety when he’s out in the street in person rather than in his surrogate. But it passes right after it’s mentioned. People who have done nothing but lie around for ten years immobile, can suddenly get up and walk around without showing any signs of the atrophy that comes with being bedridden. It’s mentioned several times that you never really know who is operating the surrogate (as you can look like anyone), but we aren’t shown any of the kinds of depravity or betrayals this would lead to . . . and which occur every day on the internet where predators and perverts lurk anonymously. And for all the talk in Hollywood about racism, they never touch upon this subject even though the obvious question would be: would minorities continue to be minorities in public? They also completely skip over the question of kids being raised by parents acting through robots. And they utterly fail to grasp the social consequences of any of this. For example, if people are partying through their robots and never really meet in the flesh, who is getting married and having kids? Wouldn’t there be a population plunge? What about the irresistible human desire to pull pranks, to hack, or to exploit a system? Nada. What about the herd instinct? Wouldn’t everyone try to look like the latest supermodels? And how exactly do people in the poorest parts of the world afford these surrogates? And so on. . . all skipped.

In short, they hint at some interesting issues, but they whitewash them all, and they ignore a great many more -- especially those that would require them to think of how the world would actually change. In other words, we’re supposed to accept the premise but not really think about what the premise would mean. This makes the film bland and pointless. And it probably won’t surprise you to learn that the writers are the same team that wrote Terminator Salvation, another pointless, lifeless, generic yawner meant to keep your brain from ever coming on.

Bad Director

Beyond the writing problems, lies the problem of the director: Jonathan Mostow. Mostow either didn’t quite know if he wanted to make a contemplative science fiction film or a summer action film, or he was too afraid to lose the summer kids because he never veered from the summer formula -- and he doesn't even do that with any creativity.

Bruce Willis plays the same character he always plays. . . a middle-aged, slightly out of place cop (FBI) with an unhappy family life. The story takes place when Bruce and his partner (Radha Mitchell) discover that someone has a weapon that lets them fry surrogates and kill the user in the process. This of course turns into a global conspiracy involving the standard bad guys: the U.S. military, corrupt cops, evil corporations, and a psychotic inventor who is the real mastermind behind whatever the evil plot actually is. Bet you never saw that coming! The plot is generic. The characters are generic -- Ving Rhames, Rosamund Pike, and James Cromwell are all wasted in this. The plot twists are generic. The pacing is generic. And the ending is uninteresting -- in fact, the movie beats you over the head with “the right answer” so much that when Willis finally is called upon to makes his decision, there’s just no suspense. Nothing interesting, original or spectacular happens in this film. It's entire potential is squandered and it ends up neither as a good action film nor an intelligent science fiction film.

It’s kind of sad that a movie with this much potential achieved so little. In this regard, it reminds me a lot of I Am Legend, which had so much potential, but chose to ignore it all for fear of losing the summer kids.

Oh well.

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