From the Brow of Zeus

I just saw Surrogates (2009), the new Bruce Willis Sci-Fi movie about a future where most people live their lives vicariously through android "surrogates." The virtual-reality sim-chairs had me set for a throwback to 80s Cyberpunk. Unfortunately, as far as killer android murder mysteries go, this was far more I, Robot than Blade Runner.

Bruce Willis stars as Greer, an FBI agent sent to investigate the mysterious destruction of two partying surrogates. Both "surries" were found in a back alley with their eyes burnt out. One of the victims was the son of Dr. Canter, the co-inventor of the androids, who was forced out of the company, sort of a next-gen Steve Wozniak. Greer tracks the other surrogate, a sexy blonde girl, back to her apartment, and is shocked to discover that, 1) The human operator is also dead, and 2) she was really a big fat guy.

Bruce Willis in: VR5, the Movie.

Surrogates are supposed to be 100% safe -- that's the whole point. Operators send them hurtling out of planes, getting all EXTREME! without risking any bodily harm to themselves. But the supposed safety is just one of the reason Surrogates are so cool.

In the opening credits, the story is set up through fake news clips, each more unbelievable than the last. First they announce that within eight years -- the film takes place in 2017 --- 98% of the world's population will use surrogates. Really? 98%? Do 98% of the world's population even use computers? How about cars? I can buy that sort of deep consumer saturation with America or Japan, but the entire world? It gets worse from there: The almost universal use of surrogates supposedly stamped out social disease (makes sense), violence (er...), murder (wait a minute!) and -- get this -- racism. Are you kidding me? Racism? How's that supposed to work? Everyone hops in a surrogate and suddenly Hebroids are hugging on Neo-Botzis?

If you think that's hard to swallow, wait until you hear what happened to the 2% who don't use surries: Called Dreads and herded into "reservations" throughout the US, they're lead by a cult leader named The Prophet, played by Ving Rhames... in a fake-looking beard and dreadlocks.

Yes, the Dreads are lead by a guy who has dreadlocks.

It's that kind of movie.

Willis tracks the assassin to the outskirts of a Dread reservation. As five cops close in on him, the assassin busts out a hand-held proton pack and fries both them and their human operators, Black Ice-style, but Willis narrowly escapes by jacking out just in time. I loved bits like this, the more TekWar the better. Bruce Willis (or at least his blond haired, prettyboy surrogate, whose skin is smoothed with CGI) chases the assassin into one of The Prophet's "Dread Zones," a reservation made up mostly of rubble, dust and empty shipping containers. This is easily the highlight of the movie, as Bruce Willis leaps twenty feet in the air and navigates the blocky terrain, it reminded me of a Mario 64 level, Wacky Wacky Robots or something.

Unfortunately cops aren't allowed on reservations, and an angry mob gathers 'round to shotgun the "abomination." With the weapon now in the hands of the Dreads, the surrogate companies denying that such a weapon is possible, and his damaged surrogate confiscated by the police, Bruce Willis is forced to crawl into the real world, bald-headed and scruffy as hell, in order to solve the crime, save the world, and maybe patch up his marriage.

"I'm a cop with a dark past, troubled marriage, and I've been forced to hand in my badge. BUT, I'm also a robot."

Surrogates is a fairly entertaining movie. I was rarely bored, unless Willis was getting all dramatic with his Cop Wife (Maggie, why are cop wives always named Maggie?), moping about their Dark Cop Past. At least it leads to the scene where Willis returns home to find his surrogate wife and some sleazy friends using a bong-like electronic drug to get "juiced." Engraged that his wife is too busy stealing jokes from Futurama to come out of her stim-chair and mourn the loss of their son, Bruce "Meatbag" Willis goes ape spit like Toki on one of the sleazy surries and beats the guy's face until the synthetic skin peels away. The surrogates find this hysterical, especially the guy getting punched, and all Bruce has to show for it is a hand full of bloody knuckles.

It's too bad this is a movie that seems to do its best not to let you actually enjoy it. The setup is far too moronic for this to be an "intelligent" science fiction movie like Gattica, and yet there are only two action scenes in the entire film -- the rest is slow paced investigation and the aforementioned Mopey Cop Backstory. Who exactly is this movie for? People who don't like a lot of action or good storylines?

For those worried about spoilers, consider this the end of the review. If you don't give a crap, read on for my main problem with this movie:

SPOILERS AHOY!

Surrogates has one of the biggest Sci-Fi cliches in recent history, an annoying trope I first noticed with Minority Report that has popped up in countless movies since. In the opening credits, they briefly show the good Dr. who invented surrogates, played by the farmer from Babe. The clip was labeled "15 years Ago" and I breathed a sigh of relief. He's old; he's got to be dead by 2017, right? Hopefully it meant that, unlike Minority Report and too many recent Sci-Fi movies to name, the villain won't turn out to be the oldest male on the cast, inventor of the technology and all around bad guy. You can imagine my pain when I saw ol' Babe Farmer alive, healthy, sobbing over his son's death, and in my mind, 100% guaranteed to be the film's bad guy. Sure enough, by the end of the movie, he's about to kill all but 2% of the world and Willis is trying to talk him out of it. Seriously, this cliche has got to stop. Any time there's a Sci-Fi mystery, it's simply a matter of finding the oldest science dude on the cast and pointing a finger at him.

Of course, the people advertising this movie did a lot better job spoiling it than me, showing Bruce Willis walking through a dead world of deactivated Surrogates in the freaking preview trailers months ago. A scene that takes place roughly two seconds before the end credits. Luckily, the movie so thoroughly annoyed me on so many levels that by the end, I'd totally forgotten about it.

Labels: movies

Link to this Entry posted by Zeus Poplar @ 11:32 AM