In tribute to Reggie on his birthday I give you my review/analysis of The Island.
I watched The Island last night. For me it falls right in the middle of enjoyable escapist sci-fi and total crap. I will now "spoil" it for you, but in doing so, I actually hope to make it more interesting. The "secret" of The Island is that it is a world of clones and, unbeknownst to the clones themselves, they are used for body replacement "insurance" for the original source human, who has paid 5 million dollars to have a clone on standby in case of a critical emergency. If you need a new liver, for example, you take it from your clone.
The amazing irony of the movie itself is that it is composed of ideas, themes and scenes CLONED from other great sci-fi movies. The only thing keeping this movie alive are the vital organs it has copied from originals. That and Ewan Mcgregor and Scarlett Johansson are pleasing to watch.
The Island is: Logan's Run, THX-1138, Blade Runner, there's at least one action sequence on "speeder bikes" from Return of the Jedi, a nick from A Clockwork Orange in the scene of forced video-brainwashing. I'm sure there are others too. Please enlighten me if I've forgotten any. A little Gattica maybe?
Logan's Run is about a guy who finds out his society is putting people to death under the guise of a lottery based prize. But when he finds this out, he decides to escape. So is The Island.
THX-1138 is about a guy named "THX-1138" who decides to escape his world because of its ant-colony-like utopian oppression where there are virtually no freedoms and everything is prescribed for you. In The Island, this is the condition that "Lincoln Echo 6" is suffering.
Blade Runner is about manufactured people who rebel against their lives of slavery, and the semi-retired cop who is hunting them. They have artificial memories from "real people" imprinted to their own brains in order to socialize them. In both movies there is a scene where the Replicant/Clone says "...but I have memories of my childhood." But the human who knows the truth tells them that those memories have been imprinted on them. It's virtually the exact same "sit down and talk about the birds and the bees" scene. And in both movies it's that human who becomes sympathetic to the plight of the Replicant/Clones and helps them escape. The Island also includes a bounty hunter character who eventually switches sides from hunter to helper in order to liberate the clones. And guess WHAT? That bounty hunter is played by African actor Djimon Hounsou; PLUS, Ewan McGregor's characer's name is LINCOLN. HA! Isn't that just charming your first-grade American history lesson's socks off? (There are 2 other odd character names: Merrick and Starkweather, real people made famous as characters in the films Elephant Man and Badlands respectively. The writers even cloned their characters NAMES.)
When the clones in The Island are first born (as fully-formed adults), they are strapped to a table, their eyelids forced open and they are subjected to video images that make them want to go to "the Island" (the false lottery prize that is actually death for them) as the primary motivation in their lives. They are inundated with images and voices telling them they are "special". This technique was used as criminal reform brainwashing in A Clockwork Orange.
So, given all that, I thought it was basically a fun movie: some good action sequences, decent actors, nice looking sets, just without any originality whatsoever. And really the movie makes a thematic case for itself. In the end, the clones are liberated because they are realized to be not "soulless" copies of their originals, not lesser beings because of their unoriginality, but valid beings in spite of their derivative origin. So condemn the makers: the director, writer, producer, but take the product at face value and appreciate it for the sci-f-eye-candy that it is. The title, after all, is The Island, which is the *lie* of the story, it is the thing that does not really exist, and that's what this movie is about: nothing but its cloned parts that its creator hopes you will accept as the real thing.
chrisx [email] said at 7:01 PM 02-23-2006: Too bad it is not as good as the sources it rips, though I admit I enjoyed seeing it once. I mean jeez, Blade Runner and A Clockwork Orange are two of the best films ever made.
josh [email] said at 7:18 PM 02-23-2006: UHHHH you missed the fact that this is basically an unauthorised remake of Parts: The Clonus Horror:
In Bay's movie, the closely monitored, mod-clothed, naive residents of a futuristic colony win a lottery to go away to a promised land called "The Island."
In "Clonus," the closely monitored, mod-clothed, naive residents of a futuristic colony are chosen to go to a promised land called "America."
In both movies, a male resident goes on the run when he discovers that the promised land is a lie, and that he's part of a colony of clones being grown to harvest their organs when the rich human originals ail. Both feature an evil scientist keeping his project a secret from the public at all costs by sending assassins after the runner.
Reached at his home in Ashburn, Va., "Clonus" director Robert S. Fiveson said Wednesday that he'd sneaked into a preview screening of "The Island" the previous night. "I went in hoping and praying that it was enough different than 'Clonus' so that I could just put my mind at rest and move on, but I can't. Because astonishingly enough, it not only seems to rest on the very skeleton of the film, ... there were enough (similarities) in the movie in the first third that I thought this cannot be happenstance or casual."
Fiveson said he'd known about the numerous Web sites and message boards that have been pointing out the similarities — even of some specific shots: "Subplots, characterizations, even down to the butterfly getting through the filter! And the chase scenes were almost in the same order and same locale."
What went through Fiveson's head as Bay's movie unfolded?
"I was thinking 'Jeez, this looks so much better than my movie. I wish I had the money.'"
cecil [email] said at 7:26 PM 02-23-2006: I avoid movie posts if I haven't seen the movie, thus it was not imprinted in my memory banks. You can call me Johnny.
reggie [email] said at 2:11 PM 02-24-2006: As I pointed out to some guy on the IMDB discussion board for Martin Scorsese's The Departed which is a remake of Infernal Affairs whose country of origin I don't know, if you look at say the top 25 of AFI's all time greatest American movies, a significant portion are based on other sources. Some are remakes, some are adaptations, only a handful are full-blooded completely original stories.
H. Pommefrittes said at 2:35 PM 02-24-2006: Infernal Affairs hails from Hong Kong. Its claim to fame is due to introverting the kinetic gunplay typical to the "heroic bloodshed" genre of HK gangster movies into a series of extremely tense, but very static standoffs.
reggie [email] said at 3:17 PM 02-24-2006: I keep catching it in segments. At some point before The Departed comes out I must chain myself to a chair and watch Infernal Affairs from beginning to end.
or the sake of fairness, I wanted to imagine two writers working independently, both beginning with the same basic concept of "a clone farm for the rich and powerful". Given that, could they conceivably have come up with two scripts this similar?
Probably not. In fact, the plot outline of The Island is identical to Clonus, except with a few key scenes rearranged. And there may be a number of plot points that are new to The Island, but as I learned from the DVD commentary, almost every scene without a Clonus counterpart was the idea of Michael Bay. So Tredwell-Owen's original script was probably even more like Clonus than the finished film.
courtney [email] said at 1:51 PM 02-24-2006: I feel like moviemakes make the same movie over and over again a generation apart so that each generation can think it's the most brilliant thing evar. Them kids wouldn't know any better.
