Surrogates My Review
Hopefully Science Fiction
This movie interested me. With the age of technology and the use of machines in the twenty first century, I have often wondered what will civilization look like in another 100 years?
The movie Surrogates places emphasis on life using robots instead of our own flesh and blood bodies. A person can go into a business and have a robot created using their basic looks; only enhancing them so that everyone looks flawless, sexier, smarter and more physically fit. Sounds nice in some ways...however, people control their robots or Surrogates from inside of their homes; never leaving their house to see the light of day or even to connect physically themselves within their own homes for fear that their significant other will be repulsed by a less than perfect form of themselves. Early on in the movie, I felt saddened over the thought of never feeling the skin of a loved one against my own. Never smelling a flower or feeling the breeze across my own face. One's surrogate experiences all of this for you.
The premise behind getting a surrogate was to shield yourself from disease, injury and other harms that a person could come in contact with in the "real" world. The problem became that surrogates and their controllers became people that were superficial and non-feeling. They began to believe that perfection was better than reality and in essence, they became as lifeless as their surrogates when they returned home after a day on the job to plug themselves in and release their controllers from their control rooms.
There were some people in the film that didn't buy into surrogacy. They fought against robots taking over their lives and they were placed in areas within the cities around the world to live their lives out like "humans"; however the conditions under which they lived looked more like poverty stricken areas and cultish behaviors.
The clink in the use of surrogates occured when a machine was created by an unknown that would not only destroy the surrogate, it would kill the operator. Bruce Willis and his partner sent their surrogates out to find the culprits and uncovered an interesting plot of lies, false placement of loyalties and attempts on their own lives. Willis's surrogate is destroyed and he decides that he not only misses his "real" wife, he misses the feelings and indescribable emotions he felt before his alter ego took his place.
This movie takes you through human emotion, neat robotic special effects (however not so unrealistic that you ever think that it couldn't be possible) and left wondering if such a tragedy could ever impose itself upon our world in the future. There are a few interesting twists of plot and in the end, it's up to one real man to decide the fate for the entire human race.
See the movie and decide for yourself. I am sure there are many times we have all wanted a double or someone that could take over our lives for a while. I know I have. After seeing this movie however, I am glad to be sitting here, sipping my juice, feeling my back ache and knowing that I can hug my own children and snuggle against my guy and actually feel these things myself!
Out of five stars, I give Surrogates 4 stars.
